World war 2 was the most horrific conflict in human history, but the thing that makes it stand out against other wars were the weapons used, and the complete lack of any kind of ethical or moral code that governed them. There were no restrictions when it came to defeating the enemy, or protecting the land you took, and due to the technological experimentation’s of the time, people made some pretty strange and terrifying creations, so here’s 5 of the most outstanding and bizarre.
1) Schwerer Gustav
(A photo of Hitler viewing the Schwerer Gustav railway gun in 1943)
The Germans made several railway guns during the war, but the Schwerer Gustav was the biggest one by far, and holds the record of the biggest rifled calibre gun ever built in history, and also the heaviest artillery piece ever made. It was originally intended to be used as siege artillery to destroy the Maginot Line in France, but was unfinished by the time the war started.
Since German ground forces simply went round the Maginot line the gun was never used on it, and instead moved around the country firing the occasional shot at allied forces. The gun itself weighed 1,350 tonnes and could fire a 7.7 ton shell almost 30 miles and was insanely powerful. It once landed a direct hit on an underground munitions depot 30 metres below the surface, and managed to destroy it in a single shot.
2) Project Riese
(The layout of the intended facilities of Project Reise)
This was the codename given to the huge building project to create seven huge connected underground structures in the owl mountains in Poland. Riese means giant in German and the project was the largest bunker building operation in history up until the end of the war. The most interesting thing about the project is that no one knows exactly why it was built, as it doesn’t seem to be just another defencive structure but closer to a small underground town, something that wouldn’t make sense to build as it could be easily dealt with by any attacking force who found it.
(The layout of one of the facilities within the complex)
The project wasn’t finished by the time the war ended and only a small percentage of its passages had been reinforced. Built entirely by prisoners of war and concentration camp victims, the project saw hundreds of deaths from the labour force, mostly from starvation and disease.
The most commonly suggested theories for its construction include the housing of the Nazi high command and an underground weapons factory, with the reason for it being so deep would be to avoid allied bombing runs. The only problem is that not a single piece of documentation has survived to explain its function, and everyone who worked on or inside it is now dead, so its true purpose will forever remain a mystery.
3) Mustard gas
This is a sulphur based gas that replaced earlier versions of weaponised gas. After people realised that things such as chlorine gas can be made harmless with the addition of a gas mask, something more effective had to be made and the result was mustard gas. Other types of gas used only had effects on certain things, for example chlorine gas affected the respiratory system and made people suffocate, but only if they were exposed to a high enough amount for a long enough period of time, and normally it would only cause breathing problems instead of death.
Mustard gas worked in a way that you would expect acid gas to work. As soon as it touched someones skin it caused large blisters to form and a deep scolding of the skin, similar to having boiling water poured over someone. If it got into your eyes it would blind you, and if you were unlucky enough to breath it in then the inside of your lungs would bleed and you’d drown in your own blood. If a wave of gas hit and you were in anything less than a full head mask and a leather trench coat with gloves, you’re pretty much guaranteed death.
4) Unit 731
This was the name given to a Japanese facility located in China during the 1930’s, and operated until the end of the war when Japan had to leave the country. It was a research facility that conducted experiments of Chinese civilians, and by far wins the title of the most evil organisation in history. Most countries during the war did some pretty nasty things, but nothing comes close to the cruelty of Unit 731. Freezing peoples limbs and sawing or hammering them off to see what would happen when they thawed out was a favourite winter pass time of the workers, and this doesn’t even scrape the top 10 worst things they did there.
Releasing anthrax and other disease bombs on Chinese settlements to monitor the effects happened on a regular basis, leading to the deaths of close to 500,000 people. After the weapon testing, the hot and cold experimentation and radiation testing the single most horrific thing would be experimental surgery.
They would sever organs and attach them to others to see how to body dealt with the change, and frequently cut open the same person to see how the change was taking effect, all done without any anaesthetic or painkillers of any kind. One particularly cruel thing they did was to get a prisoner infected with syphilis to rape and impregnate a number of female prisoners. The women would later be cut up at different stages to see how the disease was affecting the development of the baby. Not a single person out of the half a million people affected by Unit 731 survived.
5) The Bat Bomb
Out of all the strangest creations of the war this one has to be near the top. The idea was based on the behaviour of bats during daytime, with them seeking the nearest available dark space where ever they are released, and if they had a small bomb on them then it would be a guaranteed hit on an enemy building if they were released close enough to it.
The bomb contained an outer capsule that would fall away after the bomb had left the plane, and inside are several platforms that contained a number of sleeping bats on each one. The bats had a small napalm charge attached to them which was in-turn attached to a small string that activated a fuse when pulled out. The bats would be put to sleep using a freezer and then placed on the trays with the charges, when it was dropped and began falling through the air the bats would wake up and fly off, pulling out the string fuse attached to the platform.
After a short while the bats would be safely in someones attic trying to escape the light, and that’s when the bomb would go off. It was intended to be used on Japanese civilian housing which at the time were normally made of wood and would burn to the ground with the smallest amount of napalm.
After a test drop on a mock Japanese village built in an American desert the weapon seemed to work a little too well. The test village was burned to the ground, along with a number of civilian houses close to the area, but the project was ultimately abandoned due to advances of the atomic bomb.
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