Overlooked WW2 Fun Facts...

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daft

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After half a century following the dramatic narratives of WW2, I suddenly ran into new material that underlines basic forgotten facts. I'll mention some numbers by memory that may only be 80% right; better details avail from sources like videos by authors: https://www.c-span.org/video/?418529-10/macarthur-hirohito-famine-postwar-japan (postwar famine rescue) and "Why World War II Matters" (link at bottom).

1) The countries with the biggest kill ratios and who killed most opponents LOST the war. Japan killed 7 for every soldier lost (killed 27 million; mostly asian civilians it was supposedly rescuing from colonial powers). Germany killed around 25 million of Russians alone, famously fencing millions of USSR POW's in cold open air with no food ever.

2) Germany won it's war to create a fascist EU on the continent. After Poland thru France it came to rest (before the push into USSR) with a pacified continental Europe of either puppet or friendly regimes for quite some time.

3) The atomic bomb was less expensive to develop and killed only about half the numbers of a typical conventional B-29 bomb raid. The second atom bomb was dropped against orders for visability, and mainly hit an outer Christian suburb of the city. The B-29 was the most expensive item developed in the war, mostly for ambitious features that might have been needed over Germany but not over Japan. It's early use gave poor results until massive fireraids were tried - personally I think the UK Avro Lincoln could have been enhanced to do the job on a shoestring budget. Our Russian allies stole and copied the B-29 design.

4) The supposedly racist occupiers from US saved about 6 million Japanese from famine and epidemics thru amazing creativity and effort. This was twice the number of Japanese troops lost in the war. Returning troops brought mass infections which were then almost eraticated thru DDT powder etc. Much of the world was starving including Japanese victims like VietNam, but McArthur escalated on Japanese being near meltdown and uprising. If war wasn't ended decisively and for example kept under submarine blockade, the failed harvest of 1945 would have killed millions.

5) Now I forget more important stuff, but will riff a bit on Mr Porsche who besides sport cars designed military vehicles in WW1 and WW2. Legendary successes in first war and interwar, but quite a mess in WW2. The (electric drive) tank named after him (Ferdinand) was a disaster... this after Hitler delayed the biggest tank battle in history for it (and let Ruskies prepare more and win). He wasted lots of development money with other failed results with Hitler both cheerleading and bullying him to alter designs. The bureaucracy hated Porsche because he complained they didn't pay for his torsion bar suspension. The Beetle's legendary "boxer" 4 cyl config engine was designed under duress in only 48hrs! He built a very successful amphibious version of the VW Beetle, whose design molds were destroyed thru a mixup by occupying allies.

6?)

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opDuw4OZ3QI[/ame]
 
Likely this will end up in the debate forum, where the OP won't be able to go. But I'll play

The US had several years of having 4 aces up its sleeve with the atomic bomb. We could have done almost anything we wanted to in the world, and we didn't. Thinker Bertrand Russell (read his stuff!!), who was jailed as a pacifist once, said during the period right after WWII that the best thing for the US to do was to go to war with the USSR in order to avoid WWIII, which would begin with the complete destruction of London and result in setting back civilization 500 yrs. In '59 when the USSR sploded their own atomic weapon, all bets were off, though we went on and worked on the "super", our thermonuclear weapon of mass destruction. Opppenheimer and Fermi and all the eggheads said it would be the end of all. Still might be... don't want to guess on that and be wrong ;)

Anyhoo, Harry S, the habberdasher from somewhere, a guy without a big intellect, had to deal with the awesome philosophical questions of all of this. Kudos to that guy.

There's a lot of people who say the justification for using the atom bomb at Hiroshima and Nagisaki is hoohey. I dunno myself. I read a great book called The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Rhodes). Read it and judge for yourself. I will say that any weapon ever created will eventually be used, so it was only a matter of time anyway.

WWI was the war to end all wars. Haha. It ravaged the world, and the world thought such a thing would make people smarter (nice job League of Nations). Only for a few years, it turns out. After WWII, tons lots of sameness. NATO. Good luck with that.
 
Likely this will end up in the debate forum, where the OP won't be able to go.

<snip, snip>

WWI was the war to end all wars. Haha. It ravaged the world, and the world thought such a thing would make people smarter (nice job League of Nations). Only for a few years, it turns out. After WWII, tons lots of sameness. NATO. Good luck with that.

I am not debating here. But that reminds me of Versailles related "fun facts" that I think are mentioned in the Hanson video. That allied treaty was many times less severe than the treaty the Germans earlier imposed on Russia in WW1. Apparently Germany also drafted a WW2 armistice for the allies that was harsher than Versailles. The Versailles treaty wasn't enforced much, so was more an insult than a cost to Germany. Hitler mainly raged about "November 9" traitors rather than Versailles treaty. I guess that was when German Navy went on strike rather than attack, and left leaning German politicians rammed thru armistice for the 11th (red revolution in Munich?).
 
There's a lot of people who say the justification for using the atom bomb at Hiroshima and Nagisaki is hoohey. I dunno myself.

Immoral, possibly. Ask the people of Nanking about the morality of the emperor. But after the horrendous firebombing didn't work, what would have? I see no alternative that would have avoided a costly invasion.
 
Here's one I had no idea about until I saw a thing on PBS.

So part of Hitler's plan was to take the small German Navy, combine it with the Polish Navy and navies of other conquered nations, then conquer France and take its Navy making one giant combined Navy that could rival the British Navy. If he could defeat the British Navy and combine their ships with the others, he'd have a navy that could rival the US Navy.

Churchill and Roosevelt knew this. Churchill begged the US to send the US Navy to help defend the British Navy. Roosevelt refused because he thought (at that time at least) that Churchill was a wimp and that we'd just be wasting our naval resources. Churchill said screw it, and dispatched the British Navy to the French Mediterranean coast to blow up a bunch of French ships before Hitler could get his hands on them.

ETA: I suppose that's not a "fun" fact because they killed a lot of French sailors.
 
Here's one I had no idea about until I saw a thing on PBS.

So part of Hitler's plan was to take the small German Navy, combine it with the Polish Navy and navies of other conquered nations, then conquer France and take its Navy making one giant combined Navy that could rival the British Navy. If he could defeat the British Navy and combine their ships with the others, he'd have a navy that could rival the US Navy.

Churchill and Roosevelt knew this. Churchill begged the US to send the US Navy to help defend the British Navy. Roosevelt refused because he thought (at that time at least) that Churchill was a wimp and that we'd just be wasting our naval resources. Churchill said screw it, and dispatched the British Navy to the French Mediterranean coast to blow up a bunch of French ships before Hitler could get his hands on them.

ETA: I suppose that's not a "fun" fact because they killed a lot of French sailors.

I dunno. Were they Vichy?
 
7) The Nazi salute could have been "Heil Schicklgruber!", which was the birthname of Adolph's father. His father later changed his name, apparently for legal expediency in gaining an inheritance. This really should have engendered "Heil Hiedler!" which seems a comical tongue twister in english. It isn't known how "Hiedler" changed in spelling to the very uncommon "Hitler", but the father's brother sometimes used "Huttler". Could Germany have enforced the above heil's as mandatory for all civilian greetings if they sounded faintly ridiculous? I don't type actual heil they used because it is illegal in many countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler
 
The regular German soldiers wanted to drink beer and be with their families, just like the Americans and the Brits. The average Japanese soldier didn't know what he was fighting for. He just did as he was told. The Italians were fond of surrendering when faced with a real opponent. They didn't love Mussolini, they wanted wine, women and song. The crazies at the top in Japan and Germany and Italy thrust their countries headlong into conflict and the masses at the bottom had to suffer long and hard for it.
 
I won't risk debating how fascist soldiers felt, but will point out some surprising...
8) Anecdotal glimpses by civilians on the fascist side, like:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/Vasilchikov_Diaries.jpg Princess Marie Vassiltchikov's "Berlin Diaries 1940-5" highlights life under the bombing raids as offering exciting adventure. She is Russian royalty finding refuge from Stalin as a clerk for the Nazi gov't in the daytime, and a top socialite in the evening. Bomb raids seemed more a danger to property than lives, as sirens mandated retreat into deep bomb shelters. When her department is relocated to a safe ski resort, the female staff find any excuse to party in Berlin. She eternally has to hunt hot water baths which have been banned since before the war, avoid various creepy advances, and even gets in on the fringe of a Hitler assassination attempt.

https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780753810699-uk.jpg "The Diaries of Victor Kemperer 1942-5" depict life of a Jew in Dresden Germany, actually extending from 1930s-50s in other volumes. His marriage to a non-Jew keeps him alive in a city strangely untouched by bombs for most of the war. The notorious firebombing of Dresden interrupts the last roundup of the Jews there, and they tear their star off and become well treated refugees in an unbombed part of Dresden. He had assisted in many roundups of fellow Jews in hopes of more humane handling of what wasn't known to be 100% terminal process. In hindsight he thought the remote camps were meant to offer plausible denial of it being a death sentence - to make the lengthy process of getting people there (months or years for German Jews) more cooperative.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/TheRapeOfNanking_1edCover.jpg "The Rape of Nanking" author pointed out how horrifying civ atrocities were widely known by civilian Japanese and reveled in by newspaper pictorials. A book whose name I forget aimed to capture the tender angst of Japanese teens while awaiting invasion thru diaries and poems, but instead got bloodlust as they excitedly practiced skewering American soldiers with bamboo spears, etc. That didn't come to pass due to Emperor surrender, which is why he wasn't charged for war crimes. Some German civilians were not as willing to accept surrender by underling Doenitz, and had a extraordinary suicide rate even in western zones. Allies encountered aftermath of many suicide parties involving families of all ages, and a scattering of guerilla attacks later.
 
There is at least one German U-boat sunk in Long Island Sound.
If I recall correctly, one in the Atlantic defied orders to surrender at the end of the war, and entered the Sound to fight, briefly.
 
Netflix's White Rabbit Project has an episode called 'Crazy WW2 Weapons'. I haven't confirm whether the stories told really happened. Things from plans to give Hitler estrogen in order to soften him, to training pigeons to navigate missiles. It was entertaining to watch.
 
Likely this will end up in the debate forum, where the OP won't be able to go. But I'll play

1. The US had several years of having 4 aces up its sleeve with the atomic bomb. We could have done almost anything we wanted to in the world, and we didn't. Thinker Bertrand Russell (read his stuff!!), who was jailed as a pacifist once, said during the period right after WWII that the best thing for the US to do was to go to war with the USSR in order to avoid WWIII, which would begin with the complete destruction of London and result in setting back civilization 500 yrs. In '59 when the USSR sploded their own atomic weapon, all bets were off, though we went on and worked on the "super", our thermonuclear weapon of mass destruction. Opppenheimer and Fermi and all the eggheads said it would be the end of all. Still might be... don't want to guess on that and be wrong ;)

2. Anyhoo, Harry S, the habberdasher from somewhere, a guy without a big intellect, had to deal with the awesome philosophical questions of all of this. Kudos to that guy.

3. There's a lot of people who say the justification for using the atom bomb at Hiroshima and Nagisaki is hoohey. I dunno myself. I read a great book called The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Rhodes). Read it and judge for yourself. I will say that any weapon ever created will eventually be used, so it was only a matter of time anyway.

4. WWI was the war to end all wars. Haha. It ravaged the world, and the world thought such a thing would make people smarter (nice job League of Nations). Only for a few years, it turns out. After WWII, tons lots of sameness. NATO. Good luck with that.

1. I believe Russell went against that later. Probably a really bad idea to attack Russia... then China... then probably everybody. Lol! Why stop? It was revealed recently that even in the early 60's, Russia had less than 5 usable thermal warheads. We had a long window to nuke the world with minimal consequences... and we didn't. Kudos to 3 presidents for their restraint! I probably would have watched the world burn. I've been known to toss a couple empty kegs around after breaking a few hydrometers so...

2. I think it was Missouri. Maybe. He freaked out and cried when he was sworn in as top dog. Said he wasn't ready, and didn't think he could handle the pressure. Built a lot of confidence in his cabinet right away. :ban:

3. I think the use of "the bomb" was a better choice than the horrific fire bombing continuing. Killed about as many people either way, because the fire bombing wouldn't have stopped. Also, a much better choice than a full on invasion... for Americans and Japanese alike. Just my opinion. I'm sure the internet thinks I'm wrong.

4. It was only one war. There was just a brief disarmament...

:mug:
 
Watching a recent episode of Nazi Mega Weapons on PBS (an excellent series, btw) I learned that Hitler was a notorious late sleeper and would sleep until 10:00 a.m. or later. No one dared disturb him, not even on D-Day. They didn't get into detailed cause and effect, but the suggestion was that not having the boss around for the first couple hours of the invasion was detrimental to the German response.
 
Yes, a more solid series than most. I believe Hitler watched Hollywood films deep into wee hours. He was needed to release Tiger tank groups which were held way back from the coast so they could be sent to a variety of coastal spots. This drove Rommel crazy who wanted these on the coast. IIRC Hitlers very late awakening still didn't get the Tanks released for many hours as there was a fake but convincing suggestion of a big landing elsewhere. Hitler lived like a bohemian artist, Stalin and FDR were also not classic military leaders. Only Churchill had a lot of wartime command experience.
 
will riff a bit on Mr Porsche who besides sport cars designed military vehicles in WW1 and WW2. Legendary successes in first war and interwar, but quite a mess in WW2. The (electric drive) tank named after him (Ferdinand) was a disaster... this after Hitler delayed the biggest tank battle in history for it (and let Ruskies prepare more and win). He wasted lots of development money with other failed results with Hitler both cheerleading and bullying him to alter designs. The bureaucracy hated Porsche because he complained they didn't pay for his torsion bar suspension. The Beetle's legendary "boxer" 4 cyl config engine was designed under duress in only 48hrs! He built a very successful amphibious version of the VW Beetle, whose design molds were destroyed thru a mixup by occupying allies.
I read further about mr Porsche and realize I've done an injustice. To avoid being tedious I will try a picture show of odd things about his ww2 activities. Here is the book I got it from, where you can see the great amphibious 4wd version of his VW Beetle design on the cover.
51JbMXLfv6L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg


The book explains his troubled Ferdinand tank wasn't so much badly designed, but it was used for a role it wasn't intended for. Since they were mainly sacrificed in one giant battle, there wasn't time to learn from mistakes:
20150304220857.jpg


Anyway, I hadn't realized Porsche was the designer of the monster tank prototype "Maus". Furthermore I didn't realize it wasn't some zany superweapon, but a good performing one. It wasn't cancelled due to weighing nearly 200 tons etc, but because bombing raids snuffed out it's factory. But then the 2 surviving prototypes showed such agility and power, they tried to build others out of surviving spare parts.
pzkpfw-maus-super-heavy-tank.jpg


The usual complaint is how it was too big to transport (normally by rail), but it was less wide than the famous Tiger tanks - just twice as long. They did hold up oncoming trains and worry about train tunnels, I guess because it was so long the corners could stick out in a curve. Picture above shows it busting water mains on a city road, but the tracks were so wide the psi was as low as any tank for mud etc. It had a monster gun with plans for a larger, almost naval sized one.

Too heavy for a road bridge? It could drive UNDER a deep body of water! It was ELECTRIC drive altho without batteries (short supply reserved for submarines) so it would have another Maus reel out an extension cord from it's generator while it crawled deep underwater. Then reverse roles if the aboveground tank wasn't shot up. Almost as bold as another tank he designed with a jet engine like the current US one. However the exhaust would light any surrounding forest on fire, so shelved.

His factory intending to build civilian VW Beetles changed over to military cars, but later built MOST of the V1 "cruise missiles". Often this is lumped in with the V2 rocket campaign which was scary but expensive and not so effective. However see this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb#Assessment that rates the crude V1 campaign damaging about as much as the entire Luftwaffe bombing campaign over England at a fraction of the cost and no pilots lost or involved.
375px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1973-029A-24A%2C_Marschflugk%C3%B6rper_V1_vor_Start.jpg


Finally his factory concentrated on last ditch defense by kids and grandpa's via 3.5 million panzerfaust baby bazookas. He had such unlucky timing with some of the best car, aero engine, tank and other designs being interrupted by WW1 loss, the depression, and WW2 loss... I guess his kids had better luck getting his brand up on it's feet. He was early on befriended by fellow Austrian Hitler, but I believe the last chapter of this book will cover him being jailed for that.
330px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-J31320%2C_Berlin%2C_Posten_beim_Bau_einer_Stra%C3%9Fensperre.jpg
 
9) Rear Gunners: The UK carrier fighter "Fairey Fulmar" had a rear observer with no gun. According to guru Eric Brown, this helplessness kindled "fires of survival" and they would toss sheets of toilet paper out their window to disorient approaching attackers!

I was going to joke how the Brit's had compromised on the Russian dilemma of whether to carry a heavy rear gunner or not on their IL2 Sturmovic fighter, the most numerous military aircraft ever produced. The UK fighter with the unintimidating name carried the rear weight without the punch, but wiki seems to call the IL2 the dysfunctional one.

I had thought the Sturmovic one of the great Soviet successes like the T34 tank or later AK47. But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-2 depicts it as having almost zero success rate against tanks or bunkers... mainly good for soft targets or psychological effect. First Stalin bans the rear gunner, and they get shot down like flys. Then a rear gunner gets added which makes the plane dangerously tail heavy.

So it gets sent out against tanks with so much armor it can hardly carry a bombload. Before refinements late in the war it was clumsy and inaccurate at ground attack. The rear gunner has little armor, and often is killed since they are ordered to make many passes even after out of ammo for intimidation. Maybe it was lucky their 42,330 IL2/10s were supplanted by 4,719 well regarded P-39 Airacobra fighters donated from the US (yes, I know these fighter types had a bit different purposes).
 
10) British air war oddities.

Battle of Britain wasn't just Spitfires and Hurricanes fighting the Luftwaffe. For one day Italy took over the attack and it's trimotor bombers and biplane fighters were mauled over Britain, never to return.

When the US and UK invaded French west Africa, all UK planes were painted with US insignia. This was because France was mostly German held, so the French felt obligated to shoot at enemies of the Germans or be punished. The US was more a newcomer to war so thought to get more slack from French forces in Africa, which soon put down arms

4 British aircraft carriers fought with US in the thick of the kamikaze period late in the war near Japan. Based on statistics from Erik Brown's "Duels in the Sky" it appears their armored decks more easily shrugged off bomb strikes, but their pilots suffered terrible non-combat crash rates, like 5 for every 1 combat loss. I believe Erik admitted responsibility for OKing the use of Spitfires (Seafires) on carriers although upon landing they couldn't slow down much and bounced off decks like superballs. They did well against Japanese targets like in Okinawa campaign tho.
 
Nearly 80% of the Soviet males born in 1923 didn't survive World War 2. Think about all the lives lost, it's really sad.
 
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