Remarkable people
During the Normandy invasion, a private called Bill Millin landed on Sword beach. Although he was far from the only soldier to hit the beaches, he was the only one playing the bagpipe. The Germans didn’t shoot him as they figured he had gone insane and they felt sorry for him.
Millin
Hanns Scharff, a German interrogator used an unusual tactic to get his prisoners to talk. Rather than torturing them, he took them on long walks and had lunch with them. His fraternizing paid off: his captives revealed information on their own.
Although Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, a Japanese soldier by the name of Teruo Nakamura, didn’t surrender until 1974. After the Japanese defeat of the island of Morotai, Indonesia, Nakamura hid on the island until he was finally captured on 18 December of that year.
In March 1944, a Lancaster bomber that returned from a raid on Berlin was hit. The plane caught fire and went down. Nicholas Alkemade, a 21-year-old rear gunner, jumped out without his parachute after losing it to the flames. After falling fell 18,000 feet (5,500 m), he hit pine trees and landed in the snow-covered the ground. His only injury was a sprained leg.
One Japanese man, Tsusomu Yamaguchi , survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Despite being wounded, he travelled to his home in Nagasaki, where he survived the second atomic bombing as well. Yamaguchi is known as a “niju hibakusha”, which translates to “explosion-affected people.”
The youngest U.S. serviceman to serve and fight in the Second World War was Calvin Leon Graham. When he enlisted in the navy in 1942, he was only 12 years old. When his mother revealed his age later that year, Graham was arrested and discharged. However, by that time, he had already been awarded a Bronze Star (for meritorious service) and a Purple Heart (for being wounded).
Franz Stigler, a Luftwaffe pilot, spotted a damaged Allied bomber in December of 1943. As he neared the crippled plane, he saw the tail gun wasn’t moving and the crew was frantically trying to save their buddies’ lives. Rather than downing the plane, Stigler escorted the bomber to the English Channel, saluted the American pilot and returned home. Years after the war, the two men met and became close friends.
Aces
A Finnish sniper named Simo Häyhä, was so successful at killing Russians that he was nicknamed “White Death”. During the Winter War, he quickly became infamous, taking out many enemy soldiers and anti-sniper teams. All in all, “White Death” killed 542 Soviet Soldiers in a period of only one hundred days.
The most successful female sniper in the war was Lyudmila Pavlichenko. Initially, she had a hard time shooting Germans, but got over it when she saw a German shoot a young Russian soldier. Pavlichenko was ultimately credited with 309 confirmed kills, and was given the nickname “Lady Death”.
Pavlichenko
Erich Hartmann, “The Blond Knight”, became the most successful fighter ace of the Second World War. In over 1,400 combat missions, he shot down 352 enemy planes.
Casualties
Russia suffered the highest number of causalities during WWII: a staggering 21 million. The numbers, in fact, were so high, that eighty percent of Soviet males born in 1923 lost their lives during the war.
The number of Russian soldiers and civilians who died during the Siege of Leningrad was higher than the number of American and British soldiers who died during the entire war.
Four out of every five German soldiers who died in the war, died on the Eastern Front.
Altogether, between 50 and 70 million people died during WWII. Over 80 percent of these casualties were either Russian, Chinese, German or Polish, and more than half of them were civilians, mostly women and children.
The only known American civilians who were killed on U.S. soil by enemy action were Elsie E. Mitchell –who was pregnant at the time– (26), Dick Patzke (14), Jay Gifford (13), Edward Engen (13), Joan Patzke (13), and Sherman Shoemaker (11). They lost their lives after touching a Japanese “balloon bomb”, that had drifted into Gearhart Mountain, Oregon.
Third Reich
The Third Reich was so named because it was preceded by was the Holy Roman Empire (The First Reich) and the German Empire of 1871-1918 (The Second Reich).
The word “Nazi” was derived from the Bavarian word “Ignatz” that refers to an awkward, backward, and clumsy peasant. The term was originally used as a derogatory word by opponents of the NSDAP who tried to draw parallels between the widely mocked name and the party of (Na)tionalSo(zi)alisten. Hitler and his followers never used the term, but exiles spread the term across and beyond Europe.
The Nazi flag was designed by Hitler himself. The color red stood for the social idea of Nazism, white for nationalism, and the black swastika for the struggle of the Aryan man.
A German soldier named Werner Goldberg was dubbed “The Ideal German Soldier” because of his physical appearance. Consequently, he became the German poster boy for recruitment, which was ironic as he was half Jewish.
Goldberg
The SS established a special bank account to launder stolen Jewish money, gold and jewelry. The fictitious name used for the account was Max Heiliger.
Holocaust
Initially, the Germans had considered relocating the Jews to Madagascar. However, the British naval blockade caused the plan to be shelved and in 1942, the plan was forgotten when the “Final Solution” was formulated at the Wannsee Convention.
Only prisoners of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp were given identification number tattoos. The first prisoners to be tattooed were Russian POWs [Prisoners of War], who were marked on their upper-left breast. Later on, Jews were tattooed as well. By this time, the tattoos were placed on the forearms. Prisoners who were immediately gassed upon arrival, (ethnic) German prisoners, Polish civilians of the Warsaw Uprising, police prisoners, those who could be “re-educated”, and some Jewish prisoners who would be sent to other camps were not tattooed.
Miscellaneous
In an attempt to fool the British, the Nazis built a wooden airfield in Northern France. When the British learned about this, they waited for the airfield to be completed. Then, they dropped a wooden bomb on it.
A new type of radar technology developed by the British Royal Air Force made it easier for pilots to shoot down German enemy planes that often attacked at night. In order to keep the technological advance silent, the government said that the pilots had increased eyesight as a result of eating many carrots. Although the vitamin A in carrots helps maintain eyesight, it does not improve vision. However, the myth stuck.
During the war, soldiers tended to drink the alcohol used in rocket fuel. To solve the problem, the Russians switched from ethyl to methyl alcohol, and the Americans added various poisonous additives to the fuel used in torpedoes.
During the Pacific War, several indigenous islanders were so awestricken by the sudden appearance of American troops, materiel and cargo, that they believed it to be the work of gods. After the Americans left the islands, the stories and leftover materials remained. Mimicking the practices of the American personnel, the islanders attempted to summon cargo planes from the sky. One particularly famous “cargo cult” is that of “John Frum” (Derived from “John from [City]”) on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu.
In late 1941, a Dutch minesweeper was based in the Dutch East Indies. When Japan attacked the area, the ship was ordered to retreat to Australia. In order to escape detection by Japanese bombers, the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen was disguised as a tropical island. The trick worked, and the warship safely reached Australia.
HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen
As the Normandy invasion fleet was undergoing radio silence at the time, a carrier pigeon was sent to the British mainland to inform of the D-day invasion. “Gustav” reached the homefront and was awarded the Dickin Medal for bravery. Unfortunately, he died after the war when someone accidentally stepped on him.
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team became the most decorated unit in U.S. history. The RCT, which consisted of Japanese-American volunteers, won a total of 4,667 major medals, awards, and citations. Altogether, the unit was awarded 560 Silver Stars (for gallantry), 4,000 Bronze Stars (for meritorious service), 52 Distinguished Service Crosses (for extreme gallantry), and one Medal of Honor (for acts of valor), plus 54 other decorations.
Sources:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/tattoos-and-numbers-the-system-of-identifying-prisoners-at-auschwitz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNLMS_Abraham_Crijnssen_%281936%29
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Landing_on_Queen_Red_Beach%2C_Sword_Area.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Pavlichenko_in_a_trench.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Goldberg#/media/File:WernerGoldberg.jpg
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Abraham_Crijnssen_small.jpg
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