War can be cruel, it can be brutal, and every
once in a while it can throw up events that
are just plain weird.
The Second World War was the largest war ever
fought, and it was no exception.
In this list we take a closer look at some
of the strangest events from history’s most
destructive war.
10.
The Toilet Malfunction that Cost Germany a
U-boat
In April 1945 the crew of the German submarine
U-1206 completed their training, and under
their newly promoted commander, Karl-Adolf
Schlitt, set out on their first patrol.
The war was already as good as lost, but Germany
still boasted the most technologically advanced
fleet of submarines in the world.
This even included the sophistication of their
toilet facilities.
While British submarines stored human waste
in tanks to be disposed of when they returned
to docks, U-1206 was equipped with hi-tech
toilets that used compressed air to blast
waste into the sea even when deep underwater.
It was, however, a complex system, and on
April 14, 1945 it malfunctioned, causing seawater
and sewage to flood into the submarine.
The situation rapidly deteriorated from disgusting
to potentially deadly when the mixture leaked
onto the submarine’s batteries, causing
them to discharge chlorine gas.
Karl-Adolf Schlitt had no choice but to give
the order to surface just off the coast of
Scotland, where the U-boat was almost immediately
spotted and attacked by the British Royal
Air Force.
Three crew members were killed and the submarine
was destroyed, all because of a malfunctioning
toilet.
9.
Yang Kyoungjong
Many people join the army out of a strong
sense of loyalty to their country; others
are conscripted whether they like it or not.
An unfortunate few find themselves forced
to fight for a foreign power to whom they
owe no allegiance whatsoever.
For a Korean man named Yang Kyoungjong this
became a recurring feature of his life.
For the first part of the 20th century Korea
was occupied by Japan.
Koreans were treated as second-class citizens
and thousands of them were forced to serve
as cannon fodder in Imperial Japan’s growing
collection of wars.
When Kyoungjong was pressed into service and
sent to fight in the Soviet-Japanese War of
1939, his prospects were not good.
Kyoungjong survived, but he found himself
captured and sent to one of the Soviet Union’s
brutal labor camps.
He may well have toiled there until his death
but for Nazi Germany’s invasion in 1941.
With the Soviet Union suffering horrific losses
and running short on manpower, Kyoungjong
was forced to join the Red Army and sent to
fight and die on the Eastern Front.
History repeated itself as Kyoungjong was
once again captured and recruited, this time
eventually finding himself almost 6,000 miles
from home in France fighting for the German
Army.
Unwilling to fight to the death for Hitler’s
dream of a racially-pure Europe, he surrendered
to the Allies at the earliest opportunity.
Initially believed to be a Japanese soldier
who had somehow found himself under German
command, the truth of Kyoungjong’s unique
story didn’t emerge until some time later.
8.
The Puzzle of the Daily Telegraph Crossword
The Allied invasion of Western Europe had
a huge amount riding on it.
If the 1944 invasion went wrong, then tens
of thousands of Allied troops would be killed
or captured, and it wouldn’t have been possible
to launch a fresh attempt until 1945 at the
earliest.
In order to maintain the advantage of surprise
the operation was planned in the strictest
secrecy.
Only a handful of senior officers were aware
of the details.
It was therefore a cause of immense concern
when, over the course of just a few weeks,
a whole string of code words relating to the
invasion appeared in the answers to the Daily
Telegraph newspaper’s crossword puzzle.
These included Overlord (which was the name
of the operation itself), Neptune (which referred
to the naval component of the assault), mulberry
(which was the name given to the top-secret
floating harbors developed by the Allies),
and on top of all that the code names for
two of the five invasion beaches.
Fearing that enemy spies had somehow infiltrated
the highest levels of the military, Britain’s
secret service pounced.
Leonard Dawe, the man who’d compiled the
crossword puzzles, was taken away for questioning.
Dawe insisted he had done nothing wrong, hadn’t
been attempting to communicate with the Germans,
and certainly wasn’t a spy.
It seems he was telling the truth.
As far as is known Dawe chose the words through
sheer coincidence, perhaps having overheard
them mentioned by military personnel in his
hometown of Bury St. Edmonds.
7.
The Battle of Castle Itter
On April 30, 1945 Adolf Hitler shot himself
through the head.
The war in Europe wasn’t quite over yet,
but the Third Reich was clearly doomed.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians
were on the move, the vast majority heading
west attempting to escape the Soviet Red Army
and surrender to the Western Allies.
As order broke down the German guards at Castle
Itter in Austria fled their posts.
The castle had been converted into a prison
in which to hold some of Germany’s highest
profile prisoners.
In 1945 this included two former French prime
ministers, the man who had been commander-in-chief
of France’s army at the outbreak of war,
and one of the world’s leading tennis players.
With the disappearance of their guards the
prisoners rightly feared the fanatical troops
of the Waffen SS, who were prowling the countryside
in some numbers, might move in to finish them
off.
One of the prisoners set off on a bicycle
in search of help.
He returned with a ragtag force of a single
Sherman tank, 18 Americans, and 10 German
soldiers who had agreed to assist in what
would be one of the last European battles
of the war.
The attack came on May 5.
Despite being heavily outnumbered the unlikely
force of American and German soldiers, assisted
by the prisoners themselves, held the SS off
for several hours until help finally arrived.
The German commander was killed in action,
but the Battle of Castle Itter is believed
to be the only time that American and Wehrmacht
soldiers fought side-by-side in all of World
War Two.
6.
The Nazi Invasion of North America
The ability to predict the weather with greater
accuracy than an enemy provides a huge and
often underestimated military advantage.
Throughout the course of World War two the
British and Americans consistently benefited
from more accurate reports than their German
opponents.
This was at least in part because the jet
stream means weather systems tend to move
from west to east across the Atlantic, making
it easier for the Allies to make predictions
about the weather in Europe.
In an attempt to nullify this advantage the
Germans invaded North America, albeit on a
very small scale.
On October 22, 1943 a small group of armed
German sailors arrived by submarine at a remote
part of the Canadian Labrador Coast.
So far as is known it is the only German military
incursion into North America over the course
of the entire war.
It didn’t last long, with the sailors remaining
only long enough to set up an automated weather
station.
In an attempt to conceal its true purpose
they labelled it as belonging to the Canadian
Meteor Service.
No such organization existed, but the subterfuge
was none the less so successful that the truth
of Weather Station Kurt wasn’t discovered
until 1981, having sat undisturbed for 38
years.
5.
A Reindeer Lived on a British Submarine
In June 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet
Union in what was the biggest offensive in
the history of warfare.
As the Soviet Union reeled under the onslaught,
Britain and the United States of America attempted
to keep the Soviets in the fight.
They sent weapons, equipment, and supplies;
almost all of which had to be delivered through
the U-boat-infested waters of the Arctic Circle.
The British submarine HMS Trident was just
one of the vessels tasked with keeping these
vital supply routes open.
The Soviets were grateful.
So grateful, in fact, that they offered the
Trident’s captain a gift in the form of
a reindeer.
An adult reindeer stands over six-feet at
the shoulder and weighs in at more than 200
pounds.
As a species they are entirely unsuited to
life on a cramped World War Two submarine.
Nonetheless, the British didn’t want to
appear rude.
They accepted the unconventional gift, named
her Pollyanna, and squeezed her onto the submarine
through
a torpedo tube.
Pollyanna remained on the submarine for six
weeks, surviving on scraps from the galley
and sleeping in the captain’s quarters.
When the Trident returned to port in Britain,
Pollyanna was relieved of duty and donated
to Regents Park Zoo.
4.
An American Warship Almost Torpedoed the President
The first ever meeting between Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin
began in Iran on November 28, 1943.
President Roosevelt, whose health was already
failing, had to make a long and dangerous
journey through the U-boat infested waters
of the Atlantic.
In theory these German U-boats represented
the greatest danger, but in practice it was
an extraordinary incident involving an American
destroyer that could have led to the President’s
untimely demise.
Roosevelt would be transported to Iran on
the battleship USS Iowa, but before he got
underway he asked for a demonstration of the
Iowa’s capabilities.
What should have been a routine torpedo drill
suddenly became altogether more lively when
an American destroyer, the USS William D.
Porter, broke radio silence with the startling
news that they had accidentally fired a live
torpedo directly at the President’s battleship.
Roosevelt appeared unperturbed, merely asking
that his wheelchair be moved to the side of
the battleship so he could watch the torpedo
approach.
Fortunately for everybody concerned the Iowa
managed to evade the torpedo, but the entire
crew of the USS William D. Porter were arrested
on suspicion of attempting to assassinate
the President.
Chief Torpedoman Lawton Dawson was eventually
found to be responsible for the mistake.
He was sentenced to hard labor, but Roosevelt
personally intervened to have the sentence
overturned.
3.
The Death Match
Football is the most popular sport in the
world.
Countless matches have been played over the
years, but perhaps the strangest, and deadliest,
ever was played in 1942 occupied Ukraine.
Ukraine’s official football league had been
abandoned in the wake of the Nazi invasion,
but an amateur team which contained several
formerly professional players was put together
by the manager of a bread factory in Kyev.
When the newly-formed team comfortably swept
aside opponents made up of Romanians, and
another team raised from a German artillery
unit, they attracted the attention of the
German authorities.
The Germans put together the strongest team
they could muster and arranged a date for
the match.
Given that it was the Aryan master race against
mere Ukrainians, they assumed victory to be
inevitable.
The Ukrainian team, who apparently hadn’t
got the memo, romped to a crushing 5-1 victory.
The Germans demanded a do-over and arranged
a second match to be played a few days later
on August 9, 1942.
Despite being warned that any repetition of
the first result would be looked upon very
dimly, the Ukrainians won 5-3 — with all
three of the German team’s goals being scored
with the opposing goalkeeper having been knocked
unconscious.
Several of the Ukrainian players who took
part were murdered by the Nazis over the next
few months, earning the game the title of
the “Death Match.”
2.
A British Officer Went to War Armed with a
Longbow
World War Two was a war of technology as well
as manpower.
Soldiers wanted the best equipment available,
knowing it could be the difference between
life and death.
One British officer served as the exception
to this rule, preferring to go into battle
armed with bagpipes, a medieval broadsword,
and a longbow.
That man was Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Churchill,
also known as “Mad Jack” and “Fighting
Jack” to his friends.
He argued that any British officer going into
battle without a sword was improperly dressed.
As a deadly archer who had represented Great
Britain in the World Archery Championships,
if anyone was going to face the Germans armed
with a bow and arrow it would be him.
He is often credited with being the last man
to kill an enemy using a longbow in combat.
He also took part in a raid on occupied Norway
and the invasion of Sicily, on both occasions
playing his bagpipes before drawing his sword
and charging into hand-to-hand combat.
In May 1945, he requested to be transferred
to the Far East to join the fight against
Japan.
As one of the few individuals who’d thoroughly
enjoyed the war, he lamented that if the Yanks
hadn’t got themselves involved, it could
have stretched on for another ten-years.
1.
The Flight of Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess was a world-famous politician,
one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany,
and Adolf Hitler’s designated successor.
All of this and more made him one of the last
people in the world the British expected to
apprehend skulking around a field in Scotland.
And yet, in the early evening of May 10, 1941,
there he was.
Things got even stranger after he was escorted
to a local police station.
Hess explained he had flown in to personally
negotiate peace between Britain and Germany.
The fact that Hitler had not given him permission
to do any such thing seems not to have deterred
him in the slightest.
He’d made a solo-flight from Germany to
Scotland in the hope of enlisting the help
of Duke Hamilton the 14th, who Hess believed
he had once become acquainted with at a party.
This was news to the Duke, who insisted he’d
never so much as met the Deputy Fuhrer.
Rather than being rushed to meet with Winston
Churchill as he had expected, Hess was arrested
and charged with crimes against peace.
Psychologists determined that he wasn’t
insane, but he was in a delicate mental state.
He would remain imprisoned until his death
in 1987.
