89 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
Historian Emanuel Ringelblum led an underground project called Oneg Shabbat — a secret effort to document life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto. Over the course of 1939-1942, Ringelblum and his team collected diaries, reports, drawings, posters, ticket…
While the movie 'Enemy at the Gates' dramatized the sniper duel, the real Vasily Zaitsev trained 28 snipers (including his 11-year-old sister) during the Battle of Stalingrad. He claimed 225 confirmed kills. The famous 'duel' with 'Major Konig' may h…
Virginia Hall, an American socialite from Baltimore with a wooden prosthetic leg (which she named 'Cuthbert'), became arguably the most effective Allied agent in occupied France. Her work with SOE was so effective that Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of L…
In April 1942, a young Polish soldier of the II Corps in Iran purchased a Syrian brown bear cub from a boy who had tied it to a string. The bear was named Wojtek (Polish for 'joyful warrior') and was officially enlisted as a Private in the 22nd Artil…
A Syrian brown bear cub named Wojtek was adopted by the 22nd Polish Artillery Supply Company in Iran. He was formally enlisted as a private and given a paybook, barracks, and even a hammock. He drank beer, smoked cigarettes (ate them), and was traine…
While Desmond Doss's story is known, fewer know about Richard T. Trask, a medic who treated over 200 wounded soldiers under fire on the Volturno River in Italy without ever firing a weapon. Or about T5 Sergeant Carl E. Nelson, a Native American medic…
Noor Inayat Khan was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the last ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, and was a published children's author before volunteering for the SOE. She was the first female wireless operator sent into occupied France, operating i…
Born in Moscow to an Indian Muslim father and a European-American mother, Noor Inayat Khan was a pacifist writer of children's stories rooted in Indian spiritual traditions before volunteering for the SOE's Special Operations Executive. She was the f…
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 create…
British woman Pearl Witherington was rejected by the SOE three times for field work before finally being sent to France in 1943. Working undercover as a lingerie saleswoman, she built one of the most effective sabotage networks in Occupied France. Wh…
Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British physicist, passed atomic secrets to the Soviets from inside the Manhattan Project for five years. He provided detailed descriptions of the implosion mechanism, the plutonium core, and the Trinity test results. His i…
Attu Island, in Alaska's Aleutian Islands chain, was the only part of U.S. territory to be occupied by Japanese forces during WWII — the Japanese captured it (along with Kiska Island) in June 1942, just days after the Battle of Midway. The U.S. launc…