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.
Hitler's butthole aside, we're interested to know what you think. Had you heard about any of
these crazy, sad, weird stories before? Would you like to see a second part to this video?
If so, can you think of any stories we should include, bearing in mind we're
trying to stick with the lesser-known ones? Please share your thoughts in the comments.