I received these from tipster HD. I found them all interesting. I’m just wondering if anyone out there would know if they were all true. We have many WWII buffs on this site.
Let us know.
Here Are 27 Things About World War II You Weren’t Taught In School:
1. Fanta was invented in Germany when the war made it difficult to bring in Coca-Cola syrup from the US.
2. The SS officer who captured Anne Frank and her family bought her book to see if he was mentioned. He wasn’t.
3. Russia and Japan still haven’t signed a peace treaty to end WWII due to a dispute over sovereignty of the Kuril Islands.
4. The lift cables of the Eiffel Tower were cut by the French when Germany occupied France in 1940. As a result German soldiers had to climb to the top to fly the swastika flag.
5. The last Japanese soldier to surrender did so in 1974, 29 years after WII was over.
6. A radio belonging to a British POW was hidden so well that when the soldier visited the camp 62 years later he found it right where he left it.
7. Leonard Dawe, a crossword compiler for the Telegraph, used D-Day operation code names as the answers to his puzzle a month before D-Day. MI5 interrogated him only to discover that it was a random coincidence.
8. HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen was a Dutch warship covered with tree branches to disguise it as a tropical island.
9. Two doctors in Poland discovered that the Nazis would not deport anyone to a concentration camp who tested positive for typhus in fear that the disease would spread. The two injected Jews and non-Jews in their city with a vaccine containing dead Epidemic Typhus that would test positive but have no adverse effects, saving approximately 8,000 lives.
10. Queen Elizabeth II joined the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service and was trained as a driver and mechanic.
11. Canada declared war on Japan before the US did after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
12. Juan Pujol Garcia was a double agent who was awarded both the German Iron Cross and the Member of the British Empire award.
13. After the Treaty of Versailles, Ferdinand Foch said “This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.” 20 years later WWII broke out.
14. The Taj Mahal was covered with a scaffold to camouflage it as a stockpile of bamboo and misguide bombers.
15. The Mosque of Paris gave sanctuary to Jews by giving them Muslim IDs and hiding them in their underground caverns.
16. Royal Air Force sergeant Nicholas Alkemade fell 18,000 feet without a parachute and survived with only a sprained leg.
17. There’s a Twitter account that narrates WWII as it happened on this day and time in 1944 onwards.
18. To prevent the Germans from finding out that the British had RADAR onboard aircraft, the British started a rumor that their pilots had excellent night vision from eating lots of carrots. This rumor has continued to today as many people think carrots improve eyesight.
19. The President of Czechoslovakia, Emil Hacha, suffered a heart attack upon hearing of Hitler’s plan to bomb the capital.
20. 80% of all Soviet males born in 1923 died in World War II.
21. Due to a metal shortage during the war, Oscar statuettes were made of painted plaster.
22. Approximately 5,500 leftover bombs are discovered and defused in Germany every year.
23. World War II cost each person in the US $20,388.
24. Hitler’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler, fought for the US Navy against his uncle.
25. Winston Churchill lost the 1945 election just two months after winning the war.
26. Hitler order the collection of 200,000 Jewish artifacts to be displayed at the end of the war in a trophy case called The Museum of an Extinct Race.
27. The Arab nations sided with Germany in WWI and WWII.
Answer: Some are wrong, some are not.
#26 Churchill was attending the Yalta conference when he was informed he was no longer Prime Minister.
11. Canada enter WWII on September 10, 1939.
1 Yes according to Wikipedia and Snopes:
The German government placed Max Keith in charge of Coca-Cola’s properties in the occupied countries, and he sent word through Coca-Cola’s bottler in neutral Switzerland that he would try to keep the enterprises alive. But with no means of getting ingredients, Keith stopped making Coca-Cola and began marketing an entirely new soft drink he called Fanta, a light-colored beverage that resembled ginger ale.
2. The Officer Karl Josef Silberbauer became a spy for West Germany and is quoted as saying so.
3. Japan and Russia signed a cease-fire agreement and have not signed a formal peace treaty Japanese PM Shinzo Abe is working to rectify that. However the dispute over fossil fuels and strategic nuclear deployment by Russia make it unlikely.
4. Confirmed by several sources that indeed the lift cable was cut.
5. Hiroo Onoda Surrendered in 1974 and died 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/world/asia/hiroo-onoda-imperial-japanese-army-officer-dies-at-91.html
5. only source is wikipedia and similar fact list cannot be confirmed independantly
7. Confirmed The Clues were spread out over several days however Mi5 went crazy when “Overloard” was used on May 27, Less than 2 weeks before the invasion. (Telegraph.uk article)
8. confiemed actual photos exist. multiple sources http://www.lincolnheritage.org/did-you-know-hnlms-abraham-crijnssen-evaded-japanese-bombers-in-wwii-by-disguising-itself-as-an-island/
9. Two men are listed Dr. Eugene Lazowski, also known as “the Polish Schindler” and his fiend Stanislaw Matulewicz
10. confirmed multiple sources
24. Is a fact and he was actually awarded the purple heart. He changed his last name to Stuart-Hudson in 1947
Way too much stuff to look up but for the most part there is independent archives from newspapers and websites that support these facts.
@Radio
11. Canada, and the rest of the British Empire did declare war on Japan before the USA. Roosevelt had to have Congress in joint session to declare war. For the British Empire, the King declares war on the advice of his ministers. Churchill actually penned the declaration of war and had it delivered to the Japanese embassy. Parliament was then confronted with the fact.
#26 Clement Attlee became Prime minister on 26 July 1945. After VE Day, but before the Japanese surrendered.
Without looking them up #1 and #5 are true. There were 2 Japanese soldiers who surrendered in 1974. They were on 2 different islands and living in caves if i remember correctly.
#10 is true and there are some great pictures of her in uniform, changing tires, etc.
#20 not true although the Soviets lost more men than any others. The number is probably between 35 – 40% which is still horrific.
#22 Probably true but I didn’t look it up. When we lived in Nurnberg in the ’60’s there were paths and wooded ares we couldn’t walk due to unexploded WW II bombs, etc. They were clearly marked off limits.
A number of times we had to duck and cover in the halls of our apartment because building near by uncovered unexploded bombs. Line up the mattresses along the hall walls and sit and sit and sit. My mother always went into full freak out mode.
# 27 my understanding is this is true except one nation that remained neutral perhaps Afghanistan.
additional on #27 I forgot it said WW 1, as well as, 2. WW 1 Arabs for the most part sided with the Brits hoping to get away from the Ottoman Empire.
William Patrick Hitler was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. Lesser known is that Werner Goering flew B-17 missions over Germany as part of the 8th Air Force. Although he was a highly decorated pilot and flew more missions than needed, his co-pilot had orders to shoot him if it looked like Werner would defect or so something treasonous.
@Daniel Hayden: I remember reading about #5 at the time it happened. The guy died a couple of years ago.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/17/world/asia/japan-philippines-ww2-soldier-dies/
The last Japanese soldier to surrender was living on Guam all that time. The Nip had some good survival skills.
^^ Hell, the Guam guy was not the last to surrender.
Shoichi Yokoi was found in the jungles of Guam on January 24, 1972. He was one of the last three to surrender, but not the last.
Still, kudos to anybody who can stay hid out for that length of time and survive.
Completely left off the list:
The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
Source: Bluto in the true-to-life documentary Animal House.
Also, and HD will verify this, when the Germans dropped the bomb on Pearl Harbor, there were 59 States. We lost nine to the bastards.
Oblamer is still bragging about it. Check it out on Snopes.
cool stuff here.
convair, formed in 1943 to manufacture waeplanes, was located on the old pch in san diego. buildings still there today. during war years, the roof resembled a golf course to confuse japanese.
Daniel Hayden: The point was to see how much you knew, not how good you are at doing a google search! Sheesh!
I’d take #15 with a grain of salt. Give me some proof!
Moe, 15 looks, suspiciously, like a Fur implant.
Mortgages:
I think there was some semblance of independence in the matter. IIRC , South Africa held off until about the same time as Canada.
20. 80% of all Soviet males born in 1923 died in World War II.
As a child in the 60s it seemed obvious wars were meant to cull the males.
“You’re drafted! No choice! Now run straight into enemy fire! Don’t die a pussy and stop questioning our tactics! We’ll win by attrition if we have to! Your just a number after all. Here’s your number, btw. Wear it on a chain around your neck so we can identify your body amongst the masses laying on the battlefield and tell your family you really died. Then we’ll send them $40 a month to cover losing you.”
26. – Pretty sure Hitler didn’t live to see the end of the war.
7. True.
8. True, the Abraham Crinjsen was transferred to the Royal Australian Navy during WWII and had Aussies and Brits as crew replacements.
10. True, she drove an ambulance. She transported soldiers wounded in Europe from the port to hospitals inland. British single women who were not employed in defence critical industries were subject to the draft at 18 years old.
11. True. Canadian and British troops defending Hong Kong were attacked on Dec 8th 1941 (on the other side of the dateline) so it was Dec 7th in North America when Britain & Canada declared war.
16. True. He was a tail gunner in a Lancaster, the turret was so small that the parachute pack was stored in the rear fuselage. Since the plane was on fire he decided to jump rather than burn to death. Tall pines and deep snow cushioned his fall.
18. True. British scientists had developed the cavity magnetron, one of the war’s most closely guarded secrets, which allowed microwave length radar. The dish of a microwave radar is small enough to hide under a radome. The Germans didn’t develop a microwave radar until 1944. Their earlier night fighters have an antenna farm on the nose. Search for John ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham
21. True. All metals were rationed and only used for war production.
Great list, and I’ve heard of enough of these over the years from reliable sources, I can believe most if not all of them. Here’s another….
The first German soldier to be awarded the Iron Cross in WWI was a German Jew.
@MoeTom and Dad,
from what I can find the history on this is ‘fuzzy’ at best.
5 i remember when the last Jap surrendered. They had to bring his former commander to command him to surrender with a bullhorn. The locals were getting tired of them stealing shit.
A read later in Readers Digest he moved to Brazil to live with tradition Japs. He didn’ t like the new Japan.
The last jap and his few comrades were on a Philipine island.
3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 21, 24, 25 are true
17 … so what?
27 is somewhat true … Iraq in WWII overthrew the pro-brit regime the day after Rommel began his Tunisia campaign in 1941 & allied w/ Nazi Germany.
@Moe Tom: Here ya go:
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/amazing-story-wartime-raf-gunner-fell-18-000-feet/story-20171154-detail/story.html
AND, there were others who survived similar falls:
http://www.hellotravel.com/stories/how-does-it-feel-to-fall-from-33000-ft-without-parachute-and-surviv
🙂
I remembered somebody coming our of the jungle in the 80s.
This is all I could find. https://mikedashhistory.com/2015/09/15/final-straggler-the-japanese-soldier-who-outlasted-hiroo-onoda/
1989. Malaysia. It would be perfectly possible to make the case that Shigeyuki Hashimoto and Kiyoaki Tanaka, not Teruo Nakamoto, were the last true Japanese holdouts from World War II. The two men returned to Japan in the first days of 1990 after belatedly laying down their arms at a jungle base on the Malaysian-Thai border on 2 December 1989. They had been fighting first the British and then the forces of the Malaysian government ever since the surrender of the Japanese forces in the Malay peninsula in August 1945.
There seem to be several reasons why Nakamoto – who was by then 71 – and Tanaka – 77 – are so poorly remembered and so seldom considered alongside the likes of Yokoi, Onoda and Nakamura. One is that neither man had been a soldier of IJA; they had been civilians, sent to Malaysia to work for a private company, who only took up arms after the end of the war. Another is that they had been perfectly aware at the time that Japan had surrendered; these men fought on not out of ignorance, but for an ideology. That made it hard, indeed pretty much impossible, to view them as unfortunate victims of Japanese militarism in the way that other Japanese holdouts were characterised.
The greatest pilot in WW11 was Colin Kelly.
The most decorated soldier was Audie Murphy
When asked to surrender, Gen. McAuliffe said “Balls”
And on and on, and on. But here’s the kicker: The first SOB to get four new tires after the war was Ruby Goldberg, a NYC Taxi driver.
Check it out on Snopes.
@MoeTom ~ the greatest pilot in WWII was Erich Hartmann of the Luftwaffe … he is credited for shooting down 345 Ruskie & 7 American planes
… & I think McAuliffe’s reply to surrender during the Battle of the Bulge was, “Nuts!” … gonads … whatever
@ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ: Here’s the story of McAuliffe’s reply:
“The Division Operations Officer, Lt. Col. Harry Kinnard recalled that McAulliffe initially asked, ‘They want to surrender?’ Moore told him, ‘No sir, they want us to surrender.’ McAulliffe arose and erupted in anger, which shocked those looking on. He took the paper, looked at it, said ‘Us surrender, aw nuts!’ and dropped it on the floor. Maj. Jones was dismissed. McAulliffe then left the Headquarters to go congratulate a unit on the Western perimeter that had successfully taken out a German road block earlier that morning.
Upon returning to the division headquarters, McAulliffe was informed that Jones had phoned to say that the two German officers were still waiting at the F Company Command Post. Since they brought a formal demand they felt they were entitled to a formal reply and they were to return to the German lines two hours after delivering their message.
McAulliffe asked that Col. Harper be summoned to the Division Headquarters. Harper, who was still inspecting his units’ positions, was contacted by radio.
When Harper arrived at the Headquarters, he was asked to wait outside of the closed door to McAulliffe’s quarters. Inside, in the presence of his staff, McAulliffe wondered aloud, ‘Well, I don’t know what to tell them.’ At that point, Kinnard said, ‘What you said initially would be hard to beat.’ McAulliffe asked ‘What do you mean?’ Kinnard, said, ‘Sir, you said nuts.’ All members of the staff enthusiastically agreed, so McAulliffe wrote it down on a message pad and said, ‘Have it typed up.’
The reply was typed up, centered on a full sheet of paper. It read:
‘December 22, 1944
To the German Commander,
N U T S !
The American Commander'”
….
(from http://www.army.mil/article/92856)
Moan Albe. What McCauliffe actually said was “fucking balls.”
The media reduced it to “nuts,” just like they do today. Soldiers say terrible things and the American people should not be exposed to such things. Transgenders in the foxholes? Well that’s something
we have to monitor. BTW. I was just joking . I make shit up sometimes for the sake of sanity.
Vietvet. Bro you’re description is pure holliwood, From “The Longest Day.” “Nuts” my ass. And don’t quote Cornelius Ryan to me because back in those days cursing was taboo.
@Moe Tom: Vass you dere, Sharlie?
😉
I remember it well … strafing attacks on the ships at Battleship Row, dropping bombs on the Eiffel Tower, and liberating the camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau!
So many good friends lost! Tancred the Magnificent, Frederick Barbarossa, Attila, Pericles, and who could ever forget Geraldo Rivera at Tora Bora!
I can still see the look on George Patton’s face when I demanded that he cross that river! He said it couldn’t be done!
Ahhhh … good times … good times …
@Moe Tom: “…cursing was taboo.” BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
That’s the best one yet.
Got any more like that?
😂
moetom: cursing was taboo?
I researched my dad’s WWII history and read tons of personal accounts from soldiers everywhere.
Cursing was as prominent then as it is now. The difference was they didn’t use it around their kids, families or “ladies!” They had what used to be called class!
Just for the hell of it watch brad pitt’s movie FURY about tank service. It’s based on the guys who were there and they knew exactly what was said because they said it.
You are the only person I’ve ever heard say balls instead of nuts.
Like viet vet says; were you there?