163 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
POWs building the Burma Railway (the 'Death Railway') — constructed by the Japanese using 60,000 Allied POWs and 200,000 Asian forced laborers — developed a sophisticated communication system using tapping codes based on Morse code. But their most in…
POWs building the Burma Railway (the 'Death Railway') developed a sophisticated communication system using the tapping code based on Morse code, which allowed them to warn each other of approaching guards during sabotage. When Allied commando Operati…
Brigadier Orde Wingate's Chindits — officially the Long Range Penetration Groups — were formed to operate deep behind Japanese lines in Burma. In March 1943, 3,000 men crossed the Chindwin River and operated for three months behind Japanese lines, de…
When German authorities imposed strict press censorship in Denmark, the Danish resistance didn't just print underground newspapers — they created hundreds of them. At the peak, over 50 illegal newspapers were published in Copenhagen alone. The most f…
While the 442nd Regimental Combat Team is celebrated for their battlefield heroics, a smaller group of Japanese-American soldiers performed equally critical work in intelligence. The Military Intelligence Service (MIS) trained over 6,000 Nisei (secon…
The Great Panjandum had two 10-foot wooden wheels with rockets, designed to clear mines. Tested on Devon beaches in 1943, it was spectacular failure. Rockets fired unevenly, it caught fire and careened toward officers filming. A cameraman Lt. Col. Sm…
The Great Panjandum was a massive contraption designed by the British Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (an actual government department with that actual name). It consisted of two 10-foot wooden wheels with rockets attached to the rim,…
The Great Panjandum was a massive contraption consisting of two 10-foot wooden wheels with rockets attached to the rim, designed to be a self-propelled mine-clearing device. It was tested on beaches in Devon and was an absolute catastrophe. The rocke…
British inventor Geoffrey Pyke proposed building an aircraft carrier from 'Pykrete' — a mixture of 86% sawdust and 14% water frozen together. Pykrete was as strong as concrete but would float and would self-repair — you could shoot a hole in it and i…
At the heavy water plant in Vemork, Norway — perched on a cliff above a 1,400-foot gorge — the Norwegian Resistance carried out two separate sabotage missions. First, four commandos parachuted in, then skied for 18 days across frozen terrain to reach…
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…
The Venona project decrypted Soviet communications from 1943-1980, revealing deep Soviet penetration of the Manhattan Project, Treasury, State Department, and OSS. Over 3,000 messages decoded, identifying hundreds of agents including Julius Rosenberg…