(In Pics) Six Moments from WW2 that Most have Forgotten

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World War Two, right? Tom Hanks storming the Normandy beaches, Europe in ruins, the siege of Stanlingrad, the death camps, the Nazi wunderwaffe: we all know the story of this greatest and most destructive of human conflicts.

At least, these are the things we remember about the Second World War. As the go-to conflict for US cinema for decades, the narrative became entrenched and the public expected to see these common tropes trotted out whenever they watch a movie set in this time period.

But this was a world war, after all, and quite a lot of the conflict has not fired the imagination of Hollywood producers to this extent. There are many events strange occurrences, tragedies and atrocities which are, comparatively, largely forgotten in the public consciousness.

Here are six such examples.

1. Bicycle Infantry

*Almost every country involved in WW2 used* *bicycles* *as a quick, reliable and effective means of moving their infantry troops around the theatre of war. The* *Japanese* used bicycles to quickly advance on “Fortress” Singapore and their swift deployment into advanced positions was instrumental in their defeat of the British. The Germans also used bicycles in their invasion of Norway and Poland. Above are pictured German SS troops with bicycles (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S73823 / *CC-BY-SA 3.0 de*)

2. The Battle of River Plate

The Nazi armed forces in 1939 were formidable indeed. The Army had their modern Panzers and the Luftwaffe their agile and brilliant fighter planes, and on the water the Kriegsmarine had a formidable fleet of submarines, as well as powerful modern *battleships. One such, the Admiral Graf Spee, was the terror of the southern* *Atlantic* until it was defeated in a brilliant British deception: intercepted communications suggested the British had a powerful naval force in the area and the mighty German ship was scuttled in what became known as the Battle of River Plate, but it was all a ruse (Imperial War Museum / *Public Domain*)

3. The Kaunas Pogrom

*One of the worst of the early atrocities in the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s double crossing of the* *Soviet Union, the Kaunas Pogrom was a four-day massacre of Jews living in Kaunas, Lithuania, in June 1941. It is a point of contention whether the attacks were started by the* *Nazis* or Lithuanian criminals, but they took the form of a series of public executions. Most horrifically, on 27 June an unknown German soldier, nicknamed the Death Dealer, systemically beat a crowd of Jewish captives to death with an iron bar (*© Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum*)

4. Operation Gomorrah

*Operation Gomorrah* was a massive bombing campaign carried out by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force against Hamburg from July 24 to August 3, 1943. The operation created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Allies during WW2, killing an estimated 37,000 civilians and wounded more than 180,000. Ultimately, it destroyed pretty much the entire city. Allied *carpet bombing* *of German cities is often left out of the World War Two narrative, history being written by the winners and all that (Ian Dunster /* *Public Domain*)

5. The Siege of Leningrad

*Stalingrad gets all the plaudits as the high water mark for Nazi advances into* *Russia*, and is rightly celebrated as the point the Nazi advance was turned back in the East. But in truth the Nazis were advancing over a much wider front and encompassed many more cities in their increasingly desperate bid for *Moscow*. The Siege of Leningrad was one of the most destructive conflicts in the entire war, and one of the longest, lasting 872 days from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944. Over a million Nazi and Soviet soldiers would die during the siege (Boris Kudoyarov / *Public Domain*)

6. Aktion T4

*Pictured above is the order from* *Adolf Hitler* to commence Aktion T4, a programme of “involuntary euthanasia” targeting groups considered as “incurably sick” by the Nazi regime. Named after the address of the department responsible, it directed German physicians to administer a “mercy death” to those targeted by the order. Those considered to have mental or physical defects were targeted first, but the order soon expanded to include entire races and became a central part of the Nazi eugenics program. As many as 300,000 people were killed under Aktion T4, and the development of lethal gas as a method to kill large numbers of people was co-opted by the Reich Interior Ministry for later use in the *Nazi* *death camps, where millions more would die (Marcel /* *Public Domain*)

Top Image: A Hungarian soldier with a bicycle, 1943: bicycle infantry are one of the largely forgotten aspects of World war Two. Source: FORTEPAN; Pétek Edit / CC BY-SA 3.0.

By Joseph Green

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Joseph Green

Joseph Green is editor for Historic Mysteries, which combines his background in English Literature with a lifelong fascination for the strange and the unexplained. Read More