This man was the Nazi's worst nightmare | Historical Legends Part 1

if you google the most incredible story of all time this story that i'm gonna tell you today pops up all over the internet and after reading through it i can totally understand why but before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three four even five times every week so if that's of interest to you please offer the like button a bag of revels but only leave them the coffee flavored kind also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's story the united states formally entered world war ii on december 8th 1941 after the japanese attacked pearl harbor in hawaii at the time joseph byerly was a senior at his high school in muskegon michigan and he had a scholarship to attend notre dame university the next year but after his graduation in 1942 he decided he didn't want to go to college so long as other kids his age were going off to fight the war and so he enlisted in the army and he immediately volunteered for one of the most dangerous units the parachute infantry joseph completed a brutal accelerated training regimen that included exhausting pt and blistering heat extended forced marches grueling full kit runs up mountains as well as both american and british jump schools by 1943 joseph was fully trained and stationed in england and was eager to put his training to the test but the allied invasion of nazi-occupied france also known as d-day was still a few months away but joseph didn't want to wait that long so he volunteered for an incredibly dangerous mission that the oss was recruiting paratroopers for the oss was the predecessor to the cia basically volunteers would parachute in the middle of the night into nazi-occupied france with a backpack full of gold once they hit the ground they'd meet up with the french resistance and give the gold to them and then the resistance would do their best to protect these volunteer paratroopers and hopefully give them a ride back out to england but by no means was it a guarantee because many of these volunteers were killed in the process this was some hardcore deep cover spy work that the oss would tell their volunteers if you get caught on this mission you're gonna get tortured and you're gonna get executed joseph would successfully complete this insane mission and then he liked it so much he did it again shortly after his second successful oss mission word came down that d-day was set to take place on june 6th joseph's unit was told they were going to be parachuted into france the night before in order to destroy bridges cut power supply lines and generally soften up defenses before the main invasion happened just a couple of hours later at utah beach so in the dead of night on june 5th joseph and his unit were flying over france when they were struck by enemy fire and so as their plane is literally falling to the ground joseph leaps out the door when he's only 400 feet off the ground and he manages to survive the jump as parachute inflated just in time but he landed on top of a church where a nazi sniper was up in the steeple taking shots at all of the other paratroopers and when the sniper saw joseph on the roof he began taking shots at him and joseph managed to dodge the rounds before slipping off the roof and running out of sight once on the ground he slammed a mag into his m1 carbine and then began a one-man mission so incredible that there is a plaque inside of the church he landed on that looks like this alone with no idea where the rest of his unit was joseph took off running from the church and once again had to dodge more sniper fire and he eventually made it to the town's power substation which he blew up with thermite so he cut the power to the town and from there he went building to building to building killing every nazi he came across including an entire squad of nazi infantry that he ambushed with grenades at some point joseph made his way over to one of the bridges leading into this town that if he blew up it would prevent nazis from sending reinforcements to utah beach but as he crawled through one of the hedgerows he fell headfirst into a nazi machine gun nest and when he turned around there were a bunch of machine guns pointed at his face and so he surrendered joseph was marched deeper into france to a pow holding area and as soon as he got there explosions ripped out all around him it wasn't clear if it was german artillery or american aircraft but whatever it was it was killing both germans and american pows joseph took shrapnel to the leg and was blown into a ditch and despite being in excruciating pain he took this as an opportunity to escape and so he got up and ran away as best as he could with his injury and for 12 hours he remained uncaught behind enemy lines before he was ultimately caught again this time they put joseph in the back of a covered locked truck to keep him from escaping and they decided they would send him to saint lo and decide what to do with him there but on their transit to st low an allied aircraft strafed the vehicle that joseph was in and joseph survived the attack and was able to leap out of one of the holes in the side of the truck from this attack and he attempted to escape but once again he was caught the nazis finally got joseph to saint low and as soon as they got there the americans launched an all-night bombing campaign on the city but once again joseph narrowly survives a recurring theme of joseph's story is that he is repeatedly almost killed by his own teammates for the next few days joseph was interrogated 20 to 24 hours a day but he didn't give them any information and he repeatedly called them sons of [ __ ] until they got so fed up with him they just beat him to a pulp and he was knocked unconscious and kept in the hospital for several days for the next three months joseph was starved beaten interrogated some more and moved to multiple pow camps he'd be forced to do back breaking labor all day at night he would survive allied bombing runs and he would constantly weather hunger disease and exhaustion at one point he was locked inside of this boxcar with 50 other guys he could barely move inside of it and once again it was strafed by allied planes and he was one of the very few people to survive that in september of 1944 joseph was moved to a russian pow camp in poland that held about 12 000 russian men and women pows and as soon as he got there he immediately began planning his escape two months later on a freezing night in november joseph along with three other american pows managed to cut the barbed wire and snuck out of the camp and began making their escape south they snuck into a railway station and hopped on a train car they believed was headed for poland their plan was to meet up with the soviet red army as it pushed through the region but unfortunately they got on the wrong train and they wound up in berlin the capital of nazi germany one thing you don't hear much about when it comes to world war ii is there was actually a large number of germans that hated hitler and totally disagreed with the nazis and so they organized a german underground resistance that was designed to help the allies during the war and so when joseph and the other three american pows arrived in berlin still wearing their pow uniforms a member of the german resistance saw them and immediately grabbed them and brought them into hiding but after only a week the infamous nazi secret police aka the gestapo discovered them and arrested them over the next 10 days joseph and the other american pows got to see firsthand just how awful the gestapo really were they were constantly interrogated while they were beaten kicked walked on strung up by their arms backwards they were hit with whips clubs and rifle butts until they drifted into unconsciousness and then as soon as they started to come to it would start all over again after those 10 days the gestapo turned joseph and the other three american pows over to the german army who put them in the brutal prison camp called the stalagloft iii upon arrival joseph was immediately sentenced to 30 days inside of a four by five foot pine box that was too small to stand up or lay down in fortunately for him he only had to endure seven days because a red cross operative from geneva intervened on his behalf it would take months for joseph to get his strength back after being inside of this box but as soon as he did he began plotting his next escape one night joseph along with his three american pow buddies managed to break through a prison wall and made a mad dash for freedom but the nazi prison guards saw it and opened fire on them all three of joseph's friends were killed as they ran but joseph got away only to hear the faint barking of the german shepherds the nazis had sent to hunt him down so in the freezing cold of poland in january joseph leapt headfirst into a partially frozen river and swam over two miles down it before getting out and running blindly into the woods somehow miraculously he managed to reach soviet lines before he froze to death and there he spoke with battalion commander alexandra samasenko a woman who holds the distinction of being the only female tank commander in all of world war ii even though joseph spoke very little russian he convinced her to let him join her unit and so she gave him a gun and some ammunition and she told him what their next objective was they were going to liberate the same pow camp he had just escaped from and so joseph alongside the soviet red army that he now fought for turn around and go smash this pow camp and after the dust had settled joseph raided the main camp office and stole his defiant official pow photo that the germans had taken of him on the first day he got captured joseph continued to fight alongside the soviets across the eastern front for a couple of months but when a german dive bomber blew up the tank that joseph was riding on he was evacuated to a russian field hospital there he received a visit from georgi zhukov the most important soviet military commander in world war ii who was intrigued by the only non-soviet in the hospital he sat with joseph and learned his story through an interpreter and then afterwards he provided joseph with official paperwork that would allow him to rejoin american forces and so in february of 1945 joseph was sent to the u.s embassy in moscow but unfortunately when he finally met a friendly american face after nearly a year of fighting behind enemy lines they didn't believe his story they told him that joseph r byerly had been killed in action on june 10th 1944 and that they had already had a funeral mass in his honor in muskegon and that his obituary had already been printed in the paper but despite joseph painstakingly going through his story over and over again the ambassador just could not believe what he was hearing and so worried joseph might actually be a well-trained german spy the ambassador sent him to odessa to have his credentials verified but odessa had the same problem and couldn't verify him so they sent him to egypt egypt had the same problem and they too could not verify his credentials and so they sent him to italy where they finally used fingerprints and they confirmed that yes this is in fact joseph r byerly and so on april 11 1945 joseph returned home and needless to say his parents were very surprised to see him because they were convinced he died 10 months earlier one year later joseph would actually get married in the same church that held his funeral mass when everybody believed he was dead joseph was given the purple heart and then in the 1990s was given additional presidential awards from u.s president bill clinton as well as the russian president boris yeltsin joseph was also given a custom-made ak-47 from the guy who invented the ak-47 joseph died in 2004 at the age of 81 and his son would go on to become the us ambassador to russia under george w bush and barack obama so that's gonna do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it so give us the time stamp and if you're the first to do that we'll pin you at the top of the comments section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please offer the like button a bag of revels but only leave the coffee flavored kind also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly three four even five video uploads if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's john ballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tick tock where my username is mr ballen i also have a second youtube channel just called mr ballin shorts it's where i post short videos if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballin it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on instagram twitter tick tock reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see ya

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 3,184,280

Rating: 4.9468966 out of 5

Keywords: war, war story, world war, world war 1, world war one, world war 2, world war two, ww2, ww1, combat, france, d day, invasion, ambush, grenade, m1 garand, rifle, gun, explosion, shrapnel, nazi, nazis, fascism, hero, american hero, veteran, military, military veteran, insane, insane true story, true, true story, story time, unbelievable, parachute, oss, cia, secret mission, spy mission, prison, prison camp, pow, prisoner of war, missing in action, kia, killed in action, boot camp, defiant, Joseph Beyrle

Id: lHjDgOSur5c

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021