FUN FACTS
- The
country with the largest number of WWII causalities was Russia, with over 21
million.
- World
War II was the most destructive conflict in history. It cost more money,
damaged more property, killed more people, and caused more far-reaching changes
than any other war in history.
- It
is estimated that 1.5 million children died during the Holocaust. Approximately
1.2 million of them were Jewish and tens of thousands were Gypsies.
- The
longest battle of WWII was the Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted from
1939-1945.
- Out
of the 40,000 men who served on U-boats during WWII, only 10,000 returned.
- The
Battle of the Bulge is the largest and deadliest battle for U.S. troops to
date, with more than 80,000 American casualties.
- The
Nazis murdered approximately 12 million people, nearly 6 million of those being
Jews killed in the Holocaust
- Anne
Frank and her sister died at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, one month before the
camp was liberated in April 1945. During its existence, nearly 50,000 people
died. After evacuating the camp, British soldiers burned it to the ground to
prevent the spread of typhus.
- The
largest Japanese spy ring during WWII was not in the U.S. but in Mexico, where
it spied on the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
- 12,000
heavy bombers were shot down in World War 2
- If
it became necessary to drop a third atom bomb on Japan, the city that would
have been the target was Tokyo.
- In
addition to Jews and gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses were also persecuted and
murdered in German concentration camps.
- The
Nazis killed millions of Poles. But they thought that some Polish babies and
children looked German and kidnapped about 50,000 of them to be adopted by
German parents to become “Germanized.
- Prisoners
of war in Russian camps experienced an 85% mortality rate.
- The
vast majority of German war criminals passed themselves off as refugees at
displaced persons camps when the war ended, thereby gaining freedom.