From Isaac Davis during the American Revolution to Martin J. Wyatt and Ramon S. Morris in Operation Enduring Freedom, 1.1 million U.S. soldiers have died in combat since 1775.

John Kerry famously asked in a 1971 congressional testimony on Vietnam, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

As the war in Afghanistan continues to rage on after 14 years, and with the recent resurgence of violence in Iraq and now in Syria, a question like that undoubtedly weighs heavy in the minds of service members, veterans, and military decision makers.

The first soldier death marks the place where a war begins, at least for the troops. The last death bookends the war and earns that soldier a particular place in our nation’s history that is a dignified but dubious honor.

Here is a breakdown of the first and last fatalities of major U.S. wars.

SEE ALSO: The 7 enlisted jobs with awesome entry-level salaries

Revolutionary War

First: Isaac Davis (Apr. 19, 1775) — A gunsmith from Acton, Massachusetts, Davis served as a minuteman with his local company. During the Battle of Concord, his company was selected to advance first on the British. When asked if his company was afraid, Davis is recorded as having replied, “No, I am not and I haven’t a man that is!” As they advanced, Davis was shot through the heart. He is memorialized with a statue in the Acton Town Common.

Last: Unknown

Civil War

First: Elmer E. Ellsworth (May 24, 1861) — Union officer Ellsworth was a law clerk under Abraham Lincoln and an Army soldier. Just prior to the Civil War, he began recruiting for the 11th New York Volunteer Regiment.

The day after Virginia voters ratified the state convention’s decision to secede from the Union, Ellsworth and his troops entered Alexandria, Virginia, to assist in the occupation of the city. There, while taking down a Confederate flag, he was shot point blank by innkeeper James Jackson, a defender of slavery.

Noting his close relationship with the Lincolns, Ellsworth’s body was brought back to the White House, and his casket sat in the East Room. The funeral was attended by both Abraham Lincoln and his wife.

Last: John J. Williams (May 13, 1865) — Williams was a Union soldier who served with Company B, 34th Regiment Indiana Infantry. Though the Union and Confederate companies in southern Texas had a gentleman’s agreement not to fight, Union Col. Theodore Barrett ordered Lt. Col. David Branson to take troops stationed on the island of Brazos Santiago and attack Confederates at White’s Ranch and Palmito Ranch.

It was there that the 34th Regiment Indiana Infantry was met with a large Confederate cavalry force. They made the choice to retreat, and Williams was killed. It was a full month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Williams died in a meaningless battle at Palmito Ranch.

World War I

First: Joseph William Guyton (May 24, 1918) — Guyton joined the Army as a part of the 126th Infantry Regiment and was attached to the 32nd Infantry Division, which was stationed in a German-held area of France.

There, he served as an automatic gunner, firing off intermittent rounds on a post near the line of resistance. The enemy shot a barrage of machine gun fire into the line where Guyton was struck and killed instantly.

President Warren G. Harding placed a presidential wreath on his coffin at a funeral ceremony for more than 5,000 fallen soldiers in Hoboken, New Jersey, in May 1921.

Last: Henry Gunther (Nov. 11, 1918) — Gunther did not join the Army, but was drafted into the 157th Brigade, 79th Infantry Division. His military unit, which deployed to France in July 1918, was part of the incoming American Expeditionary Forces.

During the Battle of the Argonne Forest, Gunther’s unit ran into a German ambush near the French town of Chaumont-devant-Damvillers, north of Verdun. Although a message had arrived that the war would be over within an hour, Gunther went after the two German machine-gun sections blocking a road.

The Germans attempted to wave him back and refused to fire until he was within a few yards of their position, but were ultimately forced to shoot. Killed instantly, he was the last American killed in action during World War I, taken out by a German bullet just one minute before the 11 a.m. armistice.

World War II finally ended on Sep. 2, 1945 when the U.S. accepted the unconditional surrender of Japan. The debates around the use of the Atom bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a means to end the war quickly continue at institutions of higher learning to this day, but most military scholars allow that an invasion of Japan would have cost both sides hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives.

Japan still had nearly 7 million men under arms at the time of surrender and had a number of secret weapons at their disposal.

While the Allies had learned of a few, like the Kaiten suicide torpedo, weapons like the I-400 submersible aircraft carriers weren’t discovered until after the war was over.

Here are 7 weapons that would have greeted Allied troops on the beaches:

SEE ALSO: This time-lapse map shows the spread of terrorism over the past 15 years

1. The suicide torpedo, the Kaiten

Kaiten were 15-yard long torpedoes packed with over 3,000 pounds of explosives that were piloted by humans through the ocean to an Allied ship. They had trouble in the open Pacific as an offensive weapon but would have been easier to target when fired from a shore position in calm seas at approaching landing craft.

2. Ohka

Another suicide weapon, the Ohka was basically a missile piloted by a human. Again, while bombers had trouble getting them into positions offensively, they would likely have proven more successful against an invasion fleet approaching the main islands.

3. Submersible aircraft carriers

While Japan had planned to pull its massive I-400 submersible aircraft carriers back to defend the main islands, it’s not clear what role they would have played.

They launched three kamikaze bombers each, but their main strength was in approaching stealthily and attacking while the enemy were off guard. A U.S. fleet approaching the Japanese home islands would have been on high alert.

Under the South Pacific sun on December 7, 1941, troops serving the US fleet at Pearl Harbor began a calm Sunday morning unaware that Japanese bombers were headed toward America's most important Pacific base.

There, like a string of pearls draped across the docks and waterfront, was the majority of the US's naval might.

The devastating Japanese onslaught began at 7:48 a.m., eventually killing 2,402 Americans and wounding many others, sinking four battleships, and damaging military airfields.

The Pearl Harbor attack spurred America into World War II, leading ultimately to Allied victory over the Japanese in the East and Nazis and other Axis powers in the West. 

Here are photographs from the attack and its immediate aftermath.

Kamelia Angelova contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: 'We were lucky': Pearl Harbor vet describes how he survived the infamous attack

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, an attack planned by Admiral Isoroku Yamamotoa was carried out to demobilize the US Navy. This picture shows one of more than 180 planes used in the attack.

At 7:00 a.m., an Army radar operator spotted the first wave of the Japanese planes. The officers to whom those reports were relayed did not consider them significant enough to take action. This photo shows an aerial view of Battleship Row in the opening moments of the raid.

The Japanese hit most of the US ships in Oahu before 8:00 a.m. Here a Japanese plane flies over Pearl Harbor while black smoke rises from the area.

Modern wars are defined by a number of technologies like guided missiles, helicopters, and submarines.

Except all three of those technologies have been in service for more than a hundred years. Here are their stories:

SEE ALSO: These are the features of America's most futuristic ship that just hit the waters

1. Submarines

The ink had barely dried on the U.S. Declaration of Independence when an American launched the first submarine attack in history. Ezra Lee piloted the submarine, dubbed the Turtle, against the HMS Eagle but failed to sink it.

The Turtle was sent against a number of other ships but never claimed a kill before sinking in 1776.

2. Drones

The first drone missions were conducted in World War II and President John F. Kennedy’s older brother was killed in one. These early drones were modified bombers taken into the air by a pilot who then bailed out. The plane would then be remotely operated by a pilot in another bomber.

The drones were all suicide vehicles that would be steered into enemy targets. The program had its roots in a World War I program that created the first guided missiles.

3. Guided missiles

That’s right, the first guided missiles were tested in World War I. Orville Wright and Charles F. Kettering invented the Kettering Bug, a modified plane that used gyroscopes to monitor and adjust its flight to a pre-designated target.

Once the Kettering reached it’s target, its wings would fall off, the engine would stop, and the craft would fall to the ground with a 180-pound explosive. But the missile had a lot issues and the war ended before it saw combat.

Three years before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of the world's largest tourist resort, located on a beachfront property on the island of Rügen.

The Nazis called it Prora.

Capable of holding more than 20,000 residents at a single time, Prora was meant to comfort the weary German worker who toiled away in a factory without respite.

According to historian and tour guide Roger Moorhouse, it was also meant to serve as the carrot to the stick of the Gestapo — a warm, pacifying gesture to get the German people on Hitler's side.

But then World War II began, and Prora's construction stalled — until now. 

In 1936, Germany was still enmeshed in the concept of "people's community," or volksgemeinschaft, from World War I. It was a sense that Germans stood united, no matter what.

While the Nazi police state was in development, the overarching German vision was a hopeful one, Moorhouse tells Tech Insider. "And this is where something like Prora comes in."

Over the next three years, more than 9,000 workers erected a 2.7-mile-long building out of brick and concrete. Its practicality was dwarfed by its grandness. Moorhouse calls it "megalomania in stone."

The Battle of the Bulge was a Hail Mary pass by a führer who was quickly running out of options. Hitler desperately needed a decisive victory on either his Western or Eastern fronts. Remembering his series of victories after sneaking through the Ardennes forest in 1940, he went for a repeat in 1944.

On December 16, 1944, 200,000 German troops and 1,000 tanks attacked 80,000 Allied troops. Here are six things most people don't know about what happened next. 

SEE ALSO: 9 unbelievable instances of animals in the military

1. Over 1 million men were involved in the battle.

The fighting started with an assault by 200,000 Germans against 80,000 Allied troops. But as George S. Patton's Third Army swung north to hit the German flank and other Allied units rushed to the aid of the defenders, 600,000 Allied soldiers pushed back the German force, which grew to 500,000 men.

2. The Allied troops who were attacked were primarily there to rest or train.

The Ardennes was used as a training ground for green units and a recovery area for those coming off the frontline. The Americans in the area were expected to quickly fall or retreat. Hitler's strategy depended on it.

Instead rookies became veterans overnight, and fatigued veterans dug deep to slow the German advance. Anti-tank teams targeted choke points in villages and mountain passes, creating flaming barricades of destroyed German armor that slowed the blitzkrieg to a crawl.

3. The famous “NUTS" response to a surrender request was basically bored paratroopers joking around.

One of the best-known responses to a surrender request took place during the battle. Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe responded with "N U T S" centered on a typewritten piece of paper.

McAuliffe had twice said, "Nuts," when briefed on the surrender request, first to his acting chief of staff who woke him and then to his headquarter staff. When it came time to draft the formal response, McAuliffe couldn't think of what to write. His men, who had found the "nuts" comments funny, urged him to just respond with those four letters.

To a World War II history buff, the iconic Millennium Falcon from "Star Wars" resembles one of the best-known bombers of all time.

The greenhouse cockpit configuration, along with the gun turrets, aboard the ship was lifted straight out of the blueprints for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

The Superfortress was a workhorse of the US Army Air Forces that was best known for dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas is known to have studied 20 to 25 hours of footage from World War II dogfights while doing research for the film.

Ian D'Costa of Tactical Air Network notes that Lucas became particularly enamored with the B-29 and sought to re-create its signature greenhouse-style cockpit with the Millennium Falcon.

According to a 1997 interview with Willard Huyck, a screenwriter who is a friend of Lucas, footage of World War II dogfights was used as a placeholder before the special effects were edited into the original film.

"So one second you're with the Wookiee in the spaceship and the next you're in 'The Bridges at Toko-Ri.' It was like, 'George, what-is-going-on?'" Huyck said.

In his book "Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy," visual effects artist Paul Huston said, "Joe (artist in charge of pyrotechnics) would show me a shot of a Japanese Zero flying left to right in front of a conning tower of an aircraft carrier and say, 'The aircraft carrier is the Death Star, the Zero is an X-wing. Do a board like that.'"

"One of the reasons I started writing "Star Wars" was because I wanted to see starships having exciting battles in space," Lucas said in Jonathan Rinzler's "The Making of Star Wars."

"I loved Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers serials when I was a kid, but I thought I could create an experience closer to watching a dogfight in a World War II film — with incredible ships diving and banking in a realistic manner," Lucas continued, as noted by StarWars.com.

Whether the new "Star Wars" films will continue this tradition or look to emulate the tropes of more modern aviation is yet to be seen, but the team's shared enthusiasm for evoking past real-life battle scenes paid off in some of the most memorable, exciting scenes in film history.

SEE ALSO: The B-29 Superfortress debuted 73 years ago — relive its legacy in photos

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Everything that happened in the first six ‘Star Wars’ movies in 4 minutes

SEE ALSO: How World War II dogfights influenced 'Star Wars'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This is the Marine Corps' monstrous new assault vehicle

From the summer of 1944 till the end of the war in Europe, the US fielded a unique 'Ghost Army' throughout France and the Rhine Valley in order to deceive the Third Reich into over estimating the strength of the Allied forces. 

The Ghost Army, which consisted of 1,100 handpicked men and a number of phony inflatable tanks and weapons, were part of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.

The unit's sole responsibility was to create illusions and spread disinformation about the strength and location of Allied forces. 

According to PBS documentary "The Ghost Army," these masters of deception saw action dangerously close to the front lines in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany throughout the war.

In total, the unit was responsible for over 20 illusions that befuddled German military planning and masked actual Allied troop movements and deployments. 

To the Nazis, the Ghost Army appeared as real units and soldiers.

However, these men were a combination of artists, audio technicians, actors, and designers who, through a commitment to their craft, created inflatable mock-ups of military vehicles, tanks, and artillery.

Arriving in France just after the D-Day invasion, the Ghost Army set to work creating numerous illusions both on and off the battlefield.

On the battlefield, the unit fielded imperfectly camouflaged tanks, planes, and guns in order to convince the Nazis that there were 30,000 more Allied troops on the field than were actually present. 

These visual illusions were compounded by the use of audio recordings that could be heard over 9 miles away.

The recordings featured sound effects that mimicked the movement of large armored divisions.

Off the battlefield, actors within the Ghost Army would impersonate US generals and officers in towns throughout France.

These actors, aware that German agents may be spying on them, would flippantly discuss fake military plans and deployments over wine in order to better spread false information. 

Earlier this year, American Sniper actor Bradley Cooper announced he will produce Warner Brothers upcoming "Ghost Army" film.

Here's the trailer of the PBS documentary:

SEE ALSO: Bradley Cooper's new movie tells the crazy-but-true story behind inflatable artillery used to trick the Nazis

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Researchers say the Nazi gold train — supposedly discovered by amateur treasure hunters — doesn’t exist

Christmas is one of the most celebrated holidays on earth. But that doesn't mean that conflicts simply freeze every December 25th. 

Here's a look at some of the major military events that have fallen on Christmas, a date with a surprisingly rich history.

1776 — George Washington Crosses The Delaware River

Important events in both of America's most formative wars — the Revolutionary War and the Civil War — took place on Christmas.

Washington led his troops across a 300-yard stretch of the Delaware River in the dead of night between December 25 and 26, 1776. The surprise move would put Washington's men a 19-mile march away from a garrison of Hessians (German mercenaries hired by the British to help them in their effort to retain a hold on the rebelling colonies) that the Continental Army took completely by surprise.

The Hessians' quick surrender at the Battle of Trenton would be the first of two rebel victories in New Jersey (the other being the Battle of Princeton a week later) as the Continental Army regained control of the colony. This effectively reversed the British drive that had pushed the rebels across New Jersey in the previous months. The daring crossing of the Delaware ended up being one of the turning points of the war.

1868 — US President Andrew Johnson pardons former Confederate soldiers

Nearly a century later, on Christmas Day of 1868, US president Andrew Johnson extended a full pardon and amnesty"to all and to every person who, directly or indirectly, participated in the late insurrection or rebellion".

The internecine war had ended more than three years earlier, taking more American lives than any other conflict in history. But Union general Ulysses S. Grant's scorched earth tactics late in the war left much of the south in ruins, and the country emerged from the war in a state of deep division.

Johnson had been a Tennessee congressman, senator, and governor before joining Lincoln's presidential ticket.  He was tipped in part to attract southern votes. Yet at war's end he seemed bent on imposing harsh conditions on the defeated half of the country.

The day after being sworn in as the nation's president, he asserted that "treason must be made infamous, and traitors must be impoverished."

But according to the History Department at North Carolina State University, Attorney General James Speed tempered Johnson's punitive intentions: "Mercy must be largely extended. Some of the great leaders and offenders only must be made to feel the extreme rigor of the law," Speed advised.

Southerners enjoyed only conditional and limited pardoning (depending on their station during the war) — at least until this blanket amnesty on "the 25th day of December, A. D. 1868."

1914 — German, British, and French soldiers make temporary peace to celebrate Christmas together

On Christmas Day in 1914, the first Christmas of World War I, soldiers left their trenches to observe the holiday in peace.

In the midst of war, soldiers laid down their arms to sing Christmas carols, play soccer, and barter with the cigarettes and sweets they'd received in care packages from the nations they served.

In some places, the truce was limited to an occasion for each side to bury their dead strewn in no man's land, the stretch of earth between opposing trenches that too often served as a killing field. In others, the skirmishing continued.

But some made the Christmas Truce of 1914 what it was: An odd yet heartening case study in how people react to the pressures of war.

1941 — Japan seizes control of Hong Kong at the expense of the United Kingdom.

Japan's aggression during World War II began well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1931, Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria, a vast coastal region in northeast China. In 1937, it made advances on the rest of the country as well.

But it wasn't until 1941 that Tokyo confronted the West with its imperial ambitions.

And though American involvement started with the Pearl Harbor attack, the surprise assault was immediately followed by Japan's invasion of Hong Kong, a British holding, in late 1941.

Hundreds died in the eighteen-day battle for Hong Kong, and more were wounded or incarcerated in POW camps. Some would never return.

Japan announced the surrender of the colony by radio broadcast on Christmas Day, 1941.

1941 — Admiral Émile Muselier captures Saint Pierre and Miquelon, an archipelago near Canada, for the Free French Forces

The North American continent does not feature as a hot spot in the events of World War II.

But soon after France's fall to the Nazis, the colonial governor of a few small islands off the coast of Newfoundland started working with the resistance.

Writing back to the Vichy government — the Nazi's puppet regime in France — Baron Gilbert de Bournat wrote of "British pressure to rally to the British or de Gaullist causes."

That pressure would have found sympathizers on the islands. Its population was originally mobilized, in 1939, to help defend France's mainland, and some ship-owners docked there refused to return to Vichy France.

On Christmas Eve, 1941, a small task force under Admiral Émile Muselier stormed the island under the cover of night. They met no resistance and the island's administrative centers were taken within an hour, eliminating what otherwise could have served as a Nazi outpost deep among Allied nations while giving the Free French cause legitimacy.

"By five minutes past midnight on December 25 the story of the invasion was telegraphed to Canadian and American newspapers,"according to Douglas Anglin's "Free French Invasion: The St. Pierre and Miquelon Affaire of 1941".

Pierre Bienaimé originally wrote this post.

SEE ALSO: US troops have been at war on Christmas since the nation's founding

Join the conversation about this story »

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 employed 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 rolling 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.

David Balme, the Royal Navy officer who seized a top-secret Enigma machine and codebook while storming a captured German U-boat, died Sunday at age 95.

Balme, a lieutenant commander, was credited with helping to shorten World War II by two years after he led the boarding party that raided U-110, east of Cape Farewell, Greenland, in 1941.

David Edward Balme was born in Kensington, west London, on October 1, 1920.

He joined Dartmouth Naval College in 1934 and served as a midshipman in the Mediterranean in the Spanish Civil War before being reassigned to the destroyer Ivanhoe in 1939.

Balme was appointed to the destroyer HMS Bulldog, which he described as a "happy little ship," as its navigator in the early 1940s. It was while he was serving on this ship that he came across the German submarine.

On May 9, 1941, U-110, under the command of Kapitanleutnant Fritz Julius Lemp, had been attacking a convoy in the Atlantic south of Iceland together with U-201 when Lemp left his periscope up too long. The escort corvette HMS Aubretia sighted it and rushed to the scene and began using depth charges.

The HMS Bulldog and the HMS Broadway followed, and U-110 was forced to surface. HMS Bulldog immediately set course to ram the U-Boat, at which point Lemp gave the order to abandon ship.

But the U-boat did not sink. According to the former crew, he tried to swim back to U-110 to destroy the top-secret Enigma machine and codebooks that were left behind, but he wasn't seen again.

Balme was then ordered to "get whatever" he could from the U-110. After rowing across to it, he made his way to the conning tower and had to holster his pistol to climb down three ladders to the control room. Recalling the incident many years later, he said: "Both my hands were occupied and I was a sitting target for anyone down below."

He was said to have had no idea what the "funny" instrument was when he initially picked it up — but his mission enabled British intelligence experts to secretly intercept and decipher signals sent from Germany to its submarines for the rest of the war.

Sir Winston Churchill later credited the codebreaking operation, which sometimes cracked 6,000 messages a day, with saving lives across Europe and giving Britain the crucial edge in battle.

But the top-secret nature of the codebreakers' work meant Balme's role in the operation's success stayed on the classified list for decades.

The typewriter-like machine, which was designed by the Germans to protect military communications, proved invaluable to Alan Turing and his team of codebreakers at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire.

Balme had three children with his wife, Susan, whom he married after the war in 1947. He was said to enjoy hunting and was also a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron. His significance in the Allies' victory was not revealed until the 1970s, when the secrecy shrouding Bletchley Park and the codebreakers' work finally began to lift.

He was presented with a Bletchley badge and a certificate signed by Prime Minister David Cameron and local MP Julian Lewis. On Thursday night, Lewis paid tribute to the former sailor, who kept the U-boat commander's cap and binoculars as souvenirs.

He said: "Having learned of the vital capture of the Enigma coding equipment from the U-110 when studying wartime history I was delighted to discover that the brave young officer responsible was one of my constituents."

SEE ALSO: 9 wars that were technically ongoing due to quirks of diplomacy

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: People are mocking the Oregon ‘militants’ who have taken over a federal building by calling them 'YallQaeda' and 'VanillaISIS'

Five days after Hitler killed himself in his bunker in Berlin and two days before Germany surrendered, American and German troops were fighting together side by side in what has been called World War II's strangest battle.

It was the last days of the war in Europe on May 5, 1945, when French prisoners, Austrian resistance fighters, German soldiers, and American tankers all fought in defense of Itter Castle in Austria.

In 1943, the German military turned the small castle into a prison for "high value" prisoners, such as French prime ministers, generals, sports stars, and politicians.

By May 4, 1945, with Germany and its military quickly collapsing, the commander of the prison and his guards abandoned their post.

The prisoners were now running the asylum, but they couldn’t just walk out the front door and enjoy their freedom. The Waffen SS, the German paramilitary unit commanded by Heinrich Himmler, had plans to recapture the castle and execute all of the prisoners.

That's when the prisoners enlisted the help of nearby American troops led by Capt. John "Jack" Lee, local resistance fighters, and yes, even soldiers of the Wehrmacht to defend the castle through the night and early morning of May 5. The book "The Last Battle" by Stephen Harding tells the true tale of what happened next.

From The Daily Beast:

There are two primary heroes of this — as I must reiterate, entirely factual — story, both of them straight out of central casting.

Jack Lee was the quintessential warrior: smart, aggressive, innovative — and, of course, a cigar-chewing, hard-drinking man who watched out for his troops and was willing to think way, way outside the box when the tactical situation demanded it, as it certainly did once the Waffen-SS started to assault the castle.

The other was the much-decorated Wehrmacht officer Major Josef 'Sepp' Gangl, who died helping the Americans protect the VIPs. This is the first time that Gangl's story has been told in English, though he is rightly honored in present-day Austria and Germany as a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance.

As the New York Journal of Books notes in its review of Harding's work, Army Capt. Lee immediately assumed command of the fight for the castle over its leaders — Capt. Schrader and Maj. Gangl — and they fought against a force of 100 to 150 SS troops in a confusing battle, to say the least.

During the six-hour battle, the SS managed to destroy the sole American tank of the vastly outnumbered defenders, and Allied ammunition ran extremely low. But the Americans were able to call for reinforcements, and once they showed up the SS backed off, according to Donald Lateiner in his review.

About 100 SS troops were taken prisoner, according to the BBC. The only friendly casualty of the battle was Maj. Gangl, who was shot by a sniper. The nearby town of Wörgl later named a street after him in his honor, while Capt. Lee received the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery in the battle.

As for the book, apparently it has been optioned to be made into a movie. With a crazy story like this, you'd think it would have already been made.

SEE ALSO: Trump, with a decommissioned battleship as a backdrop, vows to overhaul veterans' care

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Startling facts about World War II

Long before the Facebook profile was a thing, American soldiers saw the value of photos taken in historical landmarks like Hitler’s retreat or Hirohito’s palace.

SEE ALSO: That time when Americans and Germans fought together during World War II

1. The Band of Brothers hung out together in Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

As World War II was ending, American soldiers coming off of frontline conflict were assigned to guard important structures from both looting and attempts by criminals to destroy evidence of war crimes. 101st paratroopers from the famous Easy Company were given the task of guarding Kehlsteinhaus, Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest.”

2. American troops toured, lived in, and worked in Saddam’s palaces.

After the fall of the Baath Regime, U.S. commanders looking for headquarters turned to buildings abandoned by the Iraqi Army in their retreat. Among those repurposed for American military operations were a number of Hussein family palaces. The “Victory Over America Palace” was a part of many tours.

3. An Italian Palace became a way station for Allied troops pushing up through the “soft underbelly” of Europe.

The Palace of Caserta was originally commissioned for Charles VII of Naples but he abdicated his thrown and so it passed to his son Ferdinand IV of Naples in the late 1700s. Ferdinand’s two major claims to fame were being curb-stomped by Napoleon twice and executing a bunch of his own citizens.

The palace of this amazingly ineffective dictator was one of the largest palaces in the world and was in good shape when World War II rolled around. Allied soldiers moving up the Italian peninsula moved into the palace grounds and used the fountains for swimming and baptisms as shown above.

Tanks are a staple of ground warfare. Militaries around the world deploy a wide range of tanks, but typically they conform to some basic principals. In nearly all of them, a large turret sits on top of an armored vehicle that moves on treads.

But this wasn't always the case. In the early 20th century, engineers around the world were scrambling to figure out how exactly to pass uneven terrain and mobilize troops. This period of innovation resulted in today's technologically marvelous tanks, but before that, they had some truly outrageous ideas.

SEE ALSO: The 5 most bizarre weapons of World War II

The Tsar Tank

Tank development was in its earliest stages when Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia in the first decades of the 20th century. The Tsar differed from modern tanks in that it didn't have treads, instead using two massive 27-foot-tall front wheels and a small third wheel, 5 feet in diameter, that trailed behind for steering. Reportedly, when Nicholas II saw a model of the tank roll over a stack of books he was sold on the project and gave it his blessing.

Russian engineers Nikolai Lebedenko, Nikolai Zhukovsky, Boris Stechkin, and Alexander Mikulin developed the Tsar from 1914 to 1915. The vehicle resembled a hanging bat when viewed from above, so it gained the nickname "Netopyr," which translates to "pipistrellus," the genus name for "bats."

The giant bicycle-style wheels in front of the tank did prove effective for traversing a variety of terrains. But they severely limited the firing range of the 12 water-cooled machine guns situated in between the massive wheels. Thanks to two 250-horsepower Sunbeam engines powering either wheel, the Tsar could reach a respectable speed of up to 10.5 mph.

But mobility eventually doomed the Tsar.

When testing began in a forest outside Moscow, the rear wheel became mired in soft soil. Despite the Russian military's best efforts to free the 60-ton behemoth, it remained in that spot until 1923, when it was sold for scrap.

The Boirault Machine

The French also had their own ideas about what a mobile weapons platform should look like.

In 1914, a few months before Britain began work on the "Little Willy" tank that would set the precedent for modern tanks, French engineer Louis Boirault presented the French War Ministry with plans for the Boirault Machine.

Boirault's tank design was 26 feet high and has been described as a rhomboid-shaped skeleton tank without armor, with a single overhead track." The machine weighed a whopping 30 tons and was powered by a single 80-horsepower motor, which enabled the craft to move at a leisurely rate of less than 1 mph.

The singular tracked "wheel" that encompassed the Boirault was nearly 80 feet long and had a cumbersome 330 foot turn radius, earning it the nickname"Diplodocus Militarus," after one of the longest and most sluggish dinosaurs.

The Boirault did have success in crossing trenches and trampling barbed wire. But more conventional tanks were taking shape around Europe by 1915, and the French War Ministry abandoned the project.

The Screw Tank

Before tracked wheels came into prominence as the most efficient way to traverse difficult terrain, there was some exploration into corkscrew-driven machines that could twist and crush their way through ice, snow, and mud. As early as 1899 patents were filed for agricultural machines that used auger-like wheels for work in the fields.

In the 1920s, the Armstead Snow-Motor kit made waves across the Northern US and Canada as a screw-driven tractor that could haul up to 20 tons through unwelcoming northern conditions.

Then, in World War II, the unorthodox inventor Geoffrey Pyke worked with the US military to developed a screw-driven tank to pass over ice and snow in Northern Europe.

The tank made it to a prototype stage but was never fully realized, and it died on the drawing board.

Recently, the idea of a screw tank has resurfaced, with the Russians seemingly perfecting the design as illustrated in the video below:

Youtube Embed:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/RbDe5dEu07I
Width: 800px
Height: 600px

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's President Reuven Rivlin is to make public on Wednesday previously unreleased documents including a handwritten request for clemency from Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Rivlin's office said in a statement that the request to then president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi would be presented at a ceremony at Rivlin's official Jerusalem residence to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In the petition, written after he was brought to Israel in 1960, then tried, convicted and sentenced to death the following year, Eichmann says that the Israeli court overstated his role in organising the logistics of Hitler's "Final Solution" which involved the extermination of six million Jews.

"There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders," Rivlin's office quotes the letter as saying.

"I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty," he adds.

"I am not able to recognise the court's ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honour Mr President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out."

The letter was signed and dated: "Adolf Eichmann Jerusalem, May 29, 1962."

He was hanged on May 31.

Eichmann escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp after World War II and fled to Argentina in 1950, where he lived under a pseudonym until he was snatched by Mossad agents in Buenos Aires in May 1960 and smuggled to Israel.

Other documents to be presented at Wednesday's commemoration, in the presence of Holocaust survivors, include requests for clemency from Eichmann's wife Vera and his five brothers, along with Ben-Zvi's letter to his justice minister rejecting the appeals.

Also in the collection, recently digitised by the presidential archives, are a transcript of Eichmann's defence counsel's Supreme Court appeal, the handwritten opinion of Justice Minister Dov Yosef, and a note by prosecutor Gideon Hausner for his opening address.

SEE ALSO: Self-avowed anti-Islam activist arrested in connection with the Oregon 'militia' investigation

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We went inside a secret basement under Grand Central that was one of the biggest World War II targets

January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, the UN-mandated commemoration of the Nazis' industrial-scale slaughter of 6 million Jews and another 5 million members of various other minority groups during World War II.

But Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei used the occasion to post an English-subtitled video on his website, which questioned whether the Holocaust happened at all.

The three-minute video is called "Are the Dark Ages Over?" and features audio of a March 2014 speech, during which the Iranian leader claimed, "No one in European countries dares to speak about the Holocaust, while it is not clear whether the core of this matter is reality or not. Even if it is reality, it is not clear how it happened."

The video also showed images of prominent European Holocaust deniers, including British historian David Irving.

Iran's revolutionary regime has included some outspoken deniers and revisionists, to the point at which skepticism or flat-out denial of the historic nature of the Holocaust has often appeared to be an official Iranian-government position.

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly called the genocide a "myth." The regime hosted a revisionism conference in 2006, along with Holocaust-themed cartoon contests in 2006 and 2015.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was notably evasive and equivocal in discussing the genocide during a 2013 CNN interview. And in 2006, current Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, considered one of the regime's most influential moderates, refused to say whether he personally believed 6 million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust when the question was directly posed to him during an event at Columbia University.

Earlier this month, most international and US sanctions on Iran were lifted as a result of the July 2015 nuclear deal, a development that paves the way for multibillion-dollar trade deals and even a degree of diplomatic normalization between Iran and Western nations. Rouhani has visited Italy and France this week.

Khamenei's message, however, shows that the thaw has had little impact on some of the least-savory aspects of the regime and its ideology.

SEE ALSO: The 'Steve Jobs' of Venezuelan prison gang lords was just killed

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here’s footage from the Sean Penn interview that helped Mexican forces recapture El Chapo

The Jeep was first introduced on Jul. 15, 1941. It became an icon in World War II and evolutions of the design saw combat in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf War.

The US phased the Jeep out of the arsenal starting in 1984 when it adopted the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, also known as the HMMWV or Humvee. But the Jeep may be headed for a comeback.

According to a report in Stars and Stripes, the Army is looking for an inexpensive, lightweight, unarmored, all-terrain vehicle for ferrying troops and supplies. It would bridge a gap between the Army’s upcoming, heavily armored JLTV and the light MRZRs.

The JLTV is a heavily armored vehicle replacing the M-ATV and MRAP, while the MRZR is a light vehicle in service with special operations and Airborne units. Photos: US Army

One company, Hendrick Dynamics, thinks that sounds a lot like the original Jeep and they’re submitting modified Jeep Wranglers to the competition. From Stars and Stripes:

Hendrick starts with a diesel-equipped Wrangler Rubicon, converts the electrical system to 24 volts, adds additional safety features and military-spec equipment, upgrades the suspension and brakes for higher payload capacities and modifies the vehicle so it can be transported within an aircraft cargo hold.

While Jeep, now owned by Fiat Chrysler, has been out of the defense contracting game for a long time, Hendrick Dynamics has a bit of experience modifying Wranglers for combat duty. They currently offer three versions of their “Commando” vehicle to government agencies and commercial clients.

The Commando 2, Commando 4, and Commando S are clearly aimed at light units like Airborne and Air Assault formations, the same units that are the most likely beneficiaries of the Army’s vehicle proposal.

Commandos are certified for loading on CH-47s and can be slung under UH-60 helicopters. The website advertises that the vehicles are strong enough to tow 105mm howitzers.

All three models run on JP-8, the jet fuel also used in most military vehicles, tanks, and generators. The Commando S model even has a “Mission Pallet System” that allows it to be quickly configured for carrying heavy weapons, combat engineering, route clearance, or other tasks.

If Hendrick Dynamics gets wins the Army contract, vehicles similar to the current Commando and the World War II Jeep could be the preferred ride of future warfighters.

SEE ALSO: Japan just joined an elite club with its latest fighter jet

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: America’s $241 million ‘flying gas station’ just got one step closer to the skies

The bazooka was World War II’s answer to the American soldier’s need for portable firepower that could inflict serious damage on the enemy.

Simple enough for use by rifle squads, powerful enough to shoot high-explosive rounds into bunkers and pillboxes, the bazooka put more bang farther away on the battlefield than the average G.I. could throw in the form of a grenade.

True, Gen. George Patton praised the M-1 Garand rifle as the greatest battle implement ever made.

But Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ranked the humble bazooka with the atom bomb, the jeep, and the C-47 transport and cargo plane as one of the four “Tools of Victory” that allowed the Allies to prevail over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

“The bazooka is one of those weapons that has become iconic in spite of its limitations and problems,” said Alan Archambault, former supervisory curator for the US Army Center of Military History. “Even today, most people recognize the name and the weapon.”

Rockets on the battlefield are nothing new. History is full of examples of militaries harnessing explosive force to rocket power with many kinds of results.

The 13th-century Chinese fired rockets at their enemies. The Star-Spangled Banner mentions the “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” — Congreve rockets fired at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 in an effort to burn the fort to the ground.

American space pioneer Dr. Robert Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket, even developed a prototype recoilless rocket launcher that he demonstrated to the US Army in November 1918.

Unfortunately for Goddard, the Great War ground to a halt just a few days later and the US military lost interest in rocket-powered weapons for a while.

But when the US entered World War II in 1941, the only anti-tank weapons in its arsenal were the guns on its tanks and specific kinds of anti-tank artillery. That was a problem considering the US Army faced an enemy in North Africa, and later Europe, who relied heavily on Panzer divisions.

US Army Ordnance innovators Capt. Leslie Skinner and Lt. David Uhl experimented with shaped-charge grenades that packed an armor-piercing punch but were too heavy for soldiers to throw. One day, Uhl apparently spied a steel tube on a scrap pile and decided a smooth-bore launch tube was the perfect companion to the grenade/rocket combination he recently developed.

Tube, fin-stabilized rocket, grenade: By May 1942, the combination became known as “Launcher, Rocket, 2.36 inch, Anti-Tank, M-1.”

But nobody called it that — the contraption looked like one of the novelty musical instruments of Bob Burns, a popular comedian of the era. Burns called his tubular noisemaker a “bazooka” — from Dutch slang for “loudmouth” — and the name for the joke instrument became the name of the weapon.

Optimally, the bazooka needed two men for proper use: a gunner who aimed and fired the rocket-propelled rounds and a loader who carried the rounds in a cloth bandoleer before loading the bazooka through the back end of the launcher’s tube.

An electric charge from a dry-cell battery ignited the powder charge in the rocket, which sent the round hurtling out of the tube and on its way to the target.

However, early models of the weapon could be downright dangerous. Occasionally, the rocket would fire but get stuck in the tube, leaving the soldier with a live bomb in his shoulder-mounted launcher.

All models of the bazooka produced significant “back-blast” — discharge from the firing rocket that streamed out of the rear-end of the tube — and an obvious smoke trail that often gave away the position of the shooter.

However, improvements to the weapon produced the far-more reliable M-9. It had a light warhead, but it was capable of destroying many armored vehicles because the round could penetrate five-inch armor.

Although intended as an anti-tank weapon, the bazooka could also fire white phosphorous and incendiary warheads for anti-personnel and anti-material use.

For example, Wilbur “Bill” Brunger was an engineer with the US Army during World War II when he received orders in 1945 to demolish three underpasses on the Autobahn near Dortmund, Germany, so the rubble would block any advancing enemy vehicles.

Brunger was with a squad of men trying to take control of those underpasses when they encountered German half-tracks coming their way.

His squad had an M-9 and Brunger fired a round at one of the half-tracks. The round was so efficient he got more than he bargained for.

“It must have had ammunition because it blew, I’d say, a hundred feet in the air,” Brunger said in a 2004 oral history prepared by the Douglas County History Research Center in Colorado. “But it blew up. I was glad we weren’t any closer than we were.”

In fact, the weapon was so effective the bazooka received the sincerest form of flattery: The Nazis copied captured bazookas and also created their Panzerschreck anti-tank rocket launcher using the American bazooka’s basic design.

Although it went through different variants, the bazooka remained in use through the early stages of the Vietnam War. Then, the M-72 LAW (light anti-tank weapon) eclipsed the bazooka and became the rocket-weapon of choice among infantrymen.

However, the bazooka has one remaining cultural influence in American history. According to some sources, Bazooka bubble gum (first introduced to the gum-chewing public in 1947) owes its ordnance-inspired name to the World War II weapon that made a big bang.

SEE ALSO: 9 unbelievable instances of animals in the military

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Russia's military is more advanced than people thought

When America’s Strategic Air Command is ordered to Defense Condition 3 (DEFCON 3) or above, it disperses its nuclear bombers fully-armed across the U.S. and certain allied countries so that the bombers are harder to target.

This keeps America’s second strike capability intact and hopefully deters an enemy from launching its own nuclear weapons.

The dispersal plan generally calls for the planes to go to Air Force bases rather than civilian airports, but it hinges on a few factors.

First, there have to be enough Air Force bases ready to receive the planes and the bases can’t be needed for other missions.

During the Cuban missile crisis, SAC was ordered to DEFCON 3 and carried out its dispersal plan Oct. 22, 1962. Bases in and near Florida were mostly blocked off because they were needed to host troops for a potential invasion of Cuba. Also, they would have been destroyed too quickly in an attack for a crew to attempt to take off.

So 183 nuclear-armed aircraft were sent to 33 military bases and civilian airports in the U.S., including the four civilian airports below.

Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, Minnesota

Local pop. in 1960: 741,324

Four bombers were sent to Mitchell Field. One of the co-pilots on the flight told a reporter years later that the crew was ordered to fly for at least four hours to ensure their flight pay would be protected in case they couldn’t get training flights for a while.

Since they arrived at Mitchell Field in under four hours, the pilots flew a holding pattern for a few hours over Milwaukee in inclement weather at a lower altitude than their planes were designed to optimally fly while fully armed with nuclear weapons.

Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts

Local pop. in 1960: 697,197

When the B-47s arrived at Logan Airport, they found that the fuel plan wasn’t ready to go. A lieutenant colonel had to buy fuel from a local Mobil station with his personal credit card.

When the pilots went to check on their planes in the morning, they found that the jets had sunk into the soft concrete and had to be pulled out with a tow truck, according to Michael Dobbs in his book, “One Minute to Midnight.”

Memphis Airport in Memphis, Tennessee

Local pop. in 1960: 497,524

Planes at the airport were filmed on the tarmac on Oct. 26, 1962. SAC had been upgraded to DEFCON 2 at this point, meaning they expected nuclear war to pop off at any moment and they had to be prepared to get all of the bombers into the air within 15 minutes of an alert.

Duluth Municipal Airport in Duluth, Minnesota

Local pop. in 1960: 106,884

Duluth Municipal Airport hosted eight bombers during the crisis.

SEE ALSO: Russia's military aircraft are now crashing from overuse

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows every nuclear-bomb explosion in history