15 Maniacal World War II Plans That Never Came to Fruition

Operation Bernhard was the Nazi mission to flood wartime Britain with hundreds of millions of counterfeit pound notes. The initiative was orchestrated by SS Major Bernhard Kruger (pictured), who led the SS department falsifying passports and other legal diplomatic documents. Kruger organized a top secret printing operation in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, made up of specially recruited Jewish prisoners with printing and engraving skills. 

During the war, on a monthly basis, Operation Bernhard successfully forged more than a million pounds in bank notes described as "the most dangerous ever seen." Though the Germans never managed to get enough of their fake money into Britain to effect the economy, they used it in a variety of schemes. Fake notes were used to pay spies around the world, and in transactions with foreign governments, such as Italy. Turkish spy Elyesa Bazna, AKA Cicero, even (unsuccessfully) sued the German government for fraudulent payments.  

At the close of the war, most of the counterfeit currency was dumped into Austria's Lake Toplitz, where it was discovered in 1959. Still, occasional fake British pounds showed up in Britain, prompting the government to redesign all currency with a value of five pounds or more. Some of the currency was smuggled to Palestine, to finance Zionist activity in the early days of Israel. 

Adolf Hitler clearly disliked Switzerland. In 1941, he told Mussolini: "Switzerland possessed the most disgusting and miserable people and political system. The Swiss were the mortal enemies of the new Germany."  

In fact, the Wehrmacht began preparations for an invasion of Switzerland after France surrendered in 1940, in what would have been called Operation Tannenbaum. Despite the creation of plans for such an invasion (plans revisited and revised several times), Hitler never ordered the attack.  

A specific reason for his decision is still unclear, but Swiss financial concessions that allowed the Germans to obtain hard currencies and military equipment, Swiss prevention of the emigration of Jews and other refugees from Germany to Switzerland, continued Nazi access to Swiss railroad routes to Italy and other countries, and the realization that an invasion through the rugged Alpine region defended by a fully mobilized citizenry that was well equipped all were probably factors, especially the latter point. According to PBS, the Swiss armed 435,000 citizens with weapons equal to those the Nazis had, and told them never surrender. 

Even though he despised Switzerland, Hitler understood the military reality of any invasion, and a two-front war from 1941 made a Swiss invasion an impossibility.

Geoffrey Pyke was a British inventor who conceived the idea of a floating island the size of an aircraft carrier, to be constructed in the Atlantic Ocean. Theoretically, this island, known as Project Habakkuk, would serve as a refueling location for airplanes stalking and sinking German U-Boats. Initially, tests on icebergs indicated they could be shattered by explosives and were unstable, occasionally rolling over, making them an implausible medium. Undeterred, Pyke invented a new substance made ice and wood pulp called "Pykrete," which could be manipulated like wood.   

Lord Mountbatten and Winston Churchill became interested in the project, and a small, 60-by-30 foot block of pykrete was constructed in Lake Louise, Alberta. It weighed 1,000 tons. The estimated weight of a full scale version, as well as the cost, doomed the project, though its creators kept this information concealed to keep Habakkuk viable. The US Navy officially discontinued the project in December of 1943   

The bat bomb was a four foot long, bomb-shaped weapon designed to release hundreds of bats fitted with tiny incendiary devices over Japan. Upon release, these bats would spread out over a radius of 20 to 40 miles and roost in the highly flammable wood-and-paper buildings of Japanese cities. Their incendiary devices would then ignite, with the aim of creating widespread chaos and destruction. 

The inventor of napalm, Louis Fieser, created a tiny explosive, and the Mexican Free-Tailed Bat was selected for implementation. The first tests involving bats and explosives resulted in an accidental fire at an Air Force air base in Carlsbad, NM. Another test was conducted on a mock-up of a Japanese village in Utah. This attempt was deemed more successful, but research on the atomic bomb curtailed this and other far-fetched weapons systems which were ultimately deemed unrealistic.    

The decision to drop the atomic bomb on two Japanese cities in August of 1945 has always been controversial. Also controversial is the contention that Japan would have surrendered without the death and suffering caused by atomic weapons. However, the US military was fully prepared for a conventional invasion of Japan, in the event the A-bomb wasn't dropped.  

This invasion, dubbed Operation Downfall, would have had two components, Operations Olympic and Coronet. Olympic would have started on November 1, 1945, and was intended to capture the island of Kyushu. Coronet, the larger of the two efforts, would have focused on capturing Tokyo, with the use of more than 50 divisions of the US military and assistance from British troops. Alternatives to conventional invasion were considered, because casualty estimates for such an invasion ranged from 300,000 to 1,000,000 US servicemen.

Based on the considerable Japanese defense of Okinawa, a fanatical civilian defense effort was expected, and total Japanese casualties were estimated at 10 million, essentially a near-total annihilation of the country's population, as well as Allied POW's on the mainland. Kamikaze aircraft, an issue at Okinawa, would not have to fly great distances to attack the Allied invasion flotilla.

The atomic bombs, while dreadful for those exposed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, preempted Operation Downfall, which could have precipitated the end of the Japanese people.     

Following the Japanese surrender at Okinawa, it was clear, even to the ardent militarists within the Japanese Imperial government, Japanese victory in the Pacific was impossible. Their goal in implementing Operation Ketsugo (Decisive) was to make invasion of the Japanese mainland so costly the Allies would negotiate an armistice instead of attempting to inflict an unconditional surrender.  

In anticipation of invasion, the Japanese transferred troops from Manchuria, Korea, and northern Japan to areas they expected Allied forces to strike. They also mobilized the Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps, which included all healthy men between the ages of 15 and 60 and women between the ages of 17 and 40.  In all, some 28 million people were conscripted to oppose invasion.  

The Japanese also expected to launch all-out kamikaze attacks with their remaining 10,000 aircraft, submarines, and 2,400 Shin-yo (one man suicide motorboats). Despite formidable manpower, the Japanese were dangerously low on fuel and equipment. Many civilians would have been fighting with bamboo spears and even longbows.  The atomic attacks preempted Operation Ketsugo, and undoubtedly saved millions of Japanese lives.