Interesting Facts from WWII: Part III Quiz

Answer: Injecting them with a special vaccine

He injected Jews and non-Jews with a vaccine containing dead epidemic typhus, which would give them a positive test of the disease. Although the patient would test positive for the disease it had no ill effects and they could fake the symptoms if required.

The Nazis were very health conscious and did not want to spread the disease into their concentration camps. The whole area were these people lived was quarantined by the Nazis, thus saving thousands from the concentration camps. In 1958 he immigrated to the USA and in 1976 he became the Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lazowski died in 2006 at the age of 92.

Answer: Cut the lift cables

Parisian engineers cut the lift cables to the tower so that if Hitler and his henchmen wanted to go to the top to get a bird's eye view, they would have to climb to the top. During his visit to Paris, Hitler chose to stay at ground level rather than take the stairs to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Answer: He was half Jewish

Werner Goldberg (1919-2004) was half Jewish or a "mischling" in Nazi terminology. Mischling means "mixed blood". Once the Nazi authorities found out about his origins he was expelled from the army in 1940. Goldberg's story formed part of the 2006 documentary "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers".

Answer: Harvard

The 1909 Harvard graduate Ernst Hanfstaengl (1887-1975) was impressed by a speech given by Adolf Hitler in a beer hall in 1922. Ernst played the piano with enthusiasm and Hitler would march up and down by waving his hands as a conductor. Ernst explained to Hitler how the Harvard's would shout in unison to whip up the passions of the Harvard football team.

The "Rah, rah, rah" eventually became "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil". Ernst eventually became disillusioned by the Nazi regime and moved to the USA where his was imprisoned.

Answer: Al Capone's limousine

The Secret Service realised they did not have a bulletproof vehicle to transport the President, but someone then realised the U.S. Treasury still had Al Capone's bulletproof limousine. The car was still in good working order and the President reportedly quipped "I hope Mr. Capone won't mind".
The vehicle used was not Al Capone's limousine, which it was in England at the time. It was sold in 1933 to an Englishman and shipped to England; and did not return to the USA until 1958 (Al Capone was imprisoned in 1932).
It is still a question mark in many people's minds but general consensus is that it was or very well could have been Al Capone's limousine, however, the urban myth/legend still goes on today.

Answer: A photo of each other

In Hitler's 1923 book "Mein Kampf" he included some anti-Semitic views attributed to Ford, and Ford is the only American mentioned in the book. In 1938 Ford was presented with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. During the 1930s Ford did business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war material.

However, once the USA entered the war in 1941 Ford gave his full backing to the USA war needs. This friendship with Hitler still puzzles historians. The aviator Charles Lindbergh was the second American to receive the same award as Henry Ford from Nazi Germany.

Answer: Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

German author Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925) in 1923 wrote the book Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich) which heavily influenced the Nazis. The book promoted German nationalism which was rife for the likes of the Conservative Revolutionary movement and later the Nazi Party after Germany's humiliation after WWI. Having served in the German army in WWI he published in 1918 the book "The Right of Young Nations" which presented a version of the Sonderweg theory (in German meaning special path).

Anton Drexler (1884-1942) was the founder of the German Workers' Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers' Party commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party. He was the Party Chairman (1920-21) before Hitler became Party Chairman from 1921-1945. Membership of the Nazi Party in 1920 was below 60 yet in 1945 membership was 8.5 million. The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806) and the Second Reich was the German Empire (1871-1918).

Answer: Juan Pujol Garcia

Juan Pujol Garcia (1912-1988) was a Spaniard who was utterly disgusted by the Fascist and Communist regimes in Europe so he approached the British and USA intelligence agencies to be an agent. They rejected him so he then contacted the Nazis. He became a master of lies and deception as the Nazis asked him to go to London but instead he went to Lisbon and by listening to radio reports, sending British postcards and reading newspapers he tricked the Nazis into thinking he was in London. He also created a huge network of fictitious sub-agents living in different parts of Britain. He had never visited Britain and he made many mistakes that were not picked up by the Germans. He eventually became an agent for the British who gave him the codename of Garbo and his Nazi codename was Arabel. His only real contribution was during the Normandy invasion when he convinced the Nazi regime to divert many German troops to Pas de Calais instead of the Normandy beaches.

Dusan Popov (1912-1981) was a Serbian triple agent during WWII. He received the OBE after working for MI6 and was a playboy. It is understood that Ian Fleming knew Dusan during the war as he was also in intelligence and used some of Dusan's exploits as a model for his creation of secret agent, James Bond - 007. Eddie Chapman (1914-1997) was an double agent for Britain and Germany and is the only Englishman to receive the Iron Cross. Arthur Owens (1899-1957) was a Welsh double agent who double crossed both parties.

Answer: Mildred Harnack-Fish

Mildred Harnack-Fish (1902-1943) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and met and married Arvid Harnack in 1926 when he was a Rockefeller Fellow from Germany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They left for Germany in 1929 where she worked as a translator, literary historian and eventually as a German Resistance fighter. She and Arvid became involved with a discussion group that were opposed to the Nazi regime and they became known as the Red Orchestra resistance group. The group were contacted by the Soviet Union to work against the Nazi regime. It was through this Soviet connection that Mildred and Arvid were imprisoned, tortured and executed in 1943.

Irena Sendler (1910-2008) was a Polish nurse and social worker who served with the Polish underground during the German occupation of Warsaw during WWII. She is responsible for smuggling over 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto providing them with false identities as safe haven outside the ghetto.
Vivian Bullwinkel (1915-2000) was an Australian Army nurse and the sole survivor of the Bangka Island massacre when the Japanese killed 21 of her fellow nurses on Radji Beach in February 1942. She was badly wounded and by feigning death she survived for 2 weeks before recapture and she spent 3½ years in captivity. It was only after WWII that she able to speak about the massacre and testify. Reba Whittle (1919-1981) was a First Lieutenant in the US Army Nurse Corps. She became the only American military female POW in the European theatre of war in WWII when her casualty evacuation aircraft was shot down in September 1944.

Answer: Gave them Muslim IDs

During the occupation of Paris the Rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit Benghabrit gave Nazi officers and their wives guided tours of the Mosque while many Jews were being hidden in the underground caverns of the mosque. Their story was told in the French movie of 2011 "Les Hommes Libres" (Free Men).