11 WWII Questions Even History Buffs May Not Know The Answer To

German forces had aided the nationalist side in Spain’s Civil War of 1936-1939, and the man who emerged from that conflict as the supreme ruler of the country, General Francisco Franco, was in some ways aligned with fascism, although he didn’t explicitly endorse that ideology.

During WWII, Hitler made diplomatic overtures to Spain, hoping to secure an alliance with Franco’s government. But Franco refused to join the Axis, and Spain stayed largely neutral through the conflict. Why did Franco stay out - especially in 1940-1941, when Germany seemed to be running roughshod over continental Europe with no one able to stop them?

Franco met with the Third Reich leader in October 1940 to discuss the terms under which Spain might join the Axis. After hours of discussions, they were unable to come to an agreement. (Also, the German leader quipped that he would rather have his teeth pulled than meet with Franco again.) Evidently, Franco’s demands (including Gibraltar being handed to Spain upon Britain’s defeat, as well as cession of France’s North African colonies) were too greedy. What seems to have soured the negotiations was a reasonable hesitation on both sides. Hitler did not wish to alienate the pro-German Vichy government by conceding too many French territories, while Franco could not help but notice that, as 1940 wore on, Britain’s resilience was becoming increasingly apparent.

Later Franco apologists suggested that the Generalissimo, in his wisdom, perceived either the immorality of the Third Reich or its inability to achieve ultimate success, and so kept his distance. (Churchill wrote to US President Roosevelt, “I do not know whether there is more freedom in Stalin’s Russia than in Franco’s Spain. I have no intention to seek a quarrel with either.”)

In any case, Spain was not as aloof to Germany as has sometimes been claimed. The Francoist press remained pro-German even as the war was ending and the horrors of the Holocaust were coming to light, and Spain provided material aid such as the refueling and resupplying of German U-boats. After WWII, the press nimbly pivoted to praising Franco for keeping Spain at peace.

As the new priority in the West after 1945 was containing communism, American and British leaders chose not to look too closely at Franco’s prior dalliance with Germany. Franco would live (and remain in power) until 1975.

Just four months after Pearl Harbor, American planes bombed Tokyo in a raid that was designed more to boost morale at home than to inflict serious damage on Imperial Japan. Sixteen B-25B bombers took off from the USS Hornet and attacked targets on the Japanese island of Honshu.

Because of the lack of Allied airbases in the Pacific at this early stage of the conflict, the attack was essentially a one-way ticket. With their planes low on fuel, the crews had to parachute out over China and crash-land their aircraft, then make their way home. (One plane landed in the Soviet Union; its crew was detained by the Soviets, who at the time had a non-aggression pact with Japan, but the Americans eventually escaped.)

Eighty American servicemen participated in the Doolittle Raid. Most of those were helped by Chinese civilians and soldiers. Doolittle himself, who commanded one of the aircraft, was helped by the American missionary John Birch, who would later become the namesake of a militant American anti-communist society.

Of those who didn’t make it back, three perished in action and eight were captured by the Japanese. Three of those were executed, one perished in captivity, and four were sent home after the war. The last of them, Richard Cole, passed in 2019, at age 103.

When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa - the massive attack on the Soviet Union - on June 22, 1941, its military achieved near-total surprise, which is shocking when you consider the sheer scale and logistical complexity of the assault. Stalin, who had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939 and shared in carving up Poland with the Third Reich, was stunned by this development, despite the heated anti-communist rhetoric that had emanated from German leaders for years. Why did the famously paranoid Stalin - who once purged the Red Army’s officer corps for fear of disloyalty - not see this coming?

In fact, there were warnings in the weeks before June 22 - from reports by Soviet spies, to German planes repeatedly violating Soviet airspace, to entreaties from both Winston Churchill and FDR that Germany was sure to turn its gaze on Russia. Even Polish women on the far bank of one frontier river shouted to Russian border guards, “Soviets, the war will start in one week!” But it was not until June 21, when a German soldier defected and warned the Soviets of the coming attack, that Stalin finally took the matter seriously. By then, it was too late to organize a proper defense, and Barbarossa got off to a terrifyingly effective start.

Interestingly, Stalin himself gave tantalizing hints that he perceived the danger. In a speech of May 5 to graduating Red Army cadets, Stalin addressed Germany's seeming invincibility in a way that suggested he was considering the prospects of a coming conflict with the Third Reich:

In terms of equipment the German is nothing special. Now many armies, including our own, have similar equipment. And our aircraft are already better than those of the Germans. And on top of that the Germans have become dizzy with successes. Their military equipment is no longer getting better. The leaders of the army have become conceited, have a devil-may-care attitude.

The Russian historian Arsen Martirosyan has suggested that Stalin was slow to react to the various warning signs because he feared being influenced by German misinformation. This might also account for his dismissal of warnings by Churchill and Roosevelt; he didn't trust either of them - sometimes with good reason. (The US and UK had teamed up for an abortive invasion of the Soviet Union at the end of WWI, and Churchill would consider doing so again at the end of WWII.)

Perhaps, in part, it comes down to this: If you trust no one, and doubt all sources of information, it's difficult to prepare for the future.

Almost from the very beginning, it turns out.

Wars are named for all sorts of reasons, and often the names contain embedded political assumptions. (For example, it makes a big difference in the United States whether you’re talking about the "Civil War," "The War Between the States," or "The War of Northern Aggression.") In the case of WWII, its predecessor - the global conflict from 1914-1918 - was originally known as the Great War (but sometimes also the World War). But when the new conflict began in 1939, it was obvious that it was closely related to the old one, and they became linked.

An October 1939 issue of Life magazine refers to it as “The European war” (p. 16) - which may indicate that, at that time, it was still seen (at least by some) as a rather localized affair involving England, Germany, France, Poland, and the Soviet Union (which had signed a peace treaty with Germany and was attacking Poland from the east). Japan’s incursion in China had already been going on for years, but it was not until America and England were drawn into the Pacific War in 1941 that the conflicts were seen as fully joined.

However, others were not hesitant to apply a global perspective from the very beginning. Indeed, a September 11, 1939 article in Time magazine - published just 10 days after the conflict started - began thus:

World War II began last week at 5:20 a.m. (Polish time) Friday, September 1, when a German bombing plane dropped a projectile on Puck, fishing village and air base in the armpit of the Hel Peninsula. At 5:45 a.m. the German training ship Schleswig-Holstein lying off Danzig fired what was believed to be the first shell: a direct hit on the Polish underground ammunition dump at Westerplatte. It was a grey day, with gentle rain.

In 1942, the film Casablanca opened with the words, “With the coming of the Second World War,” indicating that the usage was well cemented by the conflict's fourth year.

The term "Axis," as a reference to the powers aligned with Germany in WWII, was originally coined by Mussolini in a speech given on November 1, 1936, in which he outlined a new formal agreement between Germany and Italy. Speaking to a crowd in Milan, Il Duce said:

In addition to these four countries bordering Italy, a great country recently aroused vast sympathy from the masses of the Italian people: I speak of Germany. The meetings at Berlin had as a result an understanding between the two countries on definite problems, some of which are particularly troublesome these days.

But these understandings which have been consecrated and duly signed - this Berlin-Rome protocol - is not a barrier, but is rather an axis around which all European States animated by the will for collaboration and for peace may collaborate.

The so-called “Rome-Berlin Axis” was later extended to include Japan with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940.

The initials "G.I." evoke an image of the all-American soldier – the unpretentious grunt, weary yet determined, unglamorous yet competent, willing to do what it takes to get the job done. It became synonymous with "American infantryman," and became a ubiquitous prefix. Soldiers returning from WWII got educations thanks to the "G.I. Bill," one of most popular toys in the '60s and '80s was "G.I. Joe," and Demi Moore put a gender twist on the term when she signed up to be an elite soldier in G.I. Jane.

So, what does "G.I." actually stand for? Most of us have probably assumed it was something along the lines of "Government Infantry," "General Infantry," or perhaps a "Government Issue" label stamped on military rations and equipment.

All of those are wrong. In fact, "G.I." stands for "Galvanized Iron."

In the early 20th century, military trash cans and buckets were stamped with the initials, simply because galvanized iron was the material from which they were made. During WWI, the initials became a proxy for all things to do with infantry, and the usage stuck.