World War II is the most interesting. When were the reports about the Second World War dictated by Levitan recorded? Another interesting WWII fact about pilots

In the year of victory over fascism, Nazism and Japanese militarism, Bob Marley and Nikita Mikhalkov, Evgeny Petrosyan and Leonid Yakubovich were born, but Pugacheva, Putin and Schwarzenegger were not yet “in the project”. You see how long ago that time was. And if we stop celebrating Victory Day, soon our children will become like English schoolchildren, among whom three out of four do not know. And in Japanese schools, in general, the history of World War II is not discussed separately. So, a few words about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and about brothels in Japanese-occupied territory, desu.

If you don’t read books, but gain knowledge about world massacre number two from computer games and films made by those born in '45, you can miss not only interesting, but also important. And then it will remain a mystery under what kind of bridge Hitler was caught with his tail or why the stew was called the “second front”.

But really, why, and what kind of war was it?

1. Second World War- the most destructive conflict in human history. The most money was spent on its implementation, the greatest damage was caused to the economy and property, the maximum number of people was killed - according to various sources, from 50 to 70 million people. More than any other war, World War II influenced the further course of world history.

2. Suffered the greatest humanitarian losses in the war Soviet Union- 26.6 million people, and that’s official.

3. Four out of five German soldiers, killed on the battlefields, laid down their lives on the Eastern Front.

4. The Holocaust claimed the lives of one and a half million children. Approximately 1.2 million of them were Jews, tens of thousands were from Roma families.

5. Eighty percent of Soviet men born in 1923 did not live to see the end of the Great Patriotic War Patriotic War.

6. The Battle of Stalingrad, which became a turning point in the war, turned out to be the bloodiest in the history of the world, approximately 1.6 million people died in it. The corpses were counted in piles and buckets.

7. In the occupied German territories, Red Army soldiers raped more than 2 million German women aged 13 to 70 years. The winners are not judged.

8. On the bank deposit of Max Heiliger - a man who did not exist - the SS men put money, gold and jewelry that they seized from the Jews.

9. The swastika is an ancient religious symbol used by many civilizations. It still occurs in the symbolism of Hinduism and Buddhism. Swastikas were found in the ruins of ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese temples. Greetings in various Asian languages come from the Sanskrit word “svasti” (compare with “hello”). Hitler adopted the swastika as the symbol of the National Socialists in 1920. The flag with it too. At the same time, swastika stripes were also worn by soldiers of the southern units of the Red Army, recruited from Kalmyk Buddhists, who were distinguished by their special military audacity.

10. In 1935, British engineer Robert Watson-Watt began work on a “death ray.” This was the name given to a supposedly possible creation of a beam of radio waves that could destroy solid objects - enemy aircraft. Instead of a “death ray”, the result was a radar - a device for detecting aircraft and monitoring their movement. Nowadays, the United States has already learned how to shoot down ballistic missiles with a laser, but 68 years ago this could only have been science fiction.

11. Approximately 600 thousand Jews served in the US Army during World War II, about 8,000 of them died in battle, another 27 thousand were wounded, captured or missing.

12. More people died during the siege of Leningrad Soviet people(military and civilian) than on other fronts of the war of the Americans and the British combined.

13. Japanese kamikazes as a phenomenon appeared in October 1944, the idea of Vice Admiral Onishi, in response to the technological superiority of US forces. Approximately 2,800 suicide pilots were killed in action. They sank 34 American ships, damaged 368, killed 4,900 sailors and wounded 4,800.

14. Many Jews in the camps became subjects of medical experiments. For example, doctors irradiated the gonads of men and women with X-rays to find out what dose of radiation was sufficient to sterilize Untermensch. Surgeons broke and fused bones of experimental prisoners many times in order to find out how much regeneration bone tissue is capable of. The science of organ transplantation was also developing at full speed. The results of many nightmarish experiments have been useful to modern peaceful medicine. But their very fact led to the taboo of eugenics. Japanese military doctors carried out similar experiments on residents of China, preparing for a chemical-bacteriological war against the USSR and Mongolia.

15. Dr. Joseph Mengele used approximately 3 thousand twins, mainly from among the Gypsies and Jews, for his savage genetic exercises. Only about 200 of them survived. One day, a doctor came up with the idea to create artificial “Siamese twins” by combining two ordinary, Romanian ones. Did the “Angel of Death” plan to open a circus after the war?

16. In addition to Jews and Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses were also thrown into the gas chambers of the Third Reich - a total of approximately 11 thousand adherents of the multinational sect.

17. In 1941, a private in the American army received $21 a month, in 1942 - already $50.

18. During the air attack on Pearl Harbor, out of 96 laid up US Navy ships, 18 were disabled. 2,402 Americans were killed and 1,280 were wounded.

19. German submarines sent about 2,000 ships of the anti-Hitler coalition to the bottom, at the cost of losing 781 submarines.

20. The first jet aircraft were used by the Germans in World War II. Among these is the Messerschmitt ME-262. However, these successful fighting machines were created too late to influence the outcome of the conflict.

21. The most powerful self-propelled artillery gun in history was named “Karl” in honor of its developer, General Karl Becker. The length of the barrel was 4.2 meters. Shells with a 60-centimeter diameter pierced concrete walls two to three meters thick. Only seven such monsters were created. The Karl guns were used by the Krauts during the siege of the Brest Fortress and Sevastopol.

22. In Berlin, there was a brothel called “Salon Kitty” for foreign diplomats and other important people. The brothel was stocked with microphones, and 20 top-class prostitutes underwent a multi-week intensive course in spy training. They were trained to extract important information from clients through idle chatter. A feature film was made about a brothel.

23. The Second World War put an end to the planetary dominance of old Europe, its teeth were knocked out, and the centers of influence on the weather in our big house called Earth moved to the USA and the Soviet Union, countries that became superpowers. Invention and first application experiences nuclear weapons marked the beginning of the Cold War, which some people are still itching to imitate.

24. Most historians believe that the first day of World War II was September 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland. Others say that the global carnage began much earlier - on September 18, 1931, with the invasion of Japanese troops in Manchuria. But there are also scientists who generally consider the 1st and 2nd World Wars to be one protracted war with a break for the growth of a new generation of cannon fodder.

25. During the war, hamburgers in the United States were called “Liberty Steaks” to avoid sounding Germanic. Hamburg, they say, and we will bomb the burghers there and eat steaks, if you please.

26. Erich "Bubie" Hartmann, a German military pilot, became and is still considered the best fighter ace in aviation history during the war. He has 352 aerial victories, incl. 345 - over Soviet aircraft, in 1525 combat missions. After the war, the first ace of the Reich spent 10 years in Soviet camps, and upon returning to Germany, he commanded a Bundeswehr squadron. At the age of 48, he retired, not wanting to fly on “bad American planes,” which at that time were really so-so.

27. Adolf Hitler's nephew William fled to the United States shortly before the war, and, with the permission of President Roosevelt, participated in the war against his uncle. William Patrick Hitler was a pharmacist's assistant, so he only beat the Nazis indirectly. After the war, he changed his last name to Stewart-Houston and became rich from his memoirs.

28. The German Nazis exterminated millions of Poles. But some Polish children seemed to them anthropologically similar to the Germans, so the Nazis kidnapped about 50 thousand boys and girls from Polish families for “Germanization” in the homes of the “true Aryans” of Vaterland.

29. A purely Nazi invention were the so-called. Sonderkommando. In Auschwitz, the Sonderkommando was a special unit of physically strong prisoners who were tasked with inviting newly arrived “subhumans” into the gas chamber, then removing the corpses and pulling out the gold teeth, and then burning and/or burying them. The team members naturally became wild and went crazy.

30. Above Hitler’s desk hung a photo of Henry Ford in a decorous frame. In turn, Ford carefully kept the portrait of the Fuhrer on his desk in Dearborn. The great industrialist was an anti-Semite and the Fuhrer personally admiringly referred to him in the book “My Struggle.” However, the Ford company was also friends with the Soviet Union. I wonder if Zionists drive Fords today?

31. The greatest tank battle in history took place between the forces of the Red Army and the German invaders on the Kursk Bulge from July 5 to August 23, 1943. Almost 6 thousand tanks, 4 thousand aircraft, about two million soldiers and officers took part in it. After Battle of Kursk Soviet troops finally seized the strategic initiative.

32. The mortality rate among German, Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian prisoners of war in Soviet camps (a piece of wild land fenced with barbed wire) reached 85 percent. In camps for displaced persons in 1945, many German war criminals posed as refugees, thus avoiding hot pursuit of retribution.

33. A huge number of Japanese spies worked in Mexico, from where they tried to monitor the US Atlantic Fleet.

35. If it became necessary to drop a third atomic bomb, then Tokyo would be the next target city. There were plans for Kyoto, but the Americans decided not to touch it due to its cultural and historical value. You see, they didn’t feel sorry for German Dresden. But there are half of them without nuclear warheads ancient city razed to the ground.

36. Rudolf Hess, who held the rank of “Deputy Fuhrer,” was called “Fräulein Anna” behind his back at the top of the Reich - because of homosexual inclinations. Hess's second nickname was “Brown Mouse.” After fleeing to Britain, Genosse Rudolf was declared insane and became the last prisoner in the Tower of London prison, where he served from 1941 until the Nuremberg trials. Until his death in 1987, Hess remained a convinced National Socialist, and in 2011, the German authorities destroyed his grave so that neo-Nazis would not hold their Sabbaths there.

37. The name of the automobile concern “Volkswagen” was invented by Hitler, who wanted to give the people of Germany the opportunity to purchase strong and inexpensive cars. The development of which was entrusted to the well-known Jacob Porsche.

38. The United States of America was the only country against which the Reich government officially declared war - on December 11, 1941. The Germans did not stand on ceremony with other states.

39. The Nazis called their regime the Third Reich (lasted from 1933 to 1945) because the First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806), and the Second was the united Germany of 1871-1918. The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was destroyed by the World Economic Crisis and the rise of Adolf Hitler to totalitarian power. Every revolution has its Napoleon.

40. An amazing battle with the participation of cavalry took place on August 2, 1942 near the village of Kushchevskaya, Krasnodar Territory. The Cossack units of the Red Army offered fierce resistance to the Nazi advance. Some sources report that in the Battle of Kushchevsky horsemen successfully attacked tanks. The angry Cossacks chopped down the German infantry, as in the First World War, with sabers, into cabbages.

41. To this day, the legendary Soviet “Katyusha”, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher based on a truck, is considered a very effective means of combat. Adopted into service in the early days of the Great Patriotic War, the Katyusha could fire up to 320 shells in 25 seconds. The Germans called these machines “Stalin's organs” for their resemblance to the pipe system of a musical instrument and the deafening roar during firing.

42. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, US President Roosevelt wanted a bulletproof car. Since by law it was forbidden to spend more than $750 on a car, Roosevelt received a Cadillac limousine that belonged to a gangster for free. The President even joked about this: “I hope Mr. Capone won’t mind.” And Mister was in prison and suffered from syphilis.

43. In the German elections of 1928, less than 3% of Germans voted for the NSDAP. And exactly ten years later, Adolf Hitler was named Time magazine's man of the year. But in 1939 and 1942, that is, twice, Joseph Stalin was declared person of the year, in 1940 and 1949 - Winston Churchill. Know ours.

44. The Nazis “licked” the Nazi salute from the Italian fascists, and those from the ancient Romans. From whom the Romans themselves spied the “ridge” is not really clear.

45. In 1974, Japanese intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, born in 1922, came out to people from the jungle of the Pacific island of Luban. He Robinson lived on it for 29 years (a year longer than the hero of Defoe’s book), not knowing that his country had capitulated and nothing threatened him. So the Soviet joke about the partisan grandfather who derailed trains for many years after the Victory is not such a fairy tale.

46. The war between the USSR and Japan formally, on paper, ended only in 1956. But a “bad peace” did not work out either - the corresponding agreement has not yet been signed. Therefore, Japan considers the southern Kuril Islands its own, and half of Sakhalin as a territory with an unsettled status. From time to time the Kremlin promises to give the Japanese Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and all sorts of Habomai, but that’s what the Kremlin makes promises. Meanwhile, in the southern Kuril Islands, ancient Russian melancholy is blooming with concrete graying.

47. Writer Ian Fleming “based” his agent “007” on the spy of Yugoslav origin Dusko Popov (1912 - 1980). This guy came into intelligence with knowledge of 5 languages and his own recipe for sympathetic ink. Popov was the first superspy to take photographs on microfilm. Dusko knew when the Japanese were going to attack Hawaii, but the FBI did not believe the intelligence officer. After retiring, the spy lived happily in a penthouse and had a reputation as a womanizer, the likes of which the world has never seen.

48. Since 1942, American military sailors in Pacific Ocean used the Navajo Indians to encrypt and decipher radiograms. The Navajo language did not have words for, for example, torpedo or bomber, so they were replaced by "folk" ones. About 400 Indians worked for the Victory; their unusual language, and even encrypted, was too much for the Japanese.

49. In 1939, the Nazis launched the T4 euthanasia program in Germany, according to which from 80 to 100 thousand German disabled people, paralytics, epileptics, mentally retarded people and the insane were taken from hospitals and killed. At first, injections were used for killing, then poisonous gases. The program was closed after numerous protests from relatives of patients and church authorities.

50. All countries participating in the war had chemical munitions, but, according to the Geneva Protocol of 1925, they had no right to use them. The convention, however, was ignored by the Italian fascists in Ethiopia (1936) and the Japanese militarists in China. The farther from Geneva, the more “possible”.

On May 8, 1945, the Act of Unconditional Surrender of the Germans was signed. armed forces, which meant the cessation of hostilities on all fronts and the end of the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet people. May 9 of the same year went down in history as Victory Day. Very soon we will celebrate the 70th anniversary of this important event for all of us. On the occasion of the holiday, we have collected the most interesting facts not only about the Great Patriotic War, but also about the Second World War in general.

1. During World War II, Japan dropped bombs filled with fleas infected with bubonic plague on China. This entomological weapon caused an epidemic that killed between 440 thousand and 500 thousand Chinese.

2. During World War II, Princess Elizabeth (the current Queen of Great Britain) served as an ambulance driver. Her service lasted five months.

3. Japanese soldier Hiro Onoda surrendered 27 years after the end of World War II. The junior lieutenant of military intelligence of the Japanese armed forces hid on the island of Lubang until 1974, not believing in the end of the world conflict and continuing to collect information about the enemy. He regarded information about the end of the war as massive disinformation on the part of the enemy and surrendered only after former Imperial Japanese Army Major Yoshimi Taniguchi personally arrived in the Philippines and gave the order to cease combat operations.

4. The number of Chinese killed by the Japanese during World War II exceeds the number of Jews killed due to the Holocaust.

5. During World War II, the Paris Cathedral Mosque helped Jews escape German persecution; Fake Muslim birth certificates were issued here.

6. 80% of all Soviet men born in 1923 died during World War II.

7. Winston Churchill lost the election in 1945 after winning World War II.

8. In 1942, during the bombing of Liverpool, carried out on the orders of the Fuhrer, the area where his nephew, William Patrick Hitler, was born and lived for some time was destroyed. In 1939, William Patrick left Great Britain for the United States. In 1944, he enlisted in the US Navy, burning with hatred for his uncle. He later changed his last name to Stewart-Houston.

9. Tsutomu Yamaguchi - a Japanese man who survived both atomic bombings Japan - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The man died in 2010 from stomach cancer at the age of 93.

10. During World War II, Japan accepted Jewish refugees and rejected German protests.

11. At least 1.1 million Jewish children were killed during the Holocaust.

12. A third of the Jews alive at that time were killed during the Holocaust.

13. Czechoslovak President Emil Haha suffered a heart attack during negotiations with Hitler regarding the surrender of Czechoslovakia. Despite his serious condition, the politician was forced to sign the act.

14. In October 1941, Romanian troops controlled Nazi Germany More than 50,000 Jews were killed in Odessa. Today the event is known under the term “murder of the Jews of Odessa.”

15. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Canada declared war on Japan even earlier than the United States.

16. During World War II, Oscar figurines were made of plaster due to a metal shortage.

17. During the German occupation of Paris, Adolf Hitler was unable to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower because the elevator drive was deliberately damaged by the French. The Fuhrer refused to go up on foot.

18. During World War II, doctor Eugeniusz Lazowski and his colleague saved 8,000 Jews from the Holocaust. They simulated a typhus epidemic and thus stopped the entry of German troops into the city.

19. Hitler planned to capture Moscow, kill all the inhabitants and create an artificial reservoir on the site of the city.

20. Russians killed more Germans during Battle of Stalingrad than the Americans during the entire Second World War.

21. Carrots do not improve vision. This is a false belief that was spread by the British in order to hide from the Germans information about new technologies that allowed pilots to see German bombers at night during the Second World War.

22. Spain maintained neutrality in the First and Second World Wars, but was subjected to civil war(1936-1939), in which 500,000 people died.

23. During the German invasion of Poland, Wizna was defended by only 720 Poles, holding back the onslaught of the German 19th Army Corps, which consisted of more than 42 thousand soldiers, 350 tanks and 650 guns. They managed to stop the advance for three days.

World War II killed 20% of Poland's population, the highest figure of any country.

24. Brazil was the only independent country Latin America which took direct part in the hostilities of World War II.

25. Mexico was the only country to oppose the German annexation of Austria in 1938 just before the outbreak of World War II.

26. During World War II, 2 million German women aged 13 to 70 were raped by Red Army soldiers.

27. In World War II, the United States and New Zealand secretly tested 3,700 tsunami bombs that were intended to destroy coastal cities.

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1. On October 30, 1939, the British battleship Nelson was attacked by a submarine, but the torpedoes did not explode. It turned out that the Nelson was commanded by Winston Churchill. The torpedoes that did not fire saved his life, and the further history of those years also depended on him.

2. In 1938 Poland took the Cieszyn region from Czechoslovakia.

3. In 1939 The USSR handed over Vilnius to the Lithuanians, from whom this territory was taken away by the Poles 10 years ago.

4. In 1939 Polish emigrants publicly called on the USSR to go to war, and in 1941 they concluded a peace agreement.

5. The conflict between Poland and the Reich arose over the city of Danzig, where only Germans lived, but this territory also did not belong to the Poles.

7. The war officially ended on January 25, 1955

8. In the six months since the attack on the USSR, among the losses of the Soviet people there were about 3 million combatants.

9. Soviet troops defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad the most. Even though the Americans did not destroy the Nazis so much during the entire war.

10. The Reich forced Denmark to mine the Belta Straits to counter the English fleet.

11. The French SS defended the documents of the Reich to the last

12. In 1941, the population that was part of the Reich exceeded the Soviet people by 2 times.

13. The sovereign country of Tanu-Tuva was an ally of the USSR from the beginning of the war. This country does not exist now.

14. The Germans brought the Soviet T-35 tank onto the battlefield as a trophy, but it was immediately shot down by a Soviet soldier using a Faust cartridge.

15. The King of Romania was the only Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to be awarded the Order of Victory.

16. The Sudaev machine gun was considered the best weapon then.

War in the Arctic.

A German submarine discovered an Allied transport carrying fuel, ammunition, military equipment and tanks to Murmansk, surfaced and launched a torpedo almost point-blank at the ship. A huge blast wave tore off the tanks standing on the deck and lifted them into the air. Two tanks fell on the submarine. The German submarine sank immediately.

Radio.

At the beginning of October 1941, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command learned about the defeat of its three fronts in the Moscow direction from Berlin radio reports. We are talking about the encirclement near Vyazma.

English humor.

Famous historical fact. The Germans, demonstrating the supposedly impending landing on the British Isles, placed several dummy airfields on the coast of France, on which they “planed” a large number of wooden copies of aircraft. Work on creating these same dummy airplanes was in full swing when one day in broad daylight a lone British plane appeared in the air and dropped a single bomb on the “airfield”. She was wooden...! After this “bombing,” the Germans abandoned false airfields.

For the king.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, some cavalry units were given old checkers from a warehouse with the inscription “For the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland”...

English humor performed by a torpedo

A funny incident at sea. In 1943, a German and a British destroyer met in the North Atlantic. The British, without hesitation, were the first to fire a torpedo at the enemy... but the torpedo’s rudders jammed at an angle, and as a result, the torpedo made a cheerful circular maneuver and returned... The British were no longer joking as they watched their own torpedo rush towards them. As a result, they suffered from their own torpedo, and in such a way that the destroyer, although it remained afloat and waited for help, did not participate in hostilities until the very end of the war due to the damage received. Riddle military history There is only one thing left: why didn’t the Germans finish off the Anghichans?? Either they were ashamed to finish off such warriors of the “Queen of the Seas” and the successors of Nelson’s glory, or they laughed so hard that they could no longer shoot….

Clip.

Unusual intelligence facts. In principle, German intelligence “worked” quite successfully in the Soviet rear, except in the Leningrad direction. The Germans sent spies in large numbers to besieged Leningrad, providing everything necessary - clothing, documents, addresses, passwords, appearances. But, when checking documents, any patrol instantly identified “fake” documents of the German
production. The works of the best specialists in forensic science and printing were easily discovered by soldiers and officers on patrols. The Germans changed the texture of the paper and the composition of the paints - to no avail. Any even semi-literate sergeant of the Central Asian conscription identified the linden at first sight. The Germans never solved the problem.

And the secret was simple - the Germans, a quality nation, made the paper clips that were used to fasten documents from stainless steel, and our real Soviet paper clips were slightly rusty, the patrol sergeants had never seen anything else, for them the shiny steel paper clips sparkled like gold...

Old master.

An interesting story, which is difficult to verify, because this is not officially recorded. In Izhevsk, during the Great Patriotic War, mass production of PPSh assault rifles was launched. To prevent the barrel of the machine gun from heating up when firing, and to prevent deformation, a procedure for hardening the barrels was worked out. Unexpectedly, in 1944 there was a defect - during test firing the barrels were “velocated”. The special department, of course, began to investigate - to look for saboteurs, but they did not find anything suspicious. They began to find out what had changed in production. We found out that I was sick for the first time since the start of production. old master. They immediately “put him on his feet” and began to quietly monitor him.

To the amazement of the engineers and designers, a curious detail was revealed - the old master urinated in a quenching tank with water twice a day. But, the marriage disappeared!?? Other “masters” secretly tried to urinate, but it turned out that this particular person was required to participate in this “secret” procedure. They closed their eyes and continued to perform this secret function for a long time...

The master retired when the plant switched to producing the famous Kalashnikovs...

No man is an island.

It later turned out that it was the gun commander of the 137th Infantry Division of the 13th Army, Senior Sergeant Nikolai Sirotinin. He was left alone to cover the withdrawal of his unit. Sirotinin, took up an advantageous firing position from which the highway, a small river and a bridge across it were clearly visible. At dawn on July 17, German tanks and armored personnel carriers appeared. When the lead tank reached the bridge, a gun shot rang out. With the first shot, Nikolai knocked out a German tank. The second shell hit another one that was at the rear of the column. There was a traffic jam on the road. The Nazis tried to turn off the highway, but several tanks immediately got stuck in the swamp. And senior sergeant Sirotinin continued to send shells to the target. The enemy brought down the fire of all tanks and machine guns on the lone gun. A second group of tanks approached from the west and also opened fire. Only after 2.5 hours did the Germans manage to destroy the cannon, which managed to fire almost 60 shells. At the battle site, 10 shot down were burning out German tanks and armored personnel carriers. The Germans had the impression that the fire on the tanks was carried out by a full battery. And only later did they learn that the column of tanks was held back by one artilleryman.

Yes, this warrior was buried by the enemy! With honors...

One tank, a warrior in the field.

Also in July 1941, in Lithuania, near the city of Raseniai, one KV tank held back the entire offensive for two days!!! 4th German Tank Group Colonel General Gepner.tank kv

The crew of the KV tank first burned a convoy of trucks with ammunition. It was impossible to get close to the tank - the roads ran through swamps. The advanced German units were cut off. An attempt to destroy a tank with a 50-mm anti-tank battery from a distance of 500 m ended in complete fiasco. The KV tank remained unharmed, despite, as it turned out later, 14 !!! direct hits, but they only left dents in his armor. When the Germans brought up a more powerful 88-mm anti-aircraft gun, the tank crew allowed it to take a position 700 m away, and then shot it in cold blood before the crew could fire even one shot!!! At night, the Germans sent sappers. They managed to plant explosives under the tank's tracks. But the planted charges tore out only a few pieces from the tank’s tracks. The KV remained mobile and combat-ready and continued to block the German advance. On the first day, the tank crew was supplied with supplies local residents, but then a blockade was established around the KV. However, even this isolation did not force the tankers to leave their position. As a result, the Germans resorted to cunning. FIFTY!!! German tanks began to fire at the KV from 3 directions in order to divert its attention. At this time, a new 88 mm anti-aircraft gun was pulled to the rear of the tank. It hit the tank twelve times, and only 3 shells penetrated the armor, destroying the tank crew.

Not all generals retreated.

June 22, 1941 In the strip southwestern front Army Group “South” (commanded by Field Marshal G. Rundstedt) delivered the main blow south of Vladimir-Volynsky on the formations of the 5th Army of General M.I. Potapov and the 6th Army of General I.N. Muzychenko. In the center of the 6th Army zone, in the Rava-Russkaya area, the 41st Infantry Division of the oldest commander of the Red Army, General G.N., staunchly defended. Mikusheva. The division's units repelled the first enemy attacks together with the border guards of the 91st border detachment. On June 23, with the approach of the main forces of the division, they launched a counterattack and pushed the enemy back behind state border and advanced up to 3 km into Polish territory. But, due to the threat of encirclement, they had to retreat...

Grenade on planes.

During the defense of Sevastopol in 1942, the only case in the entire history of World War II and the Great Patriotic War occurred when the commander of a mortar company, Junior Lieutenant Simonok, shot down a low-flying German plane with a direct hit from an 82-mm mortar! This is as unlikely as hitting a plane with a thrown stone or brick...

From airplanes without a parachute!

A pilot on a reconnaissance flight during his return noticed a column of German armored vehicles moving towards Moscow. As it turned out -on a way There are no German tanks, no one. It was decided to drop troops in front of the column. They brought to the airfield only a complete regiment of Siberians in white sheepskin coats.

When the German column was walking along the highway, suddenly low-flying planes appeared ahead, as if they were about to land, having slowed down to the limit, 10-20 meters from the snow surface. Clusters of people in white sheepskin coats fell from airplanes onto a snow-covered field next to the road. The soldiers got up alive and immediately threw themselves under the tracks of the tanks with bunches of grenades... They looked like white ghosts, they were not visible in the snow, and the advance of the tanks was stopped. When a new column of tanks and motorized infantry approached the Germans, there were practically no “white pea coats” left. And then a wave of planes flew in again and a new white waterfall of fresh fighters poured from the sky. The German advance was stopped, and only a few tanks hastily retreated. Afterwards it turned out that only 12 percent of the landing force died when they fell into the snow, and the rest entered into an unequal battle. Although it is still a terribly wrong tradition to measure victories by the percentage of living people who died.

On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a German, American, or Englishman voluntarily jumping onto tanks without a parachute. They wouldn't even be able to think about it.

Elephant.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II only killed an elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Camel.

The photograph shows Stalingrad during the Great Patriotic War. The 28th Army, which was formed near Astrakhan, took part in the heavy battles near Stalingrad. By that time there was already tension with the horses, so they gave out the camels! It should be noted that the ships of the desert coped with their tasks very successfully. And a camel named Yashka even took part in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.

Shark.

During World War II, Americans got the jackpot... in the stomach of a shark! The shark managed to “manage” the sunken Japanese destroyer, and the Americans accidentally got hold of a secret Japanese code.

Deer.

There are also very exotic cases of using animals in the Great Patriotic War. An entry from the diaries of Konstantin Simonov, about the story of one colonel, how he suffered in the war with reindeer transport. “They are too unpretentious animals! They are so unpretentious that they eat nothing but their own reindeer moss. Where can you get it, this moss? If you give him hay, he shakes his head; if you give him bread, he shakes his head. Just give him moss. But there is no moss! So I fought with them, with the deer. I carried the load on myself, and they went looking for their moss.”

A cat is known from the stories of participants in the hardest Battle of Stalingrad. Through the ruins of Stalingrad, the cat made his way at night from the Soviet trenches to the German ones and back, receiving treats in both places.

Hare.

There is a known case when, during positional battles near Polotsk, shooting suddenly stopped simultaneously on both sides. It turned out that a hare ran out into the neutral zone and began carelessly scratching its shed side with its hind paw.

A sad, but entertaining and instructive fact about the Second World War.

In his memoirs of General Eisenhower, D. Eisenhower, " Crusade to Europe"), recalled a conversation with Marshal Zhukov.

Russian method of attacking through minefields. German minefields were very serious tactical obstacles that led to large military losses. Marshal Zhukov, during a conversation, spoke quite casually about his practice: “When we approach a minefield, our infantry attacks as if it were not there. We consider losses from anti-personnel mines to be approximately equal to those that machine guns and artillery would have inflicted on us if the Germans had decided to defend this area with large forces of troops, and not with minefields.” Eisenhower was shocked and could not imagine how long any American or British general would have lived if he had used such tactics. Especially if the soldiers of any of the American or British divisions found out about this.

On a ram with an open hatch!

Fighter pilot Borya Kovzan, returning from a mission, entered into battle with six German fighters. Having been wounded in the head and left without ammunition, Boris Kovzan radioed that he was leaving the plane and had already opened the canopy to leave it. And at that moment he saw a German ace rushing towards him. Borya Kovzan again grabbed the helm and directed the plane towards the ace. The pilot knew that during a ramming operation he should under no circumstances turn aside. If you turn, your enemy will beat you with a screw. He, of course, will also break his own screw, but theoretically he will be able to plan, at least in principle, and there will certainly be nothing left of the “victim.” This is a war of nerves. Well, if no one turns, then glory and honor to the two!
But the German ace was a real ace and knew it all, and didn’t swerve either, and both planes crashed head-on, but the German ace’s canopy was closed, and the seriously wounded Boris Kovzan flew unconscious through the canopy that was open by coincidence. air. The parachute opened and Boris Kovzan Twice Hero of the Union landed successfully, but first to the hospital, of course.

Unformatted!

Those who fought on eastern front The Germans completely refute the stereotypes we have based on films about the Second World War.

As German WWII veterans recall, “UR-R-RA!” they had never heard and did not even suspect the existence of such an attack cry from Russian soldiers. But they learned the word BL@D perfectly. Because it was with such a cry that the Russians rushed into an especially hand-to-hand attack. And the second word that the Germans often heard from their side of the trenches was “Hey, go ahead, fucking m@t!”, “This booming cry meant that now not only infantry but also T-34 tanks would trample on the Germans.

Another interesting WWII fact about pilots.

An order was received to bomb the occupied bridgehead Nazi troops. But the dense anti-aircraft fire of German guns burned our planes like matches. The commander changed course a little - he felt sorry for the crews. They would have burned everyone before reaching the bridgehead anyway. The planes bombed the usual forest area next to the German bridgehead and returned to the airfield. And the next morning a miracle happened. The impregnable bridgehead fell. It turned out that the carefully disguised headquarters of the central German group was completely destroyed at night in that very forest. The pilots did not receive any awards for this because they reported that the order had been carried out. Therefore, the headquarters was destroyed by someone unknown. The headquarters was looking for someone to reward, but they never found real Heroes...

Glamorous pink planes.

You can find many similar photographs of aircraft from World War II. But in reality, these planes did not look so gray and gloomy. In fact, they were a glamorous pale pink fighter from the Second World War. And this is not an accident.

Some fighter planes during World War II were so specialized that they only flew at certain times of the day. The beautiful pink RAF aircraft of the US No. 16 Squadron had a very big plus - they became almost invisible at both sunset and sunrise. And these “glamorous” fighters look really fun. And in fact, it was a really smart tactic to make stealth planes even then.

Gas attack in the metro.

The subway is the best shelter during air raids, everyone knows that. But in the subway you can be subject to a gas attack!

Do you think those in this photo are victims of a gas attack? No, it's just a normal night on the tube for Brits. When German air raids over London became almost regular, the unperturbed British quickly adapted to sleeping right on the subway. And while the Germans were bombing London, the British people slept together - gathered in a gigantic but well-mannered “heap”. Seriously, look at the guy in front of the photo: he didn’t even take off his hat in the subway during the bombing... apparently it’s more comfortable to sleep in it. Unfortunately, Muscovites cannot boast of such photographs. Firstly, in Stalin's times, taking photographs in the metro was prohibited. It was considered a military facility, so there are only a few photographs taken during World War II in the Moscow metro, including those specifically for Life magazine.

Obviously a “staged” photograph - Muscovites during air raids.

Life photojournalist at the Mayakovskaya station, at a time when Muscovites are taking cover from another air raid. Usually the raids began late in the evening, with the onset of summer twilight. There is a motionless train on the tracks. As you can see, standard wooden trestle beds are prepared in advance to accommodate small children. And one more thing: young and middle-aged women are dressed relatively well.

Spacesuits for babies.

Gas masks are not suitable for children, and yet somehow it was necessary to protect children from possible gas attacks. Thus, special devices have been developed to protect children in the event of a gas attack. Watch how mothers use a special pump to pump air into spacesuits for children. But it was thanks to these pumps that none of these children could fall asleep. It’s interesting that the mothers themselves were without gas masks, how were they going to breathe?

A plane without a wing.

This is the Avenger, a torpedo bomber from the USS Bennington, piloted by pilot Bob King during the Battle of Chichi Jima. He didn’t want to upset his loved ones, friends and family... so he managed to pull his plane out of a tailspin and fly to the airfield on this wounded plane without a wing! There is a legend that since then no one has ever denied the pilot Bob King a free drink at the bar.

Giant ears.

As funny as it looks, these are really big ears. This guy doesn't rest, but listens to the sky. In essence, this is a huge listening device. And the most interesting thing is that it really worked. AND the best way There was no way to hear the noise of bomber engines then. There is nothing high-tech about this setup, you simply plug a giant cone into your ear and listen to the sound of German pilots and planes. Elegant, effective and simple. The most popular caption for water photos during World War II was: “I just heard someone fart. Most likely, Goering’s pilots are already on their way to us.”

Half of you will be a fence, and the other half of you will be prisoners...

The fact remains that war is truly hell. And this is no longer a joke. And for the soldiers of the Red Army in 1941, it was hell on earth. Rare photos, which official propaganda does not like.

In 1939, Stalin and Hitler happily divided Europe in half by signing the famous pact. In 1941, Hitler beat Stalin by several days and was the first to attack the Soviet Union. Then, in 1941, as a result of Operation Barbarossa and taking the USSR by surprise, the Germans captured about 5,500 thousand prisoners of war - that’s five and a half million soldiers and officers. For such a number of prisoners, the Germans naturally did not even have the opportunity to build such huge camps in the first days of the war. Therefore, the Germans solved the problem this way: “Half of you will be a fence, and the other half of you will be prisoners.” Without a roof over their heads, with ruthless Nazi guards, they could only cuddle together at night to keep warm. At night, these camps were hell. The losses were so incomprehensibly great that according to the Germans, more than 3.3 million people died among Soviet prisoners of war alone.

7. Living Statue of Liberty.

In this photo you can see 18 thousand American soldiers standing in a formation that is very reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty. This photograph was used as an advertisement for war bonds during World War II.

Notice that if you just look at the base of the statue you will see a dozen soldiers standing there. But pay attention to the angle of the photo: This is not Photoshop - it simply didn’t exist then. And the image has almost ideal proportions. How did they do it? Well, the number of soldiers in the statue's formation increased exponentially the further away they were from the camera. For example, 12,000 soldiers took part in the formation of the torch alone. The entire statue, from feet to torch, is almost three hundred meters long.

Donkeys in World War II

TO In addition to elephants, camels and horses, donkeys also took part in World War II!

The donkeys, of course, did not want to go to war, but they were too stubborn to return home.
The Donkey Corps was a military unit deployed in 1943 for the invasion of Sicily. Bad roads and difficult conditions for ordinary vehicles forced the use of donkeys in Sicily! True, sometimes, because of their stubbornness, soldiers had to wear them...on themselves!

American children did the same greeting as the Hitler Youth!

Another interesting and little-known historical fact about the Second World War.

This is not a shot from the chronicle “What if the Nazis had won the war?” . This is a real photograph taken in an ordinary American classroom.

As you can imagine, as a result of World War II, and thanks to Hitler and stamps, many perfectly good things were destroyed forever. Like the tiny mustache, the swastika as a symbol of good luck, and all the hand signals that look anything like "Heil Hitler." But in fact, Hitler did not invent any of these symbols, but simply used them.

For example, in 1892, Francis Bellamy decided to come up with the American oath, as well as a characteristic hand gesture that should be made during the oath of allegiance to America, after the words "... one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

And it's a fact that for decades, children across America happily performed the "Heil Hitler" gesture, which was known in America as the Bellamy salute. But then the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini appeared in world history. When he came to power, he revived the so-called Roman salute, and Hitler thought it should be adopted, and a little later he adopted it as his Nazi salute. This caused obvious controversy when America entered World War II. It was somehow wrong for American children to do the same greeting as the Hitler Youth. Thus, during the war, Roosevelt adopted a new salute proposed by Congress - placing his right hand over his heart.

Thanks to the bra war?

An interesting historical fact about World War II, but it was the reason for the popularity of the bra among women. The fact is that before World War II, women did not really want to use this wardrobe accessory. But when men went to the front during World War II, women had to take their place in factories and factories. And as welders, and as turners, etc., a serious question arose about the safety of some parts of the female body. An industrial plastic bra was developed, which this girl is demonstrating.

By the way, it was in 1941 that a patent was received for a special cut of a bra made from natural materials, which finally solved the problem of poor fit of the bra cup to the body. And in 1942, a patent was issued for a length-adjustable bra clasp.

GRENADE ON AIRPLANES

ENGLISH HUMOR PERFORMED BY A TORPEDO

A funny incident at sea. In 1943, a German and a British destroyer met in the North Atlantic. The British, without hesitation, were the first to throw a torpedo at the enemy... but the torpedo’s rudders jammed at an angle, and as a result, the torpedo made a cheerful circular maneuver and returned... The British were no longer joking as they watched their own torpedo rush towards them. As a result, they suffered from their own torpedo, and in such a way that the destroyer, although it remained afloat and waited for help, did not participate in hostilities until the very end of the war due to the damage received. There is only one mystery left in military history: why didn’t the Germans finish off the British? Either they were ashamed to finish off such warriors of the “queen of the seas” and the successors of Nelson’s glory, or they laughed so hard that they could no longer shoot...

POLYGLOTS

Curious case happened in Hungary. Already at the end of the war, when Soviet troops entered Hungary, as a result of battles and communication, the majority of Hungarians were sure that “fucking your mother” was an accepted greeting, like “hello.” Once, when a Soviet colonel came to a rally with Hungarian workers and greeted them in Hungarian, he was answered in unison “fucking your mother!”

NOT ALL GENERALS RETURNED

On June 22, 1941, in the zone of the southwestern front, Army Group “South” (commanded by Field Marshal G. Rundstedt) delivered the main blow south of Vladimir-Volynsky on the formations of the 5th Army of General M.I. Potapov and the 6th Army of General I.N. Muzychenko. In the center of the 6th Army zone, in the Rava-Russkaya area, the 41st Infantry Division of the oldest commander of the Red Army, General G.N., staunchly defended. Mikusheva. The division's units repelled the first enemy attacks together with the border guards of the 91st border detachment. On June 23, with the arrival of the main forces of the division, they launched a counterattack, pushed the enemy back across the state border and advanced up to 3 km into Polish territory. But, due to the threat of encirclement, they had to retreat...

Unusual intelligence facts. In principle, German intelligence “worked” quite successfully in the Soviet rear, except in the Leningrad direction. The Germans sent spies in large numbers to besieged Leningrad, providing them with everything they needed - clothes, documents, addresses, passwords, appearances. But, when checking documents, any patrol instantly identified “fake” documents of German origin. The works of the best specialists in forensic science and printing were easily discovered by soldiers and officers on patrols. The Germans changed the texture of the paper and the composition of the paints - to no avail. Any even semi-literate sergeant of the Central Asian conscription identified the linden at first sight. The Germans never solved the problem. And the secret was simple - the Germans, a quality nation, made the paper clips that were used to fasten documents from stainless steel, and our real Soviet paper clips were slightly rusty, the patrol sergeants had never seen anything else, for them the shiny steel paper clips sparkled like gold...

FROM PLANES WITHOUT PARACHUTES

A pilot on a reconnaissance flight during his return noticed a column of German armored vehicles moving towards Moscow. As it turned out, there was no one in the path of the German tanks. It was decided to drop troops in front of the column. They brought to the airfield only a complete regiment of Siberians in white sheepskin coats. When the German column was walking along the highway, suddenly low-flying planes appeared ahead, as if they were about to land, having slowed down to the limit, 10-20 meters from the snow surface. Clusters of people in white sheepskin coats fell from airplanes onto a snow-covered field next to the road. The soldiers got up alive and immediately threw themselves under the tracks of the tanks with bunches of grenades... They looked like white ghosts, they were not visible in the snow, and the advance of the tanks was stopped. When a new column of tanks and motorized infantry approached the Germans, there were practically no “white pea coats” left. And then a wave of planes flew in again and a new white waterfall of fresh fighters poured from the sky. The German advance was stopped, and only a few tanks hastily retreated. Afterwards it turned out that only 12 percent of the landing force died when they fell into the snow, and the rest entered into an unequal battle. Although it is still a terribly wrong tradition to measure victories by the percentage of living people who died. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a German, American, or Englishman voluntarily jumping onto tanks without a parachute. They wouldn't even be able to think about it.

AND ONE WARRIOR IN THE FIELD

On July 17, 1941 (the first month of the war), Wehrmacht Chief Lieutenant Hensfald, who later died at Stalingrad, wrote in his diary: “Sokolnichi, near Krichev. In the evening, a Russian unknown soldier was buried. He alone, standing at the gun, spent a long time shooting at a column of our tanks and infantry. And so he died. Everyone was amazed at his courage." Yes, this warrior was buried by the enemy! With honors... Later it turned out that it was the commander of the gun of the 137th Infantry Division of the 13th Army, Senior Sergeant Nikolai Sirotinin. He was left alone to cover the withdrawal of his unit. Sirotinin, took up an advantageous firing position from which the highway, a small river and a bridge across it were clearly visible. At dawn on July 17, German tanks and armored personnel carriers appeared. When the lead tank reached the bridge, a gun shot rang out. With the first shot, Nikolai knocked out a German tank. The second shell hit another one that was at the rear of the column. There was a traffic jam on the road. The Nazis tried to turn off the highway, but several tanks immediately got stuck in the swamp. And senior sergeant Sirotinin continued to send shells to the target. The enemy brought down the fire of all tanks and machine guns on the lone gun. A second group of tanks approached from the west and also opened fire. Only after 2.5 hours did the Germans manage to destroy the cannon, which managed to fire almost 60 shells. At the battle site, 10 destroyed German tanks and armored personnel carriers were burning out. The Germans had the impression that the fire on the tanks was carried out by a full battery. And only later did they learn that the column of tanks was held back by one artilleryman. Yes, this warrior was buried by the enemy! With honors...

ENGLISH HUMOR

Well-known historical fact. The Germans, demonstrating the supposedly impending landing on the British Isles, placed several dummy airfields on the coast of France, on which they “planed” a large number of wooden replicas of airplanes. Work on creating these same dummy airplanes was in full swing when one day in broad daylight a lone British plane appeared in the air and dropped a single bomb on the “airfield”. She was wooden...! After this “bombing,” the Germans abandoned false airfields.

CAUTION, UNFORMAT!

The Germans who fought on the eastern front completely refute the stereotypes we have based on films about the Second World War. As German WWII veterans recall, “UR-R-RA!” they had never heard and did not even suspect the existence of such an attack cry from Russian soldiers. But they learned the word BL@D perfectly. Because it was with such a cry that the Russians rushed into an especially hand-to-hand attack. And the second word that the Germans often heard from their side of the trenches was “Hey, go ahead, fucking m@t!”, this booming cry meant that now not only infantry but also T-34 tanks would trample on the Germans.