Military History: The Four Worst War Crimes Imaginable

These horrific war crimes reveal a humanity that isn’t good or bad, but absolutely sadistic.

Human nature is an amorphous thing: Optimists and pessimists can look at the same human history and present diametrically opposed assessments of the human spirit.

The optimist will point to acts of selflessness and historical displays of a collective will toward waging progress in making their case that human nature is essentially “good.” The pessimist will present ceaseless wars, slavery, and a host of other social ills peppering human history to construct a human nature that is more savage than humane.

Both are correct in their evaluations of the human condition. But it is acts of particularly relentless, unfettered violence that shock both the optimist and pessimist. These acts present not a humankind that is basically good, bad, or a little bit of both, but one that is absolutely sadistic.

Here are four of those very acts, war crimes that highlight the inhumanity of, well, humanity:

T4 Euthanasia Program

In August 1939, healthcare providers throughout Germany received a missive from the Reich Ministry of the Interior. The note stipulated that all physicians, nurses, and midwives report newborn infants (under the age of three) who appeared to suffer from severe mental or physical disabilities.

Two months later, in October, these health experts started suggesting that parents send disabled children to certain pediatric clinics in Germany and Austria for treatment. The catch was that children sent to these clinics would not be helped; they would be killed.

This program — started by Adolf Hitler and which eventually comprised the near totality of Germany’s psychiatric community — was called the T4 program, coming from the address of the enterprise: Tiergartenstrasse 4.

T4 essentially created a “death panel”: A bureaucracy of physicians was charged with deciding who had a “life unworthy of life,” and who did not. To make such a decision, T4 planners distributed surveys to public health officials, hospitals, institutions, and elderly homes, placing particular emphasis on establishing the patient’s ability to work.

Nazi emphasis on productivity shaped much of their justification for euthanasia. Indeed, they argued that funds could “better” be used on those who were not insane or suffering from a terminal illness — and that those who did led “burdensome lives” or were “useless eaters” were fit only to die.

And that they did. Patients were shipped off to these “clinics,” where they entered “shower facilities” that were actually gas chambers. Dead bodies were disposed of in ovens. Their ashes were placed in urns and sent back to their families, along with a falsified account of their death.

The T4 program — which “officially” ended in 1941 and which the U.S. Holocaust Museum estimateskilled at least 5,000 physically and mentally disabled German children — was a chilling vision of things to come. It was Germany’s first mass killing program, preceding the extermination camps that took shape some years later.

Read the Remainder at All That Is Interesting

Vietnam War History: Trying to Find Viet-Cong Tunnels with Witching Rods?

The Military Has Been Known to Try Almost Anything Once, Regardless of it’s Effectiveness

 

For more than five centuries, farmers, treasure hunters and others have applied a pseudoscientific practice known as “dowsing” to find water, caves, graves and more.

During the Vietnam War, American troops tried using the method to divine the location of Viet Cong tunnel networks.

It didn’t work.

Continually frustrated by the underground networks, the Pentagon made locating and destroying the subterranean passages a main goal in 1967. A year later, defense contractor HRB Singer told the Office of Naval Research that dowsing might hold the answer.

“Undoubtedly, any system that offers some promise of improving the odds above pure chance of discovering and locating the enemy is worth a try — if nothing else is available,” the scientists explained in a 1968 report. The U.S. Army and Navy had both so far failed to build a machine that could reliably detect the tunnels.

In spite of repeated studies failing to prove any scientific basis for dowsing, the practice has endured to the present day. HRB Singer was optimistic that dowsing could help in South Vietnam.

Debates have raged about whether dowsing works since the practice first evolved in Germany in the 15th century. In 1518, Christian theologian Martin Luther decried the practice as occultic — and an affront to God.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring

Military History: 10 of the Most Insane Military Disguises That Worked

Modern militaries use relatively standard camouflage patterns and netting to try to hide themselves from prying forces, but not all camouflage and disguise is so boring. Some military disguises that actually worked were outlandish and ridiculous.

10. Israeli Commandos Fooled Sentries By Cross-Dressing

In 1973, Israel launched Operation Spring of Youth as part of a larger operation targeting the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as revenge for the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich. The operation, which targeted PLO leaders living in Lebanon, had to be very stealthy.

The Sayeret Matkal special operations force tasked with carrying out the assassinations had to sneak past Lebanese security forces and PLO guards without arousing suspicion. To do this, the Israelis turned to a ridiculous disguise: cross-dressing.

After coming ashore on the Lebanese coast on April 9, 1973, some of the Israeli commandos put on dresses and wigs. Pairing up with some of the other commandos, they pretended to be loving couples.

After being driven to their targets by Mossad agents, the commandos blasted down the doors and entered the houses of their targets. Other commandos, some still dressed as women, guarded the outside of the residences. The operation was a complete success, with only two Israeli commandos killed.

9. Explosives Disguised As Flour That Could Be Eaten

With the OSS aiming to disrupt Japanese operations in Southeast Asia, they turned to chemist George Bogdan Kistiakowsky. He created the perfect explosive that could be disguised as, of all things, flour—and it could be used to bake as well.

The “Aunt Jemima” mixture of three parts explosive and one part flour could be sneaked past Japanese soldiers without suspicion. If they did get suspicious, a realistic looking and tasting loaf of bread could be made and eaten to prove to the Japanese that the flour was “just flour.”

Although the flour could be ingested, the original mixture would have made people very ill. This was amply demonstrated in an incident when a Chinese cook disobeyed orders and ate a muffin, becoming so ill that he nearly died.

Ultimately, a second version of “Aunt Jemima” was developed that was far less toxic than the first variant and could be consumed safely in quantity. In the end, more than 15 tons of the stuff was smuggled into Japanese-controlled areas with the Japanese none the wiser.

8. Dazzle Camouflage

By 1917, with German U-boats having sunk a good 20 percent of the British merchant fleet, Britain needed to stem the losses any way it could. Although previous attempts to disguise merchant ships had failed spectacularly or been impractical in hiding the ships entirely from U-boats, artist Norman Wilkinson’s “dazzle” camouflage was designed to obscure the bearing of the ship instead.

If a U-boat couldn’t tell where a ship was heading relative to itself, the U-boat couldn’t target the ship effectively with a torpedo. Geometric shapes in varying shades of black and white accomplished this by obscuring the bow and other angles on the ship that the U-boat normally used to determine the bearing of the ship.

Wilkinson proposed his idea to the admiralty, who were desperate to stop the U-boats. As a result, they put the idea into practice without much testing. Hundreds of ships were painted with dazzle camouflage, each with a unique pattern to keep the Germans from being able to identify ship classes based on their camouflage patterns.

In the end, there was no official measurement of their effectiveness. But anecdotal evidence and more recent research has indicated that the dazzle camouflage was effective.

Read the Remainder at ListVerse

 

U.S Naval Military History: The First Submarine Ever Built

The Connecticut River Museum in Essex holds a fully-functional replica of the “Turtle,” the first American submarine ever built.

Little-known fact: the first submarine and underwater time bomb were created during the American Revolution–before electricity, and before Jules Verne.  

It was 100% human-operated (no engines just hand cranks and foot pedals) and used phosphorescent moss as the interior light source because a candle would use up too much of the available oxygen. Even though the “Turtle” failed to complete its few missions and its inventor always felt that he was a failure for it, he is often credited with being the Father of Submarine Warfare.

The son of a Connecticut farmer, David Bushnell was a brilliant man who had to delay going to college until he was 31 years old. While he was studying at Yale, he proved that gunpowder could be exploded underwater and also created a timing device to allow for delayed detonation–the first underwater time bomb.

His last year at Yale coincided with the beginnings of the American Revolution.  The university temporarily closed due to the impending crisis of war, but Bushnell knew he could use an underwater explosive to help his fellow patriots fight the superior British military power if only he could find a way to deliver it to the target.  He knew the machine had to be able to be completely submerged for at least a short amount of time to avoid detection and be maneuvered in the water.

His design is simple and efficient: a small barrel-like vessel, almost like two turtle shells glued together with simple pedal powered propellers. It had to be able to deliver the underwater time bomb, attach it to the target ship’s hull,  and then retreat before the bomb detonated, all before the pilot ran out of oxygen and had to surface.

The Connecticut River Museum has both a cut away display that you can sit in and feel what it was actually like to be inside the Turtle and a full scale replica that was hand made for the 1976 bicentennial. They tested the machine in a nearby harbor, and it is said to have worked beautifully.

Read the Original Article at Atlas Obscura

World War Two History: The Amazing Story of Wojtek, The Polish Soldier Bear

After being released from a Siberian labor camp during the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1942, the 22nd Polish Supply Brigade began a long trek south toward Persia. Along the way, they bought an orphaned bear.

In the spring of 1942 following the release of Polish prisoners and deportees in the labour camps in Siberia, the main route out of the Soviet Union was across the Caspian Sea to Persia or Iran as it is known today.  A new Polish Army was being formed in the Middle East under the command of the British and on their way to the organization area, a group of Polish soldiers came across a little bear in the mountainous region of Persia. The cub was an orphan following the death of his mother at the hands of hunters and he was traded to the soldiers by a shepherd boy who kept the bear in a sack.

The animal was very small and the problem of feeding him was soon overcome by the improvised techniques employed by his new family including feeding him from on a bottle  filled with condensed milk. Eventually, they all arrived in Palestine and the bear was taken to the 22nd Transport Company, Artillery Division, Polish 2nd Corp where the men would become his companions for the next few years. He was given the name Wojtek, pronounced Voytek.

From the beginning he became a popular member of the Company spending most of his time with the soldiers of the 4th Platoon. Two of his closest friends were two young soldiers, Dymitr Szawlugo and Henryk Zacharewicz who would both be featured in many of the photos and film footage taken of Wojtek. He would often be found in the kitchen area and he ate everything he was fed and even developed a taste for beer and wine together with cigarettes which he would only accept when lit. He had a habit of drinking from a beer or wine bottle and when empty, he would peer into the bottle waiting patiently for more. He would usually take one puff of a lit cigarette and then swallow it.

Wojtek grew to become a very strong bear and was happy bathing and wrestling with his comrades. Only a few soldiers dared to take him on in a wrestling match as some times the men would get roughed up a bit by getting scratched or have their uniforms torn. The rest of the men were happy to watch. In Palestine, Wojtek became a hero one night by capturing a thief who had broken into an ammunition compound where the bear was sleeping. The Arab was shocked to find himself confronted by the animal and the commotion that ensued resulted in his arrest. Wojtek was quite satisfied with the reward of a bottle of beer.

Read the remainder at The Soldier Bear