Ten Amazing True Tales from World War II
By: Jennifer Lee
Tags: War, Resistance, World War II, History, Politics

Ten Amazing True Tales from World War II

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

There are countless stories to tell from the six years of the Second World War. Major events like the evacuation at Dunkirk, the London Blitz, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the D-Day invasion, and the Battle of the Bulge are common knowledge, but other consequential tales have flown under the radar.

Operation Gunnerside

In the early 1930s, chemist Leif Tronstad helped build the Vemork heavy-water plant in Norway that attracted Nazi interest in 1938 when they discovered the value of heavy water in their race against the Allies to develop an atomic bomb. Tronstad later provided intelligence to the Allies, and in 1941, he fled to London and trained Norwegian commandos.

The Vemork heavy water plant in western Norway (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In October 1942, Team Grouse parachuted in and gathered information while hunting reindeer and melting snow to survive. A month later, Operation Freshman was launched with thirty-nine British air troops on two gliders; both crashed, and the survivors were executed by the Gestapo.

At midnight on February 16, 1943, six more commandos parachuted in for Operation Gunnerside. There were only two paths into the plant - or so the Nazis thought. The commandos knew a third way: they travelled to the bottom of a gorge, crossed a frozen river, and climbed five hundred feet up what the Nazis thought was an unscalable cliff. They strategically placed their explosives and fled away on skis with Nazi troops in pursuit, but none were killed or captured. This sabotage was enough of a setback in the Nazis' development of an atomic bomb that they were ultimately unsuccessful.

The Niihau Zero

On December 7, 1941, Airman First Class Shigenori Nishikaichi crash-landed his Rei Shiki Sentoki (Type 0 Fighter) on the tiny Hawaiian island Niihau. Since they had no phones or electricity, residents had no clue about that morning’s tragedy, and they threw a luau for the injured pilot.

Remains of the Zero that crashed on Hawaii’s Niihau island, on display at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum. (Source: Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum)

Nishikaichi demanded the return of papers and weapons that ranch hand Howell Kaleohano had taken from the wreck, but Kaleohano refused. The pilot spoke to Yoshi Harada, a Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American), and told him about Pearl Harbor, but Harada didn't share that information. Instead, he and Nishikaichi began terrorizing the residents.

Under fire, the islanders fled into the jungle. Kaleohano got on a whaleboat and rowed for 10 hours to Kauai. Bene Kanahele, despite taking three bullets, slammed Nishikaichi into a stone wall; his wife, Ella, bashed the pilot's head with a rock, and Kanahele slashed his throat. Harada then shot himself, and his alliance with the pilot had far-reaching consequences.

“The incident was used to help justify the dislocation and internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans during the war,” says KT Budde-Jones, education director at Ford Island’s Pacific Aviation Museum - Pearl Harbor.

In 1946, Kaleohano was awarded a Medal of Freedom, and Bene Kanahele received a Medal of Merit and a Purple Heart. They were featured in the December 1942 issue of Reader’s Digest as “full-blooded descendants of ancient Hawaiian warriors.” Musician Alex Anderson wrote what became America’s first World War II victory song “They Couldn’t Take Niihau, No-How.”

The Night Witches

A few months into the massive Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union beginning in June 1941, the Soviets became desperate. Marina Raskova, the “Soviet Amelia Earhart," had received letters from women all across the country who wanted to be gunners and pilots, and she petitioned Stalin to let that happen.

Women pilots of the “Night Witches” receiving orders for an upcoming raid. (Credit: Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images)

The Soviet Union became the first country to permit women in combat when, on October 8, 1941, Stalin gave orders to deploy three all-female Air Force units, one of which, the 588th, had to fly outdated Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes — light, two-seater, open-cockpit planes that were training craft not meant for combat. The women had to fly at night, in subzero conditions, in these plywood-and-canvas contraptions, with no radar, guns, or radios, just rulers, stopwatches, flashlights, pencils, maps, and compasses. Parachutes were too heavy for their light aircraft. When they came under fire, the pilots had to dive, and if they were hit, their planes burst into flames.

Beginning in June 1942, forty-two-person crews set out several times each night. Before releasing bombs, they idled the engines and glided to the target area; this stealth mode made a whooshing sound that resembled a sweeping broom. This was why the Nazis called them Nachthexen, or “night witches." They were so feared and hated that any Nazi airman who downed one was automatically awarded an Iron Cross.

The Night Witches flew more than thirty thousand missions and dropped more than 23,000 tons of bombs. The 588th was the most highly decorated unit in the Soviet Air Force, with twenty-four of its members awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Courageous Polish Teen

When Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, fourteen-year-old Stefania Podgórska was working in a grocery store owned by the Diamants, a Jewish family. Stefania and her sister Helena, the only ones left of their family, stayed with the Diamants, but they were on their own when the town became Nazi territory, and Stefania took a job in a factory.

Stefania with some of the Jews she rescued, including Maks, top left, who she later married. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust

In 1942, transports began taking Jews to the Bełżec and Auschwitz death camps. Maks Diamant came to Stefania's door one day with torn clothes and a scratched face, saying that he had jumped out of a wagon heading to Bełżec. He asked Stefania to hide him and his family, who were still in the ghetto.

Stefania hid a total of thirteen Jews and even led some of the children out of the ghetto right under Nazi noses. After renting a larger house, wood and bricks were needed to make a hiding place in the attic, and nine-year-old Helena brought the bricks four or five at a time.

Two German soldiers appeared one day and gave them two hours to vacate. Maks urged Stefania and Helena to save themselves, but Stefania couldn't leave them. The whole group prayed together, and the German soldiers later returned and said they needed only one room. Two German nurses, with armed soldiers, soon moved in.

In June 1944, the approaching front led the Germans to evacuate, and the nurses, as they were leaving, offered to take Stefania with them. She agreed in order not to arouse suspicion, but at the last moment, she stayed behind. The next month, the hidden refugees were free for the first time in over a year.

A year later, Maks proposed to Stefania, and they married. In 1979, both sisters were awarded the medal Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Institute. Stefania’s story is the subject of the novel The Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron.

Danish Resistance Doctor

A lot has been written about the Danes ferrying their Jewish friends and neighbors to safety in neutral Sweden upon receiving word in late September 1943 that the Nazis were planning to round up Denmark’s Jews, not coincidentally during Rosh Hashanah. But most accounts leave out a very interesting detail.

A boat full of people escaping Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943. Boats ferried 7,000 Danish Jews to safety in neighboring Sweden. AFP/Getty Images

Since his childhood, Dr. Ernst Morch had been finding ingenious solutions to difficult problems. That ingenuity was vital to the Danish resistance when they rescued all but five hundred of the country’s seven thousand Jews.

Dr. Morch and a pharmacist friend experimented on a cocker spaniel until they perfected a combination of dried rabbit’s blood and cocaine that would coat the handkerchiefs of Danish fisherman who had hidden Jewish passengers on their boats. When Nazi search parties, with their bloodhounds, boarded those boats, the dogs were attracted to the handkerchiefs by the scent of the rabbit’s blood, and the cocaine temporarily deprived them of their sense of smell. Just another of Dr. Morch’s lifesaving solutions!

Teenage Nazi Killers

When the Nazis invaded The Netherlands in May 1940, Freddie and Truus Oversteegen, fourteen and sixteen respectively, distributed anti-Nazi newspapers and pamphlets for the Dutch resistance. Because of their youthful looks, they evaded suspicion. Even resistance leaders were unaware of their activities; in 1941, a commander of the local resistance recruited them.

Freddie Oversteegan joined the Dutch resistance at age 14 and took up arms against Nazis by the time she was 16. National Hannie Schaft Foundation

The girls learned how to shoot and sabotage. At least once, Truus seduced an SS officer into the woods where another resister shot him.

Soon, the sisters started going on missions by themselves, often ambushing their targets on their bikes. In 1943, they joined forces with Hannie Schaft, a university student who dropped out after refusing to sign a pledge of loyalty to Germany. The trio formed a resistance cell and became great friends.

Freddie and Truus were devastated when Hannie was arrested and executed in 1945, just three weeks before the war ended in Europe. In 2014, the sisters received national recognition for service to their country with the Mobilisatie-Oorlogskruis, or War Mobilization Cross.

D-Day medics

Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore, medics with the 101st Airborne Division, dropped into France early on June 6th, 1944 before the landings on the beaches of Normandy. They set up a first-aid station at a church in the tiny village of Angoville-au-Plain. Within hours, they were caring for dozens of wounded troops, and they risked their lives by periodically searching the field for more wounded.

Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore. Photo by Bill DeGiulio.

German troops left the medics alone when they saw that they were treating wounded from both sides. When American forces withdrew, the two medics continued their work despite being told they were on their own. Wright and Moore were unable to get supplies, and neither had time to sleep. At one point, a shell hit the church, causing more casualties, and the windows were shattered by gunfire.

Wright and Moore saved eighty lives during those three days. The shattered windows were replaced with two beautiful stained glass windows, one honoring the brave paratroopers who liberated Angoville-au-Plain and the other honoring Wright and Moore.

Bat Bombs

On January 12, 1942, Dr. Lytle Adams, a dentist, sent a proposal to the White House detailing his plan to drop bat bombs over Japan. President Roosevelt surprisingly approved. Adams and a team of University of California field naturalists collected bats, and the particular species chosen for Project X-Ray was the Mexican Free-Tailed bat.

A bat-bomb recruit holding a mini-bomb prototype. (Source: United States Army Air Forces)

Mini-bombs were designed to be clipped onto the bats' chests. The bats would be loaded onto trays inside a capsule containing simulated hibernation conditions. Once freed, the bats would disperse in Japanese cities, causing great devastation in the wood-and-paper buildings.

A test at the Carlsbad Army Airfield in New Mexico resulted in a large fire, but another test at a mock village in Utah was more successful. However, the project was canceled in 1944 due to all resources going to atomic-bomb research.

The Six Triple Eight

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, commanded by Major Charity Adams, was the first unit of all Black women to serve overseas. They were sent to England in February 1945, enduring an eleven-day ocean journey spent dodging U-Boats.

Source: National Archives

Their assignment - to sort more than 17 million pieces of mail for Allied personnel across Europe - was a test of the value of Black women in the U.S. military. The 6888th was given six months to complete their mission that was imperative to troop morale, and they did it in three. The battalion became the fastest and most reliable military mail service in Europe, working in rotating eight-hour shifts in a building with blacked-out windows and very little heat.

In May 1945, the 6888th was sent to France to sort another backlog of mail. In 2019, the battalion was awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation.

Christmas Eve Truce

On Christmas Eve 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge in western Germany, Elisabeth Vincken and her twelve-year-old son Fritz were staying in their cabin in the snowy Ardennes. Three lost American soldiers, one of them wounded, came seeking shelter. Later, four German soldiers arrived.

Fritz Vincken, who was 12 when his mother took in three desperate American soldiers in 1944, and Ralph Blank, one of those soldiers, meet in 1996. (Source: Honolulu Advertiser)

Elisabeth agreed to let them all stay for the night on the condition that they leave their weapons outside. They shared a tense but peaceful dinner, during which Elisabeth read from the Bible and, according to Fritz, “declared that there would be at least one night of peace in this war.”

When they parted ways the next morning, one of the Germans gave the Americans a compass and directed them back to their lines. This story was the inspiration for the 2002 film Silent Night.