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#1 – Canada produced more trucks than Germany, Italy and Japan COMBINED.
The Ford F15 was a mainstay of Canadian truck production
#2 – Germany had total military casualties of 4,429,875 men during WW2. Nearly 80% of these casualties were lost to Russia.
The Battle of Prokhorovka was the largest tank engagement in history. Over 1,100 tanks, AFVs, and SPGs were destroyed in just a few hours.
#3 – For every aircraft shot down in battle, another aircraft was lost due to a accident.
US B-25 Mitchell bomber bent in half from rough landing approach near Australian desert.
#4 – The British were able to create artificial moonlight during night-time battles.
To do this, the British would fire air-bursting artillery shells as well as searchlights which would create dense clouds of smoke over a target. As a follow up, they would then fire tracer ammunition (primarily from 40mm bofors cannons) of varying colors. This created bright spots of light on the ground which helped direct troops. Additionally, they would use various colors of tracers (Red, Blue, Yellow) to indicate where armor, infantry and other groups would need to attack.
#5 – The Polish Army had broken the German Enigma code prior to being overrun. They were able to send a pre-war cipher (Stolen from the Germans) before being completely taken over.
Pictured: A German Enigma Machine
#6 – More Russians died in the siege of one city (Leningrad) than the entire armies of the US and Britain COMBINED.
Burying victims of the Leiningrad siege, 1yr into seige.
#7 – Stalin killed more people than Hitler during purges of undesirables. Stalin killed a estimated total of 25 million people versus Hitlers 12 million during ww2 (6 Million of which were Jews, during the Holocaust).
During the Holomodor, Stalin killed an estimated 4 million Ukranians through starvation and famine.
#8 – Up until 1940, there was a well established Nazi party operating in the United States. Among the supporters, Henry Ford, was one of the most notable members. He financially backed the party and Hitler himself with several million dollars. This of course ceased when the US become more involved in the war, especially after Pearl Harbor.
Henry Ford receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi officials, 1938
#9 – When the US declared war on Japan in 1941, there were a total of 1,000 nurses in the Army Corps. By the end of the war there were a total of 60,000 – less than 1% of these nurses were black.
Group of Army Nurses of the 10th Field Hospital (400-bed capacity) posing in front of a 1/4-Ton Truck. The 10th Fld Hosp arrived in the MTO March 19, 1943, spending more than a year in Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy, finally being transferred to the ETO on November 1, 1944, where it saw action at the French Riviera and in the Moselle area
#10 – In 1939, Finland was attacked by the USSR, a nation with 41 times the population of Finland. During the war the USSR suffered well over half a million casualties (Kruchev stated at one point his estimate was nearly 1 million casualties) compared to Finland’s 70,000 casualties. This represents the most lop-sided casualties of any large scale conflict in history.
Simo Hayha was credited with 542 kills during the war, and was referred to by Russians “White Deatlh”.