From Operation Mincemeat’s bizarre deception to secret agents altering history’s course, explore the untold and extraordinary tales of World War II, where audacious pranks, covert operations, and daring espionage that added intriguing layers to the most destructive conflict in history.
Buy us a KoFi to help support the channel & team! 🎭
•https://ko-fi.com/thefront
Check out some of the music we use in our videos!🎶
•https://bit.ly/RelaxJackYT
Join other history buffs on our Discord!📚
•https://discord.gg/qt68efP
🎬Video Credits:
Narrator – Cam
Editors – Kshitiz, Shantanu koli
Writer – Brad, Nick, Isabella, Tristyn
Researcher – Daniel
Intro music – https://www.youtube.com/user/16BitRecordsOfficial
#TheFront #History
For business inquiries and to learn about our team check out our website🌐:
•https://frontiermediaco.com
Chapters:
0:00 Allied Pranks on Germans
10:09 Treating Prisoners Good
20:18 Polish Code Breakers
30:48 British SS Soldiers
40:57 Hardest Code to Break
50:13 Tricking the US To join the War
58:35 WW2 Spy Units
1:17:49 Churchhill Gamble
1:29:47 3 Best Spies
1:39:00 7 Crazy WW2 Stories
1:48:07 Woman Spy Who Survived Everything
1:55:52 Operation Mincemeat
2:04:40 New Zealand Spy
2:11:39 German Pranks on the Allies
2:18:56 Falcon Destruction Unit
In warfare, there’s never a lack of crazy schemes. World War II was no different and, during those six years of fighting, hundreds of ideas were tested out. Between successes like the Dambusters Raid and failures like the Bob Semple Tank, there’s a grey area.
In this video, we shine a light on that middle ground — the most annoying things the world did to Germany and Japan during the Second World War. There are few things more annoying than an itch you just can’t scratch. The professional pranksters at the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, knew
This well and decided to weaponise it against Germany. They made itching powder from ground-up glass wool. This was a devious compound, as once it was implanted into fabrics, it was virtually impossible to remove. Skin exposed to the powder itched immediately, and once you scratched it, the itch turned into an unbearable burning sensation.
The powder was sent out in secret supply drops to resistance groups fighting the Germans. On the Axis-held island of Crete, for example, Greek resistance fighters spread the powder on the beds of Germans billeted in their houses. Village washerwomen were in on it too — spreading it on shirts they cleaned for their occupiers.
German officers assumed their soldiers had been infected with mites or lice and, presumably itching like crazy in their freshly laundered shirts, ordered all billets deloused. German medical staff were overworked, and crucial supplies had to be diverted from the front lines to deal with the itching “infection.”
Probably laughing to themselves, the pranksters of SOE designated the operation a great success. What is the best way to undermine enemy morale at home? If you said, “send them an angry postcard,” you’d be 100% correct. This is exactly what Betty MacDonald did to the Japanese in 1944.
MacDonald was an officer working for the United States Office of Strategic Services, which was essentially an American version of British SOE. Working out of India, MacDonald’s division was responsible for conducting intelligence operations designed to undermine the Japanese Army. In Spring 1944, Allied units captured a mailbag from the retreating Japanese 18th Division.
It was passed on to MacDonald at OSS, who was immediately struck with a great idea. Destined for families back home, the hastily-scrawled notes had no information of tactical value, but they had passed Japanese censors. Written on easily-made, locally available paper, the notes were called “postcards” by OSS.
After copying the censor markings, MacDonald slipped reproduction postcards describing terrible conditions into the bag. The mailbag was then conveniently dropped where the 18th Division would find it. The propaganda campaign was designated Project Blackmail, and around 400 fake postcards were sent to Japan. They contained messages like, “Obasan, where are the supplies?
We are starving in the jungle. How can we fight without bullets?” The postcards did far more damage than anyone at OSS dared hope. Soon after they reached Japan, the Government was forced to answer uncomfortable questions about the supply situation for the 18th Division fighting in Burma.
The resulting scandal forced several ministers to resign. Almost universally, soldiers like a few things above all else; one of those things is smut. Surprising to some, many nations were printing smutty leaflets along with propaganda during the Second World War.
Once airdropped on an enemy position, the idea was that soldiers would keep the leaflets for “usage” later on and, in the meantime, the propaganda would undermine their morale. On the Allied side, these leaflets were produced by Britain, the US, New Zealand, and Australia. Each country focused on different themes.
The British emphasized the numbers of Eastern European and Italian foreign workers pouring into Germany to support the war effort. In reality, these workers often lived in harsh conditions and were treated poorly, but in British leaflets, foreign workers enjoyed themselves… and soldiers’ wives and girlfriends. British leaflets also highlighted the Wehrmacht’s increasing losses.
A two-pronged attack, these leaflets were designed to highlight the futility of fighting and make the soldier worry about his wife or girlfriend being unfaithful. The Americans went for a more offensive strategy. Their leaflets showed Nazi officials using their power to force themselves on women.
One tagline read “For us at the front there is only fear and death. For the important officials at home, our women!” For men like Joseph Goebbels, this was probably not far from the truth. Over 70,000 leaflets were dropped on the enemy by US forces alone.
Some areas of the front lines were carpeted with leaflets, and a great many of these found their way into soldiers’ hands. It’s unlikely that they were successful, however. More often than not, soldiers ignored the propaganda and focused on the leaflet’s images alone.
In 1943, the US was facing a problem: how to supply the guerillas fighting the Japanese in the Philippines. The Filipino fighters needed weapons and money to equip themselves and remain a thorn in their enemy’s side. The big brains of the OSS came up with an idea that would both hurt the Japanese AND
Support the Filipinos — dump loads of money into the Filipino economy. When the Japanese occupied the Philippines in May 1942, they replaced the standard Filipino peso with a currency of their own, known by the locals as “Mickey Mouse Money.” The authorities had very limited facilities to manufacture the invasion money, and consequently,
Its value was high. Their rationale of the OSS was simple — millions of low denomination notes would be funnelled to guerillas, with orders to spend as much as they could, especially on supplies the Japanese depended on. While equipping the fighters with what they needed, such a large influx of cash would
Also cause inflation and damage the occupation economy. This all changed in 1943, when General Douglas MacArthur greenlit the operation. Production of the counterfeit money began in the US and in Australia, where five million 10-Peso notes, three million 5-Peso notes, one and a half million 1-Peso notes, and five
Hundred thousand 50-centavo notes were produced. The effect of this libertarian nightmare on Japanese morale was severe. As their situation in the Philippines worsened, the Allies dropped millions of banknotes from the sky. It was literally raining money, and the Japanese occupation economy was ruined.
While remaining officially neutral for the duration of the Second World War, Sweden was a hotbed of anti-Nazi sentiment. The successful German invasions of Denmark and Norway cut Sweden off from its traditional allies and forced the government into working with its occupiers.
After seeing what happened to Norway and Denmark, many Swedes were concerned that Germany would erode their sovereignty too. Two patriots, Ewan Butler and Janet Gow, decided to show the Germans how they felt — with a prank. In May 1944, they learned of an exclusive gala event celebrating the arrival of famous
German comedian Georg Alexander. Entrance to the gala required an invitation that could only be acquired from the German consulate, and it was open only to Germans. Butler and Gow had contacts in SOE and through them, they obtained a list of 1,500 Swedish Nazis and sympathizers.
They printed 3,000 counterfeit tickets to the gala and sent two to each person on their list. To complete the prank, a letter was included that demanded the invitee don their best clothes, to impress their German dignitaries. After the war, Butler remembered, “The German colony had turned out in full force … to
Applaud the talented visitors from Berlin. They found themselves forced to fight through a dense crowd of infuriated Swedes, many of the men in top hats, their wives in sumptuous fur coats. … It took a long time to sort out the muddle …”
The evening was a total embarrassment for the Swedish Nazis and the Germans. Not to be outdone by the Swedes, the Norwegian resistance played its own pranks on its German invaders. Their most successful was in the Winter of 1940. When it started out, the Norwegian resistance was full of part-timers — men who wanted
The Germans out but had jobs they couldn’t leave behind, lest their families starve. They worked in the sardine industry, and sardine-canning provided the men with payment as well as food for their families. When the Germans requisitioned the ENTIRE sardine catch, the fishermen were outraged.
This affront was bad enough to turn many in Norway against the Germans, and it wasn’t long before the resistance knew why the invaders wanted so much fish. The Battle of the Atlantic was in full swing, and U-boat crews needed cheap, non-perishable, easily stored food for their long voyages.
Tinned sardines from Norway were the perfect choice. But, unknown to the Kriegsmarine, their tins had a little something extra thrown in. The Norwegian resistance had made contact with SOE, and together they had formulated a dastardly plan. Britain sent the Norwegians barrels upon barrels of Croton oil.
This was mixed with sardines in canning factories in place of vegetable oil — which was used as a preservative. Doesn’t seem so bad, right? Well, Croton oil is an extremely powerful laxative with a fishy taste. The taste was undetectable when mixed with sardines, however, and U-boat crews were none the wiser.
I can only imagine what it would have been like for every single sailor to get diarrhoea at the exact same moment while in the confines of a submerged U-boat. The fighting nations of the Second World war had myriad ways of extracting information from captured enemy officers.
The creativity of these methods was matched only by their barbarity. But a select group of Brits had a different take — choosing to treat captured German officers to the finest luxuries the British high life had to offer. It worked beyond all their wildest hopes.
This is the extravagant story of Trent Park and one of the most successful intelligence-gathering operations of the entire Second World War. And now, just a quick word from today’s sponsor. Call of War is a completely free, fully cross-platform
Mobile and PC game, that allows you to choose a real country to lead during WW2 and rewrite history by fighting against and outplaying other gamers in a battle of wit. Your objective is to conquer the world through researching new technologies, making alliances with other
Players and attacking enemy players at their weakest, and capturing and holding important cities and provinces. One of the best features of this game I find is the fact that I don’t have to play it on mobile and it gives the option to play on PC instead for a more immersive playthrough.
I’m also a massive fan of big PVP battles and true strategy, which call of war offers with real time battles that take weeks to complete with up to 64 other players & it also features historically accurate borders and units to add to make the experience feel all the more authentic.
Make sure you jump into battle now, as my special offer of 13,000 gold and 1 month premium for free will only last 30 days from the date of this video. Make sure you click that link in the description below, choose your country and fight your way to victory.
The Trent Park estate was typically English, in that it was initially a Royal hunting ground, with ownership passing through the hands of many eccentric landed gentlemen before finally reaching Sir Philip Sassoon. Sir Phil was the archetypical English country gent, and had the house remodelled to fit the fashions of the roaring 20s.
Its gardens were beautifully manicured, and a huge staff was on hand to serve England’s great and good anything they desired. Gentlemen of renown clamoured for invitations to Trent Park for a spot of golf or afternoon tea. Reportedly, it had an atmosphere “… of another world – the
White-coated footmen serving endless courses of rich but delicious food, the Duke of York coming in from golf… Winston Churchill arguing over the teacups with [Irish playwright and activist] George Bernard Shaw …” In 1939, Sir Phil got a viral infection, but instead of resting, “hurtled about in unnecessary
Gaieties until his body was beyond recovery.” He died later that year, and the government requisitioned the illustrious Trent Park estate for the war effort. It ended up in the hands of Mi-19 — the British intelligence branch responsible for POW interrogations.
As the Battle of Britain reached a crescendo in August 1940, Mi-19 were inundated with Luftwaffe POWs. Every day, more German planes crashed into the English countryside, and more enemy airmen were seized. It didn’t take long for the Brits to notice the German
Pilots — just like pilots everywhere — couldn’t stop talking about flying. Immediately seeing the potential, Mi-19 had Trent Park bugged with hidden microphones. They then transferred the Luftwaffe pilots from their overcrowded cells into the luxurious mansion. The officers
Had hit the jackpot, while the enlisted men got sent to prison camps across the Atlantic. Initially, there were six German-speaking Mi-19 officers eavesdropping on the pilots’ conversations 24/7. Whenever the POWs spoke, the British listeners would start a gramophone recording from their nearby secret base the “M-Room.” Only recordings which related
To military or political matters were kept, and all personal conversations which didn’t have intelligence value were erased. This won’t surprise anyone who knows a pilot, but when all those Luftwaffe flyboys were thrown in together, they wouldn’t shut up. After some pleasantries, the pilots *immediately*
Got to discussing the relative strengths and weaknesses of their respective aircraft. They talked about engine performance, maintenance requirements, armaments, and just about everything else concerning their planes. M-Room probably would have been laughing to themselves if they hadn’t been run off their feet trying to translate it all.
As soon as this intel was passed on to the Air Ministry, Mi-19 got a massive budget increase. M-Room was expanded with scores of exiled Germans and Austrians recruited for their language skills. The spooks also worked out the best ways of getting their prisoners to talk.
POWs who were more willing to start conversations about military or political matters were designated “stool pigeons” — a weird British word meaning decoy. Stool pigeons were kept in Trent Park while other, more cagey prisoners were swiftly sent to other camps. Additionally, Mi-19 started throwing in wildcards to get the conversation rolling. These wildcards
Were officers of equal rank but from different services. U-boat officers were a popular choice, as the pilots were keen to hear their stories from the Battle of the Atlantic. With no knowledge of submarine warfare, the pilots asked a lot of varied questions — questions Mi-19 were very keen to hear the answers to.
As the listeners in M-Room were providing the British planners with a steady stream of high-value intelligence, Mi-19 decided to up the ante. All the officers below the rank of colonel, aside from a few stool pigeons, were transferred away from the estate. In their place, the Brits put generals.
After a brief period of questioning, usually lasting a few days, the highest-ranked German officers were sent to Trent Park. The proud generals rarely gave up anything useful during questioning, but that wasn’t the point. The point was **to make them think the Brits had tried interrogation, failed, and moved on.
None of them ever surmised that Trent Park was bugged, nor that they were being constantly spied on. And why would they? Before the generals arrived, Trent Park had been converted into a POW paradise. Staff had been hired to cook and clean, and the gardens had been manicured to a tee. Mi-19
Even provided the generals with a friend of equal status. His name was Lord Aberfedly, and he had graciously offered his country estate to house only the highest-ranked German officers. He was their welfare officer and made sure the generals had everything they needed for a comfortable stay.
As he spoke German, he made an excellent conversation partner, and had a *great interest* in experimental weapons. You’re not going to believe this, but Aberfeldy wasn’t actually a Lord who made sure Germany’s top brass had enough shaving cream; he was, in fact, a British spy. The Germans didn’t know though.
They never put two and two together, and took Lord Aberfedly at face-value for the duration of their stay at Trent Park. As the listeners in M-Room were providing the British planners with a steady stream of high-value intelligence, Mi-19 decided to up the ante. All the officers below the
Rank of colonel, aside from a few stool pigeons, were transferred away from the estate. In their place, the Brits put generals. After a brief period of questioning, usually lasting a few days, the highest-ranked German officers were sent to Trent Park. The proud generals rarely gave up anything useful during
Questioning, but that wasn’t the point. The point was **to make them think the Brits had tried interrogation, failed, and moved on. None of them ever surmised that Trent Park was bugged, nor that they were being constantly spied on. And why would they?
Before the generals arrived, Trent Park had been converted into a POW paradise. Staff had been hired to cook and clean, and the gardens had been manicured to a tee. Mi-19 even provided the generals with a friend of equal status. His name was Lord Aberfedly,
And he had graciously offered his country estate to house only the highest-ranked German officers. He was their welfare officer and made sure the generals had everything they needed for a comfortable stay. As he spoke German, he made an excellent conversation partner, and had a *great interest* in experimental weapons.
You’re not going to believe this, but Aberfeldy wasn’t actually a Lord who made sure Germany’s top brass had enough shaving cream; he was, in fact, a British spy. The Germans didn’t know though. They never put two and two together, and took Lord Aberfedly at face-value for
The duration of their stay at Trent Park. There was no shortage of leisure activities on offer either. The estate had swimming pools, a painting room, a library of German books looted from the embassy in London, and lovely grounds. British intelligence officers offered English language classes and, on occasion, films were screened.
Though there were no escape attempts, the estate was guarded by smartly-marching British soldiers who saluted the POW officers. Only one complaint about Trent Park was ever recorded, from General Hans Cramer: “Unfortunately, there is no tennis court.” All this luxury wasn’t cheap, and when Winston Churchill found out the generals had been
Taken out to lunch at the lavish Simpson’s-in-the-Strand restaurant, he was fuming. He ordered “the pampering of the generals” to be stopped immediately. But pampering the generals was providing Mi-19 with so much useful information that they kept going; they just forgot to tell Churchill about it.
If Churchill had known the critical nature of the intelligence the generals were unknowingly providing, he would have been more than happy to book them a table at his favourite restaurant. On one occasion, General Der Panzertruppe Crüwell of the Afrika Korps and Oberleutnant
Zur See Röhmer of U-boat *353* discussed U-boat battle tactics at length. Oberleutnant Röhmer was eager to explain to General Crüwell how a wolfpack operated, how they attempted to get past Allied countermeasures, and how best to make an attack run. The Admiralty found this information extremely useful.
A real stool pigeon, General Crüwell could be relied on to get the juiciest conversations flowing. He was so good at directing the conversation towards secret military matters that he almost put Lord Aberfeldy out of a job. The best intelligence he gave up was in March, 1943.
In a conversation with General Der Panzertruppe Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, the two men let vital information about Germany’s secret V-2 rocket program slip. From the transcript of their conversation: “[VON THOMA] This rocket business … I saw it once; there is a special testing site. They’ve got these huge things.
They said they would go up 15 km into the stratosphere… And how do you aim? You can only aim at an area – at some central point, you’re bound to hit somewhere… its horrible. But the Major there was full of hope, he said: ‘Wait until next year and the fun will start’.
It was all very secret.” Later in the evening, Von Thoma even divulged the location of the rocket-building facility: Peenemünde. Bomber command was speed-dialed, and the facility was blown to pieces by 596 British heavy bombers as part of Operation Hydra. The Brits lost 40 planes, but it was worth it. V-2 rocket
Manufacturing and launch facilities wouldn’t be close to operational for months, and, critically, wouldn’t be ready to go by D-Day. The generals didn’t just give up vital intelligence about Germany’s most top-secret weapons program. They also admitted to knowing about atrocities committed by Wehrmacht forces on the Eastern front.
For some of the officers, this would prove to be their undoing. Some were even convicted at the Nuremberg trials by their loose talk at Trent Park. Loose lips might not sink ships, but they will get your top-secret rocket facility destroyed by 600-odd heavy bombers.
It might surprise you to know that when Alan Turing and his fellow brainiacs turned their attention to cracking Enigma, they weren’t starting from scratch. Enigma had already been broken, and broken, and broken again in the years leading up to the Second World War.
This tremendous feat was achieved by a small team of Polish mathematicians who, though often forgotten, laid the foundations for one of the most important intelligence projects of the Second World War. It might surprise you to know that when Alan Turing and his fellow brainiacs turned their
Attention to cracking Enigma, they weren’t starting from scratch. Enigma had already been broken, and broken, and broken again in the years leading up to the Second World War. This tremendous feat was achieved by a small team of Polish mathematicians who, though
Often forgotten, laid the foundations for one of the most important intelligence projects of the Second World War. but the officers were STILL sending orders out over the radio with barely any encryption. In the words of Polish Colonel Mieczysław Ścieżyński: “Messages [were] being transmitted
Either entirely [plaintext] or encrypted by means of such an incredibly uncomplicated system that[,] for our trained specialists reading the messages[,] was child’s play.” In Poland, the Army’s Cipher Section picked up these Soviet transmissions, and it wasn’t long before they cracked the codes.
Three months after the Polish-Soviet War began in February, Polish High Command was fully aware of Soviet battle plans — sometimes before Soviet soldiers were! Towards the end of the war, defeat after defeat was inflicted on the Bolsheviks and, largely
Due to Cipher Section intelligence, the Polish were able to snag some serious peace deal concessions. In early 1928, a mysterious package arrived at the Warsaw Customs Office. It was from Germany and apparently contained radio equipment. The officials thought nothing of it… until the manufacturer got in touch and demanded
The package be sent back immediately — without inspection. Naturally, the Poles were curious and opened the box, only to find a machine they didn’t recognise. A team from Cipher Section were called in to examine it, and they were fascinated. It was an early commercial Enigma machine.
After taking detailed notes on its operation, the machine was sent back to Germany as ordered, but now, Cipher Section knew the Germans were up to something. In the early 1930s, the German military began using modified Enigma machines, like the one from the Customs Office, to transmit encrypted messages.
Throughout the decade, German manufacturers secretly improved Enigma’s design. Even with their extensive prior knowledge, messages sent on later Enigma machines confounded Polish codebreakers. Remembering the role intelligence played in their victory during the Polish-Soviet War, the Polish Army decided to throw its weight behind the codebreakers at Cipher Section.
They got a budget increase, several hand-picked mathematicians from Poznan University, and were renamed to Cipher Bureau. One of their new recruits was Marian Rejewski, who began working for the Army as a cryptologist in 1930. Having had their eyes on Rejewski for some time, the Polish intelligence service offered
Him, and several others, a spot on a secret cryptography training course. The workload was immense, and only three students passed. In 1932, Enigma transmissions were becoming increasingly frequent, and the Poles were, rightfully, getting nervous. Time was wearing on, and they were no closer to cracking the machine’s secrets.
That was until Rejewski started working on it. After taking one look at Cipher Bureau’s methods, he scrapped them. These old methods relied on letter-frequency analysis and linguistic patterns to break the cipher. For example, E is the most common letter in German and appears around 17% of the time.
So the Poles expected to find a substitute letter for E around 17% of the time too. Great in principle, but not when it comes to Enigma. In an Enigma machine, E could become several different letters, which messed up the probabilities.
Additionally, several different letters could all come out of the machine as an E, making things even tougher for the codebreakers. But this is where Rejewski’s theorem came in. Using pure mathematics, something that had never been done before in cryptography, Rejewski put together a theorem that explained the relationships between letters inside the Enigma
Machine. It was groundbreaking stuff and has even been touted as “the theorem that won World War II.” But Rejewski wasn’t working alone; he had some serious help. Not from other codebreakers, as few could match his mathematical skill, but from the French, who were neck-deep in espionage.
Happy to help out anyone working against the Germans, the French intelligence service passed top-secret Enigma documents on to the Polish codebreakers. But where did they get the documents? Hans-Thilo Schmidt, the brother of Wehrmacht General Rudolf Schmidt, lived quite an extravagant life.
He greatly enjoyed throwing large sums of money around and generally playing the role of a big shot. Sadly, the meagre salary he earned from his position in the German Armed Forces’ Cipher Office just wouldn’t cover his expenses. Unlike his brother, Hans was no friend to the Nazis and believed they were ruining Germany.
To get back at them and fund his high-rolling at the same time, Hans offered to sell Enigma documents to French Intelligence. He was given the codename “Asché,” and his secrets were passed onto Gustave Bertrand, the head of French radio intelligence, who in turn passed them on to the Polish mathematicians.
For the Poles, these documents proved to be a goldmine. Asché provided them with Cipher keys, duplicate plaintext and encoded messages, and even instructions for operating an Enigma machine. Combined with what they already knew about Enigma, the Poles had all they needed to crack the code.
By early 1933, Polish Cipher Bureau was regularly decrypting German radio traffic. So long as documents from Asché kept coming, they could keep up with everything the German military was up to. But Asché wouldn’t be around forever. One mistake could land their German mole in a Gestapo torture chamber, and leave the Poles
In the dark again. But luckily for the Allies, Asché was careful. Multiple Gestapo investigations sought to discover the source of radio intelligence leaks before the war started, but they never suspected Hans. As the brother of a respected general, he was politically untouchable.
Hans knew his connections were buying him out of trouble, but he still enjoyed seeing the Gestapo crawl around looking for traitors, only to come back with nothing. From 1936-onwards, German high command began implementing new procedures that made Enigma drastically harder to break.
They reset the plugboards more often, switched the rotor positions daily, and tightened up radio net security. New techniques had to be developed by the codebreakers, and they were successful, but it was taking them longer and longer to break the encryption. To expedite the process, Rejewski designed and built an electro-mechanical machine called “Bomba.”
It was essentially an aggregate of six Enigma machines and was used together with the traditional longhand methods. With an efficient team, Bomba could work out the daily Enigma cipher key in about two hours. This feat of engineering kept Polish generals informed of virtually ALL German plans.
When the Wehrmacht invaded on September first, Polish High Command knew 95% of the German order of battle. Knowing what the Germans were planning, Polish High Command ordered Cipher Bureau give all the intelligence it had to French and British representatives in July 1939.
Rejewski and his mathematicians handed over a reconstructed Enigma machine, a Bomba, instructions on how to break the code longhand, and records of German intercepts to both countries. “The Gift,” as it was called, represented Poland passing the codebreaking baton to France and Britain for the rest of the war.
During the handover, a British officer asked Rejewski the most pressing question everybody had about the Enigma machine: how were the letters arranged on the entry drum? This question confounded the Brits for years, but for the Poles, it was obvious. They guessed that the well-ordered Germans would organise everything in alphabetical order.
They were correct, and the Brits were dumbfounded. When Poland was lost to the German advance, Cipher Bureau burned all its documents and destroyed all its equipment. But their vital contribution to the war effort lived on in England. Gordon Welchman, a Bletchley Park mathematician and cryptologist, stated: “Ultra [the Enigma
Codebreaking project] would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details … of the … Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use.” Captured, tortured, and executed, none of those who worked at Cipher Bureau spilled
The beans about their discoveries. Most were killed in prison camps during the later years of the war, and their enduring silence allowed their comrades overseas to capitalise on a decade of Polish codebreaking work. THAT was the story of the Polish mathematicians who first broke Enigma and laid the foundation
For the most important intelligence operation of the entire Second World War. Ideologues, opportunists, or plain old traitors, this is the unbelievable story of the British and Dominion soldiers who WILLINGLY turned their backs on King and country to join the Waffen-SS during the Second World War.
In this video, we’re unmasking the commonwealth traitors who fought in the British Free Corps. The man who came up with the idea of the British Free Corps was British fascist John Amery. As the son of a prominent conservative politician and, later, Secretary of State for India and
Burma, Amery was born into the lap of luxury. Despising standing in his father’s long shadow, Amery struck out into the world alone. After several failed business ventures, he was hard up and looking for someone to blame. Such a privileged upbringing had given him a hatred of communism, so he looked elsewhere,
Embracing German fascist ideals. The war was the best thing Amery could have hoped for, and he eagerly joined a fascist group in France, staying there for several years. In 1942, he was invited to Germany by several prominent Nazis and suggested forming a British legion to fight the Soviets in the East.
Hitler and the Nazi officials were impressed and ran with the idea. They had had success with many other foreign legions, so why not a British one It might seem strange in hindsight, but recruiting Brits to fight for fascism wasn’t as crazy as you’d think.
Since 1932, the British Union of Fascists had been spreading a Nazi-style message of antisemitism and, in 1934, reached 40,000 members. Violence by the party’s paramilitaries shocked Britain, and membership dropped off as war loomed. By 1942, the BUF was virtually non-existent, but its initial success convinced the Nazis they had plenty of British sympathizers.
The Nazis immediate goal was to gather 1,500 volunteers from POW camps into a newly formed Legion of St George. The SS posted propaganda across POW camps to convince captured British soldiers to join. This was pretty unsuccessful, and Amery lost interest in the unit after constant heckling by crowds of patriotic POWs.
In the end, there were 54 recruits for the British Free Corps, but the unit never had more than 27 members at one time. Even though the ideas-man behind the BFC wanted an excuse to fight communists, the unit spent most of its time doing propaganda work.
The BFC was kitted out in SS uniforms and spent considerable time in Paris and Berlin. The traitors were also paid a wage and taken to events to be shown off. Compared to the German soldiers crawling through Russian mud, the BFC had a luxurious lifestyle.
But some of the more hardcore fascists wanted a chance to test their mettle. After lobbying their SS commander, the BFC was re-designated a combat unit on January first, 1944. They then began training, but as most of the men didn’t speak German, it took ages.
After a year and three months of training across Germany, the BFC was ready for combat on March 8th, 1945. Correctly guessing the Soviets didn’t like traitors, nearly half the BFC *ran off* the night they were due to leave for the front.
Turns out the Germans didn’t like traitors either, as none of the SS commanders trusted the BFC, who were now below platoon strength because of desertions, enough to let them fight. The men were assigned as medical orderlies and truck drivers well behind German lines.
By April, Germany’s situation was looking hopeless, so the last men of the British Free Corps donned civilian clothes and crossed Allied lines — pretending to be escaped POWs. Unbeknownst to them, the British intelligence service Mi-5 had been collecting information on the traitors since the BFC was established.
At the end of the war, all men known to have been a part of the BFC were pulled in for questioning. In some cases, this led to trials with charges of treason. But most were let off lightly because they weren’t really fascists at all…
So who were the men who gave up good ol’ roast beef for sausage and sauerkraut? They weren’t exactly a devious bunch of renegades. In fact, most of them couldn’t care less about politics. What they *did* care about was food, booze, and women. Let’s start with Private Charles Munns.
Munns was a Scotsman of the Durham Light Infantry, taken prisoner during the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from France in 1940. Imprisoned in occupied Danzig, Munns had been assigned to a working party, giving him a chance to travel outside the camp.
He must’ve had a good time because it wasn’t long before he had a pregnant girlfriend by the name of Gertrud Schroeder. The Gestapo was furious and came after him. Guessing he was soon to be in a spot of bother, Munns joined the BFC to escape justice.
He stayed with the BFC until there was a chance he would have to fight, at which point he returned to Danzig to be with Gertrud. Aside from soldiers, civilian merchant seamen were recruited into the BFC too.
One of them was Kenneth Berry, a 14-year-old boy who had lied about his age to join the Merchant Navy in 1939. Captured after surviving the sinking of his ship by a commerce raider, Berry decided to join the BFC after Amery told him it was a good idea.
Berry was made a poster-boy for the BFC and sent to recruit more members from a POW camp called Milag. He met a British Captain there, who told Berry that joining the BFC had, in fact, been a bad idea.
This was enough to convince the lad, who deserted when his unit was sent to the front. After the war, Berry was sentenced to hard labour for his actions, but for only nine months. He was described by the prosecutor as “a young fool who did not know what he was doing” and
“an irresponsible youth who was easily led.” Several Australians also served in the BFC. One of them was the Merchant Navy Seaman Ron Barker, from Goulburn, New South Wales. Barker wasn’t much of an ideological renegade either. He was described by his squad leader as “A man of very inferior intelligence.”
Recruited from a poorly-supplied POW camp, it quickly became clear that Barker had only joined the BFC to get more food, alcohol, free cigarettes, and a chance at hooking up with German women. His Mi-5 file states: “Finally realizing that the British Free Corps was going to have
To fight, Barker lost all of his former enthusiasm for anti-Communism and made himself ill by smoking aspirins; he was sent back to Berlin by a gullible medical officer.” On April 9th, 1945, after a miraculous recovery, Barker ran off. The unit never saw him again.
British Royal Northumberland Fusilier Thomas Perkins was let off by the British government for his involvement with the BFC due to acts of sabotage. The thing is, it’s unclear whether Perkins actually meant to sabotage his unit, or whether he was looking out for number one.
Perkins always seemed to have more cash than the other members of the unit, especially when things went missing. He claimed to have been a prison guard before the war, but his commander noted, “His general character and behaviour led me to believe that his knowledge of prisons was very probably
From the inside rather than the outside of a cell.” Perkins was caught stealing many times, on one occasion an officer’s pistol during a party, selling it to a foreign worker. Not all the men of the BFC were so selfish, however.
The South African Private Pieter Labuschagne probably tried his best, but he wasn’t a good soldier. No, Labuschagne was such a terrible soldier that he reportedly sabotaged the unit’s effectiveness by his mere presence, and was deemed to be so useless the SS refused to take him anywhere.
When put on trial after the war, the judge found Labuschagne guilty of treason and fined him 50 pounds. While some men held genuine fascist or anti-semitic views, these five men are representative of the majority who joined the BFC. The BFC was a disaster for the Nazis.
Their propaganda efforts were continually undermined by the men’s drunken antics and pervasive interest in the local women. As a combat unit, the BFC lost nearly two-thirds of its strength to desertions and wasn’t even slightly trusted by SS commanders. The founder, John Amery, was one of the few Englishmen in Germany who genuinely believed
In the fascist cause, but he never joined the unit himself. By 1945, Amery had gone to Italy and joined a fascist, pro-Mussolini organisation called the Muti Legion. He was captured on April 25th by partisans and handed over to the Allies.
Amery pleaded guilty to treason, and his trial lasted a total of eight minutes. The judge announced: “… [Y]our fellow countrymen … called you a traitor and you heard them; but in spite of that you continued in that course. You now stand a self-confessed traitor to your King and country, and you have forfeited
Your right to live.” Amery was hanged less than three weeks later. The rest of the men of the BFC were dealt with quickly and quietly, as the story of British and Dominion men willingly joining the SS was not one the British government wanted the public to hear.
THAT was the zany story of the British Free Corps and the men who turned their back on the King for food, cigarettes, booze, and women. But what do YOU think? Why couldn’t the SS get as many British volunteers as they could Belgian or French?
How much equipment do YOU think Perkins stole and sold off? How bad must you be to sabotage a unit from your presence alone? Let us know in the comments! The story of Alan Turing and the Enigma cipher has become widely known since it was declassified in the 1970s.
But what many don’t know is the Enigma cipher was actually the younger brother of the far tougher Lorenz cipher. Personally used by Hitler and his top generals, Lorenz held a secret so monumental that it couldn’t be declassified until 2002, nearly 60 years after the end of the Second World War.
While Grand Admiral Donitz and German field commanders were using Enigma machines to make their messages unreadable, Hitler and his cronies were using Lorenz machines. The first few messages were sent in 1940, but it wasn’t until mid-1942 that the machine was brought into substantial use.
In classic Nazi style, the Army got their hands on it first. Messages enciphered with these machines were always top priority, as they often came from the Fuhrer himself. From the German High Command building in Wunsdorf near Berlin, Lorenz messages beamed out across
Europe and North Africa, carrying orders that would change the tides of major battles. The Lorenz machines looked similar to Enigma machines but were seriously souped-up. Where an Enigma machine has three adjustable code wheels, a Lorenz machine has twelve.
These wheels spun when a letter was typed in a keyboard attached to the machine, and as they could all be set individually, the Lorenz machine had 16 million million million possible settings This ridiculous level of complexity meant the Lorenz Cipher was completely impossible to break by hand.
Unlike Enigma, pulling out the old notepad and pen just didn’t cut it. But this didn’t put off the geniuses at Bletchley Park. When they saw a mathematical problem, they couldn’t wait to get stuck into solving it. The Brits had been listening in on Lorenz signals from the moment they first picked
One up, and they knew right away that there was something different about them. These signals weren’t transmitted in Morse code but binary, the ones and zeros of computer language. John Tiltman, a leading Bletchley Park codebreaker, took charge of cracking this new cipher, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
He started by nicknaming the intercepted signals “Fish” and the code itself “Tunny” — short for Tunafish. Then he got to work on the cipher. But even with Alan Turing’s bespoke code-breaking method, Tiltman and his fellow brainiacs couldn’t crack it. The cipher was just too complex.
However, any piece of advanced technology is only as good as the person behind it, and one lowly radio operator was about to do more for the codebreakers in a single day than they had managed to do so far in the entire war.
On August 20th 1941, a German Army command post in Vienna received a message on their Lorenz machine. It had come from another command post in occupied Athens, but interference had garbled part of the message. In uncoded Morse, the operator in Vienna asked for the message to be resent.
Thinking nothing of it, the operator in Athens sent the message again, without changing his machine’s code wheels. Back in England, the message had got through to the listening post without interference. It was just like the other fish, and was recorded and filed with the rest of the messages from that day.
But when the listeners heard the uncoded request to transmit again, they got Bletchley Park on the line immediately. The re-sent message eventually came through too, and the codebreakers were handed a major breakthrough. When he re-sent the message, the radio operator in Athens abbreviated some of it while leaving
The rest the same as before. But both messages were enciphered with the machine’s wheels in the same position, which was *strictly forbidden*. Using these two slightly different messages as a base, Tiltman and his team could work out the coding pattern the machine used. Within a month, they’d broken their first Lorenz message.
Great as it was to crack a single message, as soon as the Germans moved Lorenz’s wheels, the Brits had to start again. It was a total fluke, but one man was clever enough to make good use of it. William Tutte came over from the Enigma team to work on Lorenz in January 1942.
It had been five months since the others had broken the message, and they still weren’t much closer to cracking any more of them. Then Tutte made a breakthrough. He noticed a 41-bit pattern and, from this, deduced some basic principles behind the machine’s inner workings, including the twelve code wheels.
In consultation with Turing, he then developed a system for breaking enciphered messages longhand. This was painfully slow, and by the time a message was broken, it often had little to no tactical value. But the geniuses had a start, all they had to do now was speed up the process.
To do that, they needed something that would change the world. Bletchley Park contacted Engineer Tommy Flowers, requesting that he design and build them a machine capable of completing the lengthy deciphering process in time for the intelligence to be useful. What he came up with was one of the world’s first programmable computers: Colossus.
The processor in the first Colossus was run by 1,600 vacuum tubes and fed data via long strips of hole-punched paper. It could be programmed by rearranging a series of complicated plugs and switches. The vacuum tubes sometimes failed when the computer was powered up, so Colossus couldn’t be turned off.
Flowers sent the first Colossus to Bletchley Park in January 1944, and by February, it was processing German messages. As they watched the machine process 1,000 letters every second, Tiltman, Tutte, and the other codebreakers couldn’t believe their eyes. Before long, Colossus was processing over 100 German messages a week, and the codebreakers
Were struggling to keep up with it. The Lorenz cipher had been well and truly broken. Unbeknownst to Hitler and his generals, the Brits were now reading all of his secret messages. Intel from broken Lorenz messages was crucial for the planning of D-Day and virtually all other Allied ground offensives of the war.
But this isn’t where the story ends, because cracking the Lorenz cipher led to another, even more vital, breakthrough. In the Third Reich’s final days, British and US intelligence were putting together four secret projects. One was called Target Intelligence Committee or just TICOM.
TICOM’s role was to locate secret German cryptography and signals intelligence and, by any means necessary, bring it back to the West. Essentially, the Western Allies knew the Germans had been working on some top-tier cryptography, and they wanted to loot as much of it as possible before the Soviets did.
There were six teams, with team one assigned to capture Lorenz machines as, by May 1945, the Allies still hadn’t seen one yet. On May 21st, they got a tip that a German POW knew the location of a secret signals
Facility and presumably offered the man a VERY comfortable life if he showed them the way. The POW was very cooperative and even found some members of his old unit to help out. They showed Team One the secret facility at Rosenheim and got the receivers up and running as a demonstration.
The advanced equipment immediately began intercepting and decoding secret signals from Soviet high command! Straight away, it dawned on the Brits and Americans what they were looking at. One of the officers, 1st Lieutenant Paul Whitaker, later said: “They were intercepting Russian
Traffic right while we were there … pretty soon they had shown us all we needed to see.” Team One packed everything up and sent all seven-and-a-half tonnes of equipment, along with the POWs, back to England. They had come looking for Lorenz machines, but they found something FAR better.
And they weren’t the only TICOM team to strike it rich — Team Five’s entire job was recovering cipher documents from a lake, which was full of hurriedly disposed of material. Now Hitler was dealt with, his minions had left behind everything the West needed to listen in on Soviet transmissions during the Cold War.
THAT was the top-secret story of the Lorenz cipher and the geniuses who managed to crack it. When the seemingly unstoppable German army overran Belgium, Luxembourg, and France in May 1940, the British Isles were left to fight on alone.
For her salvation, Britain looked across the Atlantic, in the hope that the New World would come to the aid of the Old. But the Americans weren’t interested. In this video, we shed light on the top-secret British efforts to trick the United States into a war they thought was totally unwinnable.
Between the 18th and 23rd of May 1940, the advisory company Gallup ran a nationwide poll to test American public opinion on entering the war in Europe. When presented with the question “Do you think the United States should declare war on Germany and send our army and navy abroad to fight?”
Only 7% of the participants answered yes. Nowadays, we might be surprised that the US *wasn’t* interested in global affairs, but the balance of power looked a lot different in the 1930s. Memories of the Great War were fresh, and the lingering impact of the Great Depression was still being felt.
Many believed the country was only just getting back on its feet, and needed some serious me-time to get things straight. A combined conservative and progressive lobby group called the Isolationists championed this view. They faced no concerted opposition, and their America-first messages quickly became the dominant voice in the media.
With the heroic figure of Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, at its head, the Isolationists had serious public appeal. To lead the top-secret charge against Lindbergh and the Isolationists, British Intelligence service Mi6 employed another pilot, William Stephenson.
Described as a short, quiet man, Stephenson had shown incredible skill and courage while serving with the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War. After the war, he became a businessman, and his investing contacts in European heavy industry tipped him off regarding Hitler’s secret military rebuilding program.
By June 1940, Stephenson had been spying for the British for four years. He was trusted and capable, so Winston Churchill gave him his toughest task yet. The goal was to make the American people sympathetic to war. But before the Brits could do that, they had to influence the leaders.
Stephenson, who very quickly became a close advisor to the President, suggested that Washington create an intelligence service modelled closely after British Mi6. President Roosevelt was keen on the idea and appointed Stephenson’s mate, William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, as the first US intelligence chief.
Naturally, a guy called ‘Wild Bill’ was pretty keen to fight a war with Germany, and he filled the newly-created ranks of the Office of Strategic Services with other British sympathisers. It takes time and money to get a national intelligence service up and running, so in
The meantime, Stephenson worked out an agreement with Mi6 and Roosevelt to pass on all British intelligence to the fledgeling OSS. He promised the Americans wouldn’t be left in the dark about anything the British were up to. From the outset, it seems like Stephenson and Mi6 were just doing the Yanks a favour,
But their kind offer had a more sinister purpose. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the intelligence Stephenson was providing the OSS had been strategically selected. Reports showing military blunders made by the Wehrmacht were placed front and centre, along with reports detailing the small victories made by Britain or resistance fighters.
Intelligence concerning impressive German military-industrial production or the prowess of the German military in battle was deliberately obscured. When the President and other key political figures were presented with the intelligence reports, the first thing they saw was British intel, now rebranded as unbiased OSS intel,
Telling them Nazi Germany wasn’t the unstoppable war machine it seemed to be, but a regime that could be defeated. With the President now reading his carefully laid out intel reports, Stephenson moved on to a public campaign. His unit, British Security Coordination or BSC, paid editors to run news stories describing
Daring British commando raids. All these stories were fake. It was clever propaganda to convince the American people that the Germans could be stopped and that the British were still fighting back. One of these made-up articles reads: “British parachutists … were dropped at Berck-sur-Mer
[airfield] … armed with Tommy guns and grenades, they overpowered the airport guards, demolished the control tower, captured 30 unsuspecting Nazi pilots, and blew up a number of grounded warplanes. Then they rushed to the seashore, where they all boarded torpedo-boats which were waiting to take them back to England.” Sensationalist BS, but it worked.
At its peak, the BSC was paying for 20 stories each week, and the public lapped them up. Public opinion began turning away from isolationism and towards war. But Stephenson had one last ace up his sleeve, a final trick that worked so well that Hitler couldn’t stop talking about it.
Stephenson’s boldest move finished off the isolationists and finally convinced the American people to go to war. The Brits gave the OSS a map and a document they claimed had been recovered during a spy mission in France, but really had been manufactured by Stephenson’s agents.
The map purportedly showed the Nazi intention to take over South America and incorporate it into Germany. Roosevelt and his aides were horrified, but it got worse. The document provided with the map reported the Nazi intention to ban all religions. In his Navy Day speech on October 27th 1941, Roosevelt told the public:
“… I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government … That map, my friends, makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America but against the United States as well.” The president then went on to describe the forged document. Stating:
“The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. … In the place of [our] churches … there is to be an international Nazi church … In
The place of the Bible, the words of Mein Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols — the swastika and the naked sword.” The public was whipped into a frenzy.
Not only were the Germans planning to invade South America, but they were going to outlaw Christianity too! It didn’t matter that the German government called the documents “forgeries of the crudest and most brazen kind,” nor that German conquest of South America was utterly absurd.
No one was listening to them anymore, and the people of the United States were ready to go to war. nor that German conquest of South America was utterly absurd. No one was listening to them anymore, and the people of the United States were ready to go to war.
An expert spy until the end, Stephenson did his best to mask Britain’s involvement in leading the US into war with Germany. But he also had an admirer by the name of Ian Fleming, the man who would go on to create James Bond. In Fleming’s own words.
“James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is … William Stephenson.” THAT was the story of William Stephenson and the tricks Britain pulled to bring the US into their war with Germany. There are imposters Amongus.
Not the kind that got us all through 2020, but the real kind. During World War II, both sides created several specialized units whose men were sent behind enemy lines in disguise. They were trained in the art of walking, talking, and fighting like their enemy in order to blend in.
These spies then left the safety of their camps behind to sow chaos and destruction on the other side. Some with more success than others. Today, we’re going to talk about three of these units, what they did, and whether or not they were sus enough to get caught.
Like something out of a Tarantino film, the men who made up the Special Interrogation Group, or SIG, were German-speaking Jews who disguised themselves as German soldiers and infiltrated their ranks. This unit was the brainchild of Captain Herbert Cecil Buck. Before World War II, he was an Oxford scholar and German linguist.
After the war broke out, he joined the British Army, first serving with the 1st Punjab Regiment and then later the Scots Guard. While stationed in North Africa in late 1941, he was captured by the German Afrika Korps. He was only imprisoned for a short time before he managed to escape.
Somehow, he managed to get his hands on a few pieces of a German uniform, which he used along with his fluent German to walk right out of the POW camp and back to the British side. The whole ordeal sparked the idea in Buck’s mind that if he could sneak out of the German
Ranks, other British soldiers like him could sneak in. Used offensively, they could have the opportunity to gather intelligence or sabotage German operations in North Africa. Buck took the idea to his superiors, the Middle Eastern heads of the Special Operations Executive.
They didn’t hesitate to approve it, and in March 1942 the plan was set in motion. Back at the War Office in London, Colonel Terrance Airey wrote that a “Special German Group as a sub-unit of M[iddle] E[ast] Commando… with the cover name ‘Special Interrogation
Group’, to be used for infiltration behind the German lines in the Western Desert, under 8th Army… the strength of the Special Group would be approximately that of a platoon… The personnel are fluent German linguists… mainly Palestinian (Jews) of German origin. Many of them have had war experience with No. 51 Commando.”
The British Army asked for volunteers that could speak German to join the SIG. While it’s not clear how many volunteered, the final number of imposters landed somewhere between 20 and 38 depending on the source. The majority of the men were German Jews who had fled Germany to escape the genocide and
Ended up in Palestine. They joined the British Army soon after the war broke out to fight those who were persecuting their people. There was a lot of risk for these men. If they were found out, they wouldn’t be taken prisoner, but tortured.
Not only for fighting for the Allies, but also for being Jewish. For that reason, Buck made sure that much of their training was about knowing how to act like a German soldier. They were trained by two Afrika Korps POWs who claimed to be against the Nazi regime.
This made the men of the SIG deeply uncomfortable and apprehensive, but Buck didn’t care and had the training continue. The men learned German Army songs and slang, they wore German uniforms, and they were even given fake German identities complete with pictures of fake girlfriends.
By June 1942, they were ready for their first big mission. They were sent to Tunisia and split into two teams. One would attack the Martuba airfield, and the other would attack the Derna airfield. The Matrub team, clad in their German disguises, drove through the German roadblocks without
Any problem under the guise of transporting some French prisoners. They were so convincing that some of the German soldiers told the SIG members to be careful because the British had been seen operating in the area recently. When they got to the airfield, they got to work and managed to destroy 20 aircraft without
Getting caught before slipping away into the night. The Derna team wasn’t so lucky. They traveled with one of their German teachers, who drove the truck. Suddenly, he claimed that there was something wrong with the truck and that he needed to
Go ask for help at a nearby German camp, leaving the SIG soldiers behind. When he returned, he brought with him a handful of German soldiers. Two of the SIG soldiers, still untrusting of their teacher and possibly fearful of being
Tortured, jumped out of the truck and immediately opened fire, which resulted in both of their deaths. It’s unclear how, but one of the SIG soldiers in the truck survived and made it to the rendezvous point even though he was injured.
Three months later in September 1942, the SIG initiative came to an end after they assisted in an attack on the port of Tobruk, which the British planned to attack from both land and sea. Everything went well at first, but then the British figured out that the fort was more
Well-defended than they had originally thought. The double-fisted attack had little effect, and by the time the British requested backup, some 750 of their men had already been killed, captured, gone missing, or been wounded. Even Captain Buck was captured during the attack, and this time, he wasn’t able to escape after a few weeks.
Instead, he spent the next three years in a German POW camp. Thankfully, most members of SIG survived the attack, and many went on to survive the war. But the failure at Tobruk was a hefty loss, and with the leader of the SIG rotting in
A German prison, the British Army no longer had the will to keep SIG going, so the soldiers were reassigned to different units. Following the Allied success on D-Day in 1944, Hitler grew nervous as his enemies gained a larger foothold in Europe.
He was planning the Ardennes Offensive, which later became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The ultimate goal was to launch a massive attack on the Allies and retake Antwerp, which was home to a vital resupply port for the Allies.
This was Hitler’s last stand, and he was desperate for a major win, so there were no half-measures. As part of his counter-offensive, he came up with a plan that violated the rules of the Hague Convention of 1907. He wanted to send English-speaking German soldiers behind enemy lines to create chaos
And to capture the bridges on the river Meuse, as they had become important to Allied supply lines. Hitler named this plan Operation Greif. To make Operation Greif happen, he called on Otto Skorzeny, a scary-looking lieutenant colonel who had recently returned to Germany after successfully leading Operation Panzerfaust,
Which had seen the removal of the Hungarian Regent from power by kidnapping his son in order to keep Hungary loyal to Germany. Hitler trusted Skorzeny to lead Operation Grief and met with him in October 1944 to lay out the plan. Despite the immense risks and the breaking of international agreements, Skorzeny had
No qualms about taking on the operation. The plan was kept incredibly secret. Many involved in Operation Greif didn’t know what they were supposed to do until the day it launched. Those that did know were very skeptical that the operation would succeed, with one officer
Stating, “the entire offensive had not more than a ten percent chance of success.” Still, the skepticism didn’t stop the führer’s plan from moving forward. A request was put out for 3,300 soldiers with “knowledge of the English language and also the American dialect.”
Soon after, German soldiers who fit the criteria began receiving cryptic orders telling them they were needed for “interpreter duties” and to report to a special training camp. Upon arrival at the camp, each man was questioned in English by an SS officer.
The Germans managed to scrape together 2,500 men to form Panzer Brigade 150, and all of them were ordered to sign a pledge of secrecy which stated that “breach of the order is punishable by death.” Of the 2,500 men, only 150 of the best English speakers were selected to put on American
Disguises and infiltrate their ranks. The problem was, most of the men had no experience in sabotage or undercover missions. With less than two months to prepare for the offensive, they began intense training, learning radio skills, demolition, and close-quarter combat. They also learned as much about American soldiers as possible.
They learned about their ranks, their drills, their weapons, everything. On top of that, the men had to spend at least two hours a day practicing their language skills. Speaking English wasn’t good enough. They had to imitate the American accent as best they could and learn the slang.
To do this, they watched American films and spent time with American POWs. They also had to learn cultural customs, like tapping cigarettes in a specific way and putting down the knife before eating with a fork. Not doing these things could potentially give them away as German.
The men all but lived as Americans amongst Germans. They ate American rations, saluted their superiors like Americans, and were given all their orders in English. But though they lived as Americans and even began feeling American in some ways, Skorzeny wasn’t pleased with their progress, saying that the men “could certainly never dupe
An American—not even a deaf one!” But still, the plan moved forward and Operations Grief would just have to do its best. The soldiers were dressed in American uniforms, carried American weapons, and drove American jeeps. Now looking the part of American soldiers, the Panzer Brigade 150 was finally made aware
Of what they would be doing behind enemy lines. Their mission was broken down into three parts. They had to: Form small demolition squads of five or six men to blow up fuel stores, ammunition dumps, and bridges. Form reconnaissance teams of three or four men to run information back to the Germans
And pass along false orders to American troops to sow chaos. Disrupt the American chain of command by destroying radio stations and field telephone wires. By creating chaos from within, the Germans hoped to weaken the Americans enough to make it impossible to fight back in the Battle of the Bulge.
The battle started on December 16, 1944, and on the second day, a jeep carrying four men in American uniforms was stopped by American military police. Though they looked American and spoke English with passable accents, they weren’t able to give the policemen the password they asked for.
This roused suspicion in the police, who then began to search the jeep, where they ultimately found German weapons, explosives, and swastika emblems. The imposters were immediately arrested and interrogated, which is how the Americans later learned that the objective of that small group was to capture none other than future president
Dwight D. Eisenhower along with other high-ranking officers. This incident sparked immediate paranoia among the Americans. Even though those four German impostors had been caught, it stood to reason that others hadn’t been. There were likely already German spies among them. And they were right.
There were already several small groups from Operations Grief among the American forces wreaking havoc. Reportedly, one group somehow persuaded an entire U.S. Army unit to withdraw from Poteau, Belgium. Another got to work swapping around road signs to send a whole regiment in completely the wrong direction.
The Americans could see they were being tricked from within and began coming up with ways to smoke out the infiltrators. They set up roadblocks and asked drivers and passengers questions they felt only Americans would know, like sports trivia and state capitals.
While this method did work on a number of occasions, it did also lead to several instances of Americans being mistaken for Germans. U.S. Brigadier General Bruce Clark was held at gunpoint after he said incorrectly that the Chicago Cubs were part of the American League.
In fact, it wasn’t uncommon at all for American soldiers to answer these trivia questions incorrectly, which led to the deaths of two servicemen who were shot by a nervous member of the military police. This method also failed to account for British Allies, who were also often held at gunpoint
For failing to answer questions about baseball and the name of the president’s dog. If this had been the chaos the Germans had hoped to sow, then mission accomplished. However, they were never able to complete any of their main objectives, like destroying bridges and communication lines.
In total, 44 Germans were sent into American territory and only eight made it back alive. Based on the Hague Convention of 1907, the Americans were allowed to execute the impostors if they were wearing American uniforms because, under those circumstances, they automatically forfeited their rights as POWs.
As a result, American soldiers were ordered not to let any accused German undress so they could carry out the executions. In the end, all that effort was for nothing, as neither Operation Grief nor the Battle of the Bulge ended in victory for the Germans.
Operation Zeppelin was an effort by the Germans to get Soviet POWs to carry out sabotage and espionage operations on the Soviets. And it went about as well as you’d think. The idea for the operation was born at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
The Germans had small units of interrogators who went to numerous POW camps to work with Soviet soldiers captured during the invasion. The interrogators found that some of the prisoners were willing to cooperate with the Germans. There were many in the Red Army who were not ethnically Russian, or who had been negatively
Affected by Soviet repression and had very little loyalty to the country they served. The Germans were excited at the prospect of using these men to gather intelligence on the Soviets, and they began forming a solid plan to make it work.
And, by the summer of 1942, they were ready to put Operation Zeppelin into motion. They began asking for volunteers in all of their Soviet prisoner-of-war camps and there was no shortage of men who offered themselves up, as they saw it as their best chance of making it out of the camps alive.
The problem for the Germans was that the vast majority of the volunteers did not meet their criteria. They were looking for educated anti-Communists. The issue was that, because of the Soviet repressions, most of the anti-Communists were uneducated and illiterate. Still, they were able to assemble 10-15,000 recruits for special training.
Those lucky enough to make the cut were sent to training camps where they learned about subversion, sabotage, and radio transmission. Many of the selected prisoners were from the Caucasus and Central Asia. To keep them motivated and loyal, the Germans exploited their anti-Communist sentiments by hinting at independence for their people if they succeeded.
The camps where they trained were far nicer than their prisons, and the conditions were almost as good as those given to German soldiers. And, as the Soviet prisoners were living like German soldiers and training to do work for the German army, they were also provided with German uniforms to wear.
But don’t let the better living conditions and new uniforms fool you. The Germans still saw these people as beneath them, even though they needed their help in the war. Any recruits who were deemed unfit to carry out missions for Operation Zeppelin were promptly sent to death camps.
And some who returned after completing missions were also sent to the death camps. Training for the operation lasted anywhere from two weeks to three months in the first two years of the operation, when there was little structure and more of a focus on quantity over quality.
This turned out to be a massive error, however. The Germans had an aircraft shortage and because of that, many of the missions for Operation Zeppelin had big delays, during which the recruits became idle and filled their spare time with drinking, getting STDs, and rethinking their allegiance.
That meant that when a lot of these men were eventually deployed on their missions, they defected and immediately surrendered to the Soviets. In total, the Germans sent some 2,000-3,000 recruits on missions across the Soviet Union, and not all of them were failures or ended in defection.
They had some small successes in gathering intelligence. One team was able to send reports on the movement of the Red Army after it infiltrated the Soviet People’s Commissariat of Transport. Another team sent reports on train movements between Samara and Vladivostok.
In their most successful mission, a group of Georgian separatists was able to gather intelligence on the USSR from the Turkish army in exchange for weapons. The mission that Operation Zeppelin is most famous for, however, is the plot to assassinate Stalin. In May 1942, a Russian officer defected to the German side.
His original name is hard to pin down, but he took the name Tavrin after joining the Germans. He came to them with tales of his connections to the Soviet high command and numerous Soviet medals. How much of it was true is unclear.
True or not, the Germans began training him for the mission of assassinating Stalin. The plan was for him and his wife to be dropped at an airfield just outside Moscow, and for them to travel the rest of the way to Moscow on their own.
Unfortunately for them, Soviet counter-intelligence caught wind of the plan, and the transport plane carrying Tavrin and his wife was hit by Soviet anti-aircraft fire after taking off from Riga, forcing it to land. Tavrin and his wife took off on a motorbike to try and make it to Moscow, but they were soon caught.
They, along with everyone on the plane, were captured and executed by the Soviets. By 1944, after many failures, the Germans knew they needed to start focusing on better quality training if they wanted to see any success. They began attaching German agents to the Zeppelin units and quickly found that the
German presence made it even more difficult to find reliable Soviet recruits for the operation, and as the end of the war drew nearer, Operation Zeppelin started to fizzle out. In the end, nothing really came of the operation. In a post-war trial, the German chief of foreign intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, was sentenced
To six years in prison for his role in the executions of Soviet recruits. While it’s not clear how many the Germans killed, the estimates are in the thousands. The idea behind the British Operation Postmaster was simple: secretly board Italian and German ships and sail them to Lagos without being noticed.
However, this was one of the most controversial missions for Britain to lead. In fact, British authorities refused to support the raid. The mission seemed impossible, and failure meant that the rest of Europe might turn against Britain for espionage. This left the mission in the hands of the SOE and the SSRF.
In 1941, the British Admiralty received intel about German Submarines using a refueling base in the Vichy French rivers in Africa. In response, the Combined Operations Command sent members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Small Scale Raiding Force (or SSRF) to find and investigate the German submarine bases.
So on August 9th, 1941, a team of five SSRF members left Poole harbor in Dorset, England, on a 65-ton Brixham yacht trawler named Maid Honor. They had a six-week voyage ahead of them. The Maid Honor arrived at Freetown, Sierra Leone, on the 21st of September.
The SSRF team then met up with a team of SOE soldiers, and the search for German submarine bases began. Unfortunately, they failed to locate any. They didn’t find any submarines either, However, the SOE did set up a base of operations so that they could observe Vichy French, Spanish, and Portuguese territories.
Over the next few weeks, the SOE agents learned that three Axis ships occupied a port in Santa Isabel, Fernando Po, a Spanish Island off the West African coast. The three ships were the Merchant vessel Duchessa d’Aosta, a 7,872-ton Italian cargo liner
Called Likomba, a large German tugboat, and Bibundi, a diesel-powered barge that was also presumed to be a German vessel. Of the three boats, it was the Duchessa d’Aosta that posed the greatest threat. Firstly, the radios on board could potentially relay information about Allied naval movements.
Secondly, the ship’s manifest claimed to only be carrying general supplies such as wool, tanning materials, and copper ingots. However, the first page of the manifest was missing. This led SOE agents to believe that Duchessa d’Aosta was also carrying arms and ammunition.
SOE agent Leonard Guise was tasked to visit the island and keep an eye on the ships while the SOE commanders pushed for permission to seize Likomba and disable Duchessa d’Aosta. Finally, almost three months later, on the 20th of November 1941, the Admiralty granted such permission. The SOE and SSRF planned Operation Postmaster together.
The original plan involved 17 locally recruited men, 11 SSRF commandos, and four SOE agents. They would transport the raiders to the island on two tugboats, and the raiders would work together to grab the Axis vessels while keeping the Axis soldiers distracted.
Unfortunately, their plan hit a bump when Sir George Giffard, the British General Officer Commanding of West Africa Command, refused to support the operation with the 17 locals. Giffard felt that “Any which way those planning Operation Postmaster looked at it, the chances of failure seemed to far outweigh those of success.”
In his words, “[The operation should] NOT, [I] repeat NOT take place.” As such, the Foreign Office and the British Embassy in Madrid refused to support the operation, and the Admiralty suspended it. A major issue was that the Axis vessels were docked at a Spanish island, and while Spain
Seemed to side more with the Axis and nearly joined the Axis at one point, Spain maintained neutrality throughout the war. This meant the operation might be regarded as one of espionage and piracy against the Spanish. But Churchill wanted the mission to go through, anyway.
In Churchill’s Secret Warriors, author Damien Lewis explains writes, “Winston Churchill had been briefed at all stages on the progress of the mission … [and] frustration was boiling over with the local delays.” Eventually, it became evident that the Spanish were strengthening relations with the Axis.
SSRF commander March-Phillips held a meeting with Gifford and the Admiralty in hopes of reigniting the mission. So the Foreign Office and Admiralty changed their minds and gave the mission a thumbs up on January 6th, 1942. They claimed that “intervention was inevitable.”
However, to keep the operation a secret, they would not involve the aforementioned 17 local men This mission would be conducted by the SOE and SSRF alone. With Operation Postmaster back on the cards, a new plan was struck. SOE agent Richard Lippett found an undercover job as an employee for the shipping company
John Holt & Co (Liverpool). While working for the company, Lippett found out that the Duchessa d’Aosta crew loved to party and would regularly attend parties held ashore. And so Lippett made himself known as a party animal to those around him so that he could grow closer to the enemy crew.
While Lippett was undercover, the other SEO and SSRF agents made their way to the port on two large tug boats, the Vulcan and the Nuneaton. The governor of Nigeria helped recruit a few crew members for the tug boats. While they were on their way, the agents practiced for the mission.
They used a foldable kayak called a Folbot to approach the vessels as quietly as possible, and then they would scale the side of the ship and commandeer it. On the 14th of January 14th, the raiders closed in on Santa Isabel harbor.
The two tugs anchored themselves 180 meters from the shore until 11:30 pm. The harbor’s lights were extinguished at night due to a wartime blackout, and as author Damien Lewis explained, “The assault was to go ahead under cover of a waning moon when the night would be at its darkest.”
On the Fernando Po shore, Lippett arranged a dinner party for the crew of the Duchessa d’Aosta and Likomba. It’s not clear how many crew members remained on board the ship that night, but at least 12 Italian officers and two German officers from Likomba showed up at Lippett’s “honey trap.”
While the Axis were enjoying their feast, the Vulcan made its way into the Santa Isabel harbor. On the Vulcan were Captain March-Phillips and ten other agents tasked with taking control of Duchessa d’Aosta. At the same time, four other agents from Nuneaton left the tug boat behind and paddled to the
Likomba and Bibundi on Folbots. Although some crew members from the Duchessa d’Aosta noticed the tug boat coming into the harbor, they didn’t think much of it. However, a watchman on the Likomba spotted the SOE agents as they were boarding the barge. He said, “Who goes there? Identify yourselves!”
While shining a light at Captain Graham Hayes. Although Hayes had a Tommy Gun at his side, he understood that opening fire could blow the mission wide open. Instead, Hayes answered the watchman using what little German he knew and managed to convince him he was bringing a letter for the captain of the ship.
In response, two of Likomba’s crewmen came to help Hayes board the ship. When the men got closer, they didn’t recognize Hayes and figured that something unusual was happening there. Before the men could react, the SOE agents were aiming .45-calibre machine guns at them.
The two African crew members jumped overboard without raising any alarms. Over the next few minutes, the SOE agents attached two explosive charges to the vessel’s anchors. Took control of the ship, detonated the charges, and guided the Likomba out of the harbor and back to the Nuneaton.
The Likomba was already tied to the Bibundi, making it easy to tow the Bibundi, as well. By the time of the first explosion on the Likomba, the 11 agents from the Vulcan managed to board Duchessa d’Aosta. Somehow the explosion on the Likomba had not alarmed any of the Duchessa d’Aosta’s crew.
Captain Appleyard was in charge of attaching the explosive charges to Duchessa d’Aosta’s anchors while the other 10 agents searched the ship for axis forces to take prisoner. The second Likomba explosion was far louder than the first, and the townspeople went to the pier to investigate.
For the SOE agents scouring the Italian vessel, this spelled disaster, and time was against them. March-Phillipps and Appleyard then teamed up to fasten the Vulcan tug to the Italian vessel. With this done, they set off the explosives and tugged the Duchessa d’Aosta out of the harbor.
Although multiple townsfolk were now at the pier, non made any attempts to stop the vessel’s escape. Others townsfolk had thought the explosions had come from an aerial attack, and several anti-aircraft emplacements opened fire at imaginary targets. The townsfolk were also scared to turn on the lights of the harbor as this could make
The harbor an easily identifiable target (to the imaginary aircraft above) With the Duchessa d’Aosta’s making its way back to the Maid Honor, Operation Postmaster was a success. In less than 30 minutes, the SOE and SSRF managed to steal three Axis boats and capture
29 Italians aboard the Italian vessel, and not a single shot was fired at anyone throughout the entire mission. According to author Damien Lewis, “It was fast becoming clear that the seemingly impossible had transpired: Operation Postmaster had been successful beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings.
The raiders had stolen away the three target ships, and while fierce gunfire still illuminated the sky above the town, not a shot seemed to have been directed their way.” On the 18th of January 1942, the Vulcan released a report claiming that it had “captured” enemy
Vessels 370 kilometers offshore in international waters and was en route to Lagos. Agent Lippett, the party animal, did not leave the island that same night, and Spanish authorities questioned him regarding the incident. He managed to convince them he wasn’t involved in the raid in any way.
While the authorities believed him, they wouldn’t let him leave the island. But Lippett didn’t play by the rules, escaping to British waters on a canoe. Success in Operation Postmaster seemed unlikely, yet against all odds, Churchill’s secret warriors managed to get the job done without sustaining a single casualty.
This operation proved that the SOE was an organization to be reckoned with and that the SOE was capable of working under extreme circumstances. Postmaster is often seen as the SOEs most successful exploit. Colin Gubbins, an SOE agent who took part in Operation Postmaster, scoffed at how long
It took for approval to get the mission going. In his words, “Perhaps next time it will not be necessary for prolonged negotiations before undertaking a 30 minute operation.” The Spanish government was furious when they found out about the raid. Foreign minister Serrano Suner released a report claiming that the operation was an
“intolerable attack on [Spanish] sovereignty. No Spaniard can fail to be roused by this act of piracy committed in defiance of every right, and within water, under our jurisdiction. Do not be surprised if we return the answer which the case demands—that of arms”. In the end, this threat didn’t amount to much.
Do you think that Operation Postmaster was worth it, considering it could have provoked a war with the Spanish? Should Churchill have stopped the mission? They say knowledge is power, and this is especially true in war. Knowing who your enemies are, where they are, how many of them there are, and what their
Plans are is crucial, obviously. In the Second World War, intelligence was everything, and the intelligence-gathering or espionage conducted in those war-torn years laid the foundation for intelligence organisations as we know them today. As by the very nature of the job, the names of many of the spies who risked their lives
Behind enemy lines remain unknown. Some names, however, were later declassified by the various intelligence agencies of the world, and the impacts of their clandestine activities were, at least in part, laid bare. In this video, we’re going to turn the spotlight on three World War II-era spies who influenced
The outcome of the bloodiest clash in human history. When the original leader of the French resistance spy network “Alliance” or “Noah’s Arc” was arrested about a year into the German occupation of France, command of the network fell into the capable hands of French resistance fighter and secret agent Marie-Madeleine Fourcade
**[Text: Fourcade herself went by the codename “Hedgehog.”]**. Alliance was one of the largest and most successful spy networks of the Second World War, and under Fourcade, it’s primary objective was to gather intelligence on German troop movements, naval movements, gun placements, and weapon programmes *inside of* France.
They would then relay this information to Britain via covert radio networks and couriers. Under Fourcade, Alliance grew to include some 3,000 agents, who were hiding in the shadows and, even better, *plain sight* in every large town in France. Fourcade’s contributions to the Allies were many, but the following two were perhaps her
Most significant. Some three months prior to the Allied D-Day landings early in June 1944, Fourcade’s spy network provided Allied command an incredibly comprehensive, 55-feet long, hand-drawn map of German fortifications on the Normandy shore, which proved vital to the ultimate success of the Allied landings and victory in the war.
Also, an agent under Fourcade by the name of Jeannie Rousseau — another female French resistance fighter — managed to trick some German officers into disclosing information about the development of the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, with which Hitler intended to raze London to the ground.
Using this intel, the Allies were able to raid German rocket development facilities and disrupt the V-1 and V-2 programs. As for Fourcade herself, the father of her unborn child was killed, and she gave birth on the run. She was arrested not once but twice by the Gestapo, and the second time, she managed
To escape by stripping down and squeezing her naked body through the window bars of her cell. Later, expecting to be captured and tortured to death by the Gestapo, and as a devout Catholic, she asked her priest if committing suicide by munching cyanide pills would consign her soul to hell.
The priest reassured her that it would not, as her suicide would be a means of resisting the enemy. Fortunately, it never came to that. Fourcade survived the war, and passed away in 1989 at the ripe old age of 80.
A German journalist and Soviet spy, Richard Sorge was active before and during the Second World War, playing the role of a German journalist for the Soviets in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere in the world. He was born to a German mining engineer and his Russian wife in the Russian Empire, though
His family moved to Germany with his father’s contract expired. In 1924, Sorge joined an intelligence-gathering arm of the Soviet secret police. Five years later, he joined the Red Army’s military intelligence and worked as a spy in the UK, China, and Germany.
In Germany, he was assigned the terrifying objective of infiltrating the Nazi Party. He was then assigned to Japan, where he carried out the majority of his clandestine work. Before Sorge left Germany, however, he acquired a false newspaper journalism assignment as a cover for his trip to Japan.
As a side note, his infiltration into the Nazi inner circle had been so successful that Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels attended his farewell feast. Setting foot in Japan, Sorge started to establish his shadowy web, infiltrating the German embassy and gaining the trust of high-ranking German diplomats, namely one Eugen Ott, who soon
Became ambassador. Sorge grew quickly into one of Ott’s most trusted advisors, because Sorge, as it turned out, knew a *tonne* about Japan as well, having befriended a Japanese man who worked as an advisor to the Japanese Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro.
All the juicy intel Sorge pocketed in Japan he radioed back to the USSR. Among Sorge’s greatest contributions to the Soviet cause were his continual warnings about a German invasion of the USSR, and, conversely, his assurance that Japan would *not* invade.
As early as spring 1936, Sorge had been sending intel about negotiations for an anti-communist agreement between Germany and Japan, which was an early hint at Hitler’s intentions to march his armies into the USSR. Sorge continued to send intel like this back to Russia until literally a *day* before Hitler
Put Operation Barbarossa on the ground. He also informed the Soviets that, while the Germans would invade the USSR, the Japanese had opted instead to invade the British, French, and Dutch colonies in Southern Asia. This allowed Stalin to move his forces stationed in the far east to the west, where they could
Face the German invasion. As for Sorge himself, he was arrested in 1941, when one of his Japanese operatives spilt his beans. Sorge was judged as a spy and sentenced to death, and he was made to wait three years before they finally executed him.
It wasn’t until two decades later that Sorge’s contribution was recognised by the Soviet Union at large. Spaniard Joan Pujol García served in the Spanish Civil War on both the Republican and Nationalist sides, though he proudly remembered never firing a bullet for either.
After the civil war, he developed a deep hatred for totalitarianism, and when World War II broke out, he wanted to do his part to prevent its spread. In his efforts, he became a game-changing double agent. Initially, Pujol went to the Brits in London and offered them his clandestine services,
But they sent away emptyhanded. So he took matters matters *into his own* hands, assuming the identity of a Nazi-loving Spanish government official who travelled to London on official business, and, using this identity, contacted a German *Abwehr* agent in Spain’s capital, Madrid.
The *Abwehr* took him in, gave him the codename “Alaric,” and tasked him with going to London and setting up a spy network of British agents. If they knew only *half* of what this menace was up to. Pujol, the sly devil, instead moved to Portugal, from where he sent credible reports back to
The *Abwehr,* making it out as if he were in London, carrying out his Nazi mission. He created an entirely fictional network of spies across Britain, which was codenamed “Arabal” by the *Abwehr*. After providing the Germans misinformation and causing the *Kriegsmarine* to waste valuable
Resources on the hunt for a non-existent Allied convoy, Pujol’s work came to the attention of the British intelligence agency which had earlier rejected him. They took him on as a British agent and stamped him with the codename “Garbo.” He caused some serious trouble after that.
Pujol’s/Alaric’s/Garbo’s principal way of screwing with the Germans was to supply them with sound yet *delayed* intelligence so it couldn’t be used effectively and he wouldn’t blow his cover. To further secure his cover, Pujol would often blame the delay on his fictitious British agents.
On one occasion, he reported that one of his British agents had fallen ill and perished, and to support his claim, he even had an obituary published in the local British newspaper. The Germans were so convinced that they paid a pension to the dead, *fictitious* agent’s widow.
This is all gold, but Pujol *ruined* the Germans in the lead-up to Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings. As part of the Allied deception codenamed Operation Fortitude, Pujol sent some 500 radio messages to the Germans, misinforming them about the coming Allied invasion and causing
Them to divert precious troops and resources from Normandy to Calais, where — wink wink, nudge nudge — “the landing would take place.” This deception was so effective that the British king awarded Pujol with a membership in the “Most Excellent Order,” while the Germans, ironically, awarded him the Iron Cross.
As for Pujol, he’d put a serious stick in the spokes of the German war machine, and so, with the help of British intelligence, he faked his own death to get away from it all. Until 1988, Pujol soaked up the sun in a beach town in Venezuela, knowing full well that
He was the king of World War II trolls. Through deception and sabotage, these three secret agents altered the course of the Second World War and human history. World War II was chock-full of crazy happenings, some grim, others kind of hilarious.
Naturally, we’ve covered some pretty crazy stories in the past, but we’ve always worked within some sort of theme or boundary. In this video, we say “to hell with boundaries” and present to you with a lolly-bag of crazy, sad, and straight-up weird stories from the Second World War.
The Allies subjected Berlin to over 360 air raids throughout the Second World War, with the British alone dropping more than 45,000 tonnes of bombs. The Royal Air Force’s first raid on the German capital took place on the 25th of August 1940 and wasn’t all that successful in terms of military gain.
What the RAF did manage to destroy was, unfortunately, one of the elephants in Berlin Zoo. This poor creature obviously didn’t deserve this. But the carnage didn’t end there. The Allies laid waste to the city all the way through to April 1945, and throughout this time, Berlin Zoo copped it hard.
On the 22nd of November 1943, the RAF dumped over 1,000 incendiaries on the zoo, burning a third of its caged inhabitants alive. The next night, they came back and did it again, causing the aquarium to rupture and spew sea life through the streets.
All in all, eight of the zoo’s nine elephants were killed, and the one surviving elephant suffered from PTSD until he died in 1947. Some Berliners even butchered and ate the dead zoo animals. In the words of the zoo’s director, “We had meat coming out of our ears. Particularly tasty were the crocodiles’ tails.
Later on, bear ham and bear sausage were a delicacy.” The Germans straight-up annihilated the Soviets in the Battle of Białystok–Minsk, inflicting some 420,000 casualties in exchange for just 12,000. As much as 85% of Minsk’s buildings were turned to dust, too. One Soviet tank crew managed to inflict some disproportionate hurt, though.
Fleeing the doomed city in late June 1941, a T-28 tank, driven by one Dmitry Malko, was hit by a bomb and incapacitated. Instead of ditching the tank, Malko stayed behind to fix it. With the job done, he tried to catch up with his column but couldn’t.
Instead, he met some other soldiers on the road and convinced them to get in. The T-28 fully manned, one thing led to another, and they found themselves in the middle of a vast German encirclement. Rather than trying to re-join their comrades, they went straight back into Minsk.
Malko knew the city and believed he could find a way through. Entering it, things went to hell—for the Germans. The T-28 ran down a German bicyclist then opened fire on a group of unsuspecting German soldiers, who likely believed the tank was one of many the Soviets had abandoned; why
Else would it be there? The T-28 then drove through a column of Nazi motorcyclists and mopped up the stunned survivors with its guns. After getting into a few more one-sided scraps, the T-28 tried to gun it towards the Moscow Highway. On the way, the tank took a crippling hit and caught fire.
Some of the crew were killed; some managed to climb out and escape. Our boy Malko was among the latter. We probably don’t need to tell you that Auschwitz concentration camp was hell on Earth. It was not without a few sparks of compassion and hope, though.
One of those sparks was a Polish woman by the name of Stanisława Leszczyńska, who was transported to the concentration camp with her daughter in April 1943. Stanisława was a midwife, and her daughter a medical student. Throughout her time in the women’s camp, with a little help from her daughter, Stanisława
Delivered as many as 3,000 newborns in utterly atrocious conditions. In Stanisława’s words, “[T]he fate of the women in labor was tragic, and the role of the midwife extremely difficult. There were no antiseptics, no dressings, and no medicine, other than a small quota of aspirin.”
While she may have been able to alleviate the mothers’ suffering, very few of their babies survived the camp. Around 1,000 died of hunger and exposure, while the camp’s resident Nazi schwesters, meaning “sisters,” drowned a further 1,500 in barrels of water.
The babies with blue eyes were a little luckier, with many of them being sent away for Germanization. Stanisława continued delivering babies in Auschwitz until the camp was liberated early in 1945. While she may have been able to alleviate the mothers’ suffering, very few of their babies survived the camp.
Around 1,000 died of hunger and exposure, while the camp’s resident Nazi schwesters, meaning “sisters,” drowned a further 1,500 in barrels of water. The babies with blue eyes were a little luckier, with many of them being sent away for Germanization. Stanisława continued delivering babies in Auschwitz until the camp was liberated early in 1945.
While the details of this next one are a little hairy, the result was around about the same. In April 1943, the Fletcher-class destroyer USS O’Bannon was cutting through the night in the South Pacific when her crew saw the Japanese Kaichū-type submarine Ro-34 surface ahead of them.
They decided to ram the sub, heading balls to the wall straight towards it. Only, when they got a little closer, they freaked out, believing the sub could easily be a minelayer. Closing fast, they had only so much space to change their course and ended up right beside the enemy submarine.
At this range, Ro-34 could have fired on O’Bannon, but the destroyer was too close to line up a clear shot. Legend has it that, thinking on their toes, O’Bannon’s crew woke up and started throwing potatoes at the Japanese sailors atop the submarine.
It was now their turn to freak out, mistaking the potatoes for grenades. As such, they started lobbing them back at the American destroyer while it used the opportunity to gain some distance and then open fire. As the sub dived, O’Bannon positioned itself on top of it and loosed some depth charges,
Ripping Ro-34 apart. While this all sounds great, the destroyer’s commander—who was named Donald MacDonald, mind you—claimed they were merely close enough to throw potatoes, not that they actually did. One especially weird story took place in the Institute for Study of Typhus and Virology in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Here, Polish academics and intellectuals volunteered to strap cages of typhus-carrying lice to their bodies so the tiny horrors could feast on their blood, which was then used to produce vaccines for German soldiers on the front lines. In exchange, the volunteers were given additional rations and were able to avoid being sent
To concentration camps. These people were known as louse-feeders. The guy who was running the whole project was Polish himself—a parasitologist by the name of Rudolf Weigl. He managed to save quite a few Poles from the horrors of the Reich in this manner, including
Some members of the Polish resistance organisation the Home Army and even some Jews. All in all, some 4,000 individuals spent at least some time working under Weigl in the institute. He even helped smuggle typhus vaccines into the disease-ridden ghettos and concentration camps, earning himself legendary status among the people.
We all know that Adolf Hitler was on drugs, but there’s a side to this story that not everyone’s aware of. According to the book Fascinating Footnotes from History by Giles Milton, “Hitler had long suffered from stomach cramps, diarrhoea and such chronic flatulence that he had to
Leave the table after each meal in order to expel vast quantities of wind.” To reiterate, der Führer had gas. This was mostly because of the ridiculous amounts of vegetables he ate after giving up on sweet, sweet meat. His personal physician, Theodor Morell, who jacked Hitler up with an almost lethal cocktail
Of drugs on a daily basis, made the following observation of the Führer’s bowels: “Constipations and colossal flatulence occurred on a scale I have seldom encountered before.” To combat this, he prescribed Hitler some anti-gas pills that contained the molecule strychnine.
Hitler took 16 of these pills a day, which provided him at least some relief, but also turned his skin yellow and caused him to suffer lapses in attention. That certainly explains a thing or two. “Excitable and temperamental, impulsive and hasty” — these are a few traits you probably
Wouldn’t associate with one of the most celebrated female spies of the Second World War, but you’d be wrong. Brought into the whole spy game basically on accident, this Frenchwoman’s life was full of pain and dumb, weird luck. We are of course referring to Odette Samson or Odette Churchill or Odette whatever-her-last-name-was,
Whose story we’re going to share with you now. Born Odette Marie Léonie Céline Brailly in 1912 in the city of Amiens, France, Odette’s would come to know tremendous pain very early in her life. At just eight years of age, her father was killed in the Great War, and she was also
Blinded by disease for over three years, for which she spent the majority in bed. Despite her weakened state, she was still a bit of a headstrong terror, proving to be a handful for her family. Leaving her illness in the dust and becoming a woman, Odette married an Englishman in 1931
And followed him across the English Channel to Britain. By the time World War II broke out, Odette had popped out three children, and when the bells were rung, her husband went and joined the army. Their marriage basically went to south from there.
A few years into the war, with Odette’s homeland well and truly crushed, she was probably feeling pretty good about her decision to move to Britain. In 1942, the British government department responsible for the command of the Royal Navy asked anyone with photos of the French coastline to post them in.
Odette, being French, had some Gram-worthy photographs, and decided they would get more likes if the government posted them — with proper credit, of course. But, in a classic Odette-move, she sent them to the wrong bloody department. Heads were shaken, and her letter ended up with the Special Operations Executive instead.
Through sheer luck — or is it “ill luck”? — she was subsequently asked to try out as an SOE agent, her French heritage being of great use to the SOE, as, if she accepted, she would operate in France. Despite being a little “excitable[,] temperamental, impulsive, and hasty,” and despite the fact
That the SOE said she was ” [completely willing] to admit that she could ever be wrong,” Odette was also determined and keenly patriotic. They took her on, teaching her how to end lives, endure torture, and operate in enemy-occupied
Territory, before shipping her to France, where, after a bit of a shake-up to her original plan, she made contact with the leader of the Cannes-based SOE network SPINDLE, one Peter Churchill. For over a year — having been assigned the codename “Lise” — Odette worked as a courier
And radio operator, essentially helping the French resistance communicate with the SOE and stay in the fight. In this time, Odette became good buddies with the aforementioned Peter Churchill. Early in 1943, the German Gestapo were bloodhounds on SPINDLE’s scent, and Odette fled with Churchill to the village of St Jorioz on the Italian border.
While she might have escaped the hounds, another, more stealthy creature had set its sights upon her. An Abwehr spy hunter by the name of Hugo Bleicher, posing as a disaffected German soldier, was working to infiltrate what remained of SPINDLE.
After meeting with Odette, he detected a whiff of her lie, and on the 15th of April 1943, Odette and Churchill had an unannounced visitor arrive at their hotel. It was Bleicher, of course, accompanied by several Italian soldiers. Pain was what was Odette had in stall for her now, but she would never break.
Odette’s great suffering began in Fresnes Prison, near the French capital. Kept in solitary confinement, her only visitor was the spy hunter Bleicher. He wanted to do things the easy way at first, using words and cold hard cash to try to persuade Odette to talk. But none of that worked.
She was subsequently moved to the Gestapo HQ at 84 Avenue Foch, where the physical pain began. Refusing to give up her fellow spies, she was tortured. Among other things, they rippled out all of her toenails and pressed a red-hot poker into her back.
On top of this, deprivations were taking a toll on her body. But Odette endured, and even had the wit to come up with a bit of a ruse. Thinking on on her toes, she convinced the Gestapo that she was married to SPINDLE’s
Leader, Peter Churchill, and that he, Peter, was related to Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister. While this worked out well for Peter Churchill, who — now a bargaining chip — was moved to Berlin, and while the prison guards treated Odette a little better, Odette was still neck-deep in the excrement.
Refusing to crack, she incurred the wrath of the spy hunter Bleicher, who deported her to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück, where she was to be executed for not one but two so-called crimes. To this, she said, “[M]ake up your mind on what count I am to be executed, because I
Can only die once.” As you might have imagined, Ravensbrück was excrement too. Odette was held in a pitch-black cell in a bunker, where she was fed just enough to stay just above the cold waters of death. Having been blind in her youth, Odette was able to adapt somewhat to her predicament,
But she still suffered more than most of us could imagine. She had dysentery and scurvy. Her body was covered in scabs. Her hair and teeth were falling out. They even artificially heated her cell, making it all the more unbearable. At one point, she was moved to a different cell near the crematorium.
Here, she could smell the bodies burning and even heard screaming, as if they were cremating some inmates alive. What kept her going was the prospect that she might, however unlikely it was, live to see her children again. She also remained focused on the here-and-now, and not too far into the future.
If she could, in her own words, “[S]urvive the minute without breaking up, [then] that [was] another minute of life.” When the Allies liberated France in August 1944, Ravensbrück camp commandant Fritz Suhren tried to pull a fast one, taking Odette and driving to an American base in the hopes that,
With Odette’s “connections to Winston Churchill,” he could strike a deal and avoid execution. This was, unfortunately for Fritz, not the case. He swung from a rope in 1950. As for Odette, she was free, but she wasn’t looking so good. After being returned to Britain, she underwent months of medical rehabilitation, and also
Learned that Peter Churchill had survived — all because of their ruse. After the war, Odette received a range of honours — including but not limited to the British George Cross and French Legion of Honour — and testified against various war criminals, including the 1,000-IQ Fritz Suhren.
Evidently, Odette’s relationship with Peter Churchill grew pretty steamy after the war, as she dumped her husband and married Peter in 1947, becoming Odette Churchill for real this time. It was a “wedding of spies,” and was quite popular in the media in both Britain and France. But it didn’t last.
Nine years later, she gave Churchill the sack too. She married a former SOE officer that same year, becoming — finally — Odette Hallowes, whom she perished as in 1995 at 82 years of age. The British were, without a doubt, the class pranksters of the Second World War, using
Various forms of deception (such as dummy parachutists and dummy tanks) and vexation (such asitching powder and laxatives) to confuse and whittle down their enemies. While the outcomes of some British pranks were a little more pronounced, it’s a little unclear how one of of the more disturbing deceptions of the war affected its outcome.
In this video, we take a look at Operation Mincemeat and The Man Who Never Was. From October 1940 to April 1941, Hitler did what Mussolini could not, and captured Greece. The German occupation was brutal, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Greeks and the ruination of Greece’s economy.
In 1943, the Allies geared up to invade the Italian island of Sardinia, Greece, and the Balkans — but not really. What they really wanted to do was take Sicily, but Hitler and Mussolini didn’t need to know this. In fact, the Allies made it their mission to trick Axis into thinking Allied invasions
Of Sardinia, Greece, and the Balkans were on their way. On a whole, this deception was known as Operation Barclay, and while the Allies undertook a variety of other ruses under Operation Barclay, the British ruse known as Operation Mincemeat is what where focusing on today. But just what was Operation Mincemeat?
In 1939, British Royal Navy Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence, wrote a paper which likened wartime deception to, of all things, fly fishing. But this very paper, deemed the Trout memo, may have been a deception in of itself, having
Possibly been written by Godfrey’s assistant Ian Fleming instead, with Godfrey taking the credit. If the name Ian Fleming sounds familiar to you, it’s very likely because Fleming was the bloke wrote the James Bond series. Within the Trout memo, Godfrey or Fleming — who even knows? — made one rather grim yet clever suggestion.
While by no means an original concept, suggestion number 28 of the Trout memo stated, “[…] [A] corpse dressed as an airman, with despatches in his pockets, could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that has failed. […] [O]f course, it would have to be a fresh […] [corpse].”
Taking inspiration from suggestion 28, as well as from similar occurrences in the Great War and World War II, a British MI5 intelligence officer by the name of Charles Cholmondeley conceived a plan. He would dress a corpse up a British officer, fill his pockets with documents pertaining
To fictitious Allied invasions of Sardinia, Greece, and the Balkans, and dump him somewhere where he’d end up in Axis hands — all to divert Hitler and Mussolini from the true invasion site, which was Sicily. Comprehending the plan’s potential, the Royal Navy assigned naval intelligence officer Ewen
Montagu — who had worked with our buddy Godfrey before — to Cholmondeley, and together they ironed out the kinks. Basically, they had to figure out whose corpse they would use, whom they would make the corpse out to be, which documents they would stuff in the corpse’s pockets, and how and where
They would dump the corpse. This is when it got a little disturbing, if a little sad. The corpse they selected had belonged to a Welsh homeless man named Glyndwr Michael, who, after both his parents were dead, became a homeless man on the streets of London.
Starving, or possibly in an attempt to take his own life, Michael ate rat poison in an abandoned warehouse at age 34 and died in hospital two days later. While that was bad news for Michael, it was good news for the Allies.
Cholmondeley and Montagu put their minds to creating an entirely fictitious identity for the corpse. Seemingly overnight, a homeless Welshman became William Martin of the Royal Marines — The Man Who Never Was. Martin was placed in a battledress, and various effects were attached to his person.
These included but were not limited to a naval identity card, a photo of and love letters from his fictitious fiancé, and a pass from a nightclub in London. While those items reinforced Martin’s identity, there were, of course, the false military documents themselves.
Several important deception documents were placed in a briefcase attached to Martin with a chain, one being a letter from British General Archibald Nye to British General Harold Alexander. Rather than just stating, “We gonna hit up Greece and totally not Sicily, lol,” our prankster
Duo made use of their wit, alluding to the fictitious invasion in a less direct manner. A portion of the letter read, “We have recent information that the [the Germans] have been reinforcing and strengthening their defences in Greece and Crete and [Chief of the Imperial General Staff] felt that our
Forces for the assault were insufficient.” Another fictitious letter, addressed to British Admiral Andrew Cunningham from British Vice-Admiral Louis Mountbatten, hinted at an Allied invasion of Sardinia, while also putting it out there that Martin was an expert on amphibious warfare.
All Cholmondeley and Montagu had to figure out now was how and where to dump Martin. It was decided they would make it seem as if he had been the victim of a plane crash, and they intended for him to wash up on the shore of Huelva in southern Spain, where the
The tides and currents were predictable, and where they knew a German Abwehr agent was active. Instead of actually crashing a plane with Martin inside of it, or instead of dumping him from a *moving* plane, they put him in a sealed canister inside the Royal Navy sub
HMS *Seraph*, which was bombed twice on its way to the delivery point. When HMS *Seraph* finally (and safely) arrived off the Spanish coast on the 29th of April 1943, Martin was pushed into the water. The success of Operation Mincemeat was now in fate’s hands.
A day later, a Spanish fisherman spotted something strange on the coastline. After the fisherman notified the authorities, the corpse and its effects ended up with the Spanish military, though a British vice-consul living in the city was able to notify the British that their package had arrived as planned.
The vice-consul even attended the autopsy, at which William Martin of the Royal Marines was deemed to have died at sea. He was buried in Huelva, but his personal effects ended up in Madrid. The Spanish military held on tightly to the briefcase for a while, but was ultimately
Persuaded to let German Abwehr agents operating in the area open it and see its contents. The information reached Germany on the 8th of May 1943, soon after which, Allied command received a message which read, “Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker by the right people and they look like [they’re] acting on it.”
And act on it, the Germans did. On the 14th of May, German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz wrote, “The Führer does not agree with [Mussolini] that the most likely invasion point is Sicily. [H]e believes that the discovered British order confirms the assumption that the planned attacks will be directed mainly against [Greece.]”
In preparation, Hitler bolstered his forces in the Mediterranean, doubling his infantry might in Sardinia to 10,000, transferring fighter aircraft from Sicily to Sardinia, transferring seven infantry divisions to Greece, relocating torpedo boats from Sicily to Greece, and relocating ten infantry divisions and two panzer divisions to the Balkans.
On the 9th of July 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily. By the 17th of August, the island was in Allied control. Mussolini’s regime was history. Though, while the Allies had dealt Axis a defeat, it’s unclear exactly how much Operation Mincemeat influenced Hitler’s decision to bolster Sardinia, Greece, and the Balkans.
Hitler had feared an invasion of the Balkans prior to Mincemeat, and he wasn’t all too trusting in Mussolini and Italy’s ability at this point in the war anyway. What we can say for sure is that the Allies copped a whole lot less hurt than they had
Expected to, with a campaign they expected to last 90 days taking just 38 days in reality. In the words of British historian Ben Macintyre, “Of the 160,000 [Allied] soldiers who took part in the invasion and conquest of Sicily, more than 153,000 were still alive at the end.
That so many survived was due, in no small measure, to a man who died seven months earlier.” “Of the 160,000 [Allied] soldiers who took part in the invasion and conquest of Sicily, more than 153,000 were still alive at the end.
That so many survived was due, in no small measure, to a man who died seven months earlier.” Speaking relatively, few women were recognised for their outstanding bravery during the Second World War. But one woman, an Allied spy whom the German Gestapo referred to as White Mouse, would
Have been weighed down by the medals she was awarded — if she had actually accepted all of them. If you haven’t guessed already, we’re referring to the indominable Nancy Wake, whose actions in the Second World War deserve far more attention than they already get.
Speaking relatively, few women were recognised for their outstanding bravery during the Second World War. But one woman, an Allied spy whom the German Gestapo referred to as White Mouse, would have been weighed down by the medals she was awarded — if she had actually accepted all of them.
If you haven’t guessed already, we’re referring to the indominable Nancy Wake, whose actions in the Second World War deserve far more attention than they already get. At this point in time, Hitler was in power, and Nancy was starting to see the consequences of his soon-to-be calamitous reign.
Jews were fleeing Germany, and Nancy became friendly with many of these refugees. It was when Nancy travelled to Austria in 1934 to sell some articles that she first saw Jews being persecuted, however. In Nancy’s words, “It was in Vienna that I formed my opinion of the Nazis.
I resolved there and then that if I ever had the chance I would do anything, however big or small, stupid or dangerous, to try and make things more difficult for their rotten party. […] More than hatred or anger, I felt a deep loathing for the Nazis.”
Back in Paris, Nancy met a Frenchman named Henri Fiocca in 1937 and married him about a month after the start of the Second World War. France, which Nancy now considered her home, had not yet felt the unchecked wrath of the
German war machine, but it would, and Nancy’s life would be turned completely upside down. While the Germans blitzkrieged their way into France, Nancy did her part by serving as an ambulance driver. When France fell, Nancy kept to the shadows and used her charisma when stealth wasn’t an option.
In her words, “A little powder and a little drink on the way, and I’d pass [German] posts and wink and say, ‘Do you want to search me?’ […] A woman could get out of a lot of trouble that a man could not.”
Until late 1942, Nancy focused her energy in getting Jews and stranded Allied soldiers out of France, primarily under the resistance organisation known as the Pat O’Leary Line. In unison with other escape lines — such as the Comet Line and Shelburne Escape Line
— the Pat O’Leary line helped more than 5,000 Allied military personnel get out of German-occupied Europe. Nancy’s contributions to the the escape line were so great that she earned a reputation among the Gestapo, who nicknamed her White Mouse and placed a 5-million-Franc bounty on her head.
After the Germans occupied Vichy France in November 1942, and after her network was all but destroyed by a pair of traitors, Nancy was feeling a little more heat than even she was comfortable with. She decided she would flee France to Spain, although her husband would not go with her
— a decision he would come very much to regret. After a series of mishaps and deceptions, Nancy eventually reached Britain, while her husband was captured, tortured, and executed by the Gestapo. But that wasn’t even half of Nancy Wake’s incredible story.
While she was in Britain, Nancy joined the Special Operations Executive or simply the SOE, which had only positive things to say about her, noting that she was a “real bombshell” and an excellent shot who “put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character.”
Nancy was taught how to kill, survive, and handle vital intelligence. By April 1944, she was more than ready for the field, and the SOE threw her out of a plane over the Auvergne province of occupied France. After parachuting to the ground, she worked to collect and allocate parachute-dropped
War material and other supplies to the French resistance, all in the lead-up to the Allied invasion of France. In May, after a resistance organisation she had been working with had decided to mobilise en masse, and after the Germans handed much of said organisation’s backside to it on a
Silver platter, Nancy broke stride with the fleeing resistance fighters and went right back at the Germans. Borrowing a bicycle, she road it some 500 kilometres or 310 miles in 72 hours, all to retrieve some important radio codes that had been left behind, and also to find an SOE
Radio with which she could contact the SOE headquarters back in Britain. Nancy got a whole lot more blood on her hands after that. She was involved in several significant altercations with the Germans, during which she attacked German convoys and staved off German attacks on French resistance camps.
She even participated in a raid on a German HQ which resulted in the deaths of 38 Germans. On a separate occasion, Nancy found out that some of her men had captured a young female German spy but hadn’t the guts to put her to death.
Nancy, a death-machine at this point, executed the girl herself. Later in life, Nancy said, “I was not a very nice person[,] [a]nd it didn’t put me off my breakfast.” She even claimed to have killed an SS sentry with her bare hands, which is best described,
Again, in Nancy’s own words: “They’d taught this judo-chop stuff with the flat of the hand at SOE, and I practised away at it. But this was the only time I used it, […] and it killed him all right.”
Following the liberation of France in August, 1944, Nancy went back to Britain with a slew of new stories under her belt. After the war, Nancy bounced between Britain and Australia quite a bit, and pursued careers in both intelligence and politics for a while.
Working for the Royal Air Force, she met an RAF officer and married him in 1957. Retiring to Sydney, Australia, in 1985, Nancy published her autobiography which took its title from the one the Gestapo had given her — The White Mouse.
Straight after the war, and all the way up until 2006, Nancy was awarded bucket-loads of medals — some of which she rejected and some of which she sold. Hilariously, she said, There was no point in keeping [the medals]. I’ll probably go to hell and they’d melt anyway.”
After her husband perished, Nancy moved to London, where she got tipsy and told war stories until she died two years shy of a century in August 2011. They never had any children. A while ago, we released a video describing some of the craziest pranks the Allies pulled
On the Axis powers during the Second World War. But while SOE and OSS were busy, the Germans took the chance to cook up a few schemes of their own. In this video, we shed light on four of the small ways Germany tried to get back at the Allies.
Around a dozen Luftwaffe men worked round the clock at the airfield in Borkheide, Germany. They carefully moved their aircraft out of the hangars, repaired weather damage to buildings, and generally kept the place organised to the best German standards.
But Borkheide airfield was a bit different to most, in that it was made entirely of wood. That’s right. The Luftwaffe men at Borkheide built an entirely wooden airfield to fool Allied bombing raids. It had wooden hangars, wooden staff buildings, a wooden control tower, and a dozen wooden planes.
From the air, the decoy airfield looked just like the real thing. In October 1943, just days before the wooden airfield was due to be completed, it was spotted by an RAF Mosquito recon plane. The Mosquito flew over the airfield at low level to take pictures while the Luftwaffe
Men scattered into the surrounding forests. A few days later, the raid came. Werner Thiel, one of the men involved in the airfield’s construction, hid in a shelter with his comrades while the bombers flew over. Bombs were dropped, but instead of explosions, the men only heard dull thuds.
What Thiel found when he came out was a terrific shock. “We didn’t believe what we saw: they bombed us with wooden bombs! Six to ten wooden bombs laid on the ground, all with … white Wood for Wood.” After returning from a hard day of dropping wooden bombs on wooden airfields, Allied airmen
Could switch on the radio and relax. But they, and many others in Britain, would have listened intently to the regularly scheduled Axis propaganda broadcast ‘Germany Calling,’ presented by the sinister figure of Lord Haw-Haw. Lord Haw-Haw was actually a commoner named William Joyce, a disgruntled man whose connections
To the British Union of Fascists had forced him to leave England and become a citizen of the Third Reich. Joyce’s cracking accent landed him a job with the Reich propagandists and he was made a radio presenter. When he became a regular voice over British radio, Allied propagandists fought back by
Giving the presenter what they thought was a stupid nickname, but it stuck, and Joyce adopted the Lord Haw-Haw moniker straight away Why listen to blatant enemy propaganda you ask? Well, Lord Haw-Haw didn’t just accuse Allied leaders of hypocrisy, negligence, and just about anything else he could think of.
He also broadcasted names of captured POWs and read personal messages written by them for their families at home. His Lordship also ran brief news stories from small towns in England, interspersed with regular anti-Allied propaganda. Why listen to blatant enemy propaganda you ask?
Well, Lord Haw-Haw didn’t just accuse Allied leaders of hypocrisy, negligence, and just about anything else he could think of. He also broadcasted names of captured POWs and read personal messages written by them for their families at home. His Lordship also ran brief news stories from small towns in England, interspersed with
Regular anti-Allied propaganda. “Haw-Haw had carried in his pocket a secret weapon capable of annihilating an armoured brigade.” Scary stuff. Even though he didn’t do any fighting, the courts decided that his propaganda work made Lord Haw-Haw an enemy of the King, and he was hanged after the war.
Not every country that fought in World War Two had a Lord Haw-Haw working for its propaganda department, but they DID all have something else — something they knew would never fail to attract a soldier’s attention: smut.
Yes, the Germans pumped out just as many smutty leaflets as the Allies, if not more But unlike the Allies, who enjoyed adding some ‘sausage’ to pictures of Hitler and Mussolini, the Germans wanted their smut to divide and conquer. Early in the war, German leaflets were directed at the French.
They showed Frenchmen dying at the front while Brits took advantage of their lonely wives at home. Once France had been captured, the Germans made similar leaflets to target Brits, Poles, Canadians, Aussies, and Americans. By the sheer number they produced, they must’ve thought the idea was a real winner.
But in reality, the troops ignored the propaganda messages and simply focussed on the titillating images. Reportedly, soldiers of the US 29th Infantry Division “… hoped the Germans would send more over the lines. The leaflets were a lot safer than real artillery shells, and the sketches were fairly interesting.”
If you’ve watched some of our videos before, you’ll probably know a little about British commando raids during the Second World War. But would it surprise you to know that the Germans had commandos too? SS commandos were involved in a variety of operations during the war, but the one we’ll
Be focussing on is Operation Greif. Designed personally by Hitler, Op Greif was part of the German counterattack during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. The primary German goal was to capture bridges over the Meuse river before they could be destroyed by the Allies.
But the secondary objective was for commando unit ‘Einheit Stielau’ to cause as much chaos as possible. Dressed in captured British and American uniforms, Einheit Stielau commandos pranked the Allies as hard as they could. Working in three-to-four-man teams, they successfully sent a US regiment marching the wrong way
By rotating a road sign, got another US regiment to retreat by relaying bogus orders, and held up the advance by putting up minefield warnings all over the place. But their real success was totally accidental. When Allied military police captured German commandos dressed exactly like them, paranoia set in.
Immediately suspicious of imposters among them, military police started arresting their own soldiers in fear they were German commandos. Once rumour got out that one commando looked exactly like General Montgomery, he was stopped at every checkpoint. When the impatient General refused to stop, trigger-happy Americans shot out his tires
And tied him up in a barn for a few hours. The rumour was fake, and Monty was NOT happy. THOSE were four of the small ways Germany tried to get back at the Allies during the Second World War. But what do YOU think?
Was it wrong for the German commandos to dress in captured Allied uniforms, even if they didn’t fight in them? What do YOU think convinced the Germans their leaflet drops were worth doing? China’s Four Pests Campaign, Australia’s Great Emu War, that time a seagull shat on my head
— history has proven time and time again that human beings and our avian compadres don’t always get along. The thing is, birds can be pretty smart and pretty chill, and while humans have waged war on them on more occasions than one, birds have been a part our society for thousands
Of years, just like dogs, horses, and monitor lizards. This was no different during World War II. Birds were employed by both sides for a variety of purposes, yet mostly for communications and intelligence purposes, and many paid with their lives.
In this video, we’re going to talk about the rats of the sky as well as one British unit whose job it was to assassinate Axis-aligned birds and even just neutral birds who were simply going about their business. As it would turn out, pigeons are a cornerstone of this story.
Throughout the Second World War, the British employed as many as a quarter of a million homing pigeons for communications and intelligence purposes. While they couldn’t quite match the speed of a radio wave, the enemy could only intercept a pigeon’s message if they physically caught the thing.
Another major advantage of pigeons was that they didn’t rely on electricity, nor any technology, for that matter, which made them a fantastic substitute when radio communications went to crap or didn’t exist in the first place. In the words of Major J.J.
Baker of the British Army Pigeon Service, The pigeon to the army was like a revolver to a civilian. You probably never needed it. If you did need it, you needed it badly.” Additionally, unlike military runners — as in human messengers — pigeons couldn’t be
Tortured into giving up intel either, as despite what you might believe, pigeons can’t actually talk. A major downside to homing pigeons, however, is that they were a sort of a one-way deal, as they were trained to find their way home, not relay messages over a warzone.
As such, the birds first had to be transported to a specific, sometimes very distant, location for the system to work. Often, this was achieved by stuffing the poor creatures into a container attached to a small parachute, then punting them out of a moving aeroplane.
Alternatively, the homing pigeons could be strapped in with a human parachutist. On the subject of the homing pigeons which descended on Axis-occupied Burma alongside British intelligence agents specifically, Colonel William Raymond of the British Office of Strategic Services stated, “After the agent had landed, cleared the drop zone, and had
An opportunity to test his radio, he would release the pigeon […] with a coded message either indicating that all was well or giving instructions when and where to drop another […] [radio].” Another way in which homing pigeons were employed by the British was by dumping them in the *thousands* over enemy-occupied territory.
For example, under Operation Columba — named after the bird genus *Columba* — the British parachuted more than 16,000 homing pigeons into France, the Netherlands, and Belgium between 1941 and 1944. The containers in which the pigeons were delivered also housed some thin sheets of paper, a pencil,
A message tube, a fillable intelligence report, and instructions on how to write a useful intelligence report and attach the message to the pigeon. Ideally, the British wanted the containers to fall into the hands of French, Dutch, and Belgian locals, whom they hoped would provide them vital information about the Axis occupations.
Only 10% of the pigeons operating under Operation Columba returned alive, however, with just half of them carrying useful intel. You might be wondering why so few pigeons made it back to their lofts. Firstly, the containers didn’t always end up in friendly hands, as Axis troops or Axis-sympathisers
Might just as easily have found the containers. Assuming that didn’t happen, many of the birds had a *serious* flight ahead of them, even as far as 400 miles or a little under 650 kilometres. During that time, they could potentially lose their way, get wrecked by the weather, or
Fall prey to larger, more vicious birds, such as falcons and hawks. And that was where our British bird-murderers came into play. In 1940, the British banned the destruction of falcons and hawks nesting on the cliffs of England’s east coast, hoping that a greater abundance of such birds would be an effective
Tactic in reducing enemy pigeons carrying vital intelligence out of England. This proved to be somewhat of a mistake, however, as Axis pigeons and Allied pigeons tasted around about the same to the birds of prey. Later, a high-up Allied intelligence officer by the name of Thomas Beets made an effort
To correct this mistake, stating, “[…] [T]he predators […] [do] not discriminate between patriotic British pigeons and treacherous Axis birds. Please then would we have these enemies of the pigeon restored to their true status as vermin.” Additionally, the Germans had been training predatory birds to hunt down British pigeons
Making the return flight from Europe to the UK. In the words of British author and BBC correspondent Gordon Corera, who wrote the book Secret Pigeon Service, “[…] [T]he pigeon […] had its own enemy — the hawk, the falcon. The Germans actually weaponised hawks and placed them on the coast to hunt […] British
Pigeons and kill them.” Now, the population of England didn’t set out a bird-murdering rampage or anything like that, but a small team of just five British MI5 operatives, chosen because they were exceptional shots, was assembled and then baptised as the Falcon Destruction Unit.
Once more in the words of British author Gordon Corera, “There were […] wild hawks and peregrine falcons on the British coast that would kill some of these pigeons coming back from occupied Europe with messages. […] [S]o MI5 got in on the act.
[…] [The Falcon Destruction Unit was] the only MI5 team with a licence to kill.” Essentially, the Falcon Destruction Unit roamed the English coast in an open-roofed car attached to a caravan, blasting predatory birds out of the sky, abseiling down cliffs to line
Up their shots and set bird traps, and stomping unhatched eggs in their nests. Well, we’re not actually sure about the last one, but one can assume. Some of the climbing they were doing was do dangerous that a member of the unit actually fell and lost his life.
Now more than ever, we’re eager for your input. The Falcon Destruction Unit seemed to have been an elusive lot. Do you know anything about them that wasn’t covered in this video? What about any other Allied or Axis efforts to destroy enemy and neutral birds? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
23 Comments
Thanks 😊
"It's just a prank, bro." – Allied Forces and Axis spies probably
50:15 I thought the USA joined World War II because the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, a member of the Axis Powers.
Is it just me or does the thumbnail look like it was AI generated?
1:39:02 Spike the Bulldog from Tom and Jerry during his World War II days.
The German Greif commandos, groups of Germans who created chaos behind allied lines in the Battle of the Bulge were found out early enough but done enough damage. One method to get them to reveal themselves was by asking them only a question a true American would know, like 'Name President Roosevelts dog (Fala, a Scottish Terrier in case your interested) which I doubt everyone would know, so much so, it caused General Montgomery to be detailed by MPs!
The Navajo language, known for its difficult to translate as words seemed to be translated simply by intonations of the word, must have been more than confusing to the Japanese who tried reading it. Hence the use of the 'Windtalker' code talkers who must have been protected at all costs.
يَا أَيُّهَا الْعَزِيزُ مَسَّنَا وَأَهْلَنَا الضُّرُّ وَجِئْنَا بِبِضَاعَةٍ مُزْجَاةٍ فَأَوْفِ لَنَا الْكَيْلَ وَتَصَدَّقْ عَلَيْنَا إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَجْزِي الْمُتَصَدِّقِينَ} مناشدة 💔 انَيَ انَتٌْخيَكِ انَيَ دٌِخلُةِ ْعلُى الُلُُه تْمٌ ْعلُيَكِ انَيَ فَيَ وَجُْهك انَيَ اختْكِ انَيَ اتْرَجّاكِ اتْوَسِلُ الُيَكِ انَقًـذَنَا لُوَجُْه الُلُُه. يَشِهدِ الُلُه يَاٌخيَ انَ مٌنَ الُصّبّاحُ حُتْا الُانَ يَحُرَمٌ ْعلُيَـنَا الاكل غير الماء رسالتي ندائي إلى كل مسلم ☪️☪️☪️ يِآ نآس يِآآمٌـٍة ﷴ ﷺ صِآرتٍ قلّوبگٍمٌ بلّآ رحًمٌهً ولّآشفُقهً ولّآ آنسآنيِهً گٍمٌ شگٍيِتٍ وگٍمٌ بگٍيِتٍ گٍمٌ نآديِتٍ وگٍمٌ نآشدتٍ ولّگٍن لّآ حًيِآٍة لّمٌن تٍنآديِ هًلّ يِرضيِگٍمٌ آن آخوآنيِ يِبگٍون ويِمٌوتٍون مٌن آلّجُوع وآنتٍمٌ مٌوجُودون يِعلّمٌ آلّلّهً آلّعلّيِ آلّعظَيِمٌ آننآ لّآ نمٌلّگٍ حًتٍى قيِمٌـٍة گٍيِلّو دقيِق آبيِ مٌتٍوفُيِ ﻭﺃﺧﻮﺍﻧﻲ ﺻﻐﺎﺭ ﻟﻴﺲ ﻟﻨﺎ ﺃﺣﺪ ﺃﻗﺴﻢ ﺑﺎﻟﻠﻪ ﺍﻟﻌﻈﻴﻢ ﺃﻧﻬﻢ ﻧﺎﻣﻮﺍ ﺃﻣﺲ ﺟﻮﻋﺎﻧﻴﻦ ﻭﻫﻢ ﻳﺒﻜﻮﻥ من الالم والولايات ﻳﺎﺃﻫﻞ ﺍﻟﺨﻴﺮ ﻫﻞ ﻳﺮﺿﻴﻜﻢ ﺃﻧﻨﺎ ﻣﻦ ﺃﻣﺲ ﻟﺤﺪ ﺍﻵﻥ ﺑﺪﻭﻥ ﺃﻛﻞ ﻳﺎﺃﺧﻮﺓ الأسلام يافاعلين الخير انا اقسم بالله على كتاب الله اني لااكذب عليك ولا انصب ولا احتال اني بنت يمنيه نازحين انا واسرتي بيتنا ايجار الشهر ب20 الف يمني والان علينا 60 الف حق3 شهور وصاحب البيت من الناس الي ماترحم والله يا اخي انه يجي كل يوم يبهدلنا ويتكلم علينا ويريد يطردنا من البيت للشارع لانناماقدرناندفعله الأجار وما يروح الئ بعدما نبكي ورجعوتكلمو الجيران ومهلنالاخره الأسبوع واذا دفعنا له حلف يمين بالله بيخرجنا إلى الشارع بدون رحمه واحنا.مشردين من بلادنا بسبب هذا الحرب ولانجد قوت يومنا وعايشين اناوامي واخوتي سغار والدنا متوفي الله يرحمه ومامعنا أحد في هذا الدنيا يقف جاانبنا في هذه الظروف القاسيه انا بنت لااستطيع ان اشتغل والله مانجد لقمت عیش والان لوما احدنا ساعدنا اقسم بالله انموت من الجوع فيا اخي انا دخيله على الله ثم عليك واريد منك المساعده لوجه الله انابنت عيني بصيره ويدي قصيره ليس لي أب مثلك واخواتي سغار أنقذنا وساعدونا قبل أن يطردونا في الشارع تتبهدل أو نموت من الجوع ﻳﺎﺃﻫﻞ ﺍﻟﺨﻴﺮ ﺍﻟﻲ ﻋﻨﺪﻩ ﺍﻟﻘﺪﺭﻩ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﺴﺎﻋﺪﺗﻨﺎ لايتاخر علينا لحظه
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
هاذا رقمي 00967716649494 واتساب 📞
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
الذي يقدر يساعدنا يراسلني على الواتساب ارسل له ألاسم الكامل في بطاقة الهويه والعنوان يحولنا بقدر ما يستطيع الله يجزيكم خير الجزاء والاحسان والعطاء يارب العالمين انا بنت مسلمة من اليمن..🕋🕋‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘┇┇↑↑↑~~~——-
One seriously freaky trick the US did on the Japanese was the use of white painted Foxes, known as Kitsune in Japanese folklore, released into the Japanese countryside to scare the populous.
The Germans tried destroying the UK economy by dropping agents in with loads of counterfeit Pounds Sterling, but were caught before they could distribute them. Once the US entered the war they tried the same trick its believed, as their expertise at forgery would be far greater at counterfeit spotting than anyone, however the Germans found other currencies, like slave labor into neutral Spain, etc. and were paid in their money to pay for oil and other commodities, and with no economy, that meant the allies would have to rebuild the West German economy from the ground up post war
The Mulberry mobile harbors, an immense concrete jigsaw produced around Britain save many lives in the time after D-Day, but had to be assembled and kept in top secret before they could be used
It’s just a prank bro
One seriously freaky trick the US did on the Japanese was the use of white painted Foxes, known as Kitsune in Japanese folklore, released into the Japanese countryside to scare the populous.
The thumbnail is AI generated.
It was an informative 👍🏻 video shared by an excellent ( the front) channel .
The intro is superb
That AI generated thumbnail is ludicrous 😮
Did I just hear you call the Bob Semple a failure?! How dare you sir…How dare you
Maybe if the allies were serious about anything post war like the axis things wouldn’t be complete shit in allied nations today
Two hours?? Let’s gooo
The bass on my headphones popped a little every time you mentioned the word 'party'. That led me to realize that you have a very good voice. You could easily have your voice sampled for electronic music- might make a pretty penny doing it!
I realize this is coming out of nowhere, but it's something I noticed. It's up to you if ya want to do something like that. I personally think you could find success
Excellent video. I find this kind of detailed obscure history fascinating.
Hold on, are you the same guy from the geetsly's channel?