Undoubtedly war is an ugly business, but at times war forces humans to cross the boundaries of humanity and come up with ideas that could put the devil to shame.
Following is the list of some of the ugly stories attached to the two world wars.
1. Baby Factories of Nazis
Hitler’s ugly romance with blue eyes and blonde hair is well known and documented in the history books. This romance manifested itself in a variety of different shapes and forms; most notable among all has to be the ‘Final solution’ that gave the world gas chambers and Holocaust.
But very few people know some of the bizarre atrocities Hitler authorized to further his aim of making so-called Aryan race dominant in the world.
A large number of babies were taken into large mansions and luxurious villas to be brought up as true Aryans. This Nazification program was dubbed as ‘Lebensborn’ by Hitler.
Initially, Nazi soldiers were told to mingle with the local communities of the occupied territories such as Poland. This meant that a large number of Polish women got pregnant with Nazi babies. Mother and children were then transferred to massive facilities to live a luxurious life.
This method was slow and took a while for the fresh ‘batch’ of Aryan babies. Nazis then resort to kidnapping and forcibly taking away most Aryan looking babies from their parents.
Poland claims that around 200,000 polish babies were kidnapped under the Lebensborn program.
2. The Murders of Nagyrev
Evil regimes or armies committed not all the sinister plots and atrocities during the war, sometimes seemingly normal communities shake hands with the ugly. In a small Hungarian town called Nagyrev, a string of mysterious murders shook the region during the First World War.
The murder spree in the small isolated town started after the arrival of a sinister midwife. During the war, some lonely housewives started having odd flings with the allied POW’s and had to seek the help of the midwife to put a lid on the whole matter. Her influence grew stronger, and she encouraged the people of the town to settle their scores between each other by using a deadly arsenic soup.
This resulted in a large number of deaths in the town including women and children. Some of the soldiers who survived the war came back to their wives only to get poisoned by them.
For years the whole affair went unnoticed by neighboring communities because the town’s clerk was the midwife’s cousin who never reported any death as murder in the papers. By the time the killing spree concluded some 300 people were dead including a large number of elderly and children.
3. US Soldiers treating Dead Japanese soldiers as Trophies
Propaganda has been the most prominent feature of the two biggest conflicts of the human history. In the Second World War United States and Japan, both used their propaganda machinery to stir emotions and evoke hatred among the ranks of their soldiers.
Before the war, U.S propaganda against Japanese has grown so effective that soldiers started believing that Japanese were nothing but a bunch of savages incapable of any thinking. U.S Army recruited soldiers by calling the whole campaign ‘Japanese hunting’ implying that Japanese were animals to be hunted.
This propaganda coupled with the intensity of the war meant that soldiers went over the moon after killing the Japanese. Some of them started taking Japanese soldier’s body parts as trophies. Ears started appearing on belts, while many soldiers were seen wearing necklaces made out of Japanese’ soldiers’ teeth.
It did not stop at that; some soldiers started mailing the skulls and body parts back home as trophies. The phenomenon grew to such an extent that in 1942 U.S Army had to issue an order to stop this sort of behavior, but by that time it was too late.
4. Irma Grese the Psychopath of Auschwitz
Convicted and hanged at the age of 22, Irma Grese rewrote the definition of being horrible even by Nazi standards. She got the position in the Auschwitz due to her beefy outlook and ruthless attitude, but very few knew that she was a twisted psychopath. Irma got pleasure by torturing and beating people in all kinds of horrible ways.
She would carry two hungry dogs with her at all time; she would beat people with her custom-made belt with pointy studs on. She quickly gained a reputation of a ruthless and evil person, and her popularity grew with every passing day.
She would slash women with knives, and then see painful surgery to satisfy her. By her acts, she put many Nazis to shame and was put to death when she was only 22 after committing a number of murders and torturing hundreds of prisoners.
5. Cannibal Japanese Army
Despite the fact that a lot of the propaganda against Japanese Army was conjured up by the U.S, however there was no shortage of evil and sinister acts committed by the Japanese Army during the war.
During the Second World War, American airplanes were shot down over the Japanese island of Chichi-Jima, one of the pilots was rescued by US submarine while eight others were captured by Japanese Army. Shortly after that during a dinner party held to honor Japanese Imperial Navy officers, attendees were offered a special steak.
This special steak was named ‘kimo’ meaning fresh flesh, and it came from the bodies of one of the executed POWs. After the incident, a large number of Japanese Army officials and soldiers started cannibalizing on US soldier’s bodies. On some occasions, body parts were amputated while the soldiers were still alive, later cooked and served to the officers.
One pilot who narrowly escaped this ordeal and was picked up by the submarine near Chichi-Jima, went on to become the President of the United States. His name is George Bush Sr.