Watch the video to find out about bizarre unsolved mysteries of World War II!
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00:00It's hard to understate the sheer scale of World War II, so maybe it'll come as no surprise
00:05to find that beneath all the heroics and atrocities, there are still a few mysteries that haven't
00:09been solved, even to this day. Here are some of the strangest of all.
00:14For the people of Los Angeles, February 25, 1942 is one of the tensest days of the entire
00:19war. On this day in the early morning hours, military personnel and civilians alike were
00:23alerted to an incoming bombing raid over the city. Searchlights swept across the night
00:27sky while people sat in their blacked-out homes, quietly wondering if Japanese forces
00:31had been emboldened by their attack on Pearl Harbor months earlier.
00:34Their fears seemed to be confirmed when anti-aircraft guns began going off around 3 a.m., first
00:39in Santa Monica and then across the rest of the region. Troops were even ordered to open
00:43fire where some had seen an object floating through the sky. But when the smoke cleared,
00:47there was no sign of any attempted Japanese attack.
00:50Five people died as a result of the so-called Battle of Los Angeles, three from a car accident
00:54and two from heart attacks, while a few buildings were damaged by anti-aircraft shells that
00:58hadn't detonated in the air. So what happened? Well, the Secretary of the Navy basically
01:03chalked it up to nerves, calling the whole thing a false alarm based on faulty radar
01:07readings. Some witnesses swore they saw enemy airplanes soaring through the sky, however,
01:12while others suggested a weather balloon might have been to blame. A small number of people
01:15even claimed that it was all down to flying saucers. Sadly, nobody has ever produced any
01:20strong evidence one way or another.
01:23World War II aircraft crews had plenty to worry about, to say the least. Flying comes
01:26with its own difficulties even in peacetime, such as navigation and the need to refuel.
01:31But when you're flying in a war zone, you also need to deal with, you know, enemies.
01:35But by far the strangest hazard of all for World War II-era aircraft were Foo Fighters.
01:40And no, we don't mean these guys.
01:42Foo Fighters were first reported by the Associated Press in 1945, though Allied flight crews
01:46had been seeing them at least a year before that. These crews often reported seeing balls
01:50of light that behaved strangely, typically following other planes and then peeling off
01:54or simply disappearing after a matter of minutes. Some of them even flashed and flew in formation,
01:59leading some airmen to believe that they were enemy weapons. But there are no reports that
02:03Foo Fighters ever attacked or otherwise harmed any aircraft or its occupants. They didn't
02:08even register on radar.
02:09So if these weird lights weren't German weapons, then what were they? Many blamed combat fatigue
02:14that plagued hardworking crews, though many of the airmen themselves rankled at the idea
02:18that they had basically been hallucinated. One common suggestion, the visible electrical
02:22discharge known as St. Elmo's Fire, doesn't really explain the strange movements of these
02:26lights either. Despite a CIA investigation in 1953, no one has ever been able to come
02:31up with a satisfactory answer for them.
02:34In 1941, a Scottish farmer found a burning plane in his field and a strange man standing
02:38beside it. The man claimed to be someone named Captain David Horn, but it soon became clear
02:43that was a blatant lie. In fact, Horn was a real Nazi politician named Rudolf Hess,
02:48who had flown from Germany to Scotland, evading anti-aircraft artillery and radar detection
02:52along the way until finally crash-landing in that field. But why would such a high-ranking
02:56member of the Nazi regime leave his position and literally throw himself into the heart
03:00of enemy territory?
03:01Hess claimed he wanted to broker peace between the Nazis and sympathetic British officials,
03:06but many remained skeptical of this claim. Some simply believed that Hess was mentally
03:09ill. His genuine shock that he was treated as a prisoner and not a diplomat after being
03:14arrested certainly didn't help his case in that regard.
03:17After his arrest and subsequent imprisonment, Hess apparently realized that he was in very
03:21dire straits indeed. He attempted suicide on multiple occasions during the course of
03:25the war, but survived to be jailed in the Allied-controlled Spandau Prison. Finally,
03:30in 1987, the 93-year-old Hess was found dead in prison.
03:34One of Adolf Hitler's most fanatical followers, his deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, died today
03:38at the age of 93.
03:40His death was ruled as a suicide, although his son has repeatedly insisted, albeit with
03:45no supporting evidence, that he was actually murdered by British intelligence.
03:50Nearly a year to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy radar spotted a single
03:54aircraft approaching the area on course from Japan. They quickly scrambled two planes to
03:58intercept the newcomer, and the pilots reported spotting an American P-40 fighter that had
04:02been riddled with bullet holes. The pilot inside apparently waved at them, but appeared
04:06to be covered in blood. The plane crashed on land soon after, but inspection of the
04:10wreckage showed no evidence that there had ever been a pilot in the first place. So where
04:15did the plane come from? Who was its pilot? And, most importantly, can the story even
04:19be believed?
04:20Well, the bad news is that this tale is almost certainly made up. It shares a close resemblance
04:25to a story written by Robert Lee Scott Jr., a writer who also served as a pilot during
04:29World War II. Scott later said that he and a fellow pilot had come up with the story
04:33to stay entertained during the long days of the war, but would never have said anything
04:37if they knew it was going to grow into an urban legend.
04:40Raoul Wallenberg is rightfully considered a hero of World War II. He was a Swedish diplomat
04:45who, through his position as deputy secretary at the Swedish embassy in Budapest, helped
04:49thousands of Jewish people flee the Nazis via Hungary. In early 1945, however, he was
04:54apprehended by Soviet officers, and despite not being accused of any particular crime,
04:59quickly disappeared into the Soviet prison system. Some wonder if the Soviets had suspected
05:03him of spying for the Americans. Others think that the Soviet Union wanted to hit Sweden
05:07hard for its pro-Nazi policies earlier in the war. Either way, Wallenberg's eventual
05:12fate has never been fully known.
05:14The Swedish government didn't do much to follow his case, as they were reluctant to become
05:17embroiled in Cold War politics. The Soviets later claimed that Wallenberg had died of
05:21a heart attack in Ljubljana on July 17, 1947, but some people swore that they had crossed
05:26paths with Wallenberg as late as the 1980s. Researchers claim that there are still more
05:31records of Wallenberg's movements somewhere out there, but until the Russian government
05:34releases them, the true fate of this heroic diplomat will remain a mystery.
05:39Named for the German word for treasure hunter, Schatzgräber was a station established by
05:43the Nazis just 620 miles from the North Pole. It was strategically situated to interfere
05:48with Allied transports moving troops and supplies through the Arctic, and also provided valuable
05:52weather information to the Germans. But Schatzgräber was abandoned in 1944, when staff grew sick
05:57after eating raw polar bear meat. Hey, it happens. But why not bring in a new crew to
06:02man the station, considering how important it was to the Nazis? And why didn't anybody
06:06reveal the station's existence until well after the war in 1953?
06:10While other explanations for Schatzgräber's existence include the idea that the Nazis
06:14were conducting archaeological excavations for mysterious Nordic artifacts, considering
06:19many Nazis were fascinated by the occult and practically revered the mystical Nordic past
06:24that they believed legitimized their regime, it's entirely possible that Schatzgräber
06:27may have been connected to this bizarre Nazi obsession.
06:31The Amber Room was located inside the Catherine Palace, a royal palace in Pushkin, Russia.
06:36Previously, it had been in St. Petersburg's Winter Palace, and before that, Prussia's
06:39Charlottenburg Palace. It was given as a gift by Prussian King Frederick William I to Peter
06:44the Great in 1716, after the Russian royal visited Frederick William's place and took
06:48a particular liking to the room. This place was seriously fancy, too. The Amber Room was
06:53constructed out of multiple tons of amber panels, each backed with gold. Later renovations
06:58added even more glitz and glamour to the room, to the point where many dubbed it the
07:01Eighth Wonder of the World.
07:03When invading Nazi soldiers entered the Amber Room in 1941, the panels were nowhere to be
07:08found. Or, at least, that's what it seemed like. In fact, fleeing officials had plastered
07:12the panels with wallpaper, hoping to mask them from the invaders, but the ruse was quickly
07:16uncovered by the Germans. Just a few days later, they had shipped the amber panels to
07:20Konigsberg, Germany. And that's where the disassembled Amber Room was last spotted.
07:24After that, the trail goes cold, and nobody's really sure what happened to it. Some suspect,
07:28that it's now at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, after a steamer was sunk near there in
07:311945. Others think that the panels were destroyed in air raids, or maybe still hidden somewhere
07:36in storage.
07:37We have top men working on it right now.
07:42Who?
07:45Top men.
07:47There's no shortage of legends about lost Nazi treasure out there, but some of the other
07:50access powers figure into these mysteries, too. Take Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita,
07:55for example. Yamashita reportedly buried looted treasure somewhere in the Philippines
07:59while Japanese forces were occupying the nation. When he was executed by American forces in
08:041946, however, any hope of finding the treasure was dashed. Of course, that's assuming that
08:08it's even real. Many people have searched for Yamashita's gold in the intervening decades,
08:13despite the total lack of evidence or record supporting the tale, and have invariably come
08:17up with nothing. That hasn't deterred anyone, though.
08:19The fabled treasure hoard was even at the center of a 1988 court case brought against
08:23former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos by a soldier named Rogelio Rojas. Rojas claimed
08:29that he had found part of that hoard, but that Marcos had promptly swooped in and seized
08:32it. A court later found in his favor and awarded Rojas his own hoard of cash in 1996. Unfortunately,
08:38by that point, Rojas had been dead for three years. The official cause of death was tuberculosis,
08:43though some people insist he was killed for his role in the supposed discovery of Yamashita's
08:47gold.
08:49The region of Lower Silesia in modern-day Poland was once considered to be part of Germany.
08:54War being what it is, borders have since shifted, and the German occupants of the region fled
08:58over the course of World War II. The Polish people who took their place have since uncovered
09:02treasures left behind by their German predecessors, and, as the legend goes, there may be more
09:06valuable loot still left uncovered.
09:08One of the most colorful stories claims that there is an entire underground train full
09:12of plundered Nazi treasure buried in a collapsed tunnel somewhere in Poland. It's certainly
09:16true that the Nazis built underground tunnels, and they did indeed steal cultural treasures
09:20and valuables from occupied territories. This has apparently been more than enough evidence
09:24for some treasure hunters, including one or two who insist they stumbled upon it in the
09:29past. Still, nobody has ever managed to provide the location of the Nazi gold train, or prove
09:33that it even exists at all.
09:36Towards the end of the war and in its aftermath, a number of Nazis and other fascists left
09:39Europe to escape the consequences of their defeat. Some high-placed intellectuals like
09:43Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun were quietly rescued via Operation Paperclip, which
09:48relocated some 1,600 German scientists and their family members to America. Other Nazis
09:53disappeared from Europe at the end of the war, too, with many only reappearing decades
09:57later. For example, Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by the Mossad in 1960, while
10:02Auschwitz's so-called Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, lived out a quiet life in Brazil
10:06until 1979.
10:08So how could these criminals have gotten so far and evaded capture for so long, with some
10:12escaping punishment entirely? Well, the escape networks used by the Nazis were eventually
10:16known as ratlines, though it's still not clear who was involved, how the ratlines ran, and
10:21how much everyone knew about the whole affair.
10:23What is clear is that many South American countries seem to be full of government officials
10:28who were more than happy to ignore the Nazis fleeing to their shores, and evidence seems
10:31to suggest that Vatican officials also played a significant role in aiding Nazi war criminals
10:36as they fled Europe. Some have even claimed that Pope Pius XII knew more than he was letting
10:40on, though the exact nature of his involvement in the ratlines is still a mystery to this
10:45day.