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, where we dig through history's pockets and see what falls out. Sometimes it's metals, sometimes it's bones, and sometimes it's exploding chocolate bars. Today we're heading into World War two, a war that shaped the world, killed millions, and yet somehow managed to give us sword wielding soldiers, bears carrying AMMO ghost armies made of rubber tanks and pigeons that saved more lives than radios. So buckle up. This is twenty strangest facts from World War Two, and yes we have 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, a bow, and a set of bagpipes. He once led a charge into battle playing his pipes while bullets flew time he captured forty two Germans and a mortar crew armed only with his sword. When asked about his eccentric choice of weapons, he famously said, any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed. This man would have been thrown out of Comic Con for being too committed.

1:18 Speaker 3: Today's episode is sponsored by Mad Jack's Cutlery. Need to Storm Normandy forget guns, try our full line of broadswords, 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 unit of artists, sound engineers, and designers, the twenty third Headquarters Special Troops, better known as the Ghost Army. Their mission use inflatable tanks, fake radio chatter, and giant loudspeakers blasting recorded artillery to convince the Germans that Allied armies were somewhere else, and it worked. One operation tricked German intelligence into thinking thirty thousand troops were massing near the Rhine, when in reality it was one thousand men with a lot of hot air.

2:12 Speaker 1: Literally, this was the only war where you could defeat the Nazis with rubber balloons and 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. Raised on condensed milk. He quickly developed a taste for beer, cigarettes and roughhousing. But Woytec wasn't just a mascot. He carried one hundred pound artillery shells at the Battle of Monte Casino. The bear became a private in the Polish Army, complete with a service number and rank. After the war, he retired to Edinburgh Zoo, where veterans would visit him 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 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 found themselves in a biblical nightmare. Bombing runs triggered tremors that awakened Mount Vesuvius, which erupted for nearly two weeks. Lava destroyed planes at nearby airfields and covered everything in ash. As one gi wrote, fighting Nazis was bad enough, then 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 gy Joe. This plucky pigeon flew twenty miles in twenty minutes to deliver a message canceling a planned Allied bombing on an Italian village. If he had arrived just five minutes later, one thousand Allied troops would have been bombed by their own planes. He was awarded the Dicken Medal, the animal equivalent of the victim Cory Across. Honestly, pigeons are the unsung heroes of both world Wars, and probably 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 like something from Star Wars. The Schwerer Gustav fired seven ton shells that could travel twenty miles. Problem it needed four thousand men to operate, could only fire fourteen rounds per day, and had to be transported in twenty five separate train cars. It was less a weapon and more a theme park attraction for evil dictators.

4:40 Speaker 3: Feeling inadequate, try Gustav's Jim, where our weights start at 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 breaking recruiters, realized crossword enthusiasts made excellent cryptographers. The government even placed a public crossword puzzle in a newspaper as a secret recruiting test. Those who solved it fast enough were discreetly contacted. Imagine thinking you'd just won a crossword 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 massive aircraft carriers out of ice mixed with wood pulp called pie crete. Tests showed py crete was bulletproof and melted slowly. Plans were drawn to make a two thousand foot long iceberg aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, it cost too much and proved impractical. But just imagine the Allies commanding a 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 a wooden she nicknamed Cuthbert. She organized resistance networks, smuggled information, and even called in airstrikes. At one point she radioed London saying, Cuthbert is giving me trouble, but otherwise I am fine. The Nazis considered her the most dangerous Allied spy, 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, so they cut a deal with the US government to make propaganda films. Donald Duck starred in Dear Fure's Face, mocking Hitler, Mickey, Goofy, and even Pluto appeared in training reels about malaria, factory safety, and how to file taxes. Imagine Goofy teaching you to pay the irs, garsh, don't forget your deductions, high uck.

6:55 Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by Disney war tunes. 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 strapped tiny andcendiary bombs to bats, released them over Japanese cities, and let them roost in wooden buildings before detonating. In tests, some bats escaped and burned down a US air base. The project was scrapped, but somewhere in history's filing cabinets 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 nine thousand hydrogen balloons carrying bombs across the Pacific. They relied on jet stream winds to carry them to North America. Most popped harmlessly, but about three hundred reached the US in Canada. One tragically killed a minister's wife and five children on a picnic in Oregon, the only combat deaths 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 the Nazis he had an entire network of British spies. In reality, his network was imaginary. He even submitted fake expense reports for these phantom agents, and the Nazis paid him. His disinformation was critical to D Day, as he convinced Hitler the real invasion would be at Calais, not Normandy. Garbo fought the Nazis with imagination and a really good poker face.

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

8:36 Speaker 1: The war ended in nineteen forty five, but some Japanese soldiers didn't get the memo. Officer Hirou Onoda hid in the Philippine jungle for twenty nine years, convinced the war was still on. Locals tried to tell him it was over, but he assumed it was Allied trickery. Finally, in nineteen seventy four, his former commanding officer traveled to the jungle to purse, only order him to surrender. Onoda stepped out, uniforms still neat, rifles still loaded.

9:07 Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by Onoda watches Never late, Never Surrender, guaranteed for twenty nine years. In the Jungle.

9:16 Speaker 1: Chocolate Bombs, the Nazis designed exploding chocolate bars intended to assassinate British officials. When broken, they triggered a small bomb. MI five agents discovered the plot and displayed samples. Churchill was shown one and reportedly muttered, good God, not chocolate. 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 two thousand tons and armed with guns the size of small houses. It was a marvel of engineering, at least until aircraft carriers made such ships obsolete. The Yamato spent most of its career hiding before being sunk in nineteen forty five. It was basically the military equivalent of buying 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 enlisted in the Navy in nineteen forty four. Yes, while Uncle Adolph was ranting in Berlin, his nephew was wearing an American uniform. After the war, he changed his name and lived quietly on Long Island. Imagine family reunions at the Hitler house. So, Billy, what have you been up to? Oh, 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 Battle of Stalingrad with two hundred and twenty five confirmed kills. Soviet propaganda turned him into a symbol of defiance, sparking stories of epic sniper duel with German sharpshooters. Whether all the stories are true or not, Zetzef became the Phantom 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. The British built fake airfields complete with wooden planes, Germans bombed them, sometimes multiple times, never realizing they were hitting plywood. Allied troops nicknamed them shadow squadrons. Entire campaigns were fought 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 everything bears as comrades, pigeons saving lives, and Disney cartoons telling them to file taxes. But perhaps the strangest fact of all is how many soldiers later admitted the bizarre moments, the fake tanks, the beer loving bear, the ghost armies were what kept them sane, because sometimes the only way to survive horror is with absurdity. And there you have it. Twenty of the strangest, funniest, and most absurd true stories from World War Two proof that even in humanity's darkest hours, history still had room for comedy, chaos, and cartoon logic.

12:20 Speaker 3: This episode was brought to you by exploding chocolate, mad Jack's cutlery, and Onoto watches. Remember, folks, strange history never surrenders.