World War II/Awesome: Difference between revisions

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Lest we forget.

 

 

 

== The Allies - United We Stand ==

{{quote|"Two kinds of people are staying on this beach! The dead, and those who are going to die! NOW GET MOVING!"}}

* Operations Fortitude, Ironside, and Vendetta: the Allied misinformation campaign that tried to convince the Germans that the Allies were going to attack Calais, Norway, Aquitaine, or southern France instead of Normandy. It worked brilliantly. The Allies even convinced the Germans that the massive army in Normandy was merely a diversion, and that the real attack was about to hit Calais. Consequently, the Germans didn't even reinforce Normandy, giving the Allies time to consolidate their beachhead. It was the largest hoax in human history.

*** 'Garbo', who is a German spy and regularly broadcasts the information to the Germans. Even tells them about "Overlord" before they knew. The catch - he was a double agent (The invasion warning was timed to be too late to be of any use, but enough to make him appear very credible). So good and awesome that after the war Garbo bumped into one of his old Nazi "handlers" ''who handed him an Iron Cross'' for his services.

* Defeating the Axis in WW2.

* Jose M. Lopez. It's commonly accepted wisdom that the "M" stands for "Motherfucking". Ask the Nazis. The scene was during the Battle of the Bulge, 1944, and during [[World War II]]. Lopez's sstory is similar to that of Alvin York, except Lopez suffering a few scratches. Only a few. Oh, and Lopez, also took on a Tank which was firing shells directly at him (Many striking close enough to bowl him over repeatedly...That's where his many scratches came from). Also, the endless Nazi soldier waves. Oh, and his final kill count that's estimated to be over a hundred men that he singlehandedly mowed down, and saving his entire company from being overun. He even did all this running back and forth to different sides of the battlefield with his 30+ pound machine gun every time they were going to be outflanked, then singlehandedly push the Nazi tide back. Jose Lopez never had any cover protecting him above the waist. Now you see why the "M" stands for "Motherfucking"?

** Unknown if this makes it more of a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|CMoA]] or just a truly terrifying, was the fact that the scientists involved didn't actually know what would happen. They were more worried that the explosion's sheer power might cause the atmosphere to spontaneously combust, literally destroying the world...AND THEY DID IT ANYWAY!

* Anyone that has seen the [[Dogfights]] episode "Long Odds" can talk about the scouting mission by ''Old 666'', were a Japanese plane squadrons painfully discovered was heavily customized by their crew into what is probably the most well-armed aircraft of the war.

** Therefore, not even [[Satan]] himself can ignore the effects of [[More Dakka]].

** For more details, that mission was the only bomber mission were two members of the same crew got the Medal of Honor for different actions and every other member won the Distinguished Service Cross. The first MoH went to Jay Zeamer, the pilot, for firstly shooting down an enemy plane with a remote controlled gun, and then, while wounded with a broken leg and multiple fragment wounds brought the plane down to where the crew didn't need the broken oxygen system by watching the increase in manifold pressure in the engines, and refused first aid, lapsing into unconsciousness, until the plane crash landed, at which point he was so badly injured; the rest of the crew removed him last, assuming that Jay was dead. The other went to bombardier, Joseph Sarnoski, for shooting down multiple Japanese planes while wounded, and then after getting hit with a 20mm shell that blew him out of the compartment, sought aid until a second wave of fighters came, and shot down at least one of them. He, unfortunately died at his station from his wounds.

** Defense of Hel, a Polish peninsula. The plan was to hold defense for two weeks. They lost source of supplies, were under heavy fire from German naval artillery, and they surrendered when there was no point of fighting any longer after 32 days. The most noteworthy moment was when the Polish Army realized that they could not use missiles because of their destroyed equipment, so they buried them. Once the Nazi decided to try to attack not from the sea but from land, Hel became an island.

* The 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade. General Sosabowski went into Operation Market Garden with misgivings, let his support elements be cut from his brigade to see them chewed up in the meat grinder of Arnhem, finally went in with his paras, found his Rhine crossing gone, made the crossing anyhow, and covered the retreat of the British 1st Airborne Division, at a cost of almost a quarter of his brigade in casualties. The survivors are honored every year in Oosterbeek, and not for nothing.

** Such was their defiance that they created what amounted to an ''underground state'', complete with functional institutions, that helped sustain the resistance against Nazi occupation. Not to mention how symbolically, as mentioned in the animated film [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q88AkN1hNYM The Unconquered], the war never really ended for Poles in 1945. They continued fighting for their freedom until the end of the Cold War and collapse of Communist rule in ''1989''.

* The Battle of Wizna, anyone? The Polish were outnumbered 59 to 1, and they held off the German Army for three days. The Polish managed to take out 10 tanks and a few AFV's, and an untold amount of infantry. They had six 76mm guns, 42 Machine Guns, and only two Anti-Tank Rifles, compared to the Germans 350 Tanks, Air Superiority, and 600+ heavy weapons (mortars, Machine Guns, Rockets, etc.) along with a lot of artillery. Also, the Polish commander swore by his life that he won't let the fort fall into enemy hands. When the situation became hopeless, he agreed to surrender to prevent unnecessary deaths of his soldiers, then blew himself up with a grenade. The Sabaton song 40:1 is named for it.

* Operation August Storm. Which is one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war, it involved moving over a million troops from the Western front in secret and consisted of double pincer movement over an area the size of Western Europe that utterly destroyed the Japanese defenders. The Soviet army took no less than 640,276 prisoners, while suffering only 12,031 losses. And, although it is still a matter under dispute, some historians believe that subsequent Japanese surrender was largely due to this devastating offensive and not the A-bombs.

* I'll just leave this here...

** Remarkable indeed yet not exceptional at all. Maria Oktyabrskaya, a telephonist from the city Simpherople learned that her husband died in action and decided that [[It's Personal]]. She raised 50,000 rubles!!!, transferred the amount to the State Bank and then eventually wrote a letter to Stalin requesting a personal tank. They named the tank "Sister in Arms" and she went to the front as its crew member, and spent next four months fighting, like a fury. One time in combat, a shell hit the tank's track, Maria tried to repair it, despite being under enemy fire, but was wounded, and later died. She was awarded with an order of the Hero of the Soviet Union. So impressed were her comrades that when the tank got destroyed they gave their next one the same name...And then the next one...And the next.

* The "Night Witches" - Female combat pilots, who fly obsolete biplanes with eff-off heavy bombs attached and gliding towards German positions on night-time bombing runs. All while putting up with institutional sexism from their command. Garth Ennis sums them up: "Young women in their teens and early twenties, flying obsolete biplanes at night against the most lethal military machine in the world, facing potentially catastrophic consequences should they be captured alive...That, to me, is heroism, and that deserves to be acknowledged."

* Giorgio Perlasca, one of the Righteous Among the Nations: in the winter 1944, he saved 5,200 Jews posing as Spanish consul-general to Hungary.

 

 

* The French Resistance. Particularly their actions on D-Day, where after given a coded message through the BBC, they launched massive sabotage attacks.

** She even commanded 7,000 French troops that engaged in guerrilla warfare to sabotage the Nazi.

** Once, the supply drops were threatened by the destruction of radio codes. Nancy embarked on a marathon bike ride, cycling about 500 km in 72 hours and bypassing several German checkpoints, just to find an operator to radio Britain and requesting new codes.

* De Gaulle, a chief of the FFF,'s reaction when the German radio stated that "Free French Soldier will be shot and not taken prisoner for felony," as officially France had surrendered: De Gaulle stated that, from this moment onward, German prisoners will also be shoot, too.

** [[Your Mileage May Vary]] on this one's 'awesomeness.'

**** To the Greeks, hospitality is always been sacred.

* The whole island of Malta had its CMOA by surviving a three year siege by the Germans and Italians. For it, the entire population was awarded the George Cross, which is the highest civilian award for gallantry in Britain. Which is now an independent state, the medal is now on its flag.

* Australia's the Kokoda Trail. Let just say that it's been called "Australia's Thermopylae," which is totally justified. Though not at the same magnitude, then again the Persians didn't have assault rifles.

** This is twice as awesome considering the fact it was a first time for a purely militia force and after the first battle the Japanese believed that they had defeated a huge force of more than 1,200 strong when actually they were facing 77 Australian troops.

[[The Holocaust]] was one of the worst atrocities ever committed by humankind. Eleven million people lost their lives because of ideology gone mad. These are the people who saw what was happening and said "Not one more."

 

* Albania, both the nations, the people, and as individuals, simply refused to permit the Nazis to carry out the genocide in their nation. ONE JEWISH FAMILY in the whole country were killed, other thousands were pouring in as refugees. The Albanians actually competed with each other for the privilege of saving Jews from the Nazis.

* The twelfth ''Sonderkommando'''s uprising (They're units of concentration camp inmates, mostly Jewish, who were forced to assist the SS in killing by disposing bodies from the gas chambers) in October 1944. They destroyed almost half of the crematoria of the Auschwitz extermination camp, seriously undermining the number of people the Nazis could still kill during the last months of the war, as they were never rebuilt. 200, who didn't die in the uprising itself were forced to strip, lie face down, and were shot in the back of the head in quick succession. A total of 451 members died that day.

* Jack Churchill. Some of his more notable exploits includes capturing a whole village by ambushing the sentries with his claymore, escaping execution after being captured by claiming to be a relative of Winston's and escaping from Sachsenhausen concentration camp with one of the men, who inspired [[The Great Escape]].

** Figures that any 20th century soldier that carries a broadsword into combat. And then justifies it by saying, "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed." Is going to have a career filled with Crowning Moments of Awesome.

*** Not the only one, Danish nobleman, English Commando and first-class [[Badass|Bad Ass]], Anders Lassen was (in)famous for his skill of using the hunting bow and knife to kill both the Germans and Italians silently. He's either the highest decorated or amongst the highest decorated or amongst the highest decorated foreigner EVER in the English service, definitely in WW2. - And also the only SBS member to get the Victoria Cross. Just in contrast of both the Danes and other heroes in WWII, Andres Lassen apparently enjoys the war and killing, he's very much like his [[Like Father, Like Son|Viking forefathers]] in a [[Blood Knight]] and [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]] way. To top it all off, Anders never seems to have settle down for the quiet life, since he was killed in action on April 9, 1945; taking on three German machine gun nests while doing this and winning the VC posthumously (Ironically, the day was the fifth anniversary of the Nazi occupation in Denmark). If one reads the Danish The Other Wiki, which has an article on him here: [https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Lassen The English one is just tiny].

* [[The Other Tropes Wiki|This Tv Trope Troper]] vividly remembers of his grandfather telling him a tale of how one of his friends during the war - now sadly died of old age and who had formerly been an inoffensive butcher - The ship which he was on had completely ran out of ammunition for the soldiers on board. Also they were held up at gunpoint by the U-boat Nazis. Here's the awesome bit - The troper's grandfather's friend leaped down onto the U-boat and killed six armed Nazi soldiers with just a freakin' cutlass. The U-boat was captured, the ship saved, and his grandfather showed this troper a newspaper clipping that detailed this happening.

{{quote|'''Narrator''': "At first, the Germans didn't shoot at him. I think they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing, but that wasn't the really astounding thing. The astounding thing was that after he hooked up with I company, he came back."}}

**** According to most eyewitness accounts, Spiers was credited also with taking the fourth gun emplacement all by himself on D-Day.

* Col. Joseph A. Gregory, who is a sniper and [[WW 1]] veteran from Canada had a CMOA at Dieppe. After when he and his squadmates clear a few bunkers, he went to the beach to catch the last ships to England. A boat that was stuck in the sand and while helping to push it out, a bullet ircocheting of the water whizzed past his forehead, blinding him on one eye, and knocking him into the water. He got up and proceeded to board another boat, which was then sunk from under him. He made for another motorboat, and was pulled into it by Sgt. Major McEvoy, who nursed his head and carried him over to a destroyer and into sickbay, where he said, "You'll be alright now, Joe." Just when the Sargent spoke, a dive bomb hit sickbay, killing McEvoy, knocking Colonel Gregory out, and washed him into the sea. Another boat fished him out of the water and was put beside an Oerlikon gun, which made enough noise to knock him out again. Later he came to one of the gunners and asked, "Holy Jesus, we're pretty near home?" The receiving answer "Home be b-we're still at Dieppe." The colonel survived the rest of the war and the Canadian Army employed him for recruitment advertising.

** Another Canadian from Dieppe was captured. First, he escaped from the CATTLE TRAIN that was carrying Canadian prisoners by jumping out after ALMOST BEING SPOTTED several times, trekked all the way down to Vichy France, got on a British ship to Gibraltar, and from there a long hike back to Britain. That's right, this guy traversed in just a few days across France. Also, he went to help form the Brittany Escape Line, a very ballsy operation which smuggled downed airmen, escaped POW's, and espionage/spy agents, who managed to get out of France before the Gestapo caught them.

* A troper's friend relate this story (Note: some cool details were left out, in case they're incorrect): The friend's great uncle was a Catholic priest that lived in northern Germany during the war. The town was small, "Where everybody knows your name," etc. and the church, was well-nigh ancient. The priest was decidedly anti-Nazi. He would gather up everyone who needed to disappear before they "disappeared" by force by the Nazis: Jews, Gypsies, etc. They would all attend the Sunday Mass at church, scattered across his congregation. At Communion, everyone lines up to receive Communion. The priest gives Communion to each person, but when he got to someone that needed his disappearing services, he'll claim to run out of the Communion wafers. The priest, alter boys, and assistants would go around behind the altar, where he would pretend to get more wafers. There was a door leading down to hidden catacombs underneath the church. Now this town is very close to the Belgian border and the catacombs lead far enough to the outskirts of town to get people almost to Belgium. It wasn't exactly safe there, either, but it's certainly safer than Germany itself. So the priest would send the person through the catacombs to relative safety then come back with more Communion wafers. Until, of course, another person needing assistance got to the front of the line, at which he ran out of Communion wafers again. The Nazis eventually found out and very impolitely instructed him to cease, and plus, they'll be watching. To enforce this injunction, the Nazi sent "observers" to his church to make sure he enforces the party line. At the first Mass were the priest sees the observers, he decides to do his "Hitler is actually the Anti-Christ" sermon. Needless to say, it didn't go over well. One of the observers was so incensed that he stood up mid-serman and shot the priest squarely in the chest. Hold on...Wait for the happy ending. Back in the day (and sometimes today, the troper relating the tale presumes [Being not Catholic), Catholic priests wore large crosses on their chests, usually made of gold. The bullet hit the priest square on the cross right below his heart, warping the cross, and almost folding it upon itself. The blow knocked the priest backwards over the altar, and right to the entrance to the catacombs. Seizing the opportunity, he escaped through those same tunnels that he helped others leave through and eventually made it to relative safety. Incidentally, the damaged cross is now a family heirloom. The "relative", his cousin was also a priest and was selected as the successor to the first priest. This priest was a non-fan of the Nazis, continued his cousin's practice of aiding innocent people escaping horrible deaths. Once more the Nazis figured it out. This time, they didn't bother with "observers." They sent goons to just shoot him in the head. The goons arrived, grabbed the priest, threw him down on the altar, and in a moment of [[Moral Event Horizon]]/"Holy Blasphemy, Batman! They decided to kill him on the altar. At that moment, the Allies decided to drop a few bombs on that dinky town, including the ancient church. One of the bombs crashed through the roof without detonating, but it collapse the roof in the process, and provided enough distraction for the priest. Following the footsteps of his cousin, he dove behind the altar, entered the catacombs, and found relative safety. The rest is history.

** Another brave clergyman was Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a prominent official at the Vatican. During the Nazi occupation of Rome, O'Flaherty was one of the heads of a huge underground movement dedicated to helping Allied POWs, Jewish refugees, and so forth evade capture by the Gestapo, usually hiding them in convents, seminaries, their own houses, and in some cases, the Vatican itself. Everything that O'Flaherty did had a sort of daredevil flare to it. - For example, when one man was hiding developed appendictis, the Monsignor smuggled him into a hospital, and with some help of the nuns tricked a German military surgeon into operating. The man recovered on a ward full of German officers before O'Flaherty smuggled him out quietly again. Eventually, Colonel Herbert Kappler, the leader of the Gestapo in Rome, discovered O'Flaherty's role in the organization and became obsessed with trying to stop him. Unfortunately for him, he can't arrest O'Flaherty, since the Monsignor was inside the Vatican which gave him diplomatically immunity, and when he was out of the Vatican, he was always able to outwit his pursuers. After the war, O'Flaherty visited Kappler in prison every month (By some accounts, he's his only visitor), and eventually converted his former nemesis to Catholicism. It's impossible to do a full story any justice here, but it's not an exaggeration to say that Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty's life was just a one long, Crowning Moment of Awesome from start to finish.

** While we're talking about the Catholic Clergy, what about the biggest one of the lot: Pope Pius XII? He hid hundreds of Jews (Including Rome's chief Rabbi) in the Vatican and Castle Gandolfo, as well as ordering the Convents and Monasteries throughout Europe to open their doors to refugees, and even distributing thousands of fake visas to help the Jews to escape (Some of the stunts include dressing Jews up as priests and teaching them Latin chants). Under his watch the Church helped save more Jews and other refugees than all of the other relief organizations '''combined'''. He has a history of refusing to play ball with the Naizs: When he was first elected, the Nazis sent an ambassador to try and get him on their side. The Pope let him ramble on about the inevitability of the triumph of the Third Reich, opened a ledger, calmly listed the known Nazi atrocities to date, and terminated the audience. The Nazis hated him so much that he had a standing order for the Cardinals to assume him dead and elect a new Pope, just in case he ever got arrested (Which Hitler talked about doing several times).

*** Bonus points for outfitting the Swiss Guards with machine guns just in case. That's right; he was willing to pit the ''Swiss Guards'' against the Nazi war machine if Hitler tried to stop him. The Pope's not playing around.

* Jimmy Launder's sub that was under his command took out the last German U-Boats during the war. What's impressive was that both his sub and the German sub both submerged during that time. This was before homing torpedoes came and to this day remains the only person to command a submerged sub to take out another successfully (Think of a fighter taking out angother using unguided rockets, but only this time having to only rely completely on their radar and not visuals).

* Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery. Turned the situation in Africa around after his first battle in command then proceed to spend the next year outfoxing the Desert Fox. Shame that he and Rommel never met.

 

* Singapore's 1st Malay Brigade stood up bravely to the Japanese invasion. Their commander was a great man who at the end never surrendered. When they ran out of ammunition, they used the bayonets to continue fighting, and even at the end. Until, the unit was annihilated.

* General George S. Patton - Remember that scene in [[Tim Burton]]'s [[Batman]], which has The Joker staring down the Bat-Plane, daring him to shoot? Patton really did that in North Africa, standing in the middle of an airstrip, and staring down a German fighter plane ivory-handled [[Guns Akimbo|revolvers akimbo]]. Even saying the same thing:

{{quote|"C'mon you gruesome son-of-a-bitch!"}}

** No need to be mentioned. His reputation is so badass and well-known that everyone knows who he is.

* A non-combat example: David B. Parkinson, who is credited with the invention of the M-9 electrical anti-aircraft gun, which almost curbed the threat of the German's V1 buzz bombs singlehandedly, which help their the tide of the Battle of Britain. On its own, pretty cool, but really awesome. Though one has to consider that Parkinson and his team had ''never'' worked with firearms, being recording technicians for Bell Labs, and the whole idea for the M-9 was conceived when it ''came to him in a goddamn dream''.

** [[What Happened to the Mouse?|And the Japanese monastery?]] It's built in a city called Nagasaki. Plus, it's still standing - When Kolbe built the monastery, the locals were trying to persuade him to build it on the side of the mountain facing the city, which is a more auspicious orientation. Kolbe preferred the other side of the mountain, and in August 9, 1945, that saved the building when the atomic bomb hit.

* Captain Clarence E. Coggins, 45th Division, US Army serving in the 179th Infantry. After arriving in Germany shortly, he was captured. A general tried to interrogate him and learn of the location of his fellow American troops. He eventually convinced the general that [[Blatant Lies|the German camp was surrounded by allied soldiers]] and surrendering would be the best option. Clarence even drove back to his division in the GENERAL'S OWN CAR, with 946 German soldiers, all their arms, equipment, and vehicles in tow.

 

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