The unofficial ww2 random facts thread

[Willhelm Gruber II]

and another one


LIQUIDATED

Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS, had his nephew, SS 1st Lieutenant Hans Himmler, demoted and sentenced to death for revealing SS secrets while drunk. The sentence was commuted and he was sent to the front as a parachutist. He was again charged with making derogatory remarks about the regime and sent to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich where he was finally 'liquidated' as a homosexual.

[panzermahn]

During a conference of the German OKW, Goering felt asleep with a map covering his face right in front of Hitler and his generals. But Hitler either doesn't care or doesn't bother at all...

[panzermahn]

Goebbels lost his virginity at the age of 30

[David W]

Goebbels lost his virginity at the age of 30

Why are you embarrassed? Did he lose it to you?

[panzermahn]

Goebbels lost his virginity at the age of 30

Why are you embarrassed? Did he lose it to you?

Don't be silly .. I am a straight guy

It's quite uncommon for men at that time to lose their virginity at that late age when National Socialist policy is to encourage higher German birthrate

[David W]

I wasn't being silly.
I was trying to be funny, without causing offence.
Apologies if you were upset by my post.

[sid guttridge]

Hi David W.,

Well I thought your post was funny and harmless and I suspect panzermahn probably thought the same really.

Cheers,

Sid.

[DXTR]

Goebbels lost his virginity at the age of 30

Why are you embarrassed? Did he lose it to you?

Don't be silly .. I am a straight guy

It's quite uncommon for men at that time to lose their virginity at that late age when National Socialist policy is to encourage higher German birthrate

This alleged inconsistency between Goerings sexual debut and National Socialist views on birth is farfetched. I don't know when the nazis started to advocate for a higher birthrate among women. But if we look at Goerings biography we will see that there is nothing strange about his rather late sexual debut. A debut that was to take place only less than a year after his initiation into the NS movement.

Goering was born in 1893. From 1912-1918 he was enlisted in the armed forces. There he was preoccupied with the war. He seemed to have been a man who cared much for traditions and virtues, he probably wouldn't like to loose his virginity to some random female acquaintance or prostitute. When he left the armed forces he met a woman in 1920.

Carin von Kantzow, a swede, began an adulterous relationship with Goering. They finally married on january 3 1923 when Carin got divorced from her husband. At the time of their marriage Goering was 30. So his loss of virginity seems to be coinciding with his first marriage. In a tradtionalist mind, sex before marriage is wrong. So what we have here is a traditionalist man who haven't met the right women to marry i.e. have sex with before he falls in love with Carin at the age of 27. He then waits for three years before she divorces her husband and marry Goering. After that, Goering the traditionalist could now do Carin.

In contemporary modern western society sex outside wedlock is quite common. Few today have their sexual debut with their spouse. But 80 years ago in certain traditionalist cicles in Germany such values were not that uncommon.

And if the nazis were advocating a higher birthrate among german women as early as 1923, there is nothing wrong in Goering saving his sexual debut for his spouse. NS philosophy was very conservative, and casual sex was not something that was advocated.

regards

[Magnus]

After that, Goering the traditionalist could now do Carin.

That's one way of putting it

You do have some good point in your argument, but that sentence really made me laugh.

[Dragunov]

i was bored, poking my head about in wikipedia and looked at an artikel on AT guns and found a link to anti-tank dogs. my response being along the lines to "wtf'? i had to check it out. here's a snippet:

The dogs were trained by Russians during World War II to be used against German tanks. Unfortunately, the Russians trained the dogs by placing food under their own tanks; consequently, in battle the dogs were as likely to run beneath a Russian tank as were to run under a German tank (the intended target). Also, the dogs were reluctant to run towards an active tank, and as such became a menace to everyone on the battlefield. In 1942, after the dogs forced an entire Russian tank division into retreat, the Russians withdrew the use of the dog mine.

whoa, whoa! baaaad idea.


rather unrelated but...

Exploding hamsters were an obscure in-joke in the early years of the Finnish computer magazine MikroBITTI.

From time to time, various articles in the magazine would include a comment about hamsters and Scotch tape (known as teippi in Finnish). As long as the hamsters were taped up, they were safe, but freeing a hamster from tape would cause it to explode.

The magazine staff were conscious of the obscurity of the joke and publicly admitted it. However, no explanation was ever given, and the joke fell into disuse in the 1990s.

The joke may have been influenced by hand grenade training in the Finnish Defence Forces.

[Dragunov]

the only person who escaped a Canadian POW camp was pilot Franz von Werra, who crashlanded in Winchet Hill, kent in sept 5, 1940. he was flying for II/JG.3 at the time and when he returned, he went back to service, eventually being killed on the ostfront

[Dragunov]

the only person who escaped a Canadian POW camp was pilot Franz von Werra, who crashlanded in Winchet Hill, kent in sept 5, 1940. he was flying for II/JG.3 at the time and when he returned, he went back to service, eventually being killed on the ostfront

[DXTR]

On the subject of animals.

Batbombing:

There are two versions of this event.

Version 1. During the war US planners were transfixed with the idea that the japanse people somehow was overly frightened by bats, as a sort of public hysteria. The airforce then began to develop the idea of dropping thousands of bats on the japanese cities to terrorize them into submission. The plan was eventually dropped as the airforce realised that the temperature in the bombbay in the high altitude bombers would freeze the bats to death. A similar plan was brought up surrounding Mount Fuji. Legend has it that if mount fuji was to turn red, disaster would fall upon the japanese nation. The idea was then to drop paint on the mountain. But when they realised how much paint would actually used to dye the Fuji, the idea was cancelled. (see John O’Beirne Ranelagh, The agency : the rise and decline of the CIA).

Version 2.

Bat bombs were tiny incendiary bombs attached to bats, that were developed by the United States during World War II with the hope of attacking mainland Japan. Four biological factors gave promise to this plan. First, bats occur in large numbers (four of the caves in Texas are each occupied by several million bats). Second, bats can carry more than their own weight in flight (females carry their young — sometimes twins). Third, bats hibernate, and while dormant they do not require food or complicated maintenance. Fourth, bats fly in darkness, then find secretive places (such as flammable buildings) to hide in daylight.

The plan was to release bomb-laden bats at night over Japanese industrial targets. The flying bats would disperse widely, then at dawn they would hide in buildings and shortly thereafter built-in timers would ignite the bombs, causing widespread fires and chaos. The bat bomb idea was conceived by dental surgeon Lytle S. Adams, who submitted it to the White House in January, 1942, where it was subsequently approved by President Roosevelt.[1] Adams was recruited to research and obtain a suitable supply of bats.

source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

Personally I believe version 2 sounds very strange and a bit unreal. But thats just my personal view.

[Reb]

Bat bombing - I first read of that back in the early sixties in the back of a classics illustrated comic book -it also described the more successful Japanese plan to use balloons to create forest fires in the pacific north west of the US.

Incidentally - the first US African American Paratrooper battalion was deployed to the area to act as the first smoke jumpers - airborne firefighters who jump into the target area. A risky business but done routinely these days.

They didn't get much credit at the time because the whole thing was hushed up for security reasons.

cheers
Reb

[Tom Houlihan]

DXTR, as "batty" as it sounds, I've seen a documentary or was it something on the 'Hysterical Channel' that showed the development of the delivery system for the bats? It was something like a cylindrical bathouse that would be dropped like a cluster munition. Each little bathouse had a parachute that would open. I forget how the cylinders opened.

As stated, the bats were supposed to hole up in eaves, attics, and the like, until their timed incendiaries went off. Call them early Kamikazes, if you will! Theoretically, it would have worked, but I guess there were some issues with the practical end of it!