Skip to main content

Amazing facts of WW2

 The Second World War was arguably the most significant period of the 20th century. It brought about major leaps in technology and laid the groundwork that permitted post-war social changes including the end of European colonialism, the civil rights movement in the United States, and the modern women’s rights movement, as well as the programs for exploring outer space. The primary combatants were the Axis nations (Nazi Germany, Facist Italy, Imperial Japan and their smaller allies) and the Allied nations, led by Britain (and its Commonwealth nations), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America. The Allies were the victors. Two superpowers, the USA and USSR, emerged from World War II to begin a Cold War with each other that would define much of the rest of the century.

Canada produced more trucks than Germany, Italy and Japan COMBINED.

 

For every aircraft shot down in battle, another aircraft was lost due to a accident.

 

The British were able to create artificial moonlight during night-time battles.

 

More Russians died in the siege of one city (Leningrad) than the entire armies of the US and Britain COMBINED.

 

When the US declared war on Japan in 1941, there were a total of 1,000 nurses in the Army Corps. By the end of the war there were a total of 60,000 –  less than 1% of these nurses were black.

 

In 1939, Finland was attacked by the USSR, a nation with 41 times the population of Finland. During the war the USSR suffered well over half a million casualties (Kruchev stated at one point his estimate was nearly 1 million casualties) compared to Finland’s 70,000 casualties. This represents the most lop-sided casualties of any large scale conflict in history.

 

In 1941, the military of the United States was smaller than the Romanian military.

 

When Germany invaded Russia in 1941 during Operation Barbarossa, they invaded across a 2,400km front. 

 

In 1941 , the German military lost more soldiers to frostbite than they did the Soviet Army.

 

More V2 rockets fell on Belgium than did the United Kingdom.


 

A battalion of Japanese Americans liberated the Dachau prisoner camp. Initially American soldiers in the camp feared that soldiers from the Empire of Japan were there to kill them. The soldiers quickly realized they were mistaken when the soldiers spoke English and started passing out cigarettes.

 

The French government recruited SS and former Whermacht prisoners to fight against the Vietnamese in the French-Indochina war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Top 10 Countries That Disappeared In The 20th Century

    New nations seem to pop up with alarming regularity. At the start of the 20th century, there were only a few dozen independent sovereign states on the planet; today, there are nearly 200! Once a nation is established, they tend to stick around for awhile, so a nation disappearing is quite uncommon. It’s only occurred a handful of times in the last century. But when they do, they completely vanish off the face of the globe: government, flag, and all. Here then, in no particular order, are the top ten countries that had their moment in the sun but are, alas, no more.     10. East Germany, 1949-1990 East Germany , formally the German Democratic Republic or GDR ( German : Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR ), was a state in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War period. From 1949 to 1990, it administered the region of Germany that was occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II —the Soviet Occupation Zone of the...

Propaganda posters

I WANT YOU! Originally published as the cover for the July 6, 1916, issue of Leslie’s Weekly with the title “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” this portrait of “Uncle Sam” went on to become–according to its creator, James Montgomery Flagg–”the most famous poster in the world.” Over four million copies were printed between 1917 and 1918, as the United States entered World War I and began sending troops and material into war zones. We Can Do It!  We Can Do It! is a WW II era American wartime propoganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as a tool to boost worker morale. Surprisingly, the poster did not enjoy wide popularity during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called “We Can Do It!” but also mistakenly called “Rosie the Riveter” after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The “We Can Do It!” image was used to promote feminism and o...
13 Olympic Moments that Changed History   Paris, 1900: First female athletes   Women were never allowed to compete in the Olympics until the Paris Games in 1900, when their participation in lawn tennis and golf events secured a position for female athletes in future Games. The London 2012 Olympics signifies a new gender milestone with the debut of Women's Boxing, and it will also be the first Games in Olympic history with female athletes from every competing country.    Berlin, 1936: Owens breaks records     African-American athlete Jesse Owens broke records and won several gold medals, shattering Hitler’s aim to use the 1936 Games as an example of the “new Aryan man.” Owens later befriended his German competitor in the long jump, Luz Long, and the pair's lap of honor became a symbol of the triumph of sportsmanship over Nazi ideology.     London, 1948: Wheelchair athletes compete   English doctor Ludwig Gu...