OE 21-308 - 9 Scariest Secret Military Projects From WWII
9.
WERWOLF
Toward the end of World War II, the Nazis made a last-ditch effort to create a special
type of soldier that would operate secretly behind enemy lines.
Codenamed Operation Werwolf, this regiment of elite volunteers were uniformed soldiers
who were meant to operate similarly to Allied Commandos.
These soldiers would leave behind a symbol that looked like a hastily drawn swastika,
but it was actually the mark of the Werewolves.
These soldiers would strike down the enemy at their most vulnerable, walking alone on
a dark road or driving a car.
Usually when there was just one soldier or a couple and could be easily snuck up on.
The organization was headquartered in Berlin, and the plan was to train recruits in guerrilla
warfare tactics that the Nazis had observed among the Soviets in captured territories
like Ukraine.
But things reportedly didn’t go according to plan.
It actually wasn’t that great at all.
Shortly after the Allied invasion of Normandy, rumors began to circulate about a secret Nazi
guerrilla force.
The following year, the notorious politician Joseph Goebbels urged every German to fight
to the death in what became known as the “Werwolf speech.”
Little did the world know, by then, the Werwolf unit had already been partially dismantled.
It never got even close to its potential.
But propaganda continued to spread, primarily through a radio station called “Radio Werwolf,”
which claimed that the Allies were planning to enslave Germans.
The broadcast called on Germans to stand their ground, even if it meant paying with their
lives.
After the war, German officers confided that the Werwolf unit was inefficient and weak,
and that its leader, Hans-Adolf Prützmann, was equally incompetent.
In other words, it wasn’t nearly what it was chalked up to be, and was a relative non-threat
from its inception.
8.
FP-45 LIBERATOR
Shortly after the United States entered World War II in late 1941, military intelligence
officials began brainstorming for ways to help resistance fighters in countries occupied
by Axis forces.
A Polish military expert thought up the idea of distributing a pistol
in these territories, and the U.S. Army Joint Psychological Warfare Committee was tasked
with carrying out the project.
They came up with the FP-45 Liberator, a single-shot derringer pistol designed by George
Hyde, an American machinist and gun designer from Dayton, Ohio.
General Motors quietly manufactured one million FP-45's under the codename Flare Projector
Caliber .45 to prevent the public from realizing that a pistol was being mass-produced.
Even the parts on the drawings had codenames so that no one could really tell what it was.
It was a clumsy weapon, but it was never meant for frontline use and it was never distributed
to Allied troops.
The main point of the FP-45 was to drop it en masse behind enemy lines as an insurgent
weapon.
It was intended as a quick and convenient handgun for a resistance fighter to pick up,
shoot members of the occupying force and then take the better weapons their enemies had
on hand.
The FP-45 was also valued as a tool of psychological warfare.
Its developers believed that seeing loads of them dropped into occupied territories
would cause the Axis forces' morale to plummet.
But not all military officials were on board with the project,
including Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Stilwell, and Douglas MacArthur.
Less than 25,000 of the half-million FP-45's that were sent to Britain for the French Resistance
were actually distributed.
The rest were eventually melted for scrap metal or dumped into the sea.
Because insurgent activity was rarely documented, it's impossible to know if the FP-45 was used
for its intended purpose; and, if so, to what extent.
7.
San Jose Project
Between 1944 and 1947, the U.S. government performed a series of experiments to test
the effects of mustard gas on humans in tropical conditions.
They suspected that people may be more or less sensitive to the substance based on their
race, and so the military dropped mustard gas into the jungle from planes on the Panamanian
island of San Jose.
Then, they observed the effects on Puerto Rican and white participants to see if there
was any difference.
There wasn’t, and this was sadly just one of many race-based experiments that the American
government has reluctantly owned up to in recent decades.
National Public Radio (NPR) obtained some declassified documents about the San Jose
project, which state that the experiment’s aim was to gather data on “the behavior
of lethal chemical agents.”
In other words, the military knowingly exposed the participants to deadly substances.
Mustard gas damages DNA almost instantly upon contact, according to NPR.
World War II veteran Rollins Edwards told the media outlet that it “felt like you
were on fire.”
The chemical causes serious injuries, including large blisters on the skin and in the lungs,
which often lead to chronic and life-threatening illnesses like emphysema, skin cancer, and
leukemia.
The San Jose Project and other mustard gas experiments that went on during World War
II were conducted in total secrecy.
They did not go on soldiers’ military records, and federal officials wouldn’t admit to
the horrifying tests until 1991.
Meanwhile, the government is accused of ignoring public records requests and academic studies
on the matter.
To make matters worse, the Pentagon claimed – for years – that all the chemical weapons
on San Jose had been cleaned up, and that there were none left.
Panamanian officials proved that this was a big, fat lie in 2001, when it announced
that it had found seven intact chemical weapons on the island.
And authorities suspect that there were many, more.
The U.S. government finally agreed in 2017 to clean up its decades-old mess.
6.
OPERATION EICHE
Allied forces invaded Italy in 1943.
By then, much of the country saw itself as having lost the war, and the citizens voted
their fascist and pro-Nazi dictator, Benito Mussolini, out of power.
Afterwards the king arrested him.
This situation troubled Hitler, who believed it was necessary to keep Mussolini in power
in order to maintain Italy's support in the war.
He wasn't wrong -- Italy had already agreed to engage in secret peace talks with the Allies
behind Hitler’s back, adding to his paranoia.
Hitler then invaded northern Italy, splitting the country in two, and he set to work on
a mission to rescue Mussolini.
In what became known as Operation Eiche or the "Gran Sasso Raid," Hitler ordered Waffen
SS Officer Otto Skorzeny to free "Il duce" before he was turned over to the Allies.
Skorzeny traced Mussolini's location to a remote ski resort in the Apennine Mountains.
He traveled there on gliders with his team of 16 SS troopers, who approached silently
before storming the property.
The intruders overwhelmed the guards with ease and destroyed their radio equipment.
Then, they found Mussolini, who reportedly exclaimed, "I knew my friend Adolf Hitler
would not leave me in the lurch!”
Skorzeny rushed the disgraced dictator aboard a plane and
personally escorted Mussolini to Austria.
The entire raid took less than 10 minutes, and not a single bullet was fired.
Mussolini went on to lead a puppet government that the Nazis set up in northern Italy.
By early 1945, he realized that the Allies were gaining the upper hand on the Italian
peninsula.
Not wanting to fall into American or British hands, or to be tried as a war criminal in
his own country, Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, attempted to flee to neutral
Switzerland.
At the border, they encountered partisan forces, who shot the couple dead and made an example
out of them by publicly displaying their bodies in Milan.
5.
Operation Mincemeat
In April 1943, a dead man dressed as a Royal British Marine appeared off the coast of Spain
with a suspicious-looking briefcase attached to his wrist.
The discovery piqued the Nazis' interest, and they pulled the strings necessary to gain
access to the case.
In it, they found documents outlining an Allied plot to invade German-occupied Sardinia and
Greece.
At the time, Spain was under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who declared a policy
of neutrality in the war.
The Spanish government shared the documents with the Germans, then returned them to the
British, who determined through a forensic examination that the papers had been read.
Little did the Nazis know, the dead man wasn't a soldier at all.
He was a vagabond named Glyndwr Michael, who had died from eating rat poison.
The British military had dressed his corpse as a Royal Marines officer, complete with
a fake ID under the name of Captain William Martin.
The documents were also fake.
They were part of a plan dubbed Operation Mincemeat, which intended to deceive the Nazis
into thinking they had gained valuable intel.
A British submarine deposited the fictitious courier's remains and the bogus paperwork
into the Mediterranean and waited for the mission to unfold.
And it worked beautifully.
The Nazis not only believed they'd gotten their hands on crucial information, they thought
they had done so without the British realizing it.
Hitler dispatched tank divisions and other forces to Greece in anticipation of the attack.
Meanwhile, around 160,000 Allied troops invaded Sicily, where no reinforcements had been sent.
They caught the Germans totally off-guard.
Do you think this was a good idea?
Would you have done this if you were a spy?
Let me know in the comments below!
I wonder how often these types of tricks actually happened?
And now for number 4, but first wanted to give a big shout out to You Never Walk Alone
and Ken Hawkins!
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4.
OPERATION GREIF
In late 1944, in the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, Hilter commissioned commando
leader Otto Skorzeny to run interference on and sabotage Allied communications and morale.
Known as Operation Greif, the mission involved disguising English-speaking Germans in uniforms
from captured American soldiers and sending them behind enemy lines with forged U.S. Army
documents.
These undercover troops misdirected tank traffic, switched road signs around, destroyed ammunition
dumps, destroyed telephone lines, and otherwise wreaked havoc on Allied operations.
Kind of like what operation werewolf was supposed to do!
Luckily for the Allies, the commandos didn’t cause any serious damage.
But they did manage to spark some serious confusion and panic among U.S. forces.
American soldiers caught onto the scheme and spread the word to be on the lookout for the
culprits.
They set up road checkpoints and quizzed passersby on American sports and pop culture.
Sadly, this led to the detention of genuine Allied troops.
To add to the chaos, any imposters who were captured tried to throw off the Americans
by claiming that commandos were plotting to kill General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
He was put into protective housing out of a concern for his safety.
In the end, Operation Greif did little more than inconvenience the Allied war effort.
With the operation at a standstill, the Nazis withdrew the commandos.
U.S. forces continued to search for the imposters for several months before realizing that they
were long gone.
Do you think these kinds of confusion tactics are an effective way to throw off enemy forces?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
3.
THE GHOST ARMY
In 1944, the U.S. Army developed its first-ever tactical deception unit.
Officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and nicknamed the “Ghost
Army,” the top-secret unit consisted of 82 officers and 1,023 soldiers.
They spent the final year of the war tricking the Germans into thinking they were a 30,000-strong
force by using visual, sonic, and radio deception tactics.
These clever combat con artists carried out 22 large-scale deceptions while armed only
with .50 caliber machine guns.
Due to the sophisticated nature of the work, most of the unit’s members had a background
in art or engineering, or were professional soldiers.
In fact, with an average IQ of 119, they’re said to be one of the smartest-ever military
groups.
Their tactics included using inflatable tanks, fake radio traffic and sound effects, and
bogus generals.
And their methods worked, effectively saving thousands of lives while more-or-less driving
the Germans crazy.
The work was highly classified.
Even after the war, members were sworn to secrecy, and any trace of the operation was
hidden.
Smithsonian Magazine revealed the division’s existence to the public in 1985, and the matter
was declassified during the 1990s.
2.
PROJECT PIGEON
During World War II, military officials focused on developing better ways to aim missiles
accurately.
In 1943, psychologist B.F. Skinner came up with the idea of a pigeon-guided missile,
and the government funded it.
He designed a special missile nosecone with three cockpits that held one pigeon each.
Skinner then attached cables to the birds' heads and had them peck at an image of the
flightpath that was on a screen in front of them.
When all three pigeons pecked the screen, the cables that were harnessed to their heads
changed the missile's direction accordingly.
In other words, the pigeons were entrusted with steering
explosive projectiles to the proper targets.
Skinner worked with pigeons before.
He knew that these often detested birds are intelligent, that they have good vision, and
that they remain calm during chaos.
But there was no way for the pigeons to escape the nosecone, meaning they would unknowingly
navigate to their own deaths.
Officials weren't sold on Skinner's idea, and they ended Project Pigeon before it could
ever truly get off the ground.
Skinner kept his pigeons from the project and retested their skills every so often.
Six years later, they still remembered their training.
1.
OPERATION GUNNERSIDE
One of the key ingredients the Germans used in their attempts to develop an atomic bomb
was something called deuterium oxide (D20), or heavy water.
After invading Norway in 1940, the Nazis seized the Norsk Hydro Vemork plant, where they forced
workers to speed up the manufacture of heavy water.
In 1941, a Norwegian resistance operative contacted British intelligence and told them
about the Germans’ increased heavy water production.
Suspecting that the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons, the British got to work planning
a sabotage mission.
The informant who disclosed the information was Norwegian chemist and Vemork plant designer
Leif Tronstad.
After leaking the details, Tronstad fled Norway for Sweden, then went to Britain, where he
was tasked with training commando units for Allied sabotage missions in Norway.
The project recruited Norwegian participants, who underwent weeks of intensive outdoor physical
training.
This was necessary, because the Vemork plant was surrounded by a high mountain plateau
and located in a frigid environment, making it difficult to reach.
Tronstad advised against bombing the facility.
He warned that if a bomb hit the plant's liquid-ammonia storage tanks, it would endanger civilians.
Moreover, a bomb wouldn't necessarily destroy the heavy water supply, which was kept in
the basement.
The mission, known as Operation Gunnerside, commenced in 1943.
The Norwegian recruits parachuted into the area under the cover of night.
To reach the plant, they descended to the bottom of a gorge, crossed a freezing-cold
river, and climbed up a 500-foot cliff.
Using metal cutters, the men broke onto the property through a side gate.
Two team members entered the building through a side tunnel and laid explosive charges near
the heavy water tanks.
They lit the fuses, made a hasty exit, and soon heard a satisfying "boom" coming from
within.
The group's work at Vemork was done, and they moved onto the final leg of their mission:
skiing over 200 miles to Sweden.
The Vemork facility was destroyed, and while the Germans had it up and running again within
months, it effectively slowed down their nuclear ambitions.
Meanwhile, the Nazis tried to find the team responsible for the explosion, but they were
never captured or harmed,having successfully skied to safety.
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