WWII Challenge

Alan Turing not only cracked Enigma but designed a voice encryption device for Churchills transatlantic phone calls to Roosevelt called Delilah. It used mathematical scrambling. By the time it was perfected transatlantic cable encryption sufficed. Turings Bombe machine also cracked the complex naval Enigma used by U-boats, helping end the Battle of the Atlantic.

Captain Frank Lillyman of the 101st Airborne was the first Allied soldier to land on D-Day, parachuting into Normandy at 00:15 to mark the drop zone near Sainte-Mere-Eglise. Weather and cloud cover scattered his team - only two pathfinders landed correctly. Over 5,000 paratroopers landed across 25 miles amid flooded fields Rommel had deliberately opened. Scattered troops improvised by attacking German positions, blocking roads, and cutting communications. German commanders reported hundreds of paratroopers everywhere and became paralyzed by uncertainty.

On September 1, 1939, the Polish cavalry charged German infantry at Krojanty. Initially successful, they were forced to withdraw when armor appeared. A German propaganda officer described it to Italian reporters as proof that Poles charged tanks with sabres. They never did. The myth persisted for decades, distorting the actual courage of Polish cavalry units.

Albert Gortz was a Danish schoolteacher in Jutland who used his school to hide Allied airmen shot down over Denmark. Under the guise of teaching, he ran a network that moved over 2,000 people from occupied Denmark to neutral Sweden by fishing boat. He used children's choir trips as cover for moving people and supplies. When the Gestapo raided his school, they found hidden rooms behind bookshelves containing British-made radios and British maps. Gortz escaped through the school's basement and continued his work until liberation.

Czechoslovaks Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, trained in Britain by SOE, parachuted into their occupied homeland to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich — the third most powerful man in Nazi Germany and architect of the Holocaust. They ambushed Heydrich's open car on a Prague street corner. When Gabcik's submachine gun jammed, Kubis threw an anti-tank grenade that wounded Heydrich through the car's floor. Heydrich died of sepsis from the wounds eight days later. In retaliation, the Nazis destroyed the village of Lidice, executing all 172 men and older boys and sending women and children to concentration camps. Gabcik, Kubis and their helpers were found in the Church of Sts Cyril and Methodius after a traitor revealed their hiding place; they fought a two-hour gun battle before taking their own lives.

Spanish citizen Juan Pujol Garcia managed to convince the Germans he was a fanatical Nazi, then convinced the British he was a valuable spy, then played BOTH sides simultaneously. He created a fictional network of 27 sub-agents that didn't exist, fabricated detailed reports about Allied operations, and so impressed the Germans that they awarded him the Iron Cross. The British knighted him with the Order of the British Empire, making him the only person in history to receive both the Iron Cross and an OBE. His misinformation about the D-Day invasion location was instrumental in keeping German forces at Calais.

British intelligence obtained the body of a homeless Welshman named Glyndwr Michael, dressed him as a Royal Marines officer 'Major William Martin,' and planted fake documents suggesting an Allied invasion of Greece instead of Sicily. They even created a fictional fiancée with love letters in his pocket. The body was released off the coast of Spain and found by German agents. Hitler was so convinced that he redirected the Panzer division from Sicily to Greece before the actual invasion. The true identity of the man wasn't confirmed until 1996.

The US 23rd Headquarters Special Troops used inflatable tanks, sound trucks, and fake radio signals to convince German intelligence that the invasion would come at Calais. The unit included fashion designer Bill Blass and artist Ellsworth Kelly. Their existence remained classified until 1996.

On October 14, 1943, Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp carried out a mass escape led by Polish-Jewish officer Alexander Pechersky and Polish partisan Leon Feldhendler. They used axes and knives to silently kill 11 SS men — one by one luring them into rooms under false pretenses. When the escape was discovered ahead of schedule, 300 prisoners escaped through a minefield and wire fence. Of those who survived the war, 53 had survived. The camp was completely demolished by the Nazis and a farm was built over it. The village was so completely erased that the existence of Sobibor was not widely known until the 1960s.

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), was simultaneously running operations against the Allies AND helping anti-Nazi resistance. He recruited agents he knew were British, deliberately sent false intelligence to Hitler, helped Jews escape to Switzerland, and was actively involved in the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Canaris kept detailed diaries of his activities, knowing he would likely be discovered. He was arrested after the failed bomb plot and executed at Flossenburg concentration camp on April 9, 1945 — just weeks before the war ended.