I was watching a documentary on Rudolph Hess and his flight he made to Britain before ditching his plane near Scotland. There is some controversy that Britain were expecting his arrival and that it was all a set up to lure him over, and that the controversy may be over when, in the year 2017, the British file on Hess will become public property for everyone to see.
I was just wondering if there are any other secrets that arose from WW2 that have not yet surfaced?
Thank you for your time.
Uhh, if they haven’t surfaced yet then we wouldn’t know about them, would we? Isn’t that the basic concept behind something being a secret?
I know one, but I’m not telling!
I’d say there are still secrets we don’t know about, and I’ll even go so far as to say there are secrets we will never know about.
This is a brilliant theory, of course, because it can never be conclusively proved false. 
But smartass comments aside, I really do believe this is true.
Germany slaughtered over 12 million people in concentration camps! Those who deny it are part of a world-wide conspiracy to cover it up.
Correction. Relatively “few” Nazis were responsible for that genocide (Few compared to the number of “Nazis and Soldiers” fighting for Germany). The “physical” country of Germany did not, niether did the vast, vast majority of her citzens and soldiers. I really wish people did not use such a big paint brush.
you know the “germany” thing is amazing. you never hear that Russia killed 20 million of its population. its always “stalin”
Two “mysteries” that I would like to know more about:
-the secret deal between Stalin and Hitler to carve up Poland. To my knowledge, the Russian archives have never bee opened on this one-I’m sure this is because Stalin planeed 9and carried out) the murder of thousands of Polish officers at the Katyn forest in Poland.
-how much did Stalin know about japan’s war plans? The Russians had a very good spy in the german Embassy in Tokyo (Richard Sorge). Stalin obviously knew that Japan would not invade Siberia-this left him a free hand in Europe.
Finally-the mysterious Rudolf hess affair mentioned prevously: there is considerable evidence that Hess was in contact with the British Royal Family, and that is why the British have never opened the archive on this one. Plus, the fact that the Russians INSISTED that Hess serve out his life sentence 9in the now-demolished Landsbergh prison), tells me that there were some embarrasing details here.
so a guy walks into a bar, right. And he sits down and orders a drink, and after he’s been sitting there for a while, he spots a fellow at the other end of the bar.
And damned if the fellow isn’t a dead ringer for Adolph Hitler. Doppelfrickinganger. The guy’s gaze keeps returning to this man throughout the night.
After maybe his forth or fifth beer, he’s in better spirits and his courage’s up. So he walks to the other end of the bar, and plops himself down in the stool next to the Hitler lookalike.
“You know,” he says after a subtle doubletake, “You look a lot like Adolph Hitler, my man.”
“No,” replied the guy. “I am Adolph Hitler.”
“What? You can’t be, Hitler died like 50 years ago in a bunker in Germany.”
“No, I did not die. In fact, I am making a return! I will soon take over the world, and I will kill 6 million Jews and 300 cowboys.”
“What? Why 300 cowboys?”
“See,” Hitler replied, ever the asshole, with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. “Nobody cares about the Jews.”
I would imagine there are still secrets about who collaborated with who - many are still alive, and understandably, there might be people who hold grudges, or who might be ashamed, or families could be in danger. Maybe someone was a traitor, got caught, then cooperated - embarrassing to both sides.
I think that I heard somewhere there were restrictions on photographs and film - that certain scenes were and are censored due to a graphic (hard to believe now) or politically sensitive nature. I also think that photographs that can identify specific individuals killed in combat are usually not released.
Plus, there is the stuff that was simply classified as secret at the time and no one has looked at yet. After all, it is secret.
Finally, the largest category, is the stuff simply misfiled.
The secret clauses of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact have long been public. Germany had a copy too, remember! We even have record of the Germans securing permission from the Russians to operate briefly in the Russian sector during the 1939 war, and of the modifications the two dictators made after Poland’s defeat.
Katyn was in Russia, so I don’t know what it has to do with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Tha atrocity first came to light during the German invasion of Russia, when the Wehrmacht captured the site and discovered the bodies.
When the British documents are released in 2017, I think we’re going to have to totally revise our thinking about WWII. I’m not sure how many “new” revelations we will have, but we will no doubt receive amplification on many subjects. Here are a few things I expect to see:
British intelligence was far more involved in the United States than anyone previously expected. We are already aware of a concerted propaganda effort on their part, but I think the scope of the operation will turn out to be far more extensive than anyone currently thinks. In particular, I believe that Joseph Kennedy may have been specifically targeted and perhaps even blackmailed by British intelligence agents.
Assassination was a common practice on both sides of the pond. This is going out on a limb here, but we may even discover that Britain assassinated Americans who were not sympathetic to the British cause. In particular, I will be curious to find out whether the Brits were involved in the death of George S. Patton, who just prior to his demise was advocating the rearming of Germany in order to attack the Soviets.
Knowledge of the Holocaust was more extensive than now known, and not acted upon.
Prior knowledge of Japanese plans for war was also extensive, and not acted upon.
We may discover proof that Werner Heisenberg was in fact hampering German efforts to produce an atomic bomb.
Hey, it’s all speculation, but those are my best bets.
I recall reading in the newspaper that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian historians gained access to newly declassified documents which clearly showed that Stalin had been planning an eventual attack on Germany in particular and Europe in general long before Hitler ever engaged in overt military action against Russia. But that’s all I remember. Does anybody else know anything about this?
I think that Viktor Suvorov is the most vocal proponent of the theory that Stalin was preparing for an invasion of Germany sometime in August/September of 1941. As far as I know, while there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to Soviet preparations, no one document has been unearthed that shows this was in fact the case. I haven’t read his books, but those who have seem to be fairly well convinced.
One thing I found interesting was that at the Nuremberg trials, several German higher-ups espoused this opinion. Jodl even went so far as to say that after the German invasion, they found “proof,” but failed to elaborate on what that proof was or who got the presumed documentation at the close of the war.
I’ve heard that the British knew that Coventry was going to be bombed but didn’t evacuate because they didn’t want to tip their hand that they had broken the German code. I can’t find a cite, does anyone have more info on that?
If true, it’s not exactly a secret but also not widely known.
Heh. By definition, this thread will contain only speculation, since if something is still a secret, those who know it will not post it here.
Therefore, I’m going to move this thread to In My Humble Opinion, where folks can speculate to their hearts’ content.
I also don’t have a site, but we were told about this incident when I was in tech school for Air Force Intelligence. In order to use a piece of intelligence you have received, you cannot let that piece of intelligence be traced back to its source or else you lose your source.
In this case, the only way England would’ve known about the bombing was if they had hold of an Enigma, and the Germans would have figured that out. Churchill did not want the Germans to know they had this encryption device, and so had to make the decision to let Conventry be bombed so England had better chances of winning the war.
Again, this is something the instructor told us during tech school, so I don’t have any written documentation or a site.
It’s not an uncommon theory and one supported by a little evidence. Churchill was on his way out of London on the afternoon of the 14th November 1940 before opening an envelope which caused him to turn his car around (e sometimes left the city prior to an air raid). This evidence comes from his chauffeur. Could be true that the car did turn around, information about the raid not being on London but Coventry might have been the reason. I don’t believe we know for sure. Certainly, the Luftwaffe part of Enigma had been sufficiently cracked by Bletchley Park at that stage for the information to be known.
I don’t think it was simply a question of sacrificing Coventry to avoid suspicion that the Luftwaffe Enigma had been broken because the raid could have been directed at any number of cities, London, Liverpool, Belfast, Southampton, Plymouth……anywhere really. Fact is, the British couldn’t do a whole lot about it at that stage. The important thing was to preserve and build both the RAF and its air bases in the event that Hitler tried to invaded. London and many other cites were all partially sacrificed in order to give the RAF breathing space to reform and build. Not a pleasant choice to have had to make.
Also, what do you do if you have six (or so) hours notice ? In November 1940 it was cold, wet and transportation couldn’t be mobilised on the scale necessary. How do you pass the word and evacuate a city in 6 hours today – never been done to my knowledge. Can’t see how it would have been possible in 1940.
So there were ivery mportant other reasons why Coventry wasn’t warned beside preserving the codebreakers activities.
There was a thread that touched on the Coventry story around here not too long ago. Someone with more motivation can search for it. In it, a link was posted to an article examining the evidence that has been used to support this theory. Basically, the coded messages mentioned several targets, but referred to them by code words.
In one or many of the books claiming that Coventry was sacrificed to protect Enigma, the author says that the code word for Wolverhampton was “all one piece”, when in fact it was “all one price”. This is significant, because from “all one price”, a reference to Woolworth’s slogan could be deduced, and Wolverhampton has a similar name. Likewise “umbrella” was easily fingered as the city that umbrella-wielding former PM Clemment Attlee had been mayor of.
The code word for Coventry, “corn”, was not figured out ahead of time, and was not even thought to be a separate target. The other target of the raid was assumed to be London. The article had other evidence to refute the claims about Coventry as well. Someone ought to search for that thread.
big hijack-
best thread resulting from “Coventry Enigma” search not relating to WWII bombing campaigns.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=22198
Man, that Phaedrus was a PSYCHO!
jb