40 Fascinating But Lesser Known Facts About WWII

39. The Germans Landed On Top of the Fortress

In the wee hours of May 10th, 1940, a company of 80 German paratroopers, commanded by a captain Walter Koch, boarded gliders tethered to Ju 52 transport airplanes, which towed them, then released them on an approach path to the fortress. The gliders landed atop the fortress, which had been built to thwart attacks from land, but whose designers had not contemplated a direct assault from above by airborne soldiers. Exiting the gliders and quickly forming into assault teams, the paratroopers threw explosives down Eben-Emael’s ventilation shafts, to explode within the fortress’ vitals.

38. The German Attackers Shocked and Awed Eben-Emael’s Defenders

Utilizing aggressive shock tactics, in which flamethrowers featured prominently, the Germans paralyzed the defenders, who found themselves trapped in a fortress whose exits had been blocked. The Belgians were unable to effectively fight back against attackers who rained explosives down on them from above, followed by aggressive room clearing tactics with which the garrison was unfamiliar and against which it had not trained. The demoralized defenders were steadily pushed deep into the bowels of the fortress, and away from the guns commanding the roads and bridges leading into the Belgian heartland.

37. Silencing Eben-Emael’s Guns Opened The Way For the German Advance

With Eben-Emael’s guns unmanned, other German paratroopers seized and secured the vital bridges the fortress had been built to safeguard. They suffered heavy casualties, but held on to the bridges, beating back Belgian counterattacks long enough for relief to arrive from regular German army units that raced to their aid. Eben-Emael’s garrison, its situation now hopeless, surrendered early the following day, May 11th, within 24 hours of the gliders’ landing atop the fortress.

36. Britain in 1940 Was Nowhere Near As Vulnerable to Invasion as Is Widely Thought

After the fall of France in 1940, Britain stood alone against the Germans, who dominated continental Europe. Most figured it was all over for the British, who had no choice but to sue for peace. Instead, led by the plucky Winston Churchill, Britain chose to fight on. That led Hitler to order plans for an invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion. While most Britons feared a German invasion at any moment, their leaders were confident that any German invasion, if attempted, was bound to fail.

35. Logistics Doomed Sea Lion to Failure Before It Began

The confidence of Churchill and British higher ups boiled down to one word: logistics. The Germans simply lacked the landing craft and shipping capacity to transport and supply an invasion force big and powerful enough to secure a beachhead, then go on to subdue Britain. The main reason why the D-Day landings took place in 1944, instead of in 1943 as American commanders had wanted, was the lack of sufficient landing craft in 1943. That problem was even worse for the Germans in 1940 – 1941.

34. Early on, the Germans Realized That the Invasion Could Not Succeed

Even as the Battle of Britain raged in the summer of 1940, Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering did not believe that winning would pave the way for an invasion. When the German aerial effort shifted from attacking the Royal Air Force to bombing British cities, it was not a prelude to invasion, as that had already been cancelled by the time the Blitz began. Instead, the Germans now hoped to break British morale and pressure Britain’s leaders into negotiating for peace.

33. Britain’s Leaders Thought the Fear of Invasion Was Good For The War Effort

While Britain’s leadership did not fear an invasion, they wisely kept that confidence in Britain’s safety themselves: public morale and spirit of defiance were high in the face of an “imminent invasion”, and there was no reason to tamper with that and risk complacency. Moreover, the image of an endangered Britain played well across the Atlantic, enhanced American public and governmental sympathy for Britain, and solidified US willingness to support the British.

32. Operation Bertram, the Plan to Outfox the Desert Fox

The El Alamein battlefield was bounded to the north by the Mediterranean Sea, and to the south by the Qattara Depression, impassable to armor and wheeled vehicles. Operation Bertram sought to fool Erwin Rommel about where the British planned to strike. That was important because Rommel faced fuel shortages that made redeploying his troops, particularly the Italians, difficult or even impossible once fighting began. Wherever Rommel deployed his forces, that is where most of them would stay during the battle. So the British sought to convince him to deploy them in the wrong place.

31. The British Used Stage Magicians to Trick the Germans

To conceal their plan to attack in the north, the British created a specialist unit known as the Camouflage, Development, and Training Centre (CDTC). Cobbled together from filmmakers, stage magicians, painters, sculptors, and architects, its mission was to trick the enemy. The CDTC set out to hide the actual troop and materiel buildup in the north, make what buildup could not be concealed appear slower than it actually was, and convince the enemy that the main attack would be in the south, not the north.

30. British Deception and Misdirection Efforts

The Germans were fed misinformation via turned spies, and borrowing from stage magic, the British built wood and canvass contraptions to deceive German aerial reconnaissance. Tanks over here were made to look like trucks, while trucks over there were made to look like menacing concentrations of tanks. To further fool the Germans about the British buildup of supplies and munitions, the CDTC set up fake ammunition dumps. With water being the most precious resource in the desert, whose concentration offered strong indicia of intent, a 200 mile dummy water pipeline was laid to the southern sector of the line.

29. Bertram Worked

When the Battle of El Alamein commenced with a massive artillery bombardment on the night of October 23rd, 1942, Axis commanders were surprised that the British Eighth Army’s main thrust came in the north, and not in the south as had been expected. As British planners had predicted, fuel shortages kept their foes from redeploying troops from their southern sector to reinforce and meet the threat to the north. The result was a complete British victory.

28. The Western Allies Convinced Themselves That the Japanese Were Natural Jungle Fighters

After Japan joined WWII in December of 1941, early Japanese successes in jungle terrain created a perception that the Japanese were gifted ”jungle fighters”. The British in particular convinced themselves that their foes were “natural” jungle fighters during the Malay Campaign, when the Japanese invaded the Malay Peninsula from the north. The Japanese brushed aside or sidestepped all opposition, and capped it off by capturing the fortress city of Singapore at the peninsula’s southern tip, despite being outnumbered by the British.

27. Nothing About Japan Made the Japanese Exceptionally Suited to Jungle Fighting

Japan has as many tropical jungles as does Britain: zero. The Japanese succeeded in the Malay jungles because their troops were hardened veterans, while their opponents were inexperienced and poorly trained. The Japanese were also adaptable, as illustrated by their commandeering of bicycles to speed up their advance, while British commanders were mediocre or incompetent. British generals, looking at all the greenery of the Malay Peninsula, assumed it was impenetrable jungle, and thus never expected an advance on Singapore from that direction.

26. British Defensive Positions During the Malay Campaign Were Easily Outflanked

When the Japanese invaded, British generals set up defensive positions to block their advance, frequently anchoring their flanks to a “jungle” on one or both sides. However, a significant portion of the Malay Peninsula’s foliage was not jungle, but plantations. They looked formidable when seen from the air, but on the ground they posed no barrier, comprised as they were of rows of trees with wide spaces in between, carefully cleared of underbrush. The plantations on the British flanks actually formed straight and leafy boulevards, down which the Japanese easily marched in the shade.

25. British Commanders Excused Their Ineptness by Citing an Inherent Superiority of the Japanese as “Natural Jungle Fighters”

British commanders in far off headquarters, oblivious to actual conditions on the ground in Malaya, set up defensive lines that seemed formidable on their maps, with flanks secured by impenetrable “jungles”. In reality, the “jungles” on their maps were often plantations, and the Japanese easily outflanked the British positions, time after time, by simply strolling past them. Flabbergasted British commanders convinced themselves that an unnatural talent for jungle fighting lay behind the ease with which their foes outmaneuvered them, thus giving birth to the myth of the “Japanese jungle fighter”.

24. Operation Bodyguard: The Allied D-Day Deceptions

Operation Bodyguard was an Allied intelligence plan to deceive the Germans about when and where the invasion of France would occur in 1944. The plan had three goals: first, conceal the time and date of the invasion. Second, convince the Germans that the main invasion would be at the Pas de Calais. Third, convince the Germans to keep units defending the Pas de Calais for at least two weeks after D-Day, instead of send them to reinforce their troops in Normandy.

23. Fortitude and Fortitude North

Operation Fortitude was a sub-plan of Bodyguard, which created a fictitious “First US Army Group” under the command of general George S. Patton. FUSAG’s existence was sold to the Germans by fake radio traffic between fictitious units, and allowing German air reconnaissance to photograph concentrations of FUSAG tanks and transports that were actually inflatable dummies. German intelligence was also fed fake reports through double agents and turned spies, about FUSAG’s intentions to invade the Pas de Calais. Another subsidiary, Fortitude North, created a fictitious British Fourth Army in Scotland, and convinced the Germans that it planned to invade Norway, so as to tie down the German divisions there.

22. Bodyguard Tied Down Significant German Troops-

After D-Day, Operation Bodyguard kept the Germans from committing fully to a counter attack, by convincing them that the Normandy landings were not the main event, but just the first in a series of planned landings. The German high command ended up keeping units guarding other potential landing sites, mainly the Pas de Calais which was threatened by the fictitious FUSAG under Patton, instead of sending them to reinforce the defenders in Normandy.

21. Bodyguard’s Success Exceeded Expectations

Operation Bodyguard had hoped to trick the Germans into staying put in the Pas de Calais for two weeks after D-Day, instead of immediately sending the units there to reinforce their hard pressed defenders in Normandy. The plan ended up working so well that the Germans stayed put in the Pas de Calais for seven weeks instead of the hoped-for two. That gave the Allies enough time to build up their beachhead in Normandy, before breaking out to liberate France and Western Europe.

20. The Miraculous Escape of American Forces at Leyte Gulf

The 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf, history’s biggest naval engagement, was the outcome of a complex Japanese plan featuring many moving parts and attacks from various directions. The aim was to draw off the main American fleet guarding the American landings at Leyte Gulf, and send it on wild goose chase. Then, a powerful Japanese naval contingent would fall upon the unprotected Leyte Gulf and devastate the Americans there. The plan almost worked, until the Americans were miraculously saved at the last minute by a tiny scratch force in what came to be known as the Battle off Samar.

19. Halsey Takes the Bait

Japanese aircraft carriers were dangled as bait for Admiral William F. Halsey, tasked with protecting Leyte from the north. He steamed off with his powerful 3rd Fleet to sink them, telling nobody. He left behind a small fleet of escort carriers and destroyer escorts that had been repurposed for ground attack and support duties, and had little in the way of anti-ship weapons. While Halsey was awat, a powerful fleet of 23 Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers, including the world’s most powerful battleship, the 18.1 inch gun Yamato, showed up north of Leyte Gulf, steaming towards the landing site under the command of an admiral Kurita.

18. Taffy 3, the Tiny Force That Stood Between the Americans at Leyte and Annihilation

The Americans were caught by surprise. All that stood between Kurita’s mighty armada and a massacre of the Americans at Leyte Gulf was a small force of escort carriers and destroyer escorts. The northernmost contingent which first came in contact with the Japanese, 7 destroyers and destroyer escorts nicknamed “tin cans” for their lack of protection, was commanded by rear admiral Clifton Sprague, and known as “Taffy 3”.

17. Sprague Orders a Suicidal Charge

Sprague knew that his destroyers’ 5 inch guns stood no chance against the 23 armored Japanese battleships and cruisers steaming towards Leyte Gulf. He also knew that thousands of Americans would die if the Japanese reached Leyte. So he ordered Taffy 3 into a suicidal charge. The desperate attacks of the American “tin cans” were supported by planes flown from the escort carriers, making strafing attacks or dropping high explosives suitable for ground attack but mostly useless against the Japanese ships. When the planes ran out of ammunition, they made dry strafing and bombing runs to discomfit the Japanese.

16. Tiny Taffy 3 Chased Off the Mighty Japanese Fleet

The American attacks were so reckless and incessant, that Kurita lost his nerve, and convinced himself that he faced opposition far stronger than it actually was, which must be the first outer layer of a powerful US naval presence. Kurita, who had an overwhelming victory in his grasp if had steamed on for another hour to bring his heavy guns within range of Leyte, turned his ships around and sailed away, gifting the Americans in Leyte Gulf with a seemingly miraculous reprieve.

15. Churchill Explored Attacking the Soviets in 1945

As the war in Europe neared its end, Winston Churchill grew exasperated by Soviet intransigence regarding Eastern Europe, which Stalin sought to transform into a Soviet empire. Britain had entered WWII to defend Polish independence, but Stalin was riding roughshod over the Poles, keeping a third of their country he had seized in 1939, extinguishing their independence, and turning them into a Soviet client state. Churchill saw that as an affront to British honor, so he ordered plans drawn to attack the Soviets soon as Germany surrendered, to push them back to the USSR’s borders, or at least force them to treat Poland fairly.

14. Operation Unthinkable

Churchill’s generals presented him with Operation Unthinkable, whose title indicates what they thought of the idea. An offensive version envisaged a surprise attack against the Soviets in July, 1945. A defensive version envisaged Britain defending Western Europe after America withdrew from the continent. The Soviets had 10 million men available in the summer of 1945. They outnumbered the British and Americans in Europe 4:1 in men, and 2:1 in tanks – and superior tanks at that. The Allies had an advantage in the air, but even that was subject to challenge, as the Red Air Force by 1945 had formidable fighter and ground attack arms.

13. Taking on the Red Army in 1945 Would Have Been a Daunting Prospect

By 1945, the Red Army was not the rabble it had been in 1941 when the Germans invaded, but had grown into a veteran and battle-hardened force that had won bigger campaigns against significantly greater opposition than the Western Allies had faced. Churchill’s generals concluded that taking on the Soviets would be ill advised, because far from being a pushover, the Red Army in 1945 was dangerous, vicious, and huge. If war broke out, the Red Army was more likely to end up conquering all of continental Europe, rather than get chased back to the USSR.

12. Churchill Grudgingly Shelved Unthinkable

Britain could not face the Soviets on her own, and America had no incentive to attack them – especially not over Poland. Standing up for Poland was a point of honor for Churchill, but few in either the British or American governments deemed Poland worth an even greater war with the Soviets than the one just concluded against Germany. Unlike Britain, America had never guaranteed Poland’s territorial integrity, nor had it entered WWII in order to defend Polish sovereignty. Presented with the preceding, Churchill grudgingly accepted reality, and Operation Unthinkable was archived.

11. Japan Might Have Had the Worst 5 Minutes In the History of Warfare, at the Battle of Midway

At 10:25AM, June 4th, 1942, Japan was mistress of the Pacific, possessed the world’s most powerful aircraft carrier force, and was dictating the terms of the war. By 10:30AM, Japan had effectively lost WWII. It came about because of a chain of unlikely events, too dramatic for fiction because they seem so unrealistic, but which nonetheless happened in real life. They occurred at the Battle of Midway, which the Japanese had attacked in the hopes of luring the US Navy into a decisive battle of annihilation, after which Japan would dictate peace terms to the Americans.

10. American Code Breakers Tricked the Japanese Into Revealing Their Intent to Attack Midway

US cryptanalysts had cracked Japanese ciphers, and knew that they planned to launch a massive attack against a target codenamed “AF”. Unfortunately, nobody knew what “AF” was. So US Navy cryptanalyst Joseph Rochefort, who suspected that AF was Midway, set out to confirm that hunch. He directed the radio station at Midway to send an uncoded message, to the effect that its water purification system had broken down, and that Midway was running out of drinking water. 24 hours later, American code breakers intercepted a Japanese message to the effect that “AF” was running out of water.

9. The Japanese Underestimated American Strength at Midway

Making things worse for the Japanese, the US Navy had more available carriers in the Pacific than expected. They knew that one carrier, the USS Yorktown, had sustained severe damage in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and fixing her was expected to take months. However, the Yorktown was rushed back into service and steamed off to Midway after only 48 hours of hurried repairs. In addition, another American carrier had been transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific. As a result, the Japanese would face three American carriers, and an alert enemy waiting in ambush, rather than one or two carriers and a foe caught off guard.

8. The Japanese Struck Midway Island, Oblivious to the Presence of American Carriers

On the morning of June 4th, 1942, the Japanese launched a carrier strike against Midway. They inflicted significant damage on the island, but a second strike was necessary. So the Japanese aircraft were recovered and readied. While they were preparing that follow up strike against Midway, the Japanese learned of the presence of American carriers. The result was confusion, that was finally resolved when the Japanese figured that Midway was not going anywhere, and that destroying American aircraft carriers was more important. So orders were given to switch bombs from ones intended for ground targets, to anti-ship bombs and torpedoes.

7. The Slaughter of American Torpedo Bombers

While the Japanese commander was dithering about what to do, the American carriers had launched their own aircraft against the Japanese fleet. First to arrive were Devastator torpedo bombers – slow planes that had to fly low, steady, and straight, in order to launch their torpedoes. The American torpedo bombers were unaccompanied by American fighters, and ended up getting massacred by Japanese fighters. Of 41 Devastators that attacked the Japanese carriers, 35 were shot down. They did not score a single hit. The Japanese carriers resumed refueling and rearming.

6. A Dramatic Turning of the Tide

Then the tide suddenly changed, in a dramatic twist that a Hollywood script writer would have been too ashamed to pen because it was so improbable. While the American torpedo bombers were getting slaughtered, a flight of American Dauntless dive bombers, led by a lieutenant commander Wade McClusky, was lost, and desperately trying to locate the Japanese. They had neared the point beyond which they would have insufficient fuel to return to their carriers, but McClusky decided to keep going. He was rewarded by spotting a lone Japanese destroyer below. Guessing that it was heading to rejoin its fleet, he used its wake as an arrow, and that led him to the Japanese fleet.

5. The Japanese Carriers Were Devastated

The Japanese fleet was caught at the worst possible moment for an attack from dive bombers. The carriers were rearming and refueling, so their hangar decks were full of bombs and torpedoes and gas hoses. There was also no fighter cover – the Japanese fighters had gone down to intercept and destroy the torpedo bombers that had attacked at low level, and had not yet regained altitude when the American dive bombers showed up high above and dove down. Wade Mclusky’s pilots fell upon the Japanese, and within 5 minutes, 3 of the 4 Japanese aircraft carriers were burning. The fourth was sunk later that day.

4. The Loss of Carriers Was Not The Worst of It For the Japanese

Even worse than the loss of the carriers for the Japanese, which was bad in of itself, was the loss of trained aviators. Japanese carrier pilots were the best in the world at the time – a cream of the crop. However, it was a cream that took a very long time to rise, as the exacting Japanese training system produced only about 50 new carrier pilots per year – not enough to make up for the mounting losses. That put them at a severe and growing disadvantage against the Americans, whose training pipeline produced a surfeit of pilots adequately but not overly trained for the task at hand.

3. Operation Downfall, the Planned Invasion of Japan

Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan, was to take place in two stages. First was Operation Olympic, scheduled for November, 1945, which sought to secure territory in Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese main island. That would serve as the staging area for an even bigger invasion, Operation Coronet in the spring of 1946, directed at Honshu, the largest and most populous Japanese island. As was discovered after the war, the Japanese had accurately predicted the planned American landing sites – Japan’s geography was such that the only viable beaches for large amphibious landings were the ones selected by the American planners.

2. Downfall’s Expected Casualties Were Horrific

The resources committed to Operation Olympic dwarfed those of the D-Day landings in France. They included 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts, tactical air support from the Fifth, Seventh, and Thirteenth Air Forces, and 14 divisions for the initial landing. Casualties, would likely have been horrific. Depending on the degree of Japanese civilian resistance (Japanese authorities were training even women and children to fight the invaders with spears and pointy sticks), worst case scenarios envisioned over a million Allied casualties, with Japanese casualties numbering in the tens of millions. Such casualties would have made the conquest of Japan history’s bloodiest campaign, ever.

1. The Atom Bombs Spared Everybody From the Horrors of Operation Downfall

Downfall’s planners were unaware of the highly secretive Manhattan Project, and when an atomic bomb was successfully tested in July, 1945, they did not fully grasp its game changing potential. They saw fission devices as “really big bombs”, and had nebulous ideas of using them in the November invasion in support of the amphibious landings. Their use instead against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, shocked the Japanese government into seeing reason, ended the war, and eliminated the necessity for Operation Downfall and its expected butcher’s bill.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Anzac Portal – Invasion of Malaya

Beevor, Antony – The Second World War (2012)

Business Insider, August 8th, 2015 – 21 Rare and Weird Facts About World War II

Hastings, Max – Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 (2011)

Hornfischer, James D. – The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the US Navy’s Finest Hour (2005)

MacIntyre, Ben – Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies (2012)

Majdalany, Fred – The Battle of El Alamein: Fortress in the Sand (2003)

National Interest, August 8th, 2018 – Operation Downfall: How America Would Have Invaded Japan

National Interest, September 28th, 2017 – Operation Unthinkable: Britain’s Secret Plan to Invade Russia in 1945

Parshall, Jonathan – Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (2005)

Wikipedia – Battle of Fort Eben-Emael