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Brief curiosities

// Some curiosities about the war.

The first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in Berlin Zoo.
The original name was Josef Stalin Dzhugashvili. In 1913 he began using the pseudonym Stalin, meaning Man of Steel.
Benito Mussolini, during the First World War, was an editor for an Italian newspaper partly financed by the British and French. At that time was opposed to the German authorities (he belonged to the Italian army until wounded).
Heinrich Himmler, the evil mind of the SS, was a chicken farmer.
You must have alreadt heard about kamikaze bombers, but have you heard of suicide warships? On April 7, 1945 on the island of Okinawa, the Japanese battleship Yamato, which had not been given fuel for return back home, arrived with several other ships to attack the American fleet. The Yamato, which was one of the largest warships ever built, and the other ships that accompanied him were sunk by U.S. warplanes before they reach their destination.
Adolf Hitler was a teetotaler, vegetarian and non-smoker.
Although many people refer to the landing at Normandy on D-Day as Operation Overlord, the operation was actually called Operation Neptune. The landing was originally known as Overlord, but in September 1943 the code name was changed to Neptune, and from that moment, Overlord is now used to refer to Allied strategy in northwestern Europe.
Despite what you see in the movies, the German army (Wehrmacht) did not use the Nazi salute. Only after the July 1944 attempt on Hitler's who were forced to use this greeting.
Virtually everyone knows the name of the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima - the Enola Gay - but not everyone knows the name of the one that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later. This B-29 was known as Bock's Car, and Nagasaki was not the original target - the intended target was the city of Kokura, which escaped by the fact that the bomber was under orders to attack the city only if it was clearly visible. As Kokura was under a dense fog, Nagasaki was the first alternative for the launch of the atomic bomb.
After suffering heavy losses during the assault and capture of Crete, Hitler never committed again his airborne troops in large-scale operations, using them instead as infantry.
On January 17, 1942, Churchill was nearly shot by the enemy, and also by their air force. During the return trip from the United States, the hydroplane was turned away from the default route and approached the German anti-aircraft located in France and, after having realized the error and have been corrected, the British radar operators detected the plane where was Churchill as a German bomber. Six RAF planes practically annihilate the plane in question, but fortunately for Churchill, were unable to find the hydroplane.
In addition to the transport methods used by the second Polish Corporation who fought in the battle of Monte Cassino there was also a brown bear called Wojtek who helped to carry the ammunition.
The Soviet Red Army trained dogs to destroy enemy tanks. The dogs were trained to put food under the tanks and was stuck them on the back about 26 pounds of explosive. When these tanks were below, the explosive was activated and destroy the tank (and, obviously, the dog). Unfortunately this was not always working as planned, since the dogs were trained in Soviet tanks, but performing the task easily with the Soviet tanks than with the Germans ones More than 25 German tanks were seriously damaged in this way during the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk.
The heaviest tank ever built was the German Maus II, which weighed 192 tons. At the end of the war this tank has not yet reached an operational state. (source: Guinness Book of Records).