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World War II: Difference between revisions
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** The Nazis had some of their own, too: The Ahnenerbe.
* [[All of Them]]: An [[Urban Legend]] states that on [[World War II|D-Day]] dawn a German soldier looked out at the English Channel and phoned his superiors:
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'''Command:''' How many?
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'''Soldier:''' All of them. }}
** However this is ''based on'' a real-life occurrence. A local German commander with the rank of Major and the name of Werner Pluskat did sight the invasion force and was so dismayed that he relayed to his superiors that the allies had ten thousand ships coming right at him. At first they thought Pluskat had [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!|lost his mind]] because there was no way his claim could possibly be true, until he assured them that the exact number wasn't important but there was clearly a massive fleet out there. His exaggeration wasn't exceptionally far off either, as the Allies did have several thousand ships involved in Operation Overlord.
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* [[Heroic BSOD]]:
** Churchill, when told of the loss of Singapore:
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** Admiral Kimmel's office had a picture window with a lovely view of Pearl Harbor. As he stood and watched his fleet being annihilated, a spent Japanese machine-gun round punched through the window, bounced off his chest, and fell to the ground, leaving a black smudge on his uniform. He was heard to say to no one in particular, "It would have been more merciful if it had killed me."
*** The first thing Kimmel did at the attack's conclusion was to remove two stars from his four-star uniform. In the American military system, only ranks up to two star general/admiral officer are considered permanent; three- and four-star ranks are awarded by assignment and are removed when that officer's tour is complete. The act of removing his stars was symbolic of Kimmel's realization that there was no possible way he would retain his command in the investigation to follow.
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* [[It's Raining Men]]: Happened many times during the war, from the use of glider-borne troops to capture Fort Eben-Emael in Belgium in May 1940 to Operation Varsity, Montgomery's use of a parachute drop in crossing the Rhine in March 1945. Generally, paratroops were shown to be effective in small-scale, targeted operations (Eben-Emael as noted above, the seizure of Pegasus Bridge on D-Day). They were less effective in large-scale drops like the D-day drops and Operation Market Garden, (dramatized in the films ''[[The Longest Day]]'' and ''[[A Bridge Too Far]]''), when getting the troops on the ground in an organized manner and then expecting them to fend off attacks with armor proved difficult to impossible.
** And also where the concept of [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/airborne-tactics.htm Little Groups Of Paratroopers] was realized:
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* [[Iwo Jima Pose]]: The [[Trope Maker]].
* [[Just Following Orders]]: The oft-repeated testimony at the Nuremberg trials is the [[Trope Namer]].
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* [[Nuke'Em]]: [[Trope Maker]] and thankfully, the only [[Real Life]] examples so far.
* [[Oh Crap]]: The Normandy Invasion used [[wikipedia:DD tank|DD Tanks]], a very early amphibious model which had a skirt that extended up higher than the turret, providing buoyancy. Most actually sank before reaching shore, but the first one of the ones to actually reach Juno beach looked out and later shared their view:
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* [[Order Versus Chaos]]: Nazi ideology is based upon a fabricated myth about Aryans, with strong emotional attachments to the state with the aid of romantic and religious symbolism and imagery. The Stalinist-Soviets claimed an ideology based upon 'rationalism' and a society based upon people-centric utilitarianism with emphases on international workers' solidarity and the promised land of a past-scarcity, post-capitalist world.
** Japanese ideology of the time is based upon the religion-ideology of State Shinto, though it had no need to fabricate a myth; they just held up the old myths about the creation of the world, the Japanese people and the part-kami lineage of the Emperor as true. Japan was far more effective than any other state at implementing a totalitarian government; the only thing that held it back was the Emperor's unwillingness to step forward and command his people directly. The one time he did so, they obeyed with stunning quiescence.
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*** And there was repayment in kind. But, since the actual Resistance fighters were not usually identifiable, the practical form of revenge was usually annihilating the nearest village for rural attacks, and murdering the handiest several dozen passersby for attacks in a town.
* [[Rousing Speech]]: Lots, and [[The Eternal Churchill|Churchill gave some awesome ones]].
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** Let's be honest. [[wikipedia:Sportpalast speech|"Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?"]]
** At 3rd July, during official appeal to people, Stalin gave impressive speech and said phrase, that became slogan for entire war: "Our way is right, enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours".
*** Levitan was radio announcer and gave plenty of them, and Nazis hated him for that, Hitler even declared him personal enemy. Germans tried hard to kill him, and there were even reports of German shooting active loudspeakers to silence him.
** Charles De Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June 1940.
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* [[Schizo-Tech]]: This is a war in which they had electronic sensors, rockets and jet planes. This was also a war in which a large part of the Red Army and Wehrmacht was hauled by horses and several neutral merchant vessels still used sails. It's one of the more fascinating things about this war. Materials shortages later in the war lead to [[Bamboo Technology|wooden jetfighters]].
** Fun fact: In 1939, the British Army's UK-based regular units were completely motorized. Some units policing the the Empire overseas went into action on horseback as late 1940. The Scots Greys kept their horses until 1941. Even the technologically advanced Wehrmacht used horses for rear-echelon transportation for the entire war.
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* [[The Spock]]: Spruance. He was so cold-blooded that he could probably sink Japanese ships by [[Elemental Powers|breathing ice on them]].
* [[Stop Drowning and Stand Up]]: There is an amusing story recounted in Stephen Ambrose's ''D-Day'' by Corporal George Ryan as he got off his landing craft at Omaha Beach.
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Ryan threw off all his equipment, inflated his Mae West (Not the actress, his life preserver), and began to tiptoe in off the ramp when "some German opened up on the side of the LCT with his machine gun, blblblblang. That convinced me. Into the water I dove. I pushed with all my might and started going. I'm swimming and I'm swimming. [[Stop Drowning and Stand Up|Somebody taps me on the shoulder and I look up]]. I was in a foot of water, swimming. You talk about a will to live. If they hadn't stopped me I would have swam two miles inland." }}
* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: Lots of it, culminating in the [[Atomic Hate|nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]].
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