Donald Trump decreed that this year’s Independence Day celebrations, titled “Salute to America,” would involve a military parade featuring Army tanks and Air Force flyovers, as well as a presidential address before a ticketed VIP audience at the Lincoln Memorial. To mark the occasion, the editors prepared a visual history of military parades.
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Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini reviewing a tank corps at a military parade, Rome, Italy, October 1935
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A parade of the Wehrmacht before Adolf Hitler on his forty-seventh birthday, Berlin, Germany, April 1936
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Generalissimo Francisco Franco taking the salute at a victory parade, Madrid, Spain, 1939
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Artillery on parade during the May Day celebrations in Red Square, Moscow, Russia, 1947
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Three Soviet rocket launchers taking part in a military parade to mark the sixth anniversary of Fidel Castro’s revolution, Havana, Cuba, 1965
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Chairman Mao Zedong parading the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, November 26, 1966
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A military parade marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Korean War armistice in Kim Il-Sung Square, Pyongyang, North Korea, July 27, 2013
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A tank passing a podium decorated with a portrait of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during an Army Day parade, Tehran, April 18, 2018
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A dress rehearsal for a parade marking the seventy-fourth anniversary of the USSR’s victory on the Eastern Front, Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2019
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