As we all know that the Second World War was the largest war that has ever been forced and was certainly no exception.
Here are 20 mind-blowing facts about the war, from Hitler’s favorite joke to a REINDEER IN A SUBMARINE!
1) In 1941 during the initial stages of the war, a private earned 21$ a month but in 1942 it was increased to 50$ per month
2) Before the Nazi German decided to eliminate Jews by the gas chambers, they considered sending them to the island of Madagascar
3) An astonishing amount of bombs were dropped during the war, it’s estimated that the allied dropped 3.4 million tons of explosive across Europe and Asia, i.e. 227,000 tons every month!
What’s even more fascinating that around 5 – 15% never even detonated, that means they are still beneath under the ground waiting to explode any given moment
4) In Germany alone over around 5000 bombs are discovered every year!
5) The word Nazi originates from a German word Nationalsozialist. But when Hitler became the leader in 1920 the original abbreviation for the Nationalsozialist party was NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) The word Nazi means “simple minded”
6) Hitler loved a good joke, he even had a small collection of his favorite jokes that he enjoyed telling people over and over again, one of his favorite joke was
One day, Mrs. Goering came into the bedchamber and found her husband waving his field Marshals Baton over his underwear
‘Hermann, darling, what are you doing?’ she enquired
‘I am promoting my underpants to overpants!’
7) The allied force sent weapons, equipment and supplies to the Soviet Union through water, infested with German u-boat of the Arctic Circle, the British submarine HMS trident was one of the vessels that was tasked with these vital supplies.
The soviets were grateful, so grateful in fact they offered the trident captain a gift reindeer. The British accepted the gift and named the reindeer Pollyanna.
Pollyanna remained on the submarine for six weeks surviving.
8) 10 day after bombing Nagasaki, the third bomb was set to be dropped on august 19, 1945. And the city targeted would have been Tokyo.
9) During the war, to avoid the German sounding name “Hamburger”. The Americans dubbed it to “Liberty steak”.
10) The battle of Atlantic was the longest battle in WW2, the battle of Atlantic was the struggle between the Allied and German forces for the control of the Atlantic sea. The battle lasted from 1939-1945.
11) The ideal German soldier “Werner Goldberg” was used in a recruitment poster for Wehrmacth. Little did they know he was half Jewish.
12) Japan fought alongside the Allies during World War I, though it felt cheated as it failed to gain much territory when the peace treaty was composed.
Eventually they fought alongside the Germans in WW2.
13) William Patrick Hitler was the half-nephew of Hitler; he served in the United States Navy during the war.
He later changed his name to William Patrick Stuart-Houston.
14) Soviet Union had the most casualties, according to the Russian government figures, USSR losses within postwar now stands at 26.6 million, including 8 to 9 million due to diseases and famine.
15) The blood battle of Stalingrad, which started from July 1942 to February 1943, was a German attempt in which the Soviet Union casualties were more than 1.1 million i.e. more than what the United States and British lost in the whole war. But it was also the turning point of World War II in Europe
16) Total casualties for World War II were in between 50 to 70 million, 80% of which came from only four countries Russia, China, Germany, and Poland.
Over 50% casualties were civilians.
17) A British engineer in 1935, was working on ‘Death Ray’ which would destroy enemy aircrafts using radio waves, instead his ‘Death Ray’ was evolved into Radar – ‘Radio detection and ranging.’
18) Anne Frank and her sister died at Bergen-Belsen on March 1945, a month before the camp was liberated and burned to the ground by the British soldiers to prevent the spread of Typhus.
19) The b-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was Enola Gay, while in Nagasaki was Brockscar
20) Poland was the first to realize the solution to breaking the Enigma would most likely be discovered by a mathematician. Polish cryptanalysts could decode German ciphers as early as 1932. By 1939 they were able to successfully decipher messages written with an earlier version of Enigma.