89 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
Belgian Andrée de Jongh, age 24, founded the Comet Line, helping 800 Allied airmen escape to Spain. She personally escorted 118 airmen across the Pyrenees on foot, crossing 24 times. She wore a red carnation as her signature. Arrested in 1943, she ne…
The Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days — the longest and most destructive siege in history. Over 1 million civilians died, mostly from starvation. When Lake Ladoga froze solid in winter, the 'Road of Life' became the only supply route into the city. …
Miep Gies, an Austrian-born Dutch citizen, risked her life to feed and shelter the Frank family for two years in Amsterdam. After their arrest, she found Anne's scattered diary pages on the floor and kept them in a drawer, unopened, for months. After…
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 …
Eight German saboteurs were landed on U.S. soil by U-boats in June 1942 — four near Amagansett, Long Island, New York, and four near Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida — as part of a sabotage plan code-named Operation Pastorius. They carried high explosives,…
Dentist Lytle S. Adams (a personal friend of Eleanor Roosevelt) proposed dropping bomb-laden Mexican free-tailed bats over Japan. The bats were chosen because a single bat could carry a small timed incendiary device, they hibernate in buildings, and …
Coastwatchers were Australian civilians and Solomon Islanders behind Japanese lines reporting ship movements and aircraft deployments. They provided crucial warning of Japanese forces at Guadalcanal. Coastwatcher Lt. Reginald Evans maintained a radio…
After Heydrich's assassination, the village of Lidice was destroyed — 172 men executed, women sent to Ravensbrück, children sent to Germany. But the Czech resistance's response to this horror was even more courageous than the assassination itself. Wi…
The 1st and 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments of the U.S. Army were composed of Filipino-Americans, many of whom were California farm workers who volunteered after Pearl Harbor. They served as scouts, interpreters, and intelligence specialists in the P…
The Papuan Infantry Battalion was composed of indigenous Papuans serving in the Australian Army. Known as the 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels,' they carried thousands of wounded Australian soldiers down the steep Kokoda Trail on stretchers made from local timber…
Navajo code talkers developed a battle code based on their language that was never broken by enemy forces. Unlike machine-encrypted codes (like the German Enigma which WAS broken), the Navajo code was based on an unwritten language with only about 30…
The 588th Night Bomber Regiment, composed entirely of women pilots, flew over 23,000 sorties during WWII. They flew obsolete wooden Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes — crop-duster designs — and attacked by cutting their engines and gliding to their targets at…