Discover the obscure, forgotten, and astonishing true stories that history books left out
Some of the most remarkable and surprising facts from the war
A Syrian brown bear was officially enlisted in the Polish Army, carried ammunition at the Battle of Monte Cassino, and loved drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.
Czech and Slovak soldiers trained in Britain parachuted into Prague to assassinate one of the most powerful Nazis in occupied Europe.
When the Nazis ordered the arrest of Denmark's 7,800 Jews, ordinary Danish citizens organized a spontaneous rescue operation that saved over 99% of them.
The Navajo language proved so complex that Japanese codebreakers never cracked it, and Code Talkers could encode and transmit messages in minutes versus hours for machines.
A Polish resistance officer deliberately got himself arrested and sent to Auschwitz to gather intelligence and organize a resistance movement inside the death camp.
British intelligence planted fake invasion plans on a corpse and floated it to Spanish shores to deceive the Nazis about the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Browse our collection across 10 fascinating categories
In-depth explorations of the war's most remarkable untold tales
How an all-female bomber regiment flew obsolete biplanes on daring nighttime raids
The 588th Night Bomber Regiment, composed entirely of women, flew over 30,000 sorties in rickety plywood biplanes, earning the nickname "Night Witches" from terrified German soldiers.
Read Story →Denis Avey's extraordinary mission to witness the horrors inside the most notorious death camp
A British POW deliberately swapped places with a Jewish inmate to smuggle himself into the Auschwitz-Monowitz slave labor camp—to bear witness.
Read Story →A young mother who gave her life fighting behind enemy lines in occupied France
Violette Szabo, a half-French, half-British SOE agent, twice parachuted into occupied France before being captured, tortured, and executed at age 23.
Read Story →Think you know World War II? Explore our collection and discover the stories that never made it into the textbooks.
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