20 Strangest Facts from World War II | Ghost Armies, Mad Jack, Wojtek the Bear & Exploding Chocolate

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to the Strange History Podcast,

0:04 Speaker 1: where we dig through history's pockets and see what falls out.

0:07 Speaker 1: Sometimes it's metals, sometimes it's bones, and sometimes it's exploding

0:13 Speaker 1: chocolate bars. Today we're heading into World War two, a

0:17 Speaker 1: war that shaped the world, killed millions, and yet somehow

0:20 Speaker 1: managed to give us sword wielding soldiers, bears carrying AMMO

0:25 Speaker 1: ghost armies made of rubber tanks and pigeons that saved

0:28 Speaker 1: more lives than radios. So buckle up. This is twenty

0:32 Speaker 1: strangest facts from World War Two, and yes we have

0:36 Speaker 1: sponsors today, though as always they're completely fake.

0:41 Speaker 2: Mad Jack Churchill sword, bagpipes and arrows.

0:46 Speaker 1: Most soldiers carried rifles. Jack Churchill, mad Jack, carried a broadsword,

0:52 Speaker 1: a bow, and a set of bagpipes. He once led

0:56 Speaker 1: a charge into battle playing his pipes while bullets flew

1:00 Speaker 1: time he captured forty two Germans and a mortar crew

1:03 Speaker 1: armed only with his sword. When asked about his eccentric

1:06 Speaker 1: choice of weapons, he famously said, any officer who goes

1:10 Speaker 1: into action without his sword is improperly dressed. This man

1:14 Speaker 1: would have been thrown out of Comic Con for being

1:17 Speaker 1: too committed.

1:18 Speaker 3: Today's episode is sponsored by Mad Jack's Cutlery. Need to

1:22 Speaker 3: Storm Normandy forget guns, try our full line of broadswords,

1:27 Speaker 3: longbows and bagpipes, free sharpening with every order.

1:32 Speaker 2: The Ghost Army of Inflatable Tanks.

1:35 Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, the US Army assembled a secret

1:39 Speaker 1: unit of artists, sound engineers, and designers, the twenty third

1:43 Speaker 1: Headquarters Special Troops, better known as the Ghost Army. Their

1:48 Speaker 1: mission use inflatable tanks, fake radio chatter, and giant loudspeakers

1:54 Speaker 1: blasting recorded artillery to convince the Germans that Allied armies

1:58 Speaker 1: were somewhere else, and it worked. One operation tricked German

2:02 Speaker 1: intelligence into thinking thirty thousand troops were massing near the Rhine,

2:08 Speaker 1: when in reality it was one thousand men with a

2:11 Speaker 1: lot of hot air. Literally, this was the only war

2:14 Speaker 1: where you could defeat the Nazis with rubber balloons and

2:17 Speaker 1: a jazz record.

2:18 Speaker 2: Boy Tech the Soldier Bear.

2:21 Speaker 1: Meet Woytech, a Syrian brown bear adopted by Polish soldiers.

2:25 Speaker 1: Raised on condensed milk. He quickly developed a taste for beer,

2:29 Speaker 1: cigarettes and roughhousing. But Woytec wasn't just a mascot. He

2:34 Speaker 1: carried one hundred pound artillery shells at the Battle of

2:37 Speaker 1: Monte Casino. The bear became a private in the Polish Army,

2:42 Speaker 1: complete with a service number and rank. After the war,

2:45 Speaker 1: he retired to Edinburgh Zoo, where veterans would visit him

2:49 Speaker 1: and throw him cigarettes, which he ate to children's horror.

2:53 Speaker 3: This segment brought to you by woy Tech Cigarettes, the

2:56 Speaker 3: only brand approved by Bears. Warning a cause excessive fur growth.

3:02 Speaker 2: Mount Vesuvius erupted on the US Army.

3:06 Speaker 1: In March nineteen forty four. Allied forces stationed near Naples

3:10 Speaker 1: found themselves in a biblical nightmare. Bombing runs triggered tremors

3:14 Speaker 1: that awakened Mount Vesuvius, which erupted for nearly two weeks.

3:19 Speaker 1: Lava destroyed planes at nearby airfields and covered everything in ash.

3:23 Speaker 1: As one gi wrote, fighting Nazis was bad enough, then

3:27 Speaker 1: the damn volcano joined in. Nature itself apparently picked sides.

3:32 Speaker 2: Pigeons save the day again.

3:36 Speaker 1: World War one had cher Ami, World War II had

3:40 Speaker 1: gy Joe. This plucky pigeon flew twenty miles in twenty

3:44 Speaker 1: minutes to deliver a message canceling a planned Allied bombing

3:48 Speaker 1: on an Italian village. If he had arrived just five

3:51 Speaker 1: minutes later, one thousand Allied troops would have been bombed

3:54 Speaker 1: by their own planes. He was awarded the Dicken Medal,

3:58 Speaker 1: the animal equivalent of the victim Cory Across. Honestly, pigeons

4:02 Speaker 1: are the unsung heroes of both world Wars, and probably

4:06 Speaker 1: better at time management than most humans.

4:09 Speaker 2: The Schwerer Gustav world's biggest canon.

4:13 Speaker 1: The Nazis built a railway gun so massive it looked

4:16 Speaker 1: like something from Star Wars. The Schwerer Gustav fired seven

4:21 Speaker 1: ton shells that could travel twenty miles. Problem it needed

4:25 Speaker 1: four thousand men to operate, could only fire fourteen rounds

4:29 Speaker 1: per day, and had to be transported in twenty five

4:32 Speaker 1: separate train cars. It was less a weapon and more

4:36 Speaker 1: a theme park attraction for evil dictators.

4:40 Speaker 3: Feeling inadequate, try Gustav's Jim, where our weights start at

4:45 Speaker 3: seven tons. Train like the Nazis, but please without the fascism.

4:52 Speaker 1: Crosswords and codebreakers at Bletchley Park, home of Allied code

4:57 Speaker 1: breaking recruiters, realized crossword enthusiasts made excellent cryptographers. The government

5:03 Speaker 1: even placed a public crossword puzzle in a newspaper as

5:06 Speaker 1: a secret recruiting test. Those who solved it fast enough

5:10 Speaker 1: were discreetly contacted. Imagine thinking you'd just won a crossword

5:15 Speaker 1: contest and instead you're suddenly working to break the Enigma code.

5:19 Speaker 2: Operation Habakuk aircraft carriers made device.

5:23 Speaker 1: Winston Churchill loved wild ideas. One of the wildest build

5:29 Speaker 1: massive aircraft carriers out of ice mixed with wood pulp

5:32 Speaker 1: called pie crete. Tests showed py crete was bulletproof and

5:36 Speaker 1: melted slowly. Plans were drawn to make a two thousand

5:39 Speaker 1: foot long iceberg aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, it cost too much

5:44 Speaker 1: and proved impractical. But just imagine the Allies commanding a

5:48 Speaker 1: floating glacier armed with spitfires.

5:51 Speaker 2: Virginia Hall and her wooden leg.

5:55 Speaker 1: Virginia Hall, an American spy working for the Allies, had

5:59 Speaker 1: a wooden she nicknamed Cuthbert. She organized resistance networks, smuggled information,

6:06 Speaker 1: and even called in airstrikes. At one point she radioed

6:10 Speaker 1: London saying, Cuthbert is giving me trouble, but otherwise I

6:14 Speaker 1: am fine. The Nazis considered her the most dangerous Allied spy,

6:20 Speaker 1: and they were right. She was unstoppable. Wooden leg and all.

6:23 Speaker 2: Disney at war.

6:25 Speaker 1: During World War Two, Walt Disney Studios was nearly bankrupt,

6:30 Speaker 1: so they cut a deal with the US government to

6:32 Speaker 1: make propaganda films. Donald Duck starred in Dear Fure's Face,

6:37 Speaker 1: mocking Hitler, Mickey, Goofy, and even Pluto appeared in training

6:42 Speaker 1: reels about malaria, factory safety, and how to file taxes.

6:47 Speaker 1: Imagine Goofy teaching you to pay the irs, garsh, don't

6:52 Speaker 1: forget your deductions, high uck.

6:55 Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by Disney war tunes.

6:58 Speaker 3: Reminding you to laugh and pay tax is all before bedtime.

7:02 Speaker 2: Operation X RAY the Bat.

7:04 Speaker 1: Bombs, American scientists seriously tried to weaponize bats. The idea

7:10 Speaker 1: strapped tiny andcendiary bombs to bats, released them over Japanese cities,

7:14 Speaker 1: and let them roost in wooden buildings before detonating. In tests,

7:19 Speaker 1: some bats escaped and burned down a US air base.

7:22 Speaker 1: The project was scrapped, but somewhere in history's filing cabinets

7:26 Speaker 1: is the note bat project canceled due to self immolation of.

7:30 Speaker 2: Hangar Japanese balloon bombs.

7:34 Speaker 1: Between nineteen forty four and nineteen forty five, Japan launched

7:38 Speaker 1: nine thousand hydrogen balloons carrying bombs across the Pacific. They

7:43 Speaker 1: relied on jet stream winds to carry them to North America.

7:47 Speaker 1: Most popped harmlessly, but about three hundred reached the US

7:50 Speaker 1: in Canada. One tragically killed a minister's wife and five

7:54 Speaker 1: children on a picnic in Oregon, the only combat deaths

7:57 Speaker 1: on US soil during World War II.

8:00 Speaker 2: Garbo, the greatest double agent.

8:03 Speaker 1: Spanish double agent Juan Poujol Garcia, code named Garbo, convinced

8:08 Speaker 1: the Nazis he had an entire network of British spies.

8:12 Speaker 1: In reality, his network was imaginary. He even submitted fake

8:17 Speaker 1: expense reports for these phantom agents, and the Nazis paid him.

8:22 Speaker 1: His disinformation was critical to D Day, as he convinced

8:25 Speaker 1: Hitler the real invasion would be at Calais, not Normandy.

8:29 Speaker 1: Garbo fought the Nazis with imagination and a really good

8:33 Speaker 1: poker face.

8:34 Speaker 2: Japan's last holdouts.

8:36 Speaker 1: The war ended in nineteen forty five, but some Japanese

8:39 Speaker 1: soldiers didn't get the memo. Officer Hirou Onoda hid in

8:43 Speaker 1: the Philippine jungle for twenty nine years, convinced the war

8:47 Speaker 1: was still on. Locals tried to tell him it was over,

8:51 Speaker 1: but he assumed it was Allied trickery. Finally, in nineteen

8:55 Speaker 1: seventy four, his former commanding officer traveled to the jungle

8:59 Speaker 1: to purse, only order him to surrender. Onoda stepped out,

9:03 Speaker 1: uniforms still neat, rifles still loaded.

9:07 Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by Onoda watches Never late,

9:11 Speaker 3: Never Surrender, guaranteed for twenty nine years. In the Jungle.

9:16 Speaker 1: Chocolate Bombs, the Nazis designed exploding chocolate bars intended to

9:22 Speaker 1: assassinate British officials. When broken, they triggered a small bomb.

9:27 Speaker 1: MI five agents discovered the plot and displayed samples. Churchill

9:32 Speaker 1: was shown one and reportedly muttered, good God, not chocolate.

9:37 Speaker 1: Imagine surviving the blitz only to be killed by a KitKat.

9:41 Speaker 2: The Yamato Battleship.

9:43 Speaker 1: Japan built the Yamato the largest battleship ever, weighing seventy

9:48 Speaker 1: two thousand tons and armed with guns the size of

9:51 Speaker 1: small houses. It was a marvel of engineering, at least

9:56 Speaker 1: until aircraft carriers made such ships obsolete. The Yamato spent

10:01 Speaker 1: most of its career hiding before being sunk in nineteen

10:04 Speaker 1: forty five. It was basically the military equivalent of buying

10:08 Speaker 1: a sports car right before gas Price's skyrocket.

10:12 Speaker 2: Hitler's nephew, Adolf.

10:14 Speaker 1: Hitler's nephew, William Patrick Hitler, moved to the US and

10:18 Speaker 1: enlisted in the Navy in nineteen forty four. Yes, while

10:22 Speaker 1: Uncle Adolph was ranting in Berlin, his nephew was wearing

10:25 Speaker 1: an American uniform. After the war, he changed his name

10:29 Speaker 1: and lived quietly on Long Island. Imagine family reunions at

10:34 Speaker 1: the Hitler house. So, Billy, what have you been up to? Oh,

10:39 Speaker 1: you know, just fighting Nazis.

10:43 Speaker 2: The Phantom of Stalingrad.

10:45 Speaker 1: Vassili Zeitsef, a Soviet sniper, became a hero during the

10:49 Speaker 1: Battle of Stalingrad with two hundred and twenty five confirmed kills.

10:54 Speaker 1: Soviet propaganda turned him into a symbol of defiance, sparking

10:58 Speaker 1: stories of epic sniper duel with German sharpshooters. Whether all

11:02 Speaker 1: the stories are true or not, Zetzef became the Phantom

11:05 Speaker 1: of Stalingrad, a living ghost haunting German troops.

11:09 Speaker 2: Phantom armies, and wooden guns.

11:13 Speaker 1: Just like in World War One, both sides used decoys.

11:16 Speaker 1: The British built fake airfields complete with wooden planes, Germans

11:21 Speaker 1: bombed them, sometimes multiple times, never realizing they were hitting plywood.

11:26 Speaker 1: Allied troops nicknamed them shadow squadrons. Entire campaigns were fought

11:32 Speaker 1: against firewood and paint.

11:34 Speaker 2: Exploding volcanoes of strange.

11:37 Speaker 1: By the end of World War II, soldiers had seen

11:40 Speaker 1: everything bears as comrades, pigeons saving lives, and Disney cartoons

11:45 Speaker 1: telling them to file taxes. But perhaps the strangest fact

11:49 Speaker 1: of all is how many soldiers later admitted the bizarre moments,

11:53 Speaker 1: the fake tanks, the beer loving bear, the ghost armies

11:57 Speaker 1: were what kept them sane, because sometimes the only way

12:01 Speaker 1: to survive horror is with absurdity. And there you have it.

12:06 Speaker 1: Twenty of the strangest, funniest, and most absurd true stories

12:10 Speaker 1: from World War Two proof that even in humanity's darkest hours,

12:15 Speaker 1: history still had room for comedy, chaos, and cartoon logic.

12:20 Speaker 3: This episode was brought to you by exploding chocolate, mad

12:23 Speaker 3: Jack's cutlery, and Onoto watches. Remember, folks, strange history never surrenders.