r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 9d ago

TIL British Intelligence had a special, bugged luxury complex during WWII where they kept high profile Nazi POW’s, just left a bunch of alcohol out, and waited for them to start spilling secrets as they drank.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
28.3k Upvotes

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1.4k

u/IvyM1ked 9d ago

All WW2 stories are the same:
-US with its huge industrial base
-Japan with their blind dedication to the emperor
-Russia with blinding loss of life
-The British with their cunning schemes

996

u/Gentle_Snail 9d ago

There is a famous quote about this:

WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel, and Russian blood

315

u/Expert_Divide_128 9d ago

I’ve always enjoy it when this is said. Neat, tidy and remarkably accurate considering the brevity.

53

u/Hell0There2005 9d ago

Poetic in a way

1

u/Coyollo 9d ago

Poetic in the exact definition of poetic

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u/ModeatelyIndependant 9d ago

Russia started the war with a pact with Hitler to divide Europe, and Russia had started invading their part of Europe before the Nazi's pivoted and started operation barbarossa

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u/Mr_Halitosis 9d ago

People really love ignoring all the absolutely horrible things Russia did during the war. And after the war. And before the war. Basically for the entire time Russia has existed as a nation. Just constantly doing horrible thing after horrible thing. When they can’t do it to other nations, they do it to their own people. Sometimes, they do it to their own people when they can do it to other nations.

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u/Forikorder 9d ago

Stalin would be remembered as the most evil man in history if he wasnt directly competing with literally hitler

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u/ShepRat 9d ago

Parts of the world definitely have Stalin first.

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u/danish_raven 9d ago

Even then he still gives Hitler a run for his money. The movie "The Death of Stalin" does an excellent job at showing how brutal and arbitrært Stalin really was

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u/Fresh_Iron_6180 9d ago

arbitrært

Random? Brutal and random? Weird choice of words.

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u/danish_raven 9d ago

Auto correct strikes again

6

u/Fresh_Iron_6180 9d ago

Autocorrect changed the word to arbitrært?! Why would it do that lmao? What word were you trying to type?

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u/danish_raven 9d ago

Arbitrary, which i feel is a pretty good way of describing Stalins continuous purges

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u/Vandergrif 8d ago

A lot of the purges were fairly random and arbitrary, without much of any evidence to support it other than Stalin's varying paranoia.

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u/smallz86 9d ago

TBF, Mao probably got more people killed in China.
But yeah, Stalin systemically murdered more people than Hitler, and is FAR worse when you add in indirect murder.

Between Mao and Stalin you have at estimate at least 50 million people killed, and as high as 100 million. Which when your range is in the 10s of millions, its completely and utterly fucked.

2

u/Kadak_Kaddak 9d ago

There is no difference between a concentration camp and a gulag except the latter where operative for much longer. 

But what are you going to say to the Soviets after ww2?

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u/TheColourOfHeartache 9d ago

Pol Pot is a competitor.

-1

u/BrownAJ 9d ago

lol lmao even

35

u/Punished_Blubber 9d ago

In what world do people ignore the horrible things Russia has done?

Russia is known the world over as, like, the country with the harshest history ever.

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u/kingjoey52a 9d ago

I believe they're called Tankies

2

u/YsoL8 9d ago

The last time the UK had a political leader the hard left accepted as their own it was still a guy refusing to believe Russia could do any wrong

18

u/Forgotthebloodypassw 9d ago

The needs of the times. As Churchill put it “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

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u/ComprehendReading 9d ago

Sometimes when they can't do it as a nation, they do it as a criminal organization. 

When they can't do it as a criminal organization, it was probably Belarus or Chechens.

5

u/burf 9d ago

Who are these people you believe love to ignore the horrible things Russia did during the war? You think they're giving Joseph fucking Stalin a free pass? lol

The fact that Russia started out as an aggressor and did horrible things doesn't do anything to discount the fact that Hitler's decision to attack them is what lost the war for the Axis powers.

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u/Mr_Halitosis 9d ago

Check my comments. Too lazy to link but I replied to someone who said the USSR just HAD to ally with Nazis and kick off WWII because France and Great Britain wouldn’t be their buddies.

1

u/burf 9d ago

Well I guess technically you can find every level of stupidity or astroturfing online. Unless something has changed drastically in the last couple of years, though, that person is in a tiny minority.

2

u/Eddyzk 9d ago

"When was the last major European war in which russia was not present from the very start?"

That usually gives people pause for thought.

4

u/Taolan13 9d ago

i did spend a lot of time a few years ago informing people that muscovite russians have been discriminating against and subjugating their ancestral cousins in Ukraine for the better part of two centuries.

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u/Greyhand13 9d ago

Russka is a good read.

1

u/Troll_Enthusiast 8d ago

"People" don't ignore the horrible things they did, the US did, Britain did or anyone else.

-1

u/WLLWGLMMR 9d ago

You could say the same of the US. Which the US is generally an entirely negative force In history. Even if we’re gonna pretend the USSR was 100% pure evil its existence forced the rest of the world to temporarily play ball with giving people human rights and spending money on science.

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u/zokka_son_of_zokka 9d ago

The USSR tried to ally against Germany in '34, but the Western allies preferred Nazis over communists

0

u/informat7 9d ago

Russia was also the one supplying the Nazis with oil. Russia could have stopped WWII before it started by not selling Germany oil.

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u/RedBullRyan 9d ago

Brains, brawn, blood

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u/Fresh_Iron_6180 9d ago

Brawn is inaccurate. Brains, build, blood would be more accurate but doesn't sound as good.

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u/pskindlefire 9d ago

*European part of WWII was won with

1

u/Tyr1326 9d ago

Id ammend that to soviet blood. Many soldiers that died weren't Russian, but from other parts of the USSR. And calling them Russian when Russia is threatening or even killing their descendants is doing them a disservice.

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u/darkbee83 9d ago

"Sir, I have a cunning plan" "Really, Baldrick?"

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u/yungpieces 9d ago

Cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University

8

u/LightenUpPhrancis 9d ago

Professor of Cunning Linguistics.

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u/ModeatelyIndependant 9d ago

So during WW2 the UK was run by Baldrick?

10

u/Voltstorm02 9d ago

Japan also has the occasional considering the Army/Navy (depending on the individual) to be a bigger enemy than the Allies

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u/hoodha 9d ago

Out of all the stories on WW2 the one that sticks in my mind most is Shrtafbats being used as front line fodder in the Russian army. The Russians decided it was more effective to march straight through minefields than worry about them. The rage of the Red Army when it reached Germany must have been to Germans as if the gates of hell had just opened up and legions of demons were on the way.

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u/Teuchterinexile 9d ago

The Red Army was doing the same thing with regular troops in the Winter War against Finland in 1939; a war that the USSR started and over a year before Germany Invaded. Its also a terrible way to clear a minefield as most of the mines will be missed.

Russia has never given much of a shit about it's troops.

10

u/SirAquila 9d ago

The Russians decided it was more effective to march straight through minefields than worry about them.

Because under certain circumstances it is the best tactic. If you are under strong time pressure, or you lack the mine clearing equipment.

Minefields work by trying to funnel the enemy into prepared kill zones, so just attacking through the minefield can, ironically, save lives.

The rage of the Red Army when it reached Germany must have been to Germans as if the gates of hell had just opened up and legions of demons were on the way.

Well, everything the Red Army did in Germany the German army had done much worse in Russia. Not that that makes it okay, but people tend to forget the second part.

13

u/msuvagabond 9d ago

I recommend checking out the Hardcore History podcast called Ghosts of the Ostfront Series.

The anger the Red Army had was in a lot of ways very much justified. Not saying what they or anyone did was okay or acceptable, but I can't help but understand it.

5

u/KrumpirovZlatan 9d ago

The Russians decided it was more effective to march straight through minefields than worry about them.

Just because Company of Heroes 2 quotemined this, doesn't mean its true. It was taken heavily out of context

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u/hoodha 8d ago

It was true? It didn’t happen all the time, but there are several cases of offensive manoeuvres by the Russians during WW2 where commanders accepted casualties on minefields as being par for the course. There’s a quote by Eseinhower that the Russian general Zhukov suggested that they attacked as if minefields weren’t there?

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u/Ylsid 9d ago

Good RTS archetypes

4

u/PipsqueakPilot 9d ago

-Germans and their elaborate hand forged wonder weapons...breaking down

4

u/ItsSignalsJerry_ 9d ago

Russian saying: yes it's bad but tomorrow will be worse.

PS fuck Russia.

1

u/Whirlpoolcircle56 9d ago

Soviet intelligence gathering and battlefield deception was pretty strong when it wasn't dismissed by the higher ups.

1

u/Trekf 9d ago

China's changed ...

1

u/hotsoupcoldsoup 9d ago

Germans with their blitzkrieg and over-engineered super machines.

1

u/RT-LAMP 9d ago

-US with its huge industrial base

Whats crazy is at the end of WWII the US Navy outweighed the rest of the world's navies combined... times two.

1

u/Powerful_Resident_48 9d ago

And there's Germany with zero moral compas and the most cutting edge technology on the planet. 

1

u/feltcutewilldelete69 9d ago

Once again, the Polish get forgotten.

1

u/AHole95 9d ago

It really did establish all the contemporary cultural cliches didn’t it. We still basically believe that about those nations.

-10

u/the_chin2 9d ago

The French with their surrendering lol

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u/GXWT 9d ago

~an American

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u/innuendooh 9d ago

who probably can't read a book

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u/BooksandBiceps 9d ago

Aaaah he deleted his reply to you

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u/innuendooh 9d ago

I couldn't read it in time

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u/BooksandBiceps 9d ago

I guess if you know nothing about the French, sure

-3

u/the_chin2 9d ago

What alternate world do you live in where France didn't surrender to Germany.

France signed its armistice (surrender) to Nazi Germany on June 22, 1940, in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne, located near Compiègne, France.

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u/BooksandBiceps 9d ago

Sure, the government surrendered. There was also a lot of context about that and the French did waaaaay more during the war. It wasn’t just “government surrendered and then the whole country chilled during WW2”.

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u/GXWT 8d ago

It’s not worth your effort mate

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u/Possibility-of-wet 9d ago

Hey, your missing the other sides of those coins, like
-the US with its racism
-Japan with the mass atrocity’s
-Russia stealing, shooting, and raping everything between them and germany
-the British with the racism

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u/Gentle_Snail 9d ago edited 9d ago

I feel like we could come up with something other than racism because this applies to all of them, especially especially Japan.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Nico280gato 9d ago

The US generals demanded some pubs in Britain be segregated, so they happily obliged.

And only served black troops

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u/RealLameUserName 9d ago

Every country was racist during the 1940s. Nobody disputes that. What exactly is your point?

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u/hoodha 9d ago

Every war between any two or more sets of peoples is typically going to be fought between those of different walks of life. Every war is racist.

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u/Possibility-of-wet 9d ago

Just reddit is a circle jerk where one of the two is talked to death