Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
“We Will Never Truly Know”: 46 Of The Most Intriguing Mysteries From WWII That Are Still Unsolved
Regardless of what kind of stories are your favorites, you won’t have any trouble finding tales that fascinate you in history. If you’re looking for a heartwarming romantic comedy, there are plenty from the past. And if you’re interested in a devastating tragedy, there’s no shortage of those either. Even if you love a good mystery, there are still countless that remain unsolved decades later.
Despite how much we know about the past, there are still so many questions that we cannot answer, even about events that took place less than a century ago. History buffs on Reddit have been discussing some of the darkest mysteries from World War II that we still haven’t gotten to the bottom of, so we’ve gathered some of the most fascinating ones below. Enjoy reading through, and be sure to upvote the ones that inspire you to put your detective’s cap on!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
All the missing in action men and women. My mother’s cousin Eddie plane went down in WWII in New Guinea. His parents always longed for him.
His plane was found in the mid-80’s by a group hired by a man looking for his son. He was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. Alas, his parents never knew, they were passed already.
There are many still missing.
RELATED:
#2
Not really horrifying but The "Battle of The Pips" remains a mystery.. When part of The U.S fleet was heading to retake Kiska & Attu (in Alaska's Aleutian Islands) from Japan, they started picking up a strong pip on the radar, and the fleet opened fire till it disappeared, so simple right they must have sunk a Japanese ship or sub?
But then after the war during the occupation of mainland Japan, they found out The Imperial Navy had nothing in the area around that time, so what made that strong blip/pip on the radar? And what if anything did they sink?
#3
Probably who turned in Anne Frank.
Also excavations at Auschwitz revealed a list of 17 British soldiers that no one knows whom they were. POWs, defectors, it’s a mystery.
World War II is often one of the most covered topics in history classes around the globe. The events will always be extremely disturbing to learn about, but the fact that they happened so recently makes them even more unsettling. Regardless of how much you think you know about that time, though, there will always be more to learn.
Now, there are several reasons why World War II is still so mysterious to us. Some records were intentionally destroyed, while other messages were never decoded. And we have no photographic evidence of some events that took place, so we have to simply rely on what’s been passed down by word of mouth. Unfortunately, for these reasons, we may never have all the answers. But it’s still fascinating for historians and history buffs to attempt to piece everything together.
#4
Not so much horrifying in a human sense, but the artwork, the architecture, the literature, Works by Van Gogh, Raphael, the Amber Room, the missing panel from the Ghent Alterpiece, and countless accounts of our cultural history just ruthlessly stolen and gone forever. Hitler had a list of works and artifacts he wanted and pillaged museums, private collections, and historical sites throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa to get them.
Whay we dont know about, pieces that could hold a key to our shared history, religion, humanity are gone. We will never truly know all that was stolen and destroyed. The works/scrolls/literature that weren't cataloged could've held the key to decoding ancient languages.
#5
What happened to the Amber Room. It probably was destroyed by fire but could it have been taken?
#6
What happened to the N**i war criminals who just vanished, there were quite a few.
People have long been fascinated by the aspects of World War II that we still can’t explain. Military historian William Breuer even wrote a book titled Unexplained Mysteries of World War II.
This book explores questions like: Who torched the Normandie in New York Harbor? And did a New Yorker ad warn of Pearl Harbor? Did Churchill have a "feeling" that saved his life? The book also explores how Ernest Hemingway lived to tell about switching seats and the night when an American and Japanese soldier accidentally shared a foxhole overnight. There’s even a section on a U-boat that gave a battleship a piggyback ride in the Atlantic.
#7
A Soviet agent, this time not in Germany but in Britain.
After defeating N**i Germany in May 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered his generals to prepare a plan for a sudden, all-out attack against the Soviet Union, codename Operation Unthinkable.
What Churchill and his generals didn’t know was that Soviet commanders were constantly informed about the supposedly top-secret planning of Operation Unthinkable, from when it was in its infancy to when it was finished. In June 1945, Marshal Zhukov, upon receiving details about the British plan, redeployed Soviet forces in Eastern Germany to prepare for a possible invasion from the West.
The Soviet source of information was an Agent X, whose identity remained a mystery until this day.
#8
The mystery of how an entire nation can completely switch off their empathy for Jews. These folks were their former friends and neighbors, integrated into every aspect of German life.
#9
My father had a distant cousin who worked at the German embassy in Istanbul when WW2 started. A young, pretty German woman in her early 20s. She was never heard of again, she just disappeared. Horrifying in the sense that the family has to live with not knowing what exactly happend to her. The family imagined that she ended up in a harem but that is doubtful. We‘ll never know. .
Clearly, World War II is full of mysteries, and we still have a long way to go in uncovering them all. Keep upvoting the stories that you find particularly fascinating, pandas, and let us know in the comments below what questions you want answered. Then, if you’re interested in checking out another article from Bored Panda featuring famous mysteries, we recommend reading this one next!
#10
I had a guy randomly reach out to me on Facebook from Jamaica (I'm in the Midwest) and claim he had my great grandfathers skull and part of his military jacket, along with part of an airplane wing he found on an island down there. Kind of creeped me out. He knew more about my families bloodline than I did.
#11
I seem to recall reading about a German submarine carrying many tons of mercury that set out from Germany enroute to Japan and it sank ..an environmental nightmare waiting to happen. They don't know its location in order to fix the problem ...something like that.
#12
There was a Jewish concentration camp in the Balkans (cant remember which country) where the preferred method was supposedly throwing the prisoners into deep crevasses in the mountains. It is still not known how many sites were used and how many were m******d as that many deny it ever happened and the local government has restricted access to the area. Sorry for the lack of details.
#13
The Antarctic Nazi base.
A long-running conspiracy theory claims Nazi Germany secretly established a hidden base beneath Antarctica before or during World War II. Supporters believe it housed advanced technology or served as a refuge after Germany's defeat, though historians have found no credible evidence supporting these claims.
#14
Nazi Zombies — Stories about Nazi zombies originate from postwar fiction inspired by Germany's documented interest in the occult and secret weapons. Books, films, and video games have imagined undead soldiers created through supernatural rituals or bizarre experiments, but there is no historical evidence such projects ever existed.
#15
After Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia in 1935–36, thousands of Italian civilians moved to Italian East Africa to work and settle there.
In 1941, Italian East Africa collapsed following the British and Allied campaign. Many Italian civilians were left stranded in the region. Between 1942 and 1943, the so-called “White Ships” were used to repatriate thousands of Italian civilians, mainly women, children, elderly people and the sick. The ships had to make the incredibly long journey around Africa to reach Italy.
According to mnay stories, when some of these families were eventually reunited, they discovered that some children who were supposed to have been repatriated were missing.
#16
Not really WWII, but Geli Raubal’s (Hitler’s niece) d***h remains…suspicious to say the least.
#17
The Death of Władysław Sikorski
Władysław Sikorski was a high ranking Polish general and politician. After escaping the fall of Poland, he eventually became the Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile. Sikorski was a prominent and popular leader, and somebody who had significant influence within Allied governments. On July 4th, 1943, the plane carrying Sikorski, his daughter, and many other senior Polish officials crashed shortly after taking off from Gibraltar, with only the pilot surviving. An official British investigation said that the plane crashed due to jammed elevator controls but said that it was not sabotage, which the Polish exile government refused to accept. The Poles issued their own report saying that the cause of the crash couldn't be determined
Sikorski's d***h came at an extremely fraught time for the Polish exile government. Germany had just revealed the evidence of the Katyn Forest M******e, where 20,000 Polish military officers, POWs, intellectuals, and more had been secretly executed by the Soviets in 1939. The Soviets denounced this as German propaganda, and were outraged when Sikorski accepted the German offer to send a Red Cross investigation. The Soviets broke off recognition of the (Allied-aligned) Polish exile government, and set up their own Communist exile government. Meanwhile, other prominent members of the Polish exile government were furious with Sikorski, as Sikorski continued to advocate for some sort of cooperation with the Soviets even after the Katyn massacres were revealed.
The general beat of the conspiracy is that somebody ordered Sikorski to be k****d. Some theories say that he or some others were k****d on the ground and the crash was staged. Others say that the plane itself was sabotaged. Many conspiracies point to the Soviets, as Sikorski was publicly willing to accept an investigation into the Katyn M******e, which would make the Soviets look extremely bad. Others say that it was other Poles who organized Sikorski's m****r, as Sikorski was too accommodating to the Soviets. Others say that the British actually k****d Sikorski, because his actions were jeopardizing the British-Soviet alliance. And there's always the idea that the Nazis had him k****d
There are some juicy details that do give a bit of credence to the "conspiracy" angle. The head British intelligence agent in Iberia at the time was Kim Phillby, who was later revealed to be a Soviet double agent. The Soviet ambassador and associated personnel were actually in Gibraltar at the time of the accident and Sikorski's plane was not guarded. The bodies of several passengers, including Sikorski's daughter, were never recovered, and this leads to speculation that they were m******d before the crash, or were kidnapped. For the kidnap angle, there were reports by the Polish underground that Sikorski's daughter had been sighted in a Soviet g***g in 1945 and 46. The only survivor was the pilot - the pilot was supposedly a superstitious man who never brought a life vest when flying, but was wearing a life vest when rescued
That there was a conspiracy is still taken very seriously in Polish circles. Sikorski's d***h was catastrophic for the Polish exile cause, as no other Polish leader was so prominent and influential, and some blame this crash for the Soviets being able to turn Poland into a satellite state. Sikorski's body was exhumed in 2008 by the Polish government who concluded that he had died due to an air crash, but that they couldn't rule out that the crash was due to sabotage.
#18
The fate of Heinrich Müller
Heinrich Müller was the head of the Gestapo, and was one of the most evil men in all of N**i Germany. Müller was last seen in the Fuhrerbunker on May 1st, the day after Hitler committed s*****e and the day before Berlin surrendered. He was quoted as saying that "the russians wouldn't capture him" (or something along those lines). He was never seen again, and to this day his fate is unknown. He is by far the highest ranking N**i official that we don't know the fate of
Again, the most probable (and boring) conclusion is that he k****d himself or was k****d during the fall of Berlin, and his body was just never identified. There's one allegation that a body bearing papers with his name on it was buried in a mass grave in (ironically) a former Jewish cemetery in East Berlin, but this couldn't be investigated during the Cold War, and the site has never been exhumed. His disappearance has sparked their own conspiracy theories, and unlike a lot of conspiracies, these were taken very seriously by global intelligence agencies
The most plausible is that he escaped to Argentina or elsewhere, like many other Nazis. Adolf Eichmann, the most prominent N**i escapee to have been found, thought that Müller was alive (though had no specific evidence to back that up). Mossad was quite convinced that Müller was alive, and some of their agents were caught trying to break into his wife's apartment (she survived the war) to look for evidence
There are also accusations that he was recruited by either the Soviets or Americans. Declassified CIA papers say that the Americans thought that the Soviets had picked Müller up, and a senior defector from Poland's intelligence service claimed that his Soviet counterparts told him that Muller now worked for the KGB. However, since the fall of the USSR nothing in the Soviet archives collaborates this. On the CIA side, the Soviets circulated rumors that he'd defected to the Americans, and a forged CIA dossier claiming to be Muller's was sent to journalists
#19
How Japan was never made to acknowledge all their wartime atrocities.
#20
If Yamashita’s gold is really buried in the mountains of the Philippines, or if it had existed at all. Hundreds of people have sought out to search for the treasure only to turn up with nothing or d*e trying.
#21
How did it take less than a hundred years for the fascists to come back and win again...
#22
There's a case about a Norwegian resistance fighter called Kai Holst, who ended up d**d in an apartementbuilding in Sweden just a few months after the war had ended.
It was ruled a s*****e, as he was found in the stairways at the top of the buidling with a gun in his hand.
The only thing is, his gun was found in his right hand. Kai Holst was left-handed and had never been known to use his gun with his right hand.
In the days before Kai had been stressed and agitated, and on his way from Norway to Sweden his driver described him as stressed and near paranoid.
He said to his driver that he had information he needed to give to his contacts in Stockholm. It was something that would create huge waves.
So, who was Kai Holst? He was heavily involved in re-shaping Milorg in 1942 after most of the leadership was arrested by the Gestapo or had to flee to Sweden and England. Had it not been for Holst, Milorg would probably not have existed later that year and the war might have gone a very different way.
He was also the link between Milorg and other Norwegian resistance groups, like the Osvald-group, Pelle-group and the 2A-group.
The day before he left for Stockholm he had visited a POW-camp at Lillehammer for interigation of German Intelligence officers only to find out that all 35 of them were simply gone. These intelligence officers had valuable information about Soviet codes, something that the British would love to get their hands on. And since Norway, at the time, was allied to the British it was only natural that these officers were to be sent to the UK.
Somehow Holst managed to figure out what happened to the german POWs. They had been transported out of the camp late at night by the americans and brought by trucks through neutral Sweden in what is now known as Operation Claw.
This was VERY controversial. First, the Americans had helped themselves to POWs in a country that was, in reality, under British control. They had done so without telling anyone, let alone the British.
Second, they did this so they could get their hands on Soviet codebooks. The US and the Soviet Union was at this point in time allies, so the americans went behind one ally's back to get intelligence information about another ally.
Third, they did this in agreement with Sweden, who had declared themselves neutral during the war and in the time after.
In other words, the information Kai had and was on his way to deliver to his contacts in Stockholm (either Norwegian contacts who would then forward it to the Brits, or a British contact directly) was in reality a huge volatile powder keg ready to explode.
There were several other things that happened in Stockholm before he was found d**d, but I won't go into details about that. The most important thing is that Kai Holst's d***h was ruled a s*****e eventhough he had no history of depression, the gun was in his non-dominant hand, and he had appearently shot himself in an apartement building where he had a safehouse and a contactperson who later stated that he had first heard Kai Holst going up the stairs, then followed by another person.
I believe Kai Holst was assassinated before he could deliver the information he had to his contact.
I believe he went passed the apartement he was supposed to go to because he was followed by someone, his training kicked in and he didn't want to risk his contact being k****d.
Who k****d him? From what I've found out of information it would either be American, Swedish or Norwegian intelligence operatives.
The funny thing is, the Swedish police have no records of his d***h ever happend in Stockholm. I contacted them and asked if there were records of any type of d***h at that specific day, which they denied.
I contacted archives in Norway as well, but got more or less stonewalled.
It's one of those cases that's pretty obvious, but I really want an answer to.
#23
Not that big of a mystery, but more of "oh that was surprisingly interesting and deeply sad" type of story.
The 107th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria 1944-1945 (this is around the Inner Mongolia-China region today). They were attacked by Soviet forces and were forced into the mountains to hide. They were eventually cut off and surrounded. However, the Soviets could not enter the mountains due to a number of factors (logistic problems and weather). Also the Soviets were very hesitant on entering the mountain region to begin with.
Per my Japanese side of the family who knew of those who were in Manchuria, that area the division ran into was known to be a mountain for demons (mix of Korean, Chinese, and Mongolian folklore supposedly; don't know if true or not this was word of mouth being spoken to kids so take that as you will).
The Division dealt with many harrowing issues during their tenure in hiding in the mountains. What they saw and dealt with up there, no one really knows. All that is known is that the Soviets ran them into the mountains, but then the Soviets stopped pursuing because of the history of that area (allegedly -please correct because I'm basing this off of old storied my Japanese grandma used to tell).
The Japanese division eventually surrendered, but most of those in it disappeared in the mountains. What they encountered for months in that mountain remains a mystery. The handful that survived were put into Soviet work camps. An even smaller percentage were eventually sent back to Japan in 1956. Most died in the labor camps in unmarked graves. Those that lived through it all, kept relatively silent of their experience.
Per my Japanese Grandma (from memory), she said that she heard from one of the few veterans that survived the Soviet prison camp after the war stated that most of the Japanese soldiers who were in that area of Manchuria were surprisingly grateful for being in the prison camp versus being in that mountain region. Whatever made a Soviet prison camp seem like a nice place in comparison is something that is both fascinating and weirdly horrifying.
Historians of Reddit who may or probably will not read this: please correct me anywhere you see fit. I just remember this story from my Japanese grandparents and I thought it would be interesting to comment on.
#24
The Flight of Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess was a high ranking N**i official and was close to Hitler, being eventually appointed Deputy Fuhrer of the N**i Party. In a bizarre incident that has sparked many theories and conspiracy theories, Hess flew from Germany and crash landed in Scotland, demanded to speak to a certain Duke Hamilton who he'd never met, and claimed that he was there to negotiate a peace between Germany and Britain so that they could fight the Soviet Union together. Hess was captured, interrogated, and spent the rest of his life in prison. Convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials, he was imprisoned at Spandau Prison in Berlin for the rest of his life, and when he finally died in 1987 he had been the only prisoner in the entire complex for over twenty years. The prison was demolished soon after his d***h to avoid it becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis
Hess was in a state of mental decline even before his flight, and by the time he was in British captivity he was paranoid, erratic, and had many other mental issues
The main conspiracy around Hess surrounds just how bizarre the event was - a very high ranking N**i flies a thousand miles alone, apparently not being detected by either the Germans or British, and lands in the UK claiming to be trying to negotiate a peace. The theory overall is that Hess's mission was sanctioned by both the Germans and British, with the goal of Britain switching sides to fight with the Germans against the Soviets. Or else that Hess was in contact with a secret pro-n**i conspiracy within the British elite
There's a further conspiracy that Hess died in the crash, and that the person imprisoned for so many years was actually an imposter, based off of an examination by one doctor who noted that "Hess" lacked scars that he supposedly should have had from wounds he got in WW1. Though this has been pretty thoroughly debunked
Like a lot of conspiracy theories, the boring answer is probably that Hess was mentally unstable, worried that Germany was going to lose the war, and was trying to get back into Hitler's favor by carrying out a crazy scheme. But the idea of a secret conspiracy among the British elite to work with the Nazis is a juicy one
#25
Foo Fighters - During the final years of World War II, Allied and Axis pilots reported seeing glowing spheres and strange aerial lights following their aircraft. Nicknamed "Foo Fighters," these unexplained sightings sparked theories ranging from experimental military technology to natural phenomena and extraterrestrial visitors.
#26
Die Glocke ("The Bell") — Die Glocke is a rumored secret Nazi project involving a mysterious bell-shaped device allegedly used for advanced scientific or occult experiments. While no reliable historical evidence confirms its existence, the story has become one of the most famous Nazi conspiracy theories.
#27
Rudolf Hess's Flight to Britain — In 1941, Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess unexpectedly flew alone to Scotland, claiming he wanted to negotiate peace with Britain. His true motives remain disputed, making the incident one of the war's most puzzling diplomatic mysteries.
#28
The extent of Mengele's experiments.
I am positive that there are things that weren't documented or the people involved got eliminated.
#29
It's a bit post-WW2, but directly related to war.
What happened to war invalids in Soviet Union right after the war? And did anything at hall happen to them?It's coming back to me at unexpected moments. Began with Solzhenitsyn, but when I read through interviews with Soviet veterans (and I read dozens of them) few times they mentioned some friend or neighbour who lost limb and then, shortly after war, just disappeared. Or something like: "right after war there were many invalids on streets, but then suddenly all of them disappeared, maybe govt found some jobs for them?"
Edit: one more, again, post-war but linked to war.
Polish ex-prime minister Piotr Jaroszewicz was m******d with his wife in 1992, they were both brutally tortured before m****r, yet pretty much nothing was stolen from their home.
Retired general Jerzy Fonkowicz was m******d in 1997, and just like Jaroszewicz he was tortured before.
Tadeusz Steć, least prominent here - he was a mountain guide. M******d in 1993.
All murders remain unsolved.
What puts those men together except the way they died is what they were doing in 1945 - or at least what they claimed they did. They all took part in recovery German archives left in Radomierzyce. What's important is those are claimed to be personal docs of collaborators through entire Europe, large part of them coming from France. Documents were later sent to Soviet Union, but we don't know whether they left some files for themselves or made some copies before passing them to Soviets. As we didn't catch murderers we also don't know for sure if m*rders had something to do with archive.
#30
While it was "launched," the Graf Zeppelin was never actually completed. It was basically a floating hull.
#31
There's a famous photo of a very small Asian-looking young man in a N**i uniform, who was captured by US paratroopers in Normandy shortly after D-Day. There's a bit of controversy as to who he was and what his backstory was.
The more (morbidly) entertaining story is that he was ethnic Korean and conscripted into the Japanese Army for WWII, captured by Soviets fighting in the Far East, the Soviets recruited him to join them and sent him to fight the Germans in Europe, where he was captured by the N*zis, who then recruited him and sent him to fight in northern France. This isn't completely implausible, because the N*zis did pretty frequently try to single out ethnic minorities in Allied armies and "convert" them to fight for the N**i cause.
Apparently this unusual photo floated around for a while, and then in the 1990s this full theory and even proposed identification of him emerged. But according to Wikipedia it's all pretty tentative, and other scholars think he's just one of the many ethnic Georgians that the N*zis recruited from among Soviet POWs:
#32
The Amber Room
The Amber Room was an opulent palace room elaborately decorated in amber, gold, and other works of art. Originally constructed in Prussia, it was given to Russia as a gift in the 1700s and installed in St. Petersburg
The palace where it was located was captured by the Nazis in 1941, and the room was packed up and shipped to Konigsburg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad in Russia), and installed in the city's eponymous castle. It was shown to journalists in 1941, but after that no sightings of the room have been confirmed. Konigsburg and its castle were badly damaged during the war, first by RAF bombing raids and later by heavy fighting as the Soviets captured the city. The Amber Room was not rediscovered after the war, and only a few pieces have ever emerged, all almost certainly looted when the Germans initially captured it in 1941. Any investigation into the disappearance was made extremely difficult because the Soviets demolished Konigsburg Castle in 1971
There are many theories as to its location. The (boring) most likely theory is that it was simply damaged and then destroyed during the fighting in the city, with all remnants destroyed when the castle was fully demolished in 1971. Other theories suggest it was moved - one theory is that it was moved by sea, on a ship that was sunk by a Soviet sub. There are multiple theories about it having been moved by land, either to other castles, it being part of the mythical N**i gold train, etc. A former N**i bunker in Northern Poland near Kaliningrad that serves as a museum found a hidden chamber that they think might hold it. There are other theories that the Soviets found it and simply hid it away or destroyed it, to use as further propaganda against Germany
#33
The lost treasures that the Nazis looted. There's supposedly the one in a tunnel in a Polish mountain somewhere, and one in a lake I think.
#34
Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor. It was often claimed back when that President Franklin D. Roosevelt held back information gleaned from dispatches that indicated an attack on Pearl Harbor, as part of his plan to overcome public reluctance to enter the war.
It's a theory that presupposes the idea that FDR knew he could afford to lose every battleship in the Pacific, conquests of all American territorial possessions west of Hawaii, a heavily damaged main base in Hawaii, and a lot of d**d service personnel. He was just very optimistic, I guess. However absurd, the theory still comes up using such diverse factors as the way the battleships were arranged and the ignoring of multiple warnings as evidence of a conspiracy from the top.
#35
The Japanese battleship Musashi and its final resting place was only confirmed in 2015 with the wreck located 1,000 meters down, no photos or personal effects ever returned to families.
#36
The story of the "Lady Be Good"is kinda insane. It was a B-24 Liberator bomber that vanished in 1943.
The plane was returning to its base in Libya after its very first mission. In the pitch black, the crew overshot their airfield, got disoriented by a tailwind, and kept flying deeper and deeper into the empty expanse of the Sahara Desert. When they ran out of fuel, all nine crew members bailed out into the dark.
For 15 years, no one knew what happened but in 1958, an oil survey team saw the wreck from the air. When investigators got there, it was a time capsule. The radio still worked and the guns were still loaded even, but the crew was missing
What makes it horrifying is what they found when they traced their path. The crew had survived the parachute jump and met up in the desert. Because they thought they were only a few miles from the Mediterranean Sea, they started walking north.
In reality, they were 400 miles inland, in the middle of one of the most brutal, barren deserts on Earth.
They had one canteen of water to share between nine men in 130°F heat. They walked for over a week, covering an unbelievable 85 miles before collapsing one by one. Investigators eventually found their bodies along with a diary kept by the co-pilot, Lieutenant Robert Toner. His final, entry was something like "No help yet, very cold nite".
#37
The Japanese battleship Musashi and its final resting place was only confirmed in 2015 with the wreck located 1,000 meters down, no photos or personal effects ever returned to families.
#38
The Philadelphia Experiment — According to a popular legend, the U.S. Navy conducted a secret wartime experiment to make a destroyer invisible, with disastrous consequences. Although historians consider the story fictional, it remains one of the most enduring World War II-era mysteries.
#39
Hitler's Missing Treasure — As Allied forces advanced across Europe, Nazi officials hid enormous quantities of gold, artwork, jewelry, and cultural treasures. While many caches have been recovered, thousands of valuable items remain missing, fueling ongoing searches and countless theories.
#40
Nazi Gold Train - One of World War II's greatest legends, the Nazi Gold Train is said to have disappeared in Poland during the final months of the war, allegedly carrying stolen gold, artwork, weapons, and secret documents. Despite decades of searches and numerous claimed discoveries, no conclusive evidence has ever confirmed the train's existence.
#41
Not really a mystery per se but I always find the story of the German 9th
and 12th Armies at the end of the War fascinating. As Berlin was being circled by the Soviets a delusional Hitler devised his last war plan to have the 2 armies link up and push their way to protect Berlin from the a*****t (this stood no chance of working as they were outmanned/outgunned in every way and the Generals including boy wonder Walter Wenck knew it). Rather than take on the s*****e mission where most of there men would be k****d for nothing (they knew the war was over), they blatantly ignored Hitlers orders and stopped communicating with him and Berlin and decided to fight for their own survival. They were encircled, cut off from any reinforcements and now on their own against a massive Soviet force, and decided to break out and head West to surrender to the Americans since they’d be treated better than if the Soviet’s captured them. They attempted many breakouts and eventually created an opening and busted a*s West the whole time having to fight the Soviet’s from their rear (and picking up a large Civilian group along the way with the same idea). The majority were k****d in the attempts (maybe 75%? Can’t remember off hand, but the rest made it to the Elbe to cross the river to the Americans while being shot at by the trailing Soviet’s even all the way to the rivers edge).
I think it was pretty fitting that Hitler was ignored and left for d**d in Berlin by a few of his last Standing Armies, and they had to fight for their life, not for Hitler but for each other. Think it could make a great movie, At the end Hitler was so desperate and delusional that he thought they would save the day and come to rescue him and they wouldn’t even respond to his messages and he realized he was toast and k****d himself.
#42
I've got a book called Mysteries of WWII. One of the most intriguing is suspected German sabotage in Switzerland. While the reasons for Germany not invading are much debated, I've not found details elsewhere of incidents where a bridge was blown up & other incidents where alleged saboteurs were intercepted. Also there's a mystery or rather elusive details of an incident involving the Prinz Eugen, a German heavy cruiser. She ended the war in Copenhagen, surrendering to the British in May 1945. She'd used up all her shells in firing on Soviet ground targets. However, she stlll had AA ammunition. Supposedly Danish resistance fighters tried to board her & disarm the crew, but the sailors retaliated with AA guns & several were k****d. However, I can find no reference to it outside contemporary newspaper reports. So did it actually happen?
#43
Not specifically related to ww2 but it could be connected to spy activity.
The case of "who put Bella in the witch elm".
A woman's body was found inside a d**d hollow tree in woodland.
Many are convinced she was a spy and the killer thought she would never be found.
#44
One of my favorites has to involve the amber room. There are people who are convinced it’s still out there, intact, waiting to return to Russia. Also any missing artwork taken by the Nazis besides the amber room.
#45
I've always wondered if there is any truth to the claim by the military historian Alan Clarke that we were prepared to negotiate with Hitler after the war started.
I'm sort of vaguely familiar with Chamberlain and peace in our time, but its intriguing to think the moral aspect of WWII was less a factor than pragmatism.
#46
Hitler's escape to South America.
Despite overwhelming historical evidence that Adolf Hitler died in Berlin in 1945, conspiracy theories claim he escaped to South America using secret escape routes. Decades of investigations and declassified records have found no credible evidence supporting these claims.
What do you think ?
JamieCharnette 59 minutes ago
I am making a real GOOD MONEY (300$ to 400$ / hr )online from my laptop. Last month I GOT check of nearly 18,000$, this online work is simple and straightforward, don’t have to go OFFICE, Its home online job. At that point this work opportunity is for you.if you interested.simply give it a shot on the accompanying site….Simply go to the BELOW SITE and start your work........… 𝗝𝗼𝗯𝟰𝟬.𝗰𝗼𝗺
JamieCharnette 59 minutes ago
I am making a real GOOD MONEY (300$ to 400$ / hr )online from my laptop. Last month I GOT check of nearly 18,000$, this online work is simple and straightforward, don’t have to go OFFICE, Its home online job. At that point this work opportunity is for you.if you interested.simply give it a shot on the accompanying site….Simply go to the BELOW SITE and start your work........… 𝗝𝗼𝗯𝟰𝟬.𝗰𝗼𝗺
Related on Bored Panda
