5 Bullshit 'Facts' Everyone Believes About WWII

Why It's Bullshit:

Despite the copious stock footage of B-17 and B-29 bombers employed by the History Channel, World War II was still largely about horsepower. Literal horsepower.

The Soviet Army had at least 3.5 million horses in service and deployed tens of thousands of mounted cavalrymen. They would have relied even more heavily on horse-drawn transport had the U.S. not played the role of shady wartime used car dealer. Now, you might expect as much from an army that famously didn't have enough guns for all its soldiers, but they weren't the only ones who relied heavily on horses.

The German "war machine" was actually less gears and sheet metal, more flesh and bone. When World War II began, horses outnumbered vehicles in the Wehrmacht by a good 3 to 1, and that figure only got worse as the war progressed and vehicles crapped out. When we think of the German army, we think of panzer and tiger tanks, but even the famous panzer armies had 15,000 more horses than motors. And here you thought those fancy jackboots were just for style.

Ironically, even as Nazi propagandists were inventing stories about Polish cavalrymen hopelessly charging German tanks, the German army was busy forming new cavalry units in an attempt to stop getting trampled by their horse-savvy enemies.

The United States had the only army that was mostly motorized, yet U.S. cavalry was responsible for one of the last mounted charges in history. And even though the U.S. was less reliant on horses, the Allied rolls contained thousands of veterinarians, veterinarians' assistants, and blacksmiths who kept animals and wagons on the road. While we firmly believe that Hawk Phoenix: Blitzkrieg Veterinarian and Flint McSteel: Wartime Blacksmith would have made excellent films, the animal-powered nature of the war got little airplay, thanks largely to Soviet and Axis propaganda efforts.

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As documented in such historical works as Captain America and The Official Wolfenstein Compendium of World War II, Nazi Germany was a technological juggernaut -- why, they were neck and neck with the U.S. in the race to develop the A-bomb. It was only blind luck (and the fact that Jesus likes apple pie more than bratwurst) that led to the good guys developing it first.

Why It's Bullshit:

In what was quite possibly the only good thing anti-Semitism ever did for the world, the Third Reich ostracized the very scientists capable of developing the atomic bomb. In fact, the Reich was so disdainful of that type of work that they considered the whole field of study "Jewish physics." So-called "Jewish physicists" like Erwin "quantum mechanics" Schrodinger and Albert "motherfucking" Einstein booked it out of Germany, and their exit lit the fuse that sent the Nazis' atomic aspirations up in a disappointingly non-mushroom-shaped cloud.

While the remaining German scientists got the general gist of what it would take to make the bomb tick, the Nazi atomic bomb program was doomed from the get-go due to gross miscalculations in just how much uranium was needed to give the very face of Mother Earth a gigantic shiner. Add to that the fact that Germany had been largely expelled from the world's scientific community (nobody wants genocide-tainted fingers all up in their beakers), and they never stood so much as a snowball's chance of painting that shiny new doomsday device with stylized swastikas.

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Why It's Bullshit:

It's absolutely true that Germany's government was a well-oiled machine ... before the Nazis came along and threw a big ol' Aryan super-wrench into its gears.

Back when Hitler wasn't much more than a Mussolini fanboy, the German government was ticking along about as well as a post-war, pre-Depression era government could be expected to. They were keeping up with their reparation payments from World War I, their currency was stabilizing -- the I's were dotted, the T's were crossed, and everything was in order. But then the Third Reich came along, slapped all those nerd-papers into the air, and walked away laughing.

While it's true that the Nazis had a ton of paperwork, no one ever said that they were any good at it. The Nazi government was all about a political agenda and not so much about administration; from its very beginnings, it was a bureaucratic nightmare that completely destabilized itself through extreme politicization, intergovernmental conflicts, and other problems that didn't even exist in Germany until the Nazis came to power. Even the very poster child of unfeeling bureaucracy, the Gestapo, was an absolute mess. They were consistently and embarrassingly understaffed, and if it wasn't for the German public pulling Gestapo horror stories out of their asses, they'd have seen their influence crumble quicker than a certain young artist's career.

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Why It's Bullshit:

The Greatest Generation was just like you, had you been forced to serve in a monstrously destructive war. In other words, they were scared shitless and miserable.

Big emphasis on "forced," because no matter how many times we're told that the Greatest Generation went to war because it was "the right thing to do," it doesn't change the fact that two-thirds of the U.S. servicemen were drafted. But we're told that the Greatest Generation was different from those who've come since, and in a way that's true -- because two-thirds of the men who fought in Vietnam volunteered.

World War II's draft dodging numbers dwarf both Vietnam's and World War I's. Desertion rates between World War II and Vietnam were pretty much neck and neck. And when they weren't dodging or deserting, the Greatest Generation was doing the third best thing: getting completely shitfaced. Soldiers in Vietnam took a lot of heat for drug abuse, but the Greatest Generation was dying of alcohol poisoning so fast that the U.S. Army started putting up warning billboards displaying the "Deaths from Poison Liquor to Date" (G.I.s weren't picky about their booze and often drank methanol -- aka antifreeze). Not to be outdone, creative sailors sometimes swilled the alcohol that fueled torpedoes. When the U.S. Navy caught on and started putting additives in the "torpedo juice" to make the soldiers sick if they drank it, the submariners one-upped them and learned the art of distillation via torpedo engine.

The lesson here is: Never underestimate the resourcefulness of a conscripted serviceman looking to drink away his misery. Drunk finds a way. Drunk ... finds a way.

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Still, that didn't stop 13 percent of Americans from favoring the extermination of every last Japanese person from the planet. After Japan's surrender, nearly twice that number of Americans said they regretted that the war had ended before the Japanese could be more thoroughly nuked. If history was a Batman movie, this is the spot where Robin would intervene to remind Batman that revenge isn't justice.

But at least when the war ended, the sacrifice was worth it. After all, the Allies did roll up one of the most despicable, murderous dictators in history ... and slapped a bow on most of Europe for Joseph Stalin, one of the most despicable, murderous dictators in history.

So why does this myth about World War II being a "good war" persist? Maybe because no one wants to watch a war movie about an army of terrified amateurs fighting for a homeland motivated more by hatred than nobility, only to eventually wind up chumming up alongside a brutal dictator. But wait! Stay tuned for the obligatory after-credits scene, it's a real doozy: millions of German civilians displaced, Berlin subjected to the largest mass rape in history, and the Allies ending things much as they'd begun -- with book burnings and censors to rid Germany of everything undemocratic.

"Good war" remains, to this day, an oxymoron.

Check out the slick new website for Jacopo's upcoming book, THE GREAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN POCKET WATCH CONSPIRACY. J. is a reader and a writer; you can reach him here.

Be sure to check out how the future will misremember us in 13 Misconceptions About Today from Future History Classes.

Related Reading: World War 2 was different from the movies in a number of ways, including the fabulous Dazzle camouflage that draped every battleship. Prefer your war with a dash of "gut-wrenching creepy"? Read about the Hyena of Auschwitz and other creepy, creepy tales. But wait, there's more! We'll tell you the tale of the magician who helped defeat Hitler.