21 of the Wildest Facts About World War II

A Finnish soldier was high for two weeks straight
21 of the Wildest Facts About World War II

It’s hard to overestimate the impact of World War II on everything that came after it. Remember how COVID seemed to change our whole lives as we knew them? Well, that was only four years ago, and most of us have already pretty much gone back to normal. World War II lasted six years. It was also, you know, a war. So just about everything weird about the second half of the 20th century can probably be traced back to World War II.

It turns out there was plenty of weirdness going on in the thick of it, too. From unlikely coincidences, to absurd battle tactics, to chilling artifacts, to the unlikely inspiration for James Bond, when user alfawolfvii asked r/AskReddit, “What are some crazy WWII facts you know?” there was no shortage of them.

SW eer Pretend-Pea5182 . 2y ago adidas Poland had a fucking bear on its side
Fallsyooo 2y ago The 1. bomb dropped to Berlin killed the zoo's only elephant.
spr402 2y ago One man, a Canadian, freed a town in the Netherlands from the Germans. Oh, and he did it while wearing an eye patch. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léo_Major
jah05r 2y ago Jumping Joe Beyrle of the 101st Airborne. Not only was he enough of a badass to earn that nickname among people who jump out of planes for a living, but he also escaped a POW camp to the Soviet line and became the only known person to fight for both the USA and Red Army in the war.
stargill70 2y ago a Finnish soldier took a whole bottle of pervitin and skied 400km in a matter of days. he was high for 14 days.
409Narwhal 2y ago The Soviet 13th Gaurds Rifle Division, one of the units in the Battle of Stalingrad, suffered 30% killed in the first day of fighting. Just 320 of the original 10,000 soldiers survived the entire battle.
oilfeather . 2y ago Edited 2y ago When in retreat, the Nazis would boobytrap pictues on the walls and leave them slightly crooked. They did this to entice officers to straighten them and set off an explosion.
obscureferences 2y ago The Rats of Tobruk were a bunch of Aussies holding out against the Afrika Corps while under siege, and they survived by bunkering down during the day and sneaking out at night to rob the nazis blind. They called themselves Rats because the Germans called them rats and they loved how much owning it pissed them off. After failing to shell them out with artillery the jerries finally organised a serious airstrike of Tobruk, only to discover all too late the Rats had stolen an entire anti-aircraft emplacement. Our boys shot them down with their own weapons
Status_Tiger_6210 2y ago Edited 2y ago Operation Mincemeat: British intelligence took the corpse of an English homeless man, dressed it up as an allied pilot with phony correspondence with false intel regarding the invasion of Sicily and dumped him on the Spanish coast to be shown by Spanish authorities to Nazi intelligence. The Germans shifted reinforcements away from Sicily as a result and the invasion went much smoother than predicted.
028lucky 2y ago Edited 2y ago Operation Cottage: on August 15, 1943, Canadian snd US troops decided to attack Japanese troops from opposite sides of the island (). But they didn't know that Japanese army left the island 2 weeks prior. Canadian and US troops mistook each other for Japanese and started shooting. Friendly fire resulted in 28 Americans and 4 Canadians killed. Total 313 casualties while there was no enemy.
Pencilowner 2y ago Edited 2y ago There were 6 civilian casualties in the continental United States due to the Japanese casting fire bombs out on balloons to cross the pacific on the wind. They are the only civilians to die from the war directly in the continental US. So some random folks in Oregon got bombed by the Japanese.
keepbuyingnasastuff 2y ago I was reading up about the STEN gun and found out they had a fault with the triggers. One hard drop and they would just mag dump until empty. Turns out the allies put this to use and would Yeet them into buildings like an oversized grenade when clearing buildings
Kelbeross 2y ago Due to a shortage of materials like steel, the British attempted to make an super aircraft carrier out of ice and sawdust as a stopping point for their short range aircraft. The sawdust+ice mixture (termed pykrete) was extremely resistant to melting. However, development was lengthy due to technical problems in its construction, until eventually the ship wasn't needed anymore. It took three years of neglect for the prototype to melt under the sun.
Jhaj1087 2y ago In the African theater of war; both sides used fake tanks. Some were made of wood. They were used to seem much bigger than the opposing force. In some cases they put up silhouettes in places to appear as they were there, but they were miles away.
Forschungsamt . 2y ago Hitler's normal speaking voice was recorded during a meeting with Finnish President Mannerheim. You can find the recording on YouTube.
2y ago Christopher Lee the actor was British special forces and a spy and so was the Inspiration for James Bond.
res30stupid 2y ago A woman with a broken radio that could only play British radio was sentenced to prison for listening to the enemy's broadcasts. She had a technician round to fix the problem but heard a news broadcast that was vitally important and told her neighbour who reported her. The vitally important news broadcast was that the neighbour's son wasn't killed when his ship sank but that he was arrested/captured by the British and was being held in a British POW camp. Ungrateful bitch.
WalterTangoFoxtrot 2y ago . Edited 2y ago Hiroo Onoda, the last Imperial Japanese soldier to surrender. Survived 29 years in isolation in the Philippines. The dude didn't know that the war was over. Wouldn't believe what the allies were telling him and his command when they dropped leaflets, telling him to surrender and that the war was over.
didnsignup4dis 2y ago There was no coffee in major German cities for much of WWII because of supply lines being disrupted. But they made up for the lack of coffee by switching to meth filled chocolate.
LordBaranof 2y ago Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on a work trip to Hiroshima when the atom bomb went off. Не then regurned to his job/home in Nagasaki and was describing the blast to his unbelieving boss when the Nagasaki bomb went off. Не survived both atom bombings.
dieinafirenazi 2y ago A Belgian pilot flying for the RAF found out the Nazis had executed his father in occupied Belgium. So after an escort mission he took a side trip and did a solo attack on the Gestapo headquarters in Brussels, dropping down to ground level in front of the building and machine gunning the fuck out of it. Не killed the local Gestapo commander along with some SS officer and the AA crew on the roof. The he did a victory lap tossing little Belgian flags out tje window. Oh and he swung by his niece's place and

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