Want to win a war? The number one rule of warfare is "no dancing"... Okay, not exactly. But it is one of the weirdest rules soldiers had to follow during World War II.
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00:00So, here's the thing about war. No country enters one without the desire to dominate
00:05the other side and win. But in order to do so, there are often some pretty strict rules
00:09that the soldiers fighting in the trenches have to follow. But did you know that during
00:13World War II, one country outlawed dancing? Yeah, me neither.
00:17Stick around to find out who it was, because today we're looking at some of the strangest
00:21rules soldiers during World War II had to follow.
00:25We shall never surrender.
00:27That's one of Winston Churchill's most famous quotes, and one of my worst impressions. But
00:32yeah, he's got nothing on the Japanese. You see, imperial leaders took it a step further
00:37and added in a fight to the death or keep fighting. And you know what? That's exactly
00:42what happened.
00:43Some of these Japanese servicemen refused to surrender for years or even decades after
00:47the Empire's surrender. Among the most notable of the holdouts to return to Japan was Shoichi
00:52Yokoi. He was the last of nearly 5,000 Japanese fighters who had refused to surrender after
00:57Guam fell to U.S. forces. Yokoi hid out until 1972 when he was found by local fishermen.
01:03He apologized publicly to the emperor upon his return.
01:06Two years later, Hiroo Onoda was discovered on Lubang, refusing to be repatriated until
01:11his commanding officer arrived and directly ordered him to do so.
01:14As an intelligence officer, I was ordered to conduct guerrilla warfare and not to die.
01:18I had to follow my orders as I was a soldier.
01:21The last confirmed soldier was a Taiwanese native fighting for the Japanese. He was found
01:25in December 1974. As recently as 2005, two elderly men emerged in the Philippines claiming
01:32to be holdouts, though their claims have been met with tons of skepticism.
01:36So we know all about those Japanese holdouts and fighting to the death. But this wasn't
01:41an issue exclusive to the imperial forces. Most leaders decreed to keep fighting. And
01:46whatever you do, don't retreat or run for it without orders.
01:49The Soviet Union took an especially dim view of desertion. During the German onslaught,
01:53Stalin issued his Anti-Desertion Order 270, which stated that even when surrounded, Soviet
01:58units were to fight to the death rather than surrender, or be shot if they didn't resist
02:02hard enough. Even their families back home could be subject to punishment.
02:05Though some Soviet deserters were shot, it was deemed counterproductive to shoot too
02:09many. The most common fate was to be sent back to the front, either in one's own unit
02:14or a special penal unit assigned day of his work.
02:17Many of you think that the good old U.S. of A. was above that kind of order. Well,
02:21that's a no. The U.S. executed one soldier for desertion during the war. His name was
02:26Private Eddie Slovik. Slovik deserted in the autumn of 1944. He returned and was warned
02:31not to disappear again, but then he deserted a second time. General Eisenhower wanted to
02:36make an example out of him, and he was executed by firing squad in January 1945. He remains
02:41the only U.S. serviceman to be executed for desertion since 1864.
02:46The Winter War is this kind of forgotten part of World War II. That's when the Soviets
02:50invaded Finland. Now, the Finns fought like the Dickens and gave Russia all they had.
02:55Given all this stress, it's easy to imagine a Finnish fighter wanting to spend his time
02:58on leave unwinding. But one thing was forbidden. Dancing. Yes, public dances for both civilians
03:05and for soldiers on leave were banned in Finland. Twice. First during the Winter War of 1939
03:11to 1940, and then during the Continuation War of 1941 to 1944. People flouted the ban
03:17as time wore on. After all, nearly five years without busting a move was a lot to ask. But
03:22dancers were raided, and a number of people were punished. Two were even killed in these
03:26dance hall raids. After the Continuation War with the Soviets concluded in 1944, Finns
03:31had to put up with shortages, the loss of one of their provinces, and retreating Germans.
03:35But at least they could again distract themselves from dancing.
03:39You probably know that General George Patton was one of the United States' most effective
03:43commanders of World War II. But what you may not know was that he was a snappy dresser.
03:48This urge to dress well influenced his standards for troops under his command, who had to wear
03:52neckties in battle, even in hot, sticky Sicily. Reportedly, the only way out of the necktie
03:57decree was to present a doctor's note, as one soldier who had survived having his throat
04:02cut by a German soldier did. Any options? I'd probably just suck it up and wear the
04:08necktie.
04:09When German soldiers approached the university city of Bonn in western Germany, the Germans
04:12tried to destroy records implicating them in their nation's crimes. But a quick-thinking
04:16Polish lab technician salvaged the dossier of German and Austrian scientists. This information
04:21was used to make a list for one of the most grim scavenger hunts in modern history. America
04:26wanted to benefit from these scientific minds nearly as much as they wanted to prevent the
04:30Soviets from doing so. So Operation Paperclip, a program to snag and use these experts, was
04:35born.
04:36In the U.S., American soldiers capturing Nazi forces were on the lookout for these VIPs,
04:40with whom the U.S. might be willing to cut a deal, offering them amnesty and a new life
04:45in the U.S. in exchange for their scientific know-how. Individual soldiers sometimes made
04:50the collars. Wernher von Braun, a brilliant rocket scientist, later key to the U.S. space
04:55program, surrendered to a private monitoring a rural road in Austria.
04:58Now here's a model I designed for a four-stage orbital rocket ship."
05:03Cleanliness is next to godliness. And uncleanliness? Well, that's the Oregon Trail.
05:08Typhus, a bacterial disease spread by lice, was so feared by German administrators that
05:13enterprising Polish doctors faked an outbreak to keep workers from being deported to Germany
05:17for forced labor. Dysentery, our old friend, has plagued armies for centuries. Handwashing,
05:23general cleanliness, hot showers, and aggressive laundering went a long way toward limiting the
05:27spread of conditions like these. In addition to straightforward personal hygiene, maintaining
05:32a sanitary environment was also emphasized in wartime messaging. Cleaning latrines,
05:36covering trash, and managing insect populations were simple actions enlisted soldiers could take
05:41that limited the spread of disease, and kept more men in fighting shape.
05:45"'Dirt and filth are the brothers of discomfort, disease, and death.'"
05:50So, obviously, secrecy is key during wartime. And both the Axis and Allied armies worked hard
05:56to conceal their plans, which included making sure soldiers kept their mouths shut. Starting
06:00in March 1940, Nazi censors began monitoring mail going to, from, and between German soldiers.
06:06Among various other restrictions, soldiers were to write only in European languages,
06:10which explicitly excluded Morse code, fraying from giving details of Axis or Allied movements
06:15or attacks, and send no pictures of important military installations. The Allies also censored
06:21mail, and with similar aims in mind. And self-censorship was also an important factor.
06:26Public information campaigns taught both soldiers and people on the home front of the dangers of
06:30loose lips. Both Axis and Allied forces used scorched-earth approaches during the war,
06:35with one of the most striking examples coming in the early stages of the German invasion of
06:39the Soviet Union. Soviet units smashed roads and bridges, disabled the railroad, destroyed
06:44food stores, and in some cases broke down entire factories and sent them further east for
06:49reassembly. The Soviets also evacuated more than 17 million other citizens from the combat zone,
06:54denying the Germans this colossal pool of labor, preserving it for their own war effort.
06:59Nazis notoriously left ruins behind when they retreated, but thankfully, one of the worst
07:03proposed scorched-earth attacks never came to pass. Faced with the imminent liberation of Paris,
07:08Hitler ordered the French capital destroyed. A horrified General Dietrich von Koltitz refused
07:13to follow orders, instead stalling until the Allies retook the city of Wien.
07:18After the war ended, the victorious Allies were left to handle those who had carried
07:22out the Axis powers' crimes against humanity. Key Nazis were taken to Nuremberg to face trial.
07:27There, a number of defendants presented the defense that they had just been following orders,
07:31and thus could not be personally held responsible for what happened. And conveniently for them,
07:36the ultimate source of those orders, Adolf Hitler, was dead. The judges, drawn from the victorious
07:41major Allied states of France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union,
07:46rejected this defense. They wrote in a decision that created an important legal precedent that
07:50the soldiers who had committed atrocities knew, or at least should have known, that what they
07:55were doing was wrong. While it might have been dangerous for them to disobey these orders,
07:59they were not at immediate risk of death for doing so. Nuremberg established the right to
08:03the world to hold such wrongdoers accountable.
08:06"...humanity has waited for this moment of retribution, when the insane ambitions of
08:10men like these would come up against the stone wall of world justice."
08:14Here's the interesting thing. It actually sort of circles back to the first thing we discussed —
08:18Japanese soldiers that kept on fighting. In a sense, legally speaking,
08:22soldiers should know when to stop and when to surrender, regardless of orders or interiors.
08:28Now, we tend to gloss over Italy when it comes to World War II, but they were fascist way before
08:32Germany ever was. Of course, Italy's gung-ho approach to an all-fascist Europe cracked in
08:371943. Several factors — perhaps most importantly, the Allied invasion of Italy in September that
08:43year — effectively obliterated the Italian will to continue the war. In late July, the seldom
08:48relevant King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini. The caretaker government took control.
08:54Sort of. They were too inept to even give the military orders to defend Rome,
08:58and Germany soon overran northern and central Italy.
09:01Allied commanders correctly assumed that Italy's wartime struggles would turn most Italians,
09:05including those in the armed forces, against Germany. In October 1943,
09:10barely a month after the Allied invasion, Italy officially switched sides and joined the Allies.
09:14In under a year, Italian soldiers had gone from Germany's staunchest ally to their sworn enemy.
09:20It also marked the second straight world war where Italy switched sides. Check out that goal.
09:26France and Poland — Germany's largest and strongest neighbors — both came under
09:30foreign occupation relatively early in the war. But while both nations were defeated,
09:34their battered armies weren't completely destroyed, and those that survived continued
09:38to fight for the rest of the war. Using bases in the United Kingdom and personnel and resources
09:42from across France's colonial empire in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, the French general Charles
09:47de Gaulle cobbled together an effective fighting force. These free French fighters coordinated with
09:52their allies in the resistance and occupied France, while also fighting alongside British
09:56troops in Africa and Italy, eventually participating in the liberation of France itself.
10:01Poland had a much wilder ride. They were initially invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union,
10:07prior to the Soviets switching sides and joining the Allied cause. While some Polish soldiers
10:11evacuated to France and the United Kingdom and participated in the war efforts there,
10:15others were captured by the Soviet Union. So when Germany invaded the Soviet Union,
10:19the Soviets recruited a captured Polish general to lead an army of Polish prisoners against the
10:24Germans. These freed soldiers trained in Iran, of all places, where they joined up with British
10:28forces who were occupying parts of Iran to keep its oil out of Axis hands. And we're not talking
10:34about a few troops here and there. Somewhere around 33,000 Polish soldiers ended up in Iran.
10:40If you didn't have that on your green card.