Foo Fighters: The Real WWII Origin Story | World War Weird | War Stories

strange glowing spheres in the wartime skies explanation america's top secret vampire squadron a mystery mass grave and world war ii whodunit and the tommy torturers britain's secret ss conflict on a scale never seen before or since a new kind of war this is war at its weirdest bizarre experimental weapons mysterious events conspiracies and cover-ups when governments destroy files you can't help but wonder why unexplained phenomenon the raf doesn't have an explanation for the cruz report when a world goes to war with itself things get weird a series of close encounters with floating glowing spheres these are highly experienced pilots and they don't know what they're seeing the british government launches an urgent investigation could these be alien craft of some sort winter 1942 despite the early success of operation barbarossa hitler's invasion of russia is coming to a bloody and disastrous end at the battle of stalingrad there's fierce fighting in stalingrad there's fierce fighting in north africa there's a great struggle for air superiority in europe the whole future is in the balance at the beginning of october germany successfully launches a rocket aggregate iv later known as the v2 it is the first ever man-made object to reach space the nazis are on their knees but there's a rumor they're developing a new kind of wonder weapon that can change the whole course of the war a few weeks after the germans reached space raf pilot pc lumsden is flying over the english channel in his hurricane for a mission over occupied france he is flying at seven thousand feet suddenly he sees something two orange spheres of glowing light moving steadily towards his plane he immediately thinks well of course it has to be tracer flat what else could it be but then he realizes no hang on it's moving too slow it's like nothing he's ever seen before whatever these things are lumsden tries to shake them off sending his fighter into a dizzying sequence of spins and turns but the mysterious spheres have no difficulty following his every move whatever these lights are they're still on his tail [Music] frightened and confused lumsden plunges his hurricane into a hair-raising 4 000 feet nose dive accelerating to 260 miles per hour he manages to pull out of the dive the glowing spheres have gone on his return to base lumsden reports the incident but his story is dismissed at first no one believes him but then other pilots start reporting the same thing so now the authorities have to take it seriously the number of reported sightings starts to multiply it's not just individuals entire squadrons purport to have seen them one famous sighting involves america's elite 415th night fighter squadron as the night fighters are flying over germany around 10 luminous spheres appear as if out of nowhere the floating objects surround the plane and move among them they're moving independently under their own control the orbs of light are so bright they illuminate the skies around the aircraft fearing that they are under attack the onboard radar operators are told to check their screens but there's nothing showing up these mysterious balls of light seem to be undetectable by radar this is a special ops night fighter squadron they're not about to run this pilot steers the aircraft directly at the glowing halls of light and they vanish a few moments later they reappear but in a different location the unexplained lights follow the squadron for another six or seven minutes and then they vanish it's like these balls are intelligent they seem to anticipate the pilot's next move as even more sightings are reported word spreads about the bizarre hovering orbs of light the pilots and crews give them a name taken from a popular american comic strip there was this cartoon character whose catchphrase was where there's food there's fire and this is what the americans start calling them the foo fighters american and british authorities need to find a plausible explanation for the foo fighters some people suggest that the pilots who've seen these things may have had one french cognac too many but even tea totalers have seen them as well us navy doctors ashton grabiel and brant clark conduct an experiment on pilots to see if the foo fighters are mere tricks of the light you put the pilot in a dark room and then you shine a pinpoint of light in his eyes and then you ask him what's it doing disorientated in the dark room and with no other visual references many subjects report the light to be moving in fact the light's not moving at all it's standing perfectly still this is a visual illusion the doctors call this illusion autokinesis it's this false movement of a light source caused by autokinesis that grabie cites as the most likely cause for foo fighters rabial subjects other pilots to his test with similar results but there are problems with this theory for a start it doesn't explain where the lights are coming from the foo fighters don't look like the lights in graybiel's tests they're bigger and they're brighter and they zip all over the sky what's more when the foo fighters appear there are often multiple witnesses surely they can't all be imagining it so you've really got to ask yourself if there are these lights in the sky then where are they coming from this led some to look to nature for an explanation [Music] could the glowing orbs be examples of a rare and little understood atmospheric disturbance known to meteorologists as ball lightning [Music] ball lightning is one of those unexplained phenomena that just won't go away people report seeing it but scientists can't explain it all lightning can appear during or just after lightning strikes the spheres are typically the size of a grapefruit that can be as big as a beach ball they are white yellow orange red or blue in color and just like the foo fighters they appear and disappear without a trace but there is a major difference though it has been seen in or around plains it's most typically observed on the ground all lightning has been reported to fly down chimneys and pass through walls it's also been observed near aircraft but doesn't last more than a few seconds it's extremely rare and has never been seen in clusters but foo fighters often come in numbers and travel alongside aircraft for as long as 10 minutes so whatever a foo fighter is it's not bull lightning the british authorities ordered their own investigation by the air ministries operation research section the investigation is entitled recent enemy pyrotechnic activity over germany what the british want to know is could this be a secret nazi wonder weapon as the war turns against the nazis hitler begins to pin his hopes on futuristic weapons developed by his rocket scientists they call these sinister inventions the most extraordinary is the new v2 rocket the first man-made object ever to leave earth's atmosphere the v2 was developed by some of the very same nazi scientists who would later help nasa put a man on the moon the foo fighters start to appear at the same time as the launch of the first ever v2 rocket but they cannot themselves be v2s v2s travel well in excess of the speed of sound they don't slow down and they don't hover [Music] so you actually have to ask yourself could the nazis have developed another type of wonder weapon one that behaves exactly like the foo fighters the nazis were rumored to be trying to develop aircrafts that had vertical takeoff and landing capabilities a program to develop a bell-shaped aircraft was said to have made a significant breakthrough a central cockpit was surrounded by rotating adjustable wing vanes which gave the aircraft lift 15 prototypes were built and this was not the only wonder weapon according to some investigators nazi scientists also developed an airborne drone known as a foyer ball a jet propelled pilotless flying disc it was fitted with electromagnetic charges to play habit with an enemy's aircraft's electrical systems jamming radar and even stalling engines but no such interference was ever reported by pilots encountering foo fighters there are no collisions no breakdowns no ill effects of any kind from having a foo fighter on the end of your wing so if this was a top secret german weapon it was a pretty lame one the foo fight as it seems cannot be explained by any technology known to exist at the time why couldn't this be extraterrestrial activity why couldn't they be checking out what we're doing down here on planet earth and why we're fighting at the time of the foo fighter encounters the term ufo hasn't even been coined yet but as the war ends and nazi technology ushers in a new space age the possibility of life beyond earth captures the public's imagination files declassified by the british government in 2010 referred to an alleged sighting by an allied reconnaissance aircrew returning from france [Music] the airmen say that they've seen this weird metallic object that appears to hover noisely by their plane and then disappear without a trace in the declassified report churchill and u.s president general eisenhower are said to have discussed the encounter according to hearsay churchill declared that the incident should be classified for at least 50 years because he feared a mass panic but these claims have never been officially confirmed it was generally the case that before 1967 all ufo files were destroyed after five years so if there was a record we're never gonna find it when governments destroy files you can't help but wonder why reports of foo fighters remain among the weirdest events of the war the foo fighters ultimately remain unexplained 2008 construction workers digging foundations in a polish town make a terrifying discovery there are over 2 000 bodies in this one pit this secret mass grave lay hidden for 70 years was this another atrocity carried out against the jews by nazi execution squads but the authorities struggled to find an answer who are these people and what happened to them most of the bodies show no sign of a violent death who these people were is a mystery october 2008 malbork northern poland labourers are digging foundations for a luxury hotel next to one of poland's biggest tourist attractions the town's 13th century castle of the teutonic order [Music] but as they dig down they make a gruesome discovery a human skeleton is embedded in the earth with what appears to be a bullet hole in its skull heavy rain causes more of the earth to fall away and hundreds more skeletons are exposed everywhere the workers look there are bones appalling atrocities took place in this region during the second world war in some areas the majority of the population were ethnic germans but minorities were persecuted within days of the german invasion on the 5th of september 1939 the ss shot more than a thousand poles and jews in the town of berdoch which is not far from malbork in east prussia then known by its german name marienberg the nazis carried out horrific war crimes in this area and within eight weeks they have burnt down 530 towns and villages and murdered most of their populations to the nazis jews and slavs were unto menschen subhuman and lebensen vertizleben unworthy of life heinrich himmler wanted the polls to be decimated it was a brutal chapter of the war in 1945 when allied forces sweep across german occupied europe the horrifying scale of the nazi's grotesque crimes is exposed the nazis systematically exterminated thousands of innocent victims this was murder on an industrial scale and there was simply no denying what they had done the mass graves of their victims are simply too big to conceal and yet in 2008 investigators examining the newly found mass grave can find no historic accounts of such an atrocity having taken place in malbork when they speak to the local townspeople no one has any knowledge of a massacre no stories have been handed down not even any rumors the vast majority are women and children very few men but who were they and when did they die it seems incredible that 2 000 bodies can be buried in a single mass grave and there's no one who can tell us how they died to begin with it is naturally assumed that this massacre is the work of the nazis the nazis philosophy of hatred has stripped them of moral decency their troops murder thousands upon thousands of people there are certainly some aspects of the site which strongly suggests that the nazis are responsible the corpses at the bottom of the heap have been buried naked stripped of possessions and identifying features there are no clothes no identification not even any false teeth in the extermination camps at auschwitz and elsewhere victims were shaved rings ripped from their fingers gold teeth removed with pliers the removal of personal effects like glasses and even dentures summons up the spirits of the extermination in the concentration camps but there is something very strange about the mass grave discovered in malbork only the top bodies look as though they've been shot on the others there's no sign of execution but there are no gas chambers in this area what's more if these are the bodies of locals they're likely to have been ethnic germans not polish victims of the nazis so how did they die could the bodies at the bottom of the pit have been victims of frostbite the appalling effects of freezing became evident in the arctic winter of 1941 when hitler sent german soldiers without adequate winter clothing to fight on the eastern front those who witnessed the retreating troops were shocked thousands of soldiers were mutilated by the frost they lost limbs arms and legs they lost their nose their ears even their sexual organs but forensic investigation does not suggest frostbite is the cause of death for the bodies in the malbork mass grave the first clue to what really happened at malbork comes from the grave the itself typically forced their victims to dig their own mass grave but crucially the bodies at malbork lie in a bomb crater this is a form of mass burial more often used by the soviets the population of this region were not just victims of the nazis 17 days after the germans invaded poland from the west the soviet union invaded from the east over 20 000 polish soldiers were taken to forests and executed by the communist nkvd the forerunners of the kgb one russian soldier complained he had blisters on his trigger finger from shooting poles in the back of the head on the face of it it looks suspiciously like the soviets may have been to blame but there's a lot more to this than meets the eye when the nazis came many poles and jews were sent to the death camps those who remained sank into destitution weakened by malnutrition they were more vulnerable to disease the lack of soap and bad sanitation caused the spread of lice and the lice carried typhus [Music] typhus thrives in unsanitary conditions during the course of the first world war three million people fell victim to the disease and it's spread by lice living in clothes that most of the bodies in the grave show no signs of violence suggests the population of marienborg may well have fallen victim to typhus even so people attempted to escape before the russians got there eyewitness accounts report that there were too many women and children trying to desperately get a place on too few trains that were leaving the city before the soviet army arrived as the soviet troops advanced they were fearful of catching the highly infectious diseases which were rife in the region maybe this is what happened back in 1945 that marionberg was in the grip of a typhus epidemic it's believed that the soviets may have rounded up healthy locals and forced them to strip the weakened typhus victims who are already close to death and to push them into bomb craters one effective way to destroy typhus is to bury the dead and then to burn their infected clothes and that effectively kills the lice and kills the germs and prevents it spreads that would explain why the bodies at the bottom of the grave were found naked but then what would explain the bullet holes in the skulls of the bodies on the top layer the very act of removing the clothes from the typhus victims exposes the people doing the clothes removal to the bacteria themselves a job almost certainly given to prisons of war potentially after they'd finished that unsavoury task they turned round and saw the guns pointing at them and they realized that because they themselves were infected with the bacteria they were going to be executed as well how could this soviet atrocity have gone unreported how did the communists succeed in concealing it after the war this part of east prussia became poland and mariamport was renamed malbork the region was then subjected to decades of communist rule under soviet rule there was no free speech the slightest word against the authorities could have extremely serious consequences under these conditions of terror the communists could simply rewrite history they were assisted in this by the allies the british foreign office it is now known colluded in the cover-up of communist atrocities in eastern europe even churchill and roosevelt were very willing to blame the nazis for these communist outrages because they wanted to maintain their very delicate alliance with stalin however they died seven decades on the identities of the bodies found in the grave at malbork are still unknown the people remain the forgotten dead a wonder weapon inspired by hollywood horror a crazy dentist with an even crazier plan and a bizarre secret mission that goes horribly wrong when the truth starts to emerge it sounds like a horror story brought to life a squadron of blood-sucking vampires is sent to wreak havoc on the enemy it's the stuff of horror movies except that it's true well almost the story begins with a mystery fire 15 1943 new mexico for no obvious reason a fire breaks out at a brand new u.s army flight training station carlsbad american army air base turns into a raging inferno the barracks control tower offices and hangars are all destroyed in a matter of minutes smoke is bellowing hundreds of feet into the air they have no idea what's going on personnel are evacuated from the buildings and stare in disbelief but the base is not under attack this isn't some japanese commando raid there are no soldiers attacking the base and no one seems to breach security no one can explain what's happened and even stranger still the base fire crews aren't even allowed in to fight the flames it's deeply suspicious the base is less than a year old it has been built several miles southwest of the small town of carlsbad in the new mexican desert to train bomber crews for the war against germany and japan the base is an obvious target for the japanese people are very aware of the dangers of bombing in the aftermath of the london blitz and the attack on pearl harbor so are americans in danger the japanese have already demonstrated they can hit mainland america on the evening of the 23rd of february 1942 a japanese submarine slips undetected towards the santa barbara coast the target is the elwood oil field elwood was a key oil field on the californian coast and it supplied the whole santa barbara area because it was so close to the sea it made it an easy target for any japanese naval bomb for 20 minutes the japanese sub is free to fire at elwood's massive oil tanks before silently slipping away [Applause] [Music] was the inferno at the carlsbad air base the result of another japanese submarine attack carlsbad is 500 miles inland and even the japanese didn't have weapons that powerful whatever caused these fires it sure as hell wasn't a submarine then was this the work of japanese agents already in the united states the americans are willing to believe the japanese will do anything president roosevelt ordered the internment of japanese and japanese-american citizens and there was no right to appeal once these people were put away they were put away because this was a time of paranoia was the carlsbad fire the work of guerrilla fighters originating from the camps on the whole the japanese internment camps were peaceful places and there's very few reports of people escaping or going awol the carlsbad incident remains unexplained for more than 30 years but in 1974 a set of highly classified wartime government documents are finally released these papers contain details of some of the weirdest secret weapons the americans ever invented and among them is a memo which reveals the cause of the carlsbad inferno the fire was caused by an experimental weapon going completely wrong that top secret weapon is like something from a horror movie this was arguably the most bizarre weapon ever developed by the u.s military the weapon is the brainchild of a pennsylvanian dentist called dr little adams adams is outraged by the pearl harbor attack and devises project x-ray a bizarre plan to get back at the japanese a squadron of terrifying killer bats these aren't the mythical creatures we're talking real live bats a species known as tatarida brasiliensis wasp eating free-tailed bats adams knew that the majority of japanese cities were made of timber-framed houses with paper walls in other words a fire waiting to happen [Applause] when the bats are released near buildings they naturally seek shelter under the eaves of houses the dentist's novel idea is to fit thousands of the tiny mammals with incendiary devices and drop them out of b25s over japan spreading destruction across the country they would burn japan to the ground [Music] cities burning to the ground was a real threat in world war ii in the blitz the germans destroyed a million homes in london over eight months and killed forty thousand civilians that kind of bombardment threatened the morale of the british so vital to keeping the war effort going it take more than this to get me out of my home america wants japan to kowtow by destroying their cities and their morale the usa are willing to consider any option adam's eccentric plan might well have come to nothing but among his friends was the president's wife eleanor roosevelt and she then explained the plan to her husband adam's crazy idea is given the grain light project x-ray is put into motion and the search is out for bad soldiers the dentist visits a bat colony in caves several miles southwest of carlsbad literally millions of mexican free-tailed bats nest there [Music] they are small but strong easily capable of carrying a dangerous incendiary device this variety of bat flies higher than any other and since backs are nocturnal their altitude makes them hard to spot and hard to stop after further research adams finds another cave which serves as the perfect source for the project x-ray bat bombers he has found an almost limitless supply of the right breed of the flying mammals adams finally finds a cave in south west texas with 20 to 30 million free-tailed bats that's enough flying arsonists to burn tokyo to the ground but for the batty plan to work there is still one extremely tricky problem left to solve just think about it for a moment you've got a live bat the size of your hand and around this you've got to attach a detonator half an ounce of explosive and the timing device this may not be rocket science but it's just as difficult to devise a bat bomb the army turns to harvard university chemist professor louis fisa fisa knows all about starting fires the previous year he invented napalm visa decides that napalm is perfect for the bat bombs he pours a thickened kerosene into small celluloid sacs and then the detonation timers and triggers are added each miniature firebomb is to be clipped to the loose skin on a bat's chest they could produce a flame about a foot long and they would burn for about eight minutes plenty of time to start a serious fire now all the team have to do is test whether this crazy idea will actually work containers full of bats are parachuted down from bombers and at a certain altitude a switch opens the cages releasing the bats the delivery device is another technical masterpiece it's like a concertina which pulls open to release the bats which are stored on racks inside the bomb they work just like a living cluster bomb spreading many incendiary bombs over an entire neighborhood temperature is used to control the bats to keep them calm in flight they're cooled into forced hibernation to excite them near the target they're warmed up the trays of bats are dropped from the plains timer fuses open them as they fall through the air and the bats fly off now a 15-minute countdown starts what could possibly go wrong for the test bats are dropped into rural american farmland wearing dummy incendiary devices [Music] to the relief of adams's team the test is a huge success the planes drop the bat bombs cases burst open and the bats fly away all over the local area they're found in barns in farms everywhere that's flammable it's a huge success [Music] if these were houses in tokyo and the bats were armed fires would be already raging across the city but skeptical senior commanders want to see what happens when the bats are carrying real bombs in makeshift labs at carlsbad air base the handlers take the bats out of the cooler the bats are very docile and sleepy but fitting the bombs is fiddly and it takes time and it's very very hot working in the new mexico labs and the bats quickly start to wake up so they fetch six hibernating bats strap bombs to them then all hell breaks loose one second the bats are there and the next they're gone just 15 minutes later the entire military base has gone up in flames the office is in charge of the operation panic project x-ray is top secret if they send in fire crews everyone will know about the bat bombs [Music] and so in order to keep the vampire squadron secret this brand new army airbase is allowed to burn to the ground for the u.s military there is one consolation the bat bombs clearly work but just as the project x-ray team think they've found a super weapon that will break the spirit of the japanese another lethal invention steals their place in history adam's great plan is shelved not because it doesn't work but because they have a more sinister and powerful approach august 1945 the americans dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of hiroshima and nagasaki over 100 000 people are killed immediately tens of thousands more would die later [Music] adam's always maintained that his bat bombs could have worked and forced the japanese to surrender just like the atom bomb but with far less tragic loss of life luckily for the bats he never got the chance to find out [Music] it was a war between good and evil and it was kind of obvious who the bad guys were it's a standard scene from a war movie the ss officer comes in vain cruel clicking his heels the ss officer is sneering brutal and of course he speaks in a thick german accent but now imagine a slightly different scene when the ss officer comes in and speaks with a british accent just suppose there'd been a british ss it goes against every image we have of the second world war weird but true this is the true story of hitler's secret british ss regiment spring 2009 auschwitz birkenau the nazi extermination camp has been preserved a terrifying reminder of the horrors supposedly civilized people are capable of during routine work in the camp grounds a historian finds something half concealed beneath the rubble it's a piece of white celluloid and it's got writing on it in pencil he sees that it's a list of people 17 names are written down the left-hand side of the margin of the celluloid names like osborne gardner hutton and clark they're obviously british names on the reverse there are around 20 words german words and english words just simple words day-to-day words historians from auschwitz museum confirm its authenticity it could be german and date from the middle of the war what's puzzling are the british names a million or more innocent people were forced into the gas chambers of auschwitz these people were totally innocent victims they were jews gypsies homosexuals from all over europe but british pows are not subjected to the same fate as other prisoners some of the people on the list have marks against their names eight of them have got a tick next to them although british pows are not sent to the main extermination camp there are a series of smaller satellite camps including one in the town of monovitz auschwitz iii is a slave labor camp used by german companies like ig farben siemens and krupp most of the workers there are jews their life expectancy at the camp is around three months they're given barely any food and water many die as they stood working those too weak to work are sent to the main camp to be gassed but at auschwitz iii there are also british pows there are a few historical records of british prisoners being beaten up and killed by ss officers in the nazi camps but compared to the jewish slave laborers working beside them british pows got off lightly they received red cross food packages and were at least in theory protected by the geneva convention nazi racial prejudice also saved british pows hitler's views on race were very twisted his view of the jews were that they were sub-humans that they were animals in contrast he had an overly high-blown view of the british whom he viewed as being of the same noble aryan teutonic stock as the german race and these views filtered down throughout the nazi party the supposed racial purity of the british in hitler's eyes qualified them to become nazis this has led to speculation about the auschwitz list of british names with these potential recruits for a british nazi unit who were these men it's possible this wasn't a list of people earmarked for punishment or for execution but a list drawn up for an entirely different purpose altogether the story of the little-known british ss begins with a young upper-class englishman called john amory john amery was born into the british establishment his father was at harrow school winston churchill and he was the first lord of the admiralty in britain as in germany fascism seemed to appeal to down at hill aristocrats looking to revive their status and fortunes amory fitted the bill he had failed in business and couldn't hold down a job john amy was a bankrupt who moved to paris in 1936 where he married a prostitute but then couldn't afford to keep her to himself in paris amory mixed with upper-class french fascists and came up with the idea of starting a british ss division or legion amory proposed to the wehrmacht a british volunteer force intended to fight the bolsheviks the ss were viewed as the supermen of germany they had to pass certain racial tests they had to be blonde head blue eyed physically perfect specimens when he was told about amery's idea hitler was delighted he was fond of britain's ruling class some of whom he'd counted as close friends and john amory was the son of a leading british statesman unsurprisingly the nazi hierarchy saw in him an ideal recruiting and propaganda tool and amy was very happy to help out however he could like william joyce better known as lord haha he turned his hand to propaganda broadcast for germany he he appealed to britons to to fight the real enemy communism the legion of saint george later called the british free corps was formed an ss division to be made up of british officers and men with fascist views to find volunteers for his british ss unit amory is given access to pow camps in nazi occupied europe amory starts touring prisoner of all caps and there he shares his anti-semitic views with british pows a murray first addresses british pows at the san deni pow camp outside paris but the british soldiers treat him with contempt they despise him they jeer at him they use his propaganda sheets as toilet paper amory visits camp after camp but from thousands of pows manages to entice just four people to join him tell amy ray's men the nazis built comparatively luxurious pow camps where the british prisoners of war were subjected to non-stop nazi propaganda but they were so nice and pleasant compared to normal pw camps that they became known as holiday camps it worked the nazis did recruit british prisoners to the ss the rumors are that when churchill first heard about the british ss he flew into a rage churchill saw that it was a propaganda coup and it was a blight upon the good name of the british people it goes against every image we have of the second world war the british are the good guys they're not the ss nazi torturers or so we like to think so does this ss recruitment drive explain the list of british names found at auschwitz one theory is that this list of names is those people who had quietly made their interest known to the german authorities if so it is a source of enormous shame to the british the war against national socialism was indeed a battle of good against evil [Music] but nations did not neatly and simply divide into one camp or the other the truth is of course that there were a great many germans who loathed the nazis and another surprising truth is that there were countless people in britain and america and elsewhere who secretly admired them [Applause] in the united states there had been a long dark tradition of racism in the south in the 1920s the ku klux klan had millions of supporters including a young harry s truman who was later to become american president many members of the kkk were attracted to fascism in 1939 they and other american nazi sympathizers were on parade in madison square garden in new york american fascists held a rally and you had 20 000 people waving swastikas and making nazi salutes and enchanting kyle hitler but the rally was a one-off in america as in britain nazi sympathizers were overwhelmed by the vast majority of the population who found national socialism repugnant but despite being in the minority some went to extreme lengths to pledge their allegiance to the fascist cause another british aristocrat who was a well-known sympathizer of nazism was unity myth midford was studying in munich and is said to have stalked the fuhrer until he finally invited her to join him at his restaurant table he is said to have become smitten with the young british aristocrat [Music] she tried to persuade the fuhrer that britain was a natural ally and supplied him with a list of british people who shared his views and she even appeared in public with hitler when he announced the annexation of austria her relationship with hitler is rumored to have gone so far that she became pregnant by him after britain's declaration of war in september 1939 she was so distraught she attempted suicide [Music] hitler arranged for her to return to britain but she never fully recovered fascism was never going to catch on in britain and particularly america both countries which attached an immense amount of importance to the individual liberties [Music] happily hitler's attempt to create a british ss unit was a humiliating failure thankfully the british ss unit was a mighty flop it never exceeded 60 men 60 traitors the caliber of men who signed up was lamentably poor wretched petty criminals mindless thugs men of extremely low intelligence and a small number of sad underachieving upper-class anti-semites they were not the creme de la creme of the british fighting force and as such they made an ineffective fighting unit this was not the master race hitler was after nor indeed was it pure aryan john amery the founder of the british ss never admitted it but his grandmother was jewish in the last weeks of the war amory was captured in northern italy by resistance fighters he was sent back to britain where he was convicted for treason his trial lasted just eight minutes on the 19th of december 1945 he was hanged [Music] you

Channel: War Stories

Views: 325,255

Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, battles, world war weird episodes, world war weird facts, world war weird experts, weird history, world war two, WWII, WW2, Second World War, Secret British History, strange wwii facts, ww2 mysteries, ww2 mysteries documentary, ww2 mysteries solved, ww2 myths misconceptions, foo fighters, foo fighters ww2, vampire squadron the untold air war, unexplained ww2 mysteries, british ss ww2

Id: 3jLy_z-jQ_Y

Length: 47min 39sec (2859 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021