74 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
Krystyna Skarbek, a Polish countess, was one of the first and longest-serving Special Operations Executive agents. She parachuted into Nazi-occupied Poland and crossed the Tatra mountains to reach Hungary, delivering intelligence. During an SOE missi…
The Comet Line (Reseau Comete) was a Belgian-French escape network that helped nearly 800 Allied airmen escape from occupied Europe to neutral Spain. It was founded and run almost entirely by young women. The leader, 24-year-old Belgian Andrée de Jon…
On August 20, 1941, near the town of Krasnogvardeysk (now Gatchina) outside Leningrad, Soviet Lieutenant Zinoviy Kolobanov took his KV-1 heavy tank — one of the few Soviet tanks heavy enough to penetrate German armor — and positioned it in a swampy a…
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. Tu…
Most people know Alan Turing cracked Enigma. Fewer know he also designed a voice encryption device for Churchill's transatlantic phone calls to Roosevelt called 'Delilah.' It used mathematical scrambling rather than physical key rotation and was neve…
Thousands of Soviet orphan children were taken in by partisan units during the Eastern Front. The partisans in Belarus maintained schools, newspapers, and hospitals in forests - running a shadow government with its own currency of wooden chips, court…
During the brutal fighting in the Eastern Front, thousands of Soviet children became orphans and wandered into the forests. Many were taken in by partisan units. But the most remarkable story is of Masha Bruskina — a 17-year-old Minsk girl whose phot…
After the fall of Bataan, Major Macario Peralta organized a guerrilla army of over 30,000 fighters on the island of Panay in the Philippines. His forces kept 8,000 Japanese troops pinned down, recovered downed Allied airmen, and established a complet…
After the fall of Bataan, a group of 1,100 Filipino and American soldiers escaped the Death March by slipping through a gap in Japanese lines that a local fisherman had discovered. Led by Lt. Col. Ed Ramsey, they formed a guerrilla force that survive…
When the Japanese cargo ship Lisbon Maru was torpedoed by an American submarine in 1942, the Japanese guards locked the holds containing 1,816 British POWs below deck and covered them with hatch covers. When the Chinese fishing boats of Dongji Island…
In the mountain village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in southern France, the entire Protestant community — led by Pastor Andre Trocme and his wife Magda — conspired to hide Jewish refugees and French resistance fighters. Magda Trocme hid resistance fight…
Vera Atkins was a Romanian-born woman who spoke four languages and had a photographic memory. She joined the SOE's French Section as an intelligence officer and personally recruited and managed 39 agents sent into occupied France — including 13 women…