World War II was shaped not only by enormous battles, but also by hidden resistance, desperate survival, ingenious deception, and unimaginable loss. These 75 facts reveal more of the courage, cruelty, sacrifice, and lasting consequences behind the conflict.
Schizophrenia Aftermath In Germany
1. Even though Nazi Germany sterilized or murdered 73-100% of all schizophrenics in Germany, about 220,000-269,000 people, there were no lasting effects on later schizophrenia rates in Germany. In fact, the rate of people diagnosed with schizophrenia after World War 2 was unexpectedly high.
2. During World War 2, 10% of those conscripted in the UK were assigned not to the battlefield, but to the coal mines that powered the war machine. Some of these soldiers were not released from service until two years after the war ended. They were not officially recognized for their contribution until 1995.
3. In World War 2, the German army employed a radar system known as Wotan. The British scientist R.V. Jones worked out how it operated by assuming that it used a single beam, based on the fact that the Germanic god Wotan had only one eye.
4. During the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton told a chaplain to write a prayer for the good weather that was urgently needed for an advance. The chaplain did so, the weather improved, and Patton gave the chaplain a bronze star immediately.
5. During World War 2, a group of prisoners at Auschwitz managed to blow up one of the crematoriums by using gunpowder smuggled one teaspoon at a time from the nearby munitions factory where some prisoners were forced to work.
6. World War 2 plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe introduced saline baths as a burn treatment after observing that pilots who crashed into the sea recovered from burns faster than those who crashed on land.
7. British Commander Terence Otway, wanting to make sure his men would not leak the D-Day plans, checked them by sending 30 pretty members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in civilian clothing to the local pubs with instructions to do everything they could to try to get information out of them, but none of the men fell for it.
8. During World War 2, Finnish soldiers were instructed to “fire low”, because their rifles would often jerk upwards when fired. As a result, their battle cry was changed to “Tulta munille!” loosely translated as, “Fire at their balls!”.
9. During World War 2, there was a saying that “It’s more likely for a snake to smoke a pipe, than for Brazil to go to the front and fight.” So when Brazil joined the war, their troops became known as “Cobras Fumantes”, or “the Smoking Snakes.”
10. The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered. During World War 2, because only 30 non-Navajo people could understand Navajo, the US used Navajos as code talkers. They could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line message in 20 seconds, versus 30 minutes for machines.
Asperger’s Wartime Classification
11. Hans Asperger discovered the autistic spectrum and the difference between “high functioning” and “low functioning” autism while trying to protect children in his clinic from the Gestapo during World War 2, who killed disabled children in preparation for the Holocaust.
12. The “Three Musketeers” candy bar got its name because the package first held three bars: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. World War 2 sugar restrictions caused them to be reduced to a single chocolate bar.
13. During World War 2, the United States occupied Greenland to stop the Nazis from capturing it. After the war ended, they offered Denmark $100 million to buy it, but Denmark refused.
14. The biggest transfer of physical wealth in human history happened during World War 2. Operation Fish sent 186,332 gold bars and more than 8 million ounces of gold coins from the UK to Canada, with not even one crate or treasury bill going missing.
15. During the Normandy Allied Invasion, Bill Millin, a Scottish Piper, played his bagpipes while walking along the beach as the carnage erupted around him. He later asked captured German prisoners why they hadn’t shot at him. They said they believed he was on a suicide mission and was clearly mad.
16. During World War 2, American factory workers produced more than twice as much as their German counterparts and had four times the output of Japanese workers, leading industrialist Donald Douglas to say, “Here’s proof that free men can out-produce slaves.”
17. Right before World War 2, the US Army created the “Logan Bar,” a chocolate bar that intentionally tasted “a little better than a boiled potato” as an emergency ration to keep soldiers from eating it outside emergency situations.
18. Before World War 2, Volkswagen was sued by Czechoslovakian car maker Tatra because the original Beetle was so similar to the Tatra T97. After Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, the Nazis canceled the lawsuit.
19. Civilian Public Service (CPS) was a US government program that gave conscientious objectors an alternative to military service during World War 2. CPS draftees fought forest fires, helped reform an abusive mental health system, and even served as test subjects in medical experiments.
20. A cyclist named Gino Bartali used his fame as a Tour de France winner to smuggle counterfeit documents hidden inside his bicycle through Nazi checkpoints in Italy during World War 2 while posing as training. These documents allowed as many as 800 Jews to escape persecution by the Nazis.
Beyrle’s Two-Front War
21. An American paratrooper named Joseph Beyrle fought for both the US and the Soviet Union during World War 2. He was captured in Normandy, sent to a POW camp, escaped, joined the Red Army, and liberated the camp he had just escaped from. He later met Marshal Zhukov and won the Purple Heart for his service.
22. While attacking a series of machine-gun nests during World War 2, Daniel Inouye had most of his right arm shot off while arming a grenade. He pried the grenade out of his severed hand and destroyed a bunker with it before finishing the last resistance in the bunker with a one-handed Tommy gun burst.
23. In Stalingrad during World War 2, the average life expectancy of a Soviet soldier was just 24 hours.
24. Germany’s World War 2 invasion of France was aided by crystal meth. New research says tablets of the stimulant enabled German troops to stay awake for three days and three nights and push through the Ardennes Mountains.
25. During World War 2, about 250,000 Filipinos were promised US Citizenship and Veteran Benefits for aiding the US in fighting Japan. Then the USA reneged on its offer and only about 4000 got any benefits at all.
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