Obscure WW2 Facts

Noor Inayat Khan's final word before execution at Dachau was "Liberté." She was a children's book author who had been a pacifist before the war.

The Polish cavalry did NOT charge German tanks — that myth was Nazi propaganda. Polish cavalry fought mounted but dismounted to fight on foot as mounted infantry.

The most decorated soldier, Audie Murphy, was rejected by the Marines for being too small (5'5", 112 lbs) before the Army accepted him.

B.F. Skinner trained pigeons to steer missiles by pecking at ship images. They hit targets 55% of the time — better than mechanical guidance. It was canceled because it sounded absurd.

Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole (Medal of Honor) was killed by a sniper while carrying a child's drawing of an angel she made when he liberated her from a transport train.

9,000 Japanese balloon bombs crossed the Pacific to attack America. Only 6 people died — a woman and 5 children on a picnic near Bly, Oregon, May 5, 1945.

Miep Gies, who hid Anne Frank, kept the diary in a locked desk drawer for the rest of the war. She later said: "I only did what was human."

PFC Desmond Doss prayed before each rescue run on Hacksaw Ridge. He said God told him which wounded men to reach first and in what order.

Pigeon GI Joe flew 20 miles in 20 minutes to deliver a message that called off a bombing run on a village the British had already captured — saving 1,100 troops.

The Altussee salt mine held the Ghent Altarpiece — it had been stolen by the Nazis and hidden in an Austrian mine. The villagers who saved it risked execution.

Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 by a Swedish parliament member as a sarcastic protest against Neville Chamberlain's nomination.

Operation Cornflakes: OSS agents forged German postage stamps reading "Futsches Reich" (Ruined Empire) and slipped forged anti-Nazi letters into the real German postal system.

Wojtek the bear enlisted in the Polish Army drank beer from mess tins and carried 100-lb artillery shells at Monte Cassino without dropping one.

32 pigeons received the Dickin Medal (animal Victoria Cross) for WWII service.

Otto Skorzeny's Operation Greif soldiers in American uniforms caused so much paranoia that General Bradley was detained at a checkpoint for failing to identify the capital of Illinois.

The Fu-Go balloon bombs nearly hit the Hanford nuclear facility, where the plutonium for the atomic bomb was being produced.

Ernie Pyle kept a private notebook of stories too devastating for newspaper readers. One entry describes an old German man searching rubble for his dead wife's wedding ring for three days under shellfire.

British double agent "Garbo" created a network of 27 fictional sub-agents and fed fabricated intelligence to the Germans. He was so trusted they awarded him the Iron Cross.

Cher Ami, a WWI pigeon, delivered a message that saved the "Lost Battalion" despite being shot through the breast and losing an eye. The message hung from a dangling leg bone.

The youngest American WWII serviceman was Calvin Graham — 12 years old when he enlisted with a forged birth certificate. He was wounded at Guadalcanal.