Unfortunately, war can drive innovation. During World War II, the world's major powers set their sights on advancing technology, medicine, and communications in order to be efficient and fearsome in battle. Some of the advancements made in WWII were fundamental to modern technology — others, not so much.

Here is a look at some of the most bizarre, useless, and downright insane weapons developed on both sides during WWII.

1. A ship-mounted aerial mine rocket launcher

The unrotated-projectile rocket launcher was an especially ill-conceived antiaircraft measure. Created to protect ships from enemy planes, the unrotated projectile was fired from a ship, and, upon reaching 1,000 feet in elevation, it would explode and disperse mines attached to parachutes via 400 feet of cable. 

The general idea was to create an aerial minefield wherein enemy planes would become ensnared in the mess of cables, pulling the mines into their fuselages and downing the plane. However, the mines, cables, and parachutes were all easily visible and enemy pilots had no trouble flying above or below the "aerial minefield".

Here's what the weapon looked like when launched:

The undetonated mines would then be at the mercy of the wind, and they would often float back down toward the British ships that fired them.

"There are no records of UPs bringing down any aircraft. It's entirely possible that this system injured or killed more Britons than enemies due to accidents, fires, etc,"according to a page dedicated to one of the battle cruisers that carried the weapon. 

2. Suicide bomb dogs

In 1942, Hitler's Nazi infantry invaded Soviet Russia with German "Panzer" tanks.

The Russians, who had used military dogs since 1924, sought to turn their canine soldiers into antitank mines by strapping explosives around the dogs' bodies.

During training, the dogs were starved and let loose on stationary Soviet tanks that had food hidden under them.

Once the dogs were underneath the tank they were trained to pull a detonator cord with their teeth. However, most dogs were unable to comprehend or execute the task while the sights, sounds, and smells of battle raged around them. 

The dogs would usually turn around and run toward their Russian handler, only to be shot and killed on sight.

3. The largest gun ever used in battle

Eager to invade France, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler demanded a new weapon that could easily pierce the concrete fortifications of the French Maginot Line — the only major physical barrier standing between him and the rest of Western Europe.

In 1941, the year after France fell, German steelmaker and arms manufacturer Friedrich Krupp A.G. began constructing Hitler's Gustav gun, according to the documentary "Top Secret Weapons."

The four-story, 155-foot-long gun, which weighed 1,350 tons, shot 10,000-pound shells from its mammoth 98-foot barrel. 

Here's what this beastly weapon looked like when fired:The gun's size was not only its source of strength, but also its downfall.

The huge gun could only be transported via rail system and was an easy target for Allied bombers flying overhead. The project was scrapped within a year.

4. V-3 cannon

The V-3 was the unnecessary younger sibling of the V-1 and V-2 rockets that pulverized London during the Blitzkrieg. 

Devised in the summer of 1944, the V-3 was designed to fire 300 nine-foot-long dart-shaped shells every hour. A series of secondary charges positioned along the 416-foot barrel were meant to speed up the projectile, which would hypothetically be able to reach London from well over 100 miles away in the French town of Mimoyecques. But when the V-3 finally became operational, the velocity of the shell was a mere 3,280 feet per second, which was estimated to be about half what was needed to reach London.

Hitler had authorized the production of 50 of these weapons, but before the original plans for the V-3 could be implemented, Allied forces bombed and destroyed the gun, despite Germany's best efforts to hide the munitions under haystacks.

In the end, only two miniature (if you can call 150-feet long miniature) versions of the gun became operational, with only a few shots ever fired to an unknown effect.

5. A mini "tank-like" remote-controlled demolition vehicle

The Nazis' Goliath tracked mine was anything but Goliath-like in stature. Known as the "Doodlebug" by American troops, the Goliath was run with a joystick operated by a controller. It had coiled within its compartments 2,145 feet of cable leading back to the controller. The mini-tank was powered by two electric motors, later replaced by gas burners, and able to carry more than 100 pounds of high explosives.

The Goliath was meant to slide under Allied tanks and deliver its explosive payload to their vulnerable undersides. However, it proved to be susceptible to cord-cutting and later on radio-controlled models were introduced. The Germans built 7,500 Goliaths during the war, which suggests that they met with some success. 

However, the real success of the Goliath was that it paved the way for radio-controlled weapons, which in our modern age are becoming the new mode of warfare.

Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

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On Aug. 1, 1944, less than two months after D-Day, Marine Maj. Peter J. Ortiz, six Marines, and an Army Air Corps officer parachuted into France to assist a few hundred French resistance fighters known as the Marquis in their fight against the Germans.

Ortiz had already worked and trained with the Marquis in occupied France from Jan. to May 1944.

The mission, Operation Union II, faced a rough start. Due to the danger of the Marines being spotted or drifting away from the drop zone, the jump was conducted at low altitudes.

“Because of the limitations, we had to make this jump at 400 feet,” said Sgt. Maj. John Bodnar in a Marines.com interview. “As soon as we were out of the aircraft our chutes opened and the next thing I remember is I was on the ground.”

One Marine’s parachute, that of Sgt. Charles Perry, failed to open. At such low altitudes, using a reserve wasn’t an option, and Perry was killed when he hit the drop zone. Another Marine was injured too badly to continue. The four Marines able to perform the mission were Ortiz, Sgt. Jack Risler, Sgt. Fred Brunner, and Bodnar who was also a sergeant at the time.

The Marines, some of the only ones to serve in the European theater in World War II, would make good use of the personnel they had. First, they recovered 864 supply crates of weapons and ammunition that were dropped after the men parachuted in. Then, they linked up with the Marquis and began training the resistance fighters.

For a week, the Marines schooled the resistance fighters on how to use the new equipment, how to conduct ambushes, and how to harass German forces. They also conducted reconnaissance and mapped prime areas to conduct ambushes.

When the fighters began conducting the ambushes, they were very successful. The exact casualty counts are unknown, but the Marquis and their Marine handlers inflicted so much damage so quickly that German intelligence believed an allied battalion had jumped in to assist the resistance instead of only six Marines and a soldier.

The Germans did not take the threat lightly. They remembered Ortiz from the Jan.-May 1944 mission and were still angry about his theft of 10 Gestapo trucks and a pass that let him drive the vehicles right through checkpoints. They began executing captured resistance members in public areas in an attempt to deter others. On Aug. 14, an entire town was murdered after the Germans found injured resistance members hiding in the church.

The Marines were on a nearby ridge and watched as the Germans destroyed the town.

“They burned the place down,” Bodnar later said in a Marines.com interview. “We just left there … they killed them all.”

The next day, the Marines were trying to move positions when a German patrol got the jump on them. They split up and tried to escape, but Ortiz, Risler, Bodnar, and a resistance member were pinned down. Fighting in a small town, Ortiz became worried that the Germans would destroy it if the Marines escaped. After his initial calls for a parley were ignored, he simply walked out while under fire to speak to the German commander.

The German finally ordered his men to stop firing and Ortiz, fluent in German, French and a few other languages, offered to surrender himself and his men if the Germans would promise to leave the town alone. The German commander, believing he was fighting a company, agreed.

Risler and Bodnar stepped out and the Germans captured the resistance member, Joseph Arcelin. Luckily for the Arcelin, he was wearing the uniform of Sgt. Perry and so the Germans didn’t execute him. Maj. Steven White, a Marine Corps intelligence officer and liaison to the 60th Anniversary Commemoration of Operation Union, said the Germans thought the Americans were lying about their numbers.

“Initially, the German officer was in disbelief,” White told Marines.com. “He did not believe that only 4 Marines had held off his forces for this long. He insisted that Maj. Ortiz turn over the rest of his team members.”

Ortiz was able to convince the German officer that the four men formed the entire team. He and his men spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp near Bremen, Germany.

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In early 1941, Lyudmila Pavlichenko was studying history at Kiev University, but within a year, she had become one of the best snipers of all time, credited with 309 confirmed kills, 36 of which were German snipers.

Pavlichenko was born in 1916 in a small town in Ukraine.

She was described as an independent, opinionated tomboy who was "unruly in the classroom," as the Smithsonian notes.

At the age of 14, Pavlichenko's family had relocated to Kiev, where she worked as a metal grinder in a munitions factory.

Like many young people in the Soviet Union at that time, Pavlichenko participated in OSOAVIAKhIM, a paramilitary sporting organization which taught youths weapons skills and etiquette. 

“When a neighbor’s boy boasted of his exploits at a shooting range,” said Pavlichenko according to the Smithsonian.

“I set out to show that a girl could do as well. So I practiced a lot.”

On June 22, 1941, Hitler broke ties with Joseph Stalin and German troops poured into the Soviet Union. Pavlichenko rushed to join the Soviet army and defend her homeland, but she was initially denied entry into the army due to gender.

"She looked like a model, with well-manicured nails, fashionable clothes, and hairstyle. Pavlichenko told the recruiter that she wanted to carry a rifle and fight. The man just laughed and asked her if she knew anything about rifles,"Soviet-Awards.com wrote of Pavlichenko's effort to join the military.

Even after Pavlichenko presented her  marksman certificate and a sharpshooter badge from OSOAVIAKhIM, officials still urged her to work as a nurse. 

“They wouldn’t take girls in the army, so I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to get in,” explained Pavlichenko.

Eventually, the Red Army gave her an "audition" by giving her a rifle and showed her two Romanians downrange who were working with the Germans. She shot down the two soldiers with ease, and was then accepted into the Red Army’s 25th Chapayev Rifle Division.

Pavlichenko then shipped out to the battle lines in Greece and Moldova. In very little time she distinguished herself as a fearsome sniper, killing 187 Germans in her first 75 days at war.

Snipers in these battles fought between the enemy lines, often far from their companies. It was extremely dangerous and careful work, as she had to sit perfectly still for hours on end to avoid detection from enemy snipers. After making a name for herself in Odessa and Moldova, Pavlichenko was moved to Crimea to fight in the battle of Sevastopol.

Her reputation earned her more dangerous assignments, eventually facing off one on one with enemy snipers. The Smithsonian reports that she dueled and killed 36 enemy snipers, some of whom were highly decorated themselves.

“That was one of the tensest experiences of my life,” Pavlichenko reportedly said.

She spent eight months fighting in Stevastopol, where she earned a praise from the Red Army and was promoted. On several occasions she was wounded, but she was only removed from battle after taking shrapnel to the face when her position was bombed by Germans who were desperate to stem the tide of her mounting kill count.

She had become a well known figure in the war, as a protagonist in the Red Army's domestic propaganda, and the scourge of German soldiers all over the Eastern front. The Germans even went so far as to address her over loud speakers, offering her comfort and candy should she defect and join their ranks.

Pavlichenko became a sniper instructor and was soon invited to the White House.

She became the first Soviet soldier to visit the White House, where she met with President Franklin Roosevelt and first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Pavlichenko became angry at the US media for the blatantly sexist way they questioned her about the war. Her look and dress was criticized. When she was asked if she wore make up to battle she responded, “There is no rule against it, but who has time to think of her shiny nose when a battle is going on?”

“I wear my uniform with honor. It has the Order of Lenin on it. It has been covered with blood in battle. It is plain to see that with American women what is important is whether they wear silk underwear under their uniforms. What the uniform stands for, they have yet to learn,” she told Time Magazine in 1942.

Pavlichenko was one of 2,000 female snipers who fought for the Red Army in World War II, and one of the 500 who survived.

Her score of 309 kills likely places her within the top five snipers of all time, but her kills are likely much more numerous, as a confirmed kill has to be witnessed by a third party.

After the war, Pavlichenko went back to finish her Master's Degree at Kiev University. 

In April of this year, Pavlichenko's story was immortalized in a film called "Battle for Sevastopol" in Russia and "Indestructible" in the Ukraine. 

The film was shot during the 2013 EuroMaidan protests in Ukraine, and financed by both Russian and Ukrainian backers at the start of a conflict that would become bloody and divisive, however the film is a testament to the outstanding career of Pavlichenko, a common hero among both parties.

SEE ALSO: The incredible story of the man who volunteered to enter Auschwitz and exposed the horrors of the Holocaust

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Throughout history, American speech has adopted soldier-coined slang into everyday language.

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American military heroes typically spend a lot of time fighting in other countries. The leaders of those countries can give medals or official thanks, but sometimes they induct American warriors into their chivalric orders and turn them into knights. For American citizens the honor comes without the title of “sir” or any of the official perks, but it’s still way better than a challenge coin.

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1. Gen. James Doolittle

Medal of Honor recipient and leader of the Doolittle Raid, Gen. James Doolittle also has a number of honorary knighthoods including Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath from Great Britain, the Order of the Condor of Bolivia, and the Grand Order of the Crown from Belgium.

2. Adm. Chester W. Nimitz

The naval hero who commanded the fleets at the battles of Midway, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and others was named to two foreign knighthoods. First, he was appointed as Knight Grand Cross of the Military Division of the Order of Bath by Great Britain, then Knight Grand-Cross in the Order of Orange Nassau by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

3. Gen. “Stormin'” Norman Schwarzkopf

The rockstar general who led Desert Storm, Gen. “Stormin'” Norman Schwarzkopf was appointed as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath by Queen Elizabeth during her visit to the United States in 1991.

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Trains may seem pretty mundane in the 21st century when compared with jet aircraft.

These days, trains play a small role in transporting Americans. Things are a bit flashier in Europe and Asia, where they're used for high-speed, comfortable travel.

This contrasts vividly with the previous century, when not just trains but armored trains were a vital piece of machinery in the two largest military conflicts of the era.

The armored train was first seen in the American Civil War, according to The Jamestown Foundation. But the battle-ready form of transportation came to prominence in World War I, when Russia used it as a means of defense during cross-country travel.

The trains were used by most of the European nations fighting in World War II: Poland took advantage of them extensively; Nazi Germany reacted and began using them; and the Russians kept their fleet up. Even Canada patrolled its west coast with one for a time in case of an invasion, according to Canada's Virtual Museum.

These trains were not just armored — they were heavily armed. Cannons, machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons, and even tanks were on board these moving walls of terror.

While the armored train could transport large amounts of firepower rapidly cross country, it also had quite a few drawbacks.

They were hardly stealthy. Their reliance on tracks not only limited where they could go, but it provided the enemy with an easy target: Sabotage the tracks, and you disable the train.

After World War II, automotive technology had caught up sufficiently to render the armored train obsolete. But these insane trains have left an indelible mark on history.

[An earlier version of this feature was written by Alex Davies and Travis Okulski.]

This early Polish train, Smialy, is one of the most famous of the era. The rotating turret on the front helped clear out anything that got in the way.

Here is another shot of Smialy. It was captured by Poland in 1919 but was used in both wars by four different nations: Austria, Poland, the USSR, and Germany.

Source: fsu.edu

Extensive armor plating could withstand a lot of punishment.

On July 16th, 1945, the United States conducted the world's first test of a nuclear weapon. Less than a month later, two bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing about the end of the Second World War. No nuclear bombs have been used as weapons since the attacks on Japan, but thousands of tests have been conducted – primarily by the US and USSR throughout the Cold War.

Produced by Alex Kuzoian

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Luftwaffe navigators flying over 1940s England had few tools to ensure their bombs were striking the right bases and cities. They used maps, compasses, airspeed indicators, and aerial photographs to try and find their assigned targets.

Apparently, the British capitalized on this by building fake cities and airstrips to confuse the bomber crews. The effort was commanded by former British Royal Engineer Col. John Turner who employed set designers from movie studios to create the decoys.

By 1940 the Royal Air Force had already dispersed some of their planes to satellite stations, sparse outposts that hosted a dozen fighters or less with small ammo and fuel dumps. Turner and his men started by creating fake version of these satellite stations. The fake versions were positioned so attacking bombers would reach the decoy station before the real station and hopefully become confused.

Turner’s men would build a fake runway and park about 10 fake airplanes at it. A group of men were assigned to move the aircraft around every day and repair any damage done by enemy bombs. To really sell the ruse to any German spies who might be watching, RAF planes or other aircraft were sometimes sent to land at the fake stations.

After success with the satellite stations, orders for simulated aircraft manufacturing plants provided a greater challenge for the team. Full-size decoys were constructed, complete with cars in the lot. During bombing runs the men would set fires in sections of the fake factory to simulate damage, but they were crafted to be easily put out once the bombers left.

In 1940 and 1941, the British government decided to protect full cities using the decoys. The team knew they couldn’t construct an entire city, but they also knew the Germans were mostly limited to night missions. So, the team came up with a series of scaffolds and lights that looked at night like a city with poor light discipline. It gave the appearance of open doors and unshaded skylights, glowing furnaces, and train depots.

Like the decoy factories, the “cities” were rigged for simulated fires and explosions. The first wave of a German bombing raid was allowed to pass without any fireworks, but diesel fuel and paraffin wax would be dumped onto burning coals ahead of the second wave. The goal was to convince the second wave that the first had found the target and that this burning “town” was it. The second and follow-on waves would then focus on the decoy.

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How many of you science fiction buffs have fantasized about zipping around town in your very own flying car? Sure, a trip in a helicopter or airplane has now become the standard or even mundane mode of long distance travel, but imagine taking your very own flying machine on a trip across town, presumably with The Jetsons’ theme song blasting in the background.

With advances in modern technology, it is only a matter of time right? What may surprise you though, is that way back in 1942, twenty years before Americans were meeting George Jetson and marveling at The Jetsons‘ flying car, the British Military actually had their very own flying jeep.

It was right smack in the middle of the Second World War and the military needed to find a way to airdrop more than messages, medical supplies or rations. They wanted to sky dive off-road vehicles to provide transportation for their infantry soldiers and other military personnel. They had previously tested the Hafner Rotachute, a rotor equipped parachute towed by an airplane with the objective of delivering armed soldiers more precisely to the battlefield, and they figured they could apply similar technology to a large vehicle.

So they looked to Raoul Hafner again. Hafner was an Austrian engineer – a contemporary and admirer of Juan de la Cierva, that Spanish pioneer of rotary-winged flight – with a passion for helicopters. Hafner first designed the Rotachute and later conceptualized its spin-off the Hafter Rotabuggy.

While both machines used rotor technology, the Rotachute was actually a fabric-covered capsule with room for one pilot and a notch for his weapon with fairing in the rear and an integrated tail. After various modifications, the first successful launch occurred on June 17, 1942 from a de Havilland Tiger Moth. Taking off, the airplane towed the Rotachute on a 300 foot towline and released it at an altitude of 200 feet. A rough landing necessitated further improvements in the form of a stabilizing wheel and fins to improve stability.

In the case of the Rotabuggy the question was how to build a vehicle that they could fly and drop from a height without causing damage. They did some tests using a regular (non-flying) 4×4 wartime jeep- a Willys MB- loaded with concrete and discovered that dropping it from heights up to a pretty impressive 2.35 metres (7.7 ft) could work without damaging the unmodified jeep.

With durable jeep in hand, they then outfitted it with a 40 ft rotor as well as a streamlined tail fairing with twin rudderless fins. For added toughness, they attached Perspex door panels, while stripping it clean of its motor. Inside they installed a steering wheel for the driver and a rotor control for the pilot and other navigational instruments. So visually you had the now-bantamweight jeep in front with two guys inside, a driver and a pilot, a rotor on top and a tail bringing up the rear. Welcome to the Blitz Flying Jeep!

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Fearful that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler would attempt to flee Germany, US intelligence tried to predict what the Führer would look like if he altered his appearance.

The Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, hired American make-up artist Eddie Senz to alter Hitler's portrait in various guises.

Senz's altered images were circulated among Allied forces before the D-Day invasion in June 1944.

The pivotal Normandy invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults and predicting Hitler's reaction was part of the Allied forces' extensive planning.

During the 1990s, German news magazine Der Spiegel first released Senz's photos to the public. 

Here are Senz’s head shots of the Führer in numerous guises.

SEE ALSO: Here's what US intelligence thought Hitler would do next

Here's Hitler without hair or his infamous mustache

Hitler with glasses, a thicker mustache, and a widow's peak hairstyle

Hitler with a beard

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pounded Wednesday with a barrage of condemnations after he claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler only decided on the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews after receiving input on the matter from Jerusalem’s then-grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian nationalist widely acknowledged as a fervent Jew-hater.

Critics accused Netanyahu of “absolving” Hitler of responsibility for the Holocaust, a charge the prime minister later brushed off, saying he had merely intended to drive home the enormity of the mufti’s role as the originator of contemporary Palestinian “incitement” against Jews.

During an address Tuesday to delegates at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Netanyahu posited that the Nazi fuehrer did not initially intend to annihilate the Jews, but rather sought to expel them from Europe.

According to the prime minister’s version of the events, Hitler changed his mind after meeting with Husseini — who was grand mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1948, and president of the Supreme Muslim Council from 1922 to 1937 — in Berlin near the end of 1941.

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time [of the meeting between the mufti and the Nazi leader]. He wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu said.

“And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to mandatory Palestine],'” continued the prime minister.

“‘So what should I do with them?’ He [Hitler] asked,” according to Netanyahu. “He [Husseini] said, ‘Burn them.'”

Netanyahu was speaking in the context of enduring Palestinian accusations to the effect that Israel is seeking to take control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; the mufti was one of the first to peddle such allegations against Jews in Mandatory Palestine.

The charges have been fueling a recent wave of attacks against Israelis in and around Jerusalem. Israel has repeatedly denied allegations that it wishes to change the status quo on the Mount, which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and is holy to both Jews and Muslims. As per the status quo, Jews may visit the Temple Mount but not pray there.

An overwhelming majority of Holocaust historians reject the notion that Husseini planted the idea of a “Final Solution” for Europe’s Jews in Hitler’s mind.

Tom Segev, a leading Israeli historian who has conducted extensive research on the Holocaust, told The Times of Israel Wednesday that the notion that Hitler needed to be convinced to exterminate the Jews was “entirely absurd.” He stressed that “one can surely say that [Husseini] was a war criminal, but one cannot say Hitler needed his advice.”

Segev, born in Jerusalem to parents who escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, further stressed that by the time Husseini and Hitler met in 1941, the annihilation of the Jews had already begun. In fact, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators by the time of the meeting.

“So the mufti told Hitler, ‘Burn them,’ and Hitler goes, ‘Oh, what a great idea,’” Segev added ironically.

Other commentators pointed out that Hitler had discussed the possible extermination of European Jewry as early as 1939, even before World War II began and certainly before he met with Husseini. The order to carry out a Final Solution against Jews was given in July 1941 — months ahead of the mufti and Hitler’s meeting — after which the infamous Wannsee Conference was called in order to finalize the logistics and details of the mass-murder operation.

The Wannsee Conference, held in on January 20, 1942, came after the meeting between Hitler and Husseini.

The theory that Husseini played a role in the origin of the plan to commit genocide against the Jews has been raised by a number of historians including David Dalin and John Rothmann, but the notion has been rejected by a vast majority of Holocaust scholars.

Netanyahu’s speech on Tuesday was not the first time the Israeli leader offered his alternate version concerning the mufti’s role in the perpetration of the Holocaust.

“Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the leading architects of the Final Solution,” he said in 2012 during a speech at the Knesset. “He, more than anybody else, convinced [Hitler] to execute the Final Solution, and not let the Jews leave [Europe]. Because, God forbid, they would come here. Rather that they would be annihilated, burned, there.”

The prime minister was criticized across the political board Wednesday for his comments, which were described as inaccurate at best and, at worst, as a tailwind to Holocaust denial. Implying the mufti planted the idea for the Final Solution in Hitler’s mind was tantamount to some, to absolving Hitler and the Nazis, at least partially, for orchestrating the unprecedented, systematic genocide of the Jews.

“This is a dangerous distortion of history and I demand that Netanyahu correct it immediately because it trivializes the Holocaust, the Nazis, and the terrible dictator Adolf Hitler’s share in the terrible tragedy of our people in the Holocaust,” Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog said in a statement. “It falls like ripe fruit straight into the hands of Holocaust deniers, and involves them in the Palestinian conflict.

“Netanyahu has forgotten that he is not only the Israeli prime minister, he is also the prime minister of the Jewish people. No one will teach me what a hater of Israel the mufti was. He gave the order to kill my grandfather, Rabbi [Yitzhak HaLevi] Herzog, and actively supported Hitler,” Herzog added.

Zehava Galon, leader of the liberal Meretz party, was even more vituperative, asserting that she felt “ashamed” for Netanyahu.

“This is not a speech by [extreme right-wing Austrian politician] Jorg Haider. This is not part of the doctorate of [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas [which accused the Zionist movement of collaborating with Nazism and played down the extent of the Holocaust]. It is an absolutely accurate quote by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu… It’s unbelievable,” Galon said in a statement.

“Perhaps we should exhume the 33,771 Jews killed at Babi Yar in September 1941, two months before the mufti and Hitler ever met, and let them know that the Nazis didn’t intend to destroy them. Perhaps Netanyahu will tell that to my relatives in Lithuania murdered by the Nazis along with nearly 200,000 members of the Jewish community there, well before the mufti and Hitler met,” she continued.

“I am ashamed for you, Mr. Prime Minister,” Galon added.

Joint (Arab) List party leader Ayman Odeh accused Netanyahu of distorting history in order to incite against the Palestinian people.

“The victims of the Nazi monstrosity, among them millions of Jews, are converted into cheap political propaganda to assist the refusal of peace,” Odeh said. “Netanyahu proves every day how dangerous he is to the two nations, and how far he is willing to go to consolidate his power and justify his catastrophic policies.”

Echoing Odeh’s words, the Palestinian Authority’s former chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, asserted that “Netanyahu hates Palestinians so much that he is willing to absolve Hitler for the murder of 6 million Jews.” He added that “on behalf of the thousands of Palestinians that fought alongside the Allied troops in defense of international justice, the State of Palestine denounces [Netanyahu’s] morally indefensible and inflammatory statements.”

PA President Mahmoud Abbas accused Netanyahu of placing “responsibility on Haj Amin al-Husseini for the killing of Jews during the Holocaust.” He said that by implying that “Hitler was not responsible [for the Holocaust], Netanyahu wants to change history. He is changing the history of the Jews.” In a 1984 book based on his PhD dissertation, Abbas claimed that the Nazis had collaborated with the Zionists, who had also exaggerated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Netanyahu asserted that his comments had been misconstrued. Hitler, he said, “was responsible for the extermination of six million European Jews — no one doubts that.” But, he added, “we must not ignore that the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was among those who encouraged him to adopt the Final Solution. There is much testimony to that effect, including the testimony of Eichmann’s deputy at the Nuremberg trials.”

Addressing reporters on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport as he prepared to head to Berlin, Netanyahu said Wednesday he had no intention of “absolving Hitler of his responsibility,” but had rather meant to show that “the forefather of Palestinian nationalism, which was without a state and without what is referred to as an ‘occupation,’ without the territories and without settlements, was already aspiring, through systematic incitement, to annihilate the Jews.

“To my chagrin, Haj Amin al-Husseini is to this day a revered figure in Palestinian society — he appears in textbooks and celebrated as the father of the nation — and the incitement that began with him, the incitement to kill Jews, yet persists,” he said. “The incitement must stop if we are to end the murders. The paramount thing is to acknowledge the historical facts and not ignore them.”

SEE ALSO: All of the ways US intelligence thought Hitler may try to disguise himself

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NOW WATCH: Netanyahu berates UN members for their 'utter silence' on Iran deal

Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is coming under fire from Holocaust experts after he claimed that Adolf Hitler never wanted to kill Jews, but was convinced to do so by a Muslim leader.

"Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time," Netanyahu said. "He wanted to expel the Jews, and Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, 'If you expel them, they will all come here.'"

According to the Israeli PM, when Hitler then asked al-Husseini what he suggested doing, al-Husseini allegedly replied "Burn them."

Netanyahu was speaking to the Zionist Congress when he made the statements late on Tuesday.

Netanyahu, whose father is a historian, claims that this exchange took place when Hitler and al-Husseini met in November 1941. However, Holocaust experts point out that in January 1939, more than two years before that meeting, Hitler had already expressed his determination to exterminate Jews in a speech to parliament.

Many, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbasfeel, feel like Netanyahu is saying that Hitler is not responsible for the genocide. And while Netanyahu is not backing down from his statements, he does say that he isn't absolving Hitler.

Netanyahu's remarks come at a tense time between Palestinians and Jews, as there has been a wave of violence in Israel over a holy Islamic site.

Story and editing by Andrew Fowler

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Most anyone familiar with the give and take of discourse on blogs and social media knows about Godwin’s Law. 

Godwin’s Law is the proposition that the longer an online discussion takes place, the greater the chance of someone making an analogy to Hitler or Nazis, until at some point such an analogy becomes inevitable.

It might be time to create a new corollary to this principle, which is that the more that Prime Minister Netanyahu discusses Israel’s external foes, the more inevitable the eventual Holocaust analogy becomes.

In light of Netanyahu’s comments this week to the 37th Zionist Congress about Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and his responsibility for the Final Solution, the corollary seems to be in full swing.

In his Tuesday speech, Netanyahu brought up al-Husseini’s well-known connection to the Nazis and vocal support of Hitler in warning about the dangers of Palestinian incitement regarding Israel’s alleged efforts to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount.

His connection between these two seemingly disparate threads was that al-Husseini had instigated riots in the 1920s by accusing the Jews of wanting to destroy al-Aqsa, and he later met with Hitler in 1941 and — in Netanyahu’s telling — convinced Hitler to exterminate European Jewry rather than expel them.

So the implication is that false warnings about Jews trying to take over al-Aqsa, or to even just change the Temple Mount status quo, lead to attempts to exterminate Jews, including the Holocaust.

If the logic of this is lost on you, then you are not alone, and it certainly is not the first time that Netanyahu has used Hitler, the Nazis, or the Holocaust to make a point about legitimate dangers to Jews in situations where the Holocaust has no place in the discussion.

The condemnations have come fast and furious for reasons large and small, from trivializing the Holocaust and giving succor to Holocaust deniers, to absolving Hitler from even a single ounce of the blame that he deserves, to distorting history by overstating the mufti’s role (even if he would have carried out the Holocaust if given the chance).

I am positive that it was not Netanyahu’s intention in his poorly written and even more poorly conceived speech to trivialize the Holocaust or take the blame for it away from Hitler, but in his zeal to tie current Palestinian propaganda about the Temple Mount to a larger campaign to eliminate Jews wherever they may be, his words had that unintended effect.

Furthermore, in getting his history wrong and overstating the role of the mufti — who was a virulent anti-Semite and a cheerleader of genocide but who was not the inspiration for the Final Solution, which started before Hitler and al-Husseini met — and linking Palestinian accusations about the Temple Mount to the Holocaust, Netanyahu makes it seem as if his grip on reality is lost.

Anyone who found Ben Carson’s comments about guns and the Holocaust earlier this month to be irresponsible demagoguery should feel the same about Netanyahu’s ahistorical stream of consciousness.

While the focus on the inappropriateness of Netanyahu’s comments is important and is taking up most of the oxygen surrounding this sorry episode, the larger issue of the real-world consequences of Netanyahu’s comments is being neglected. In misappropriating historical memory while using the Holocaust to score political points and advance Israel’s agenda, Netanyahu instead accomplishes the precise opposite.

Rather than alert the world to the dangers that Israel faces, Netanyahu ensures that the world will not take them seriously.

This ham-handed effort at exposing lies, as Netanyahu put it in his speech, erodes Israeli credibility and desensitizes observers to the risks inherent in the daily life of Israel’s citizens.

Not for the first time, Netanyahu risks becoming the boy who cried Holocaust, seeing the ultimate marriage of threats to Jews and ability to carry those threats out at every turn. While vigilance is a virtue for any prime minister of Israel, the constant Holocaust analogies end up trivializing legitimate threats and make it far more difficult to take Netanyahu’s warnings seriously.

After all, if Netanyahu is warning that al-Husseini was the inspiration for the Holocaust and that therefore current Palestinian claims about the Temple Mount should be viewed in that light, who is going to still be paying attention when Netanyahu warns about other issues? The incitement over the Temple Mount is, in fact, a legitimately dangerous issue, but it is hard to press that point once the duo of Haj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler have been turned into a social media meme.

Reducing the Holocaust to just another genocide, which is what happens when every security challenge or episode of anti-Semitism is connected back to Hitler, waters down Jewish and Israeli credibility when it comes to true threats against Israel and Jews.

Then there is the issue of misuse of historical memory for instrumental purposes. One cannot decry those who, like President Obama in Cairo in 2009, point to the Holocaust as the primary motivating factor for Israel’s legitimacy — and argue instead that Israel’s existence is rooted as much in Jewish nationalism and historical claims to the land of Israel as it is to the need for a safe haven following Hitler’s campaign of extermination — and then turn around and use the Holocaust as a shield against any attempts to attack Israel in any way.

Yes, the mufti of Jerusalem was a really bad guy, and yes, he encouraged Hitler to kill Jews. If that historical truth is used to create a historical fiction about the Final Solution, which then mushrooms into a larger historical misappropriation that connects genocidal extermination of Jews to limited violence motivated by false claims about the Temple Mount, then the historical crime being committed is taking place in the here and now.

There are Palestinians who do not like Jews and who will never accept Israel, and who attack Jews for no reason other than being Jewish and living in Tel Aviv. But many Palestinians bitterly resent the occupation of the West Bank or blatant discrimination within Israeli municipalities and push back against perceived and actual threats and injustices, and that pushback can be inhumane and is frequently directed against civilians.

The fact that targeting civilians is unacceptable does not mean that there isn’t a tangible motivation behind it that is connected to more than blind hatred. Trotting out the Holocaust as a worldview that explains all of the violence and incitement that happens in Israel eludes reality, and places Israel in a dangerous position by missing what is actually going on and preventing an appropriate policy response.

Many are laughing at what Netanyahu said on Tuesday. But the larger consequences of his ahistorical blather are no laughing matter.

SEE ALSO: The Iran Deal just hit a huge snag

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NOW WATCH: Netanyahu berates UN members for their 'utter silence' on Iran deal

"I know that men are won over less by the written than by the spoken word, that every great movement on this earth owes its growth to great orators and not to great writers."—Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf," 1925

One of the world's most influential orators created the largest German political party, conquered a dozen nations, and slaughtered as many as 21 million people during his brutal 12-year Third Reich.

In more than 5,000 persuasive speeches, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler bewitched his audiences and promised them that his empire would reign for a thousand years.

Professor Bruce Loebs, who has taught a class called the Rhetoric of Hitler and Churchill for the past 46 years at Idaho State University, credits the Führer's oratory success to his charisma.

"He learned how to become a charismatic speaker, and people, for whatever reason, became enamored with him," Loebs told Business Insider.

"People were most willing to follow him, because he seemed to have the right answers in a time of enormous economic upheaval."

Plagued with enormous World War I-related reparations in addition to an increasingly depressed global economy, Germany's economic environment supported Hitler's rise in the 1930s.

Hitler took advantage of the brewing discontent and found himself at the forefront of an opportunistic political ideology, the National Socialist German Workers' party.

Hitler's political arena

Hitler's speech writing process

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, wrote in his diary that Hitler was known to write his own speeches and edit them up to five times.

He would "work deep into the night, several evenings running, occupying three secretaries taking dictation straight into the typewriters before carefully correcting the drafts,"according to British historian Ian Kershaw.

"He simply did not want to rely on anyone to write his speeches," Loebs told Business Insider. "For Adolf Hitler, public speaking was so important that he would never trust anyone to write his speeches for him."

Loebs also noted that Winston Churchill preferred to write his own speeches as well, something rare among leaders of the time (and today).

Hitler's voice was 'mesmeric'

In Ron Rosenbaum's book "Explaining Hitler," French-American novelist George Steiner describes the Nazi leader's voice as overwhelmingly powerful and "spellbinding."

"I was born in 1929, so from '33 on my earliest memories are sitting in the kitchen hearing The Voice [of Hitler] on the radio," Steiner shared with Rosenbaum.

"It's a hard thing to describe, but the voice itself was mesmeric ... The amazing thing is that the body comes through on the radio. I can't put it any other way. You feel you're following the gestures," Steiner said.

"In the German language, Hitler drew on a kind of rhetorical power which — in a way is perhaps a little bit peculiar to German — allies highly abstract concepts with political, physical violence in a most unusual way. And Hitler was easily a genius at that, absolutely no doubt about it."

Further, American psychologist Henry Murray describes the Führer's overall presence as "hypnotic" in "The Personality of Adolf Hitler," a 229-page report that was commissioned in 1943 by the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA.

According to Murray's report, Hitler received frequent compliments on his grayish-blue eyes, even though they were described as "dead, impersonal, and unseeing."

The Führer was slightly below average in height and had a receding hairline, thin lips, and well-shaped hands.

Murray notes that the merciless Nazi leader was known to offer a weak handshake with "moist and clammy" palms and was awkward at making small talk.

'He had to add animation to his language'

Hitler workshopped his delivery, hand gestures, and body language while practicing his speeches.

"He absolutely had to work at his presentation since it was half of his message," Loebs told Business Insider. "He had to add animation to his language in order to successfully communicate his ideas."

Hitler's personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, captured 2 million images of the bellicose leader and was advised to never release a specific series to the public, according to his memoir, "Hitler was my Friend."

In 1925, Hoffman took several photos of Hitler's facial expressions and gestures while he rehearsed speeches in a mirror.

After studying the images, the Nazi leader reportedly asked for them to be destroyed.

Secretly Hoffman saved the photos and published them 30 years later in his memoir.

"No other photographer in history landed the scoop that he [Hoffman] did: intimate and exclusive access to a major head of state — and importantly, the chance to work with a subject who knew very well how to 'work' the camera, and paid painstaking attention to the cultivation of his public image," historian Roger Moorhouse later wrote in the republished introduction of Hoffman's memoir.

Here is a video of one of Hitler's speeches with English subtitles:

Hitler's Third Reich officially ended on April 30, 1945, when the Führer committed suicide in his bunker with his new wife after learning Allied forces had surrounded Berlin.

SEE ALSO: Here's what US intelligence thought could happen to Hitler in 1943

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Today I found out about Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. World War II veteran.

Murphy was born on June 20, 1925 in Texas. His family was extremely poor, partially due to having twelve young mouths to feed.

When his father abandoned the family when Audie was fifteen years old, he was forced to pick up some of the slack by hunting and doing what work he could to keep food on the table.

Unfortunately, his mother died just a year after his father left.

Shortly thereafter, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Audie attempted to join the various branches of the U.S. military but was turned down in each case owing to his age and diminutive stature -five and a half feet tall (1.66 meters) and weighing only about 100 pounds (45 kg).

About seven months later, just ten days after he turned seventeen, he tried again. 

Having gained some weight (getting up to a whopping 112 pounds / 50.8 kg) and with falsified testimony from his sister claiming he was actually 18, this time Audie was able to get into the army. He was then shipped off to North Africa and later deployed to Sicily.

Despite his small size, Murphy proved to be a phenomenal soldier. In 1944, after witnessing the death of a friend during Operation Dragoon, he charged a group of German soldiers, took over their machine guns and other weapons, and proceeded to take out the other enemy soldiers within range using their own artillery.

He was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions that day, the first of many medals.

During another battle shortly after this, to cover retreating Allied soldiers, he jumped onto a tank that had been hit and was on fire, exposing himself to the advancing enemy soldiers.

Why did he put himself in such an exposed position on a tank that could potentially explode at any minute? There was a .50 caliber machine gun on the tank.

As Private Anthony Abramski said of the event,

 It was like standing on top of a time bomb … he was standing on the TD chassis, exposed to enemy fire from his ankles to his head and silhouetted against the trees and the snow behind him.

Nevertheless, over the course of the next hour, he held off six German tanks and several waves of enemy soldiers, who were all trying desperately to take out the little American who was the only thing in their way at that point.

He only retreated when he ran out of ammo.  Once this happened, having sustained a leg wound and completely exhausted, Audie said in his book To Hell and Back,

I slide off the tank destroyer and, without once looking back, walk down the road through the forest. If the Germans want to shoot me, let them. I am too weak from fear and exhaustion to care.

Despite the leg wound, as soon as he caught up with his retreating soldiers who had now re-formed, he turned them around and managed to reclaim a stretch of forest from German occupation.  According to the official report, in that battle, he killed or severely wounding at least fifty German soldiers by himself. 

For this act of bravery and for “indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground [saving] his company from possible encirclement and destruction…” he was awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor.

He rose through the ranks and was a captain when he was pulled out of the war in 1945. All in all, he earned 33 awards and decorations for his exemplary service during the war.

He was just 20 years old at the time and, as one movie critic later put it, knew more of death than he did of life.

When Murphy returned from the war, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that often went undiagnosed at the time. After being featured on the cover of Life magazine, he found himself in Hollywood without work, sleeping in rough conditions.

He caught his big break in 1949 when he starred in the film Bad Boy. That same year, he released the aforementioned autobiography titled To Hell and Back, which topped the bestseller charts.

He went on to star as himself in a movie with the same title in 1955; it was Universal’s top-grossing film for nearly 20 years until Jaws usurped it.

Acting seemed to suit him. He made no less than 44 feature films while he was in Hollywood, many of them westerns, and also filmed a 26-episode western TV series called Whispering Smith, which aired in 1961 on NBC.

It was criticised for being too violent, however, and cancelled after just 20 episodes were aired.

A man of many talents, Murphy also dabbled in poetry and song-writing as well as horse breeding and racing. Thanks to his earnings from acting, he was able to purchase a ranch in Texas.  He was living an incredibly comfortable life, far grander than what he had known as a child.

Yet all was not well with Murphy. Back to his post traumatic stress disorder, he became dependent on sleeping pills to combat the insomnia he experienced after the war. Realizing he had become addicted to them, he locked himself in a motel room for a week, while he worked through the withdrawal symptoms.

He ended up beating the addiction and went on to break the taboo of talking about the mental disorders many soldiers suffered when they returned home. His willingness to do so opened up discussions about psychological care for veterans upon their return to the US.

Murphy ended up marrying twice, divorcing his first wife after just two years, and having two sons with his second wife.

He appeared to be happy with his family, with more than enough money in the bank to keep them comfortable (though he squandered much of it on gambling in his later years); had acted in dozens of movies; and had amazing war stories to tell his grandkids about.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get to that stage of his life.

On May 28, 1971, Murphy was in a private plane flying on a business trip from Atlanta, Georgia to Martinsville, Virginia.

The weather conditions were less than ideal: rain and fog shortened the pilot’s visibility considerably, and he had a questionable instrument rating.

He called in to the Roanoke, Virginia airport to say that he would be landing shortly due to poor conditions. The plane, carrying five passengers including Murphy, never landed in the Roanoke Valley. It crashed into Brush Mountain twenty miles away, close to Blacksburg.

Everyone in the crash was killed. Murphy was just 45 years old. The site of the crash has since been turned into a monument, and in the 1990s, the Appalachian Trail was rerouted to go past it.

That wasn’t quite the end for Murphy, though. After a funeral in Arlington Cemetery, where his grave remains the second most visited (after Kennedy’s), he was posthumously awarded his final medal, the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor.

It was presented to his last remaining sister, Nadine Murphy, on October 29, 2013 by Governor Rick Perry.

SEE ALSO: Man arrested after being found with a massive stockpile of 10,000 guns, 500 chain saws

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NOW WATCH: Startling facts about World War II

After masterminding the attacks at Pearl Harbor, Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto knew that his country’s dominance of the Pacific Ocean would not last against the U.S.’s industrial might.

He began forming plans for a weapon that could terrify the U.S., especially eastern cities like New York and Washington D.C. He thought a campaign of vicious attacks on the east and west coasts would convince the U.S. to quickly sue for peace.

At the time, some submarines carried a reconnaissance plane. Yamamoto asked his engineers if they could devise a submarine that would instead carry three bombers each and have range to carry the bombers around South America to the east coast of the U.S.

What the engineers returned with would be I-400 class submarines. At 400 feet long and displacing 6.560 tons, they were the largest subs of the war. Each massive ship could sail for 37,500 miles without refueling and had a 115-foot long watertight hangar for the aircraft and an 85-foot catapult to launch them.

The planes landed on the water and were recovered using a crane on the deck. The M6A1 Seiran torpedo-bombers were designed for the I-400. They had wings that rotated and folded along the fuselage and even the tail folded down to fit in its tiny hangar.

In addition to their aircraft, the subs carried a 140mm cannon, 4 anti-aircraft guns, and had 8 torpedo tubes.

To help the subs avoid U.S. Navy sonar, the subs were coated in a rubber and asphalt blend that absorbed sound waves.

Progress on the subs were slow and the initial order for 18 of them was eventually cut to just five due to materiel shortages. Yamamoto would be shot down and killed by U.S. Army Air Corps pilots before the first sub was launched.

By the time the first sub took to the water at the end of December 1944, Japan was in rapid retreat across the Pacific. The original I-400 mission to attack the U.S. mainland had been scrapped long before.

The idea of using the planes to deliver biological weapons was considered, and then a Kamikaze attack on the Panama Canal was planned and canceled.

Finally, the I-400 and I-401 were sent to destroy the U.S. carrier fleet at Ulithi Atoll before they could invade the Japanese mainland. The subs were to send their six bombers on Kamikaze attacks against the 15 carriers there.

To maximize the chance that the planes would reach their targets, the Japanese admiralty ordered the planes be painted silver with U.S. markings. Though the pilots protested, the illegally camouflaged planes were placed in the subs and sent to sea.

Luckily, Japan surrendered while the subs were staging for the attack. Both subs were captured by the U.S. Navy. American officers studied the ships but then sank them before Soviet officers could ask to see them. There was concern that the Soviet Union would develop its own version if it saw the I-400.

The subs were then lost for decades, but the I-401 was found in 2005 and the I-400’s final resting place was found in 2013.

SEE ALSO: Here’s why the Air Force’s B-52 has only gotten better with age

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NOW WATCH: Everything you've ever wanted to know about life on a US Navy submarine

In 1917, while Britain's Royal Navy was plagued by Germany's formidable U-boat offensive, visual artist Norman Wilkinson realized that traditional camouflages wouldn't help British ships avoid the onslaught. So he proposed the "extreme opposite."

Wilkinson, a volunteer in the Royal Navy at the time, had the idea for "dazzle ships," or ships painted with high-contrast patterns intended to disorient U-boats.

He wrote the admiralty of the Royal Navy, and soon found himself in Devonport, painting scale models.

Impressed with his ideas, and desperate to save lives as the war in the Atlantic raged, the Royal Navy adopted this novel paint scheme.

Camouflage is meant to make an object blend in with its surroundings. In contrast, the dazzle pattern used stark lines and hard contrasts to make it difficult to judge the speed and orientation of the ship.

Dark and curved lines towards the bow and stern gave way to bright patches, which make it difficult to estimate the exact dimensions of the ship, it's speed and direction of travel, and its type. U-boats hunted enemy ships by periscope in those days, so a dazzle pattern could effectively skew the enemy's targeting.

During World War I, no scientific inquiry could be conducted into the effectiveness of the dazzle ships. But a study from the School of Experimental Psychology found that dazzle paint on moving Land Rovers made rocket-propelled grenades 7% less effective, according to the BBC.

“In a typical situation involving an attack on a Land Rover, the reduction in perceived speed would be sufficient to make the grenade miss by about a meter," Nick Scott-Samuel, the researcher who led the study, told the BBC. "This could be the difference between survival or otherwise.”

SEE ALSO: Meet the world's deadliest female sniper who terrorized Hitler's Nazi army

Here's how the dazzle pattern was designed to fool enemy submarines:

Here is the dazzle paint on the HMS Badsworth.

The HMS Furious. World War I ended in November 1918, and all of these pictures were taken between 1917 and 1919.

Pope Pius XII was reviled for his silence in the face of Nazism during and after World War II, and was thus often dubbed "Hitler's Pope."

However, a new book, "Church of Spies" by Mark Riebling, claims that Pius allegedly masterminded a number of plots to have Hitler overthrown from within.

According to the book, Pius only acted impartial, all the while secretly collaborating with members of the German resistance, and using his clout to get German politicians and bishops to discreetly keep tabs on Hitler. It also claims that Pius toned down any past criticisms he had against Hitler in order to not blow his cover.

However, Hitler's habit of constantly changing his schedule made assassination attempts impossible. Josef Müller, one of Pius' spies, was caught and thrown into the Dachau concentration camp.

Thanks to the book, over half a century after the war ended Pius is no longer being seen as "Hitler's Pope."

Story by Ian Phillips, editing by Stephen Parkhurst

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Gen. George S. Patton was a complicated military figure, but there can be little debate over whether he was quotable.

Perhaps most famous for his commanding of the 7th Army during World War II, Old “Blood and Guts” often gave rousing speeches to motivate, inspire, and educate his soldiers. We collected up 11 of his most famous quotes (courtesy of his estate’s official website) that show how larger-than-life he really was.

SEE ALSO: HOOAH! These US military veterans now have big roles on Wall Street

1. “A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.”

Soldiers are not good on the battlefield without training hard beforehand. Whether it’s a soldier, a civilian wanting to run a marathon, or a CEO running a company, being successful at what you do requires focus, effort, and learning.

For soldiers especially, working extra hard in training can save their lives later.

2. “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

Known for his brilliance on the battlefield, Patton often had to make decisions based on limited information and time. But he knew to avoid “paralysis by analysis” and make a decision and execute it the best he could. Otherwise, the enemy might be able to maneuver faster and beat him.

3. “Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. “

Perhaps one of the most famous quotes that people don’t originated with Patton, this mantra summed up his style.

Kamikaze attacks — known as “special attacks” by Japan — were an infamous tactic designed to not only destroy American ships but also strike fear in the Allied navies.

But two months before the first kamikaze attacks were carried out at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in Oct. 1944, a Japanese transport pilot pitched the idea of a kamikaze super weapon, the Oka “Cherry Blossom” Type 11 plane.

While the Oka was technically a plane, it was more like a pilot-guided missile. It was a 4,700-pound aircraft that contained 2,600 pounds of high explosives. That left only 2,100 pounds for the body, armor-piercing nose cone, and three rocket engines.

The Oka was carried by a mother plane — usually a Betty medium-bomber — to a launch point within 23 miles of its target. The Oka pilot would then squeeze into the craft and strap himself in while a crew member on the bomber would lock the cockpit closed.

After it was released, the Oka glided most of the way to its target from high-altitude. Once the Oka got close to a naval ship, it would ignite the engines and race at its target.

Hitting the enemy ship at up to 576 mph, it punched right through most armor and detonated its 2,600-pound payload inside the ship.

While those 2,600 pounds of explosives gave the kamikaze a big boom when it hit its target, the small control surfaces and extreme speed made it very hard to aim.

The Oka’s commonly made it past enemy defenses and outran pursuing fighters, but they sometimes missed their target entirely.

Also, the bombers carrying the Oka were susceptible to attack. While carrying the massive weapon, the planes lost maneuverability, range, and speed.

The first thing a Betty with an Oka was supposed to do if it came under attack was drop the Oka and attempt to evade the fighters.

This led to another problem for the Oka pilots. When the bomber crews felt a route was too dangerous, they’d often order the Oka pilot into the suicide plane early and launch it.

The pilot would be left sitting in the cockpit, piloting his coffin into the ocean with no chance at destroying a target.

In the end, the more than 850 Oka 11s produced sank only one ship and damaged six others.

Longer range variants were produced that could fly up to 81 miles. They would have been a serious threat to Navy ships during an invasion, but none ever saw combat.

Today, a number of Oka survive in museums. One Oka type 22, the longer range model, still exists and is housed at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

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