On May 30, 1942 — in the throes of World War II — a tiny island adrift in the Adriatic Sea was transformed. What began as a humble fort built 100 years earlier turned into a concentration camp run by dictator Benito Mussolini, where prisoners were held captive and tortured.

That fort, known as Fort Mamula in honor of its 1853 creator, General Lazar Mamula, is now seeing a second transformation. 

Earlier this January, real-estate company Orascom Development Holding announced plans to invest $16.8 million to turn Mamula into a "world-class boutique hotel and spa" that will be "completely eco-friendly by using renewable energy sources, and energy efficient materials."

Fort Mamula is located on Lastavica island, which sits on Montenegro's northwestern coast.

According to University of Cambridge historian Andrew Lacey, in the early 1940s Mussolini turned Mamula into a prison death camp as part of his overall effort to control the Balkan region.

Stories from the concentration camp are expectedly heartbreaking.

"If the baby cried, soldiers would come in and beat everyone up until there was silence," Jovanka Uljarevic, the granddaughter of a woman held in the camp, told Balkan Insight. "It was cold, they were starved and the overall conditions were very bad."

The fort was semi-abandoned in the aftermath of WWII, used by tourists looking to see a bit of history. It wasn't until earlier this year that Orascom entered the picture, provoking a divided response from local residents, politicians, and families of those who were kept in the camp.

Orascom has said it will create a specific remembrance room to honor those who died during WWII, while Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Gali once said in a letter to the Montenegrin parliament that he's surprised that "the only solution for preserving and using the fort is a mere business arrangement and privatisation agreement."

While the island will no doubt entertain — it'll boast a DJ booth, beach club, swimming pools, restaurant, and spa — Lacey says he hopes Orascom will indeed erect some form of a memorial, for the sake of the island's history.

Although, he does point to the dilemma places like Mamula face.

"Do you knock it down and pretend it never happened, or do you acknowledge what happened and move on?" he says. "We've got to acknowledge where we come from and what this once was. I think some people might actually be interested in the history of the place."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A mysterious lost Nazi train — supposedly filled with gold — may have been found

Here are six times when American tank units found themselves massively fighting it out with enemy armor:

SEE ALSO: Here's why some militaries have strange pixelated camouflage

1. Battle of the Bulge

When the Germans assaulted Allied Lines in what would become the Battle of the Bulge, US tanks and infantry struggled to hold the line against the nearly 1,000 tanks and more than 200,000 troops on a 75-mile front.

Tanks with the 7th, 9th, and 10th Armored Divisions helped the infantry hold the lines as the Germans attacked, and tanks operating under Gen. Patton's Third Army spearheaded the effort to save the 101st Airborne Division. The tank that led that rescue effort survived the war and was rediscovered in 2008.

2. Battle of Norfolk

Fourteen coalition and Iraqi divisions fought each other at the Battle of Norfolk, the last battle of the Persian Gulf War. Four US and British divisions plus elements of two more destroyed Iraqis fighting in eight divisions, including the elite Tawakalna Republican Guard Division.

The battle opened with a massive artillery and rocket bombardment that fired almost 20,000 artillery and rocket rounds, destroying 22 Iraqi battalions and hundreds of artillery pieces. Tanks and Apache helicopters moved forward, slaughtering their way through Iraqi resistance. The Tawakalna Republican Guard Division and 10 other Iraqi divisions were destroyed in the fighting. The US lost six men.

3. Battle of Arracourt

The Battle of Arracourt, fought September 18-29, 1944, was the largest tank battle the US had conducted up to that point and saw the American forces brilliantly destroy two Panzer Brigades and additional units from two Panzer divisions.

The US commander used true combined arms artillery, infantry, airpower, and armor to win. On one fog-covered morning, the Shermans flanked the Panzers and took out 11 in a single attack. The 12-day battle in Eastern France ended with 86 German tanks destroyed and 114 damaged or broken down from an original total of only 262.

Joseph Medicine Crow, a renowned Native American chief and historian, died on Sunday at the age of 102.

Medicine Crow was the last living war chief of Montana's Crow tribe, a distinction he earned by accomplishing four traditional war tasks while serving in the US Army during World War II.

With his death, the US loses an invaluable historical resource — Medicine Crow was the last link to the famous Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand.

In 2009, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom, and continued to speak on Crow history until his death. 

Here's Medicine Crow's unbelievable story:

Joe Medicine Crow was born on the Crow Indian reservation near Lodge Grass, Montana, in 1913.

Medicine Crow's step-grandfather, White Man Runs Him, was one of six scouts for George Armstrong Custer during the general's 1876 expedition against the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne.

The expedition culminated in the Battle of Little Bighorn in June of 1876.

The connection made Medicine Crow the last living person to have heard direct oral testimony from someone involved in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Technology and manpower never guarantee a military victory by themselves. And neither can tactics and strategy — sometimes, it takes an extra measure of trickery and subterfuge to swing the tide on the battlefield. 

A group of Quora users sought to answer the question "What are the most mind-blowing tricks used during any war?" The answers provide a fascinating insight into some of the minds responsible for the most ingenious successes in the history of war.

SEE ALSO: 7 unbelievable military weapons most people have never heard of

1. Operation Mincemeat

During World War II, the British launched a successful disinformation plan called Operation Mincemeat. The operation was created in an effort to convince the Germans that the Allies planned on invading Sardinia and Greece — instead of Sicily, where they actually landed in July 1943. 

The operation was carried out successfully by obtaining the corpse of a homeless man in London, who was then given a false identity as a major in the Royal Marines. This man was then given false plans documenting an invasion of Sardinia and Greece, before being thrown to the tide off the coast of Spain. 

The British alerted the Spanish, who were nominally neutral during the war, to be on the lookout for a British Marine carrying documents that had to be recovered. The papers were promptly handed over to the Nazis by the Spanish and convinced Hitler to reposition troops away from Sicily. 

2. Heroin-Laced Cigarettes

The British and Ottomans were locked in extremely slow-moving trench warfare during World War I's Palestine Campaign. Eventually, the British learned that the Ottomans had run out of cigarettes. In an attempt to demoralize their enemy, the British began sending cigarettes wrapped in propaganda to the Ottomans. 

Instead of surrendering, the Ottomans threw away the propaganda and smoked. So, before the British scheduled one raid, they switched tactics and threw over cigarettes laced with heroin.

The British met little opposition from the Ottoman forces during their assault.

3. Moving A Naval Fleet Over Land

During the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the invading Turks faced a major challenge. The Byzantines had erected a giant chain across the Golden Horn, a stretch of water that connected Constantinople to the sea. This chain effectively blocked the Ottoman navy from making their way to the enemy capital.

In order to overcome the chain, the Ottomans moved their navy overland using log rollers. This allowed the Ottomans to bypass the chain and attack the Byzantines from multiple fronts, ultimately aiding in the capture of the city that's now called Istanbul. 

SEE ALSO: The 5 greatest warships of all time

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 4.2 million Americans could be displaced by rising sea levels this century — see if your county is at risk

On November 10, 1943, when Lt. Walter L. Chewning Jr., the catapult officer of the USS Enterprise, saw a 9,000-pound F6F Hellcat crash-land on the flight deck and erupt in a ball of flames as it barreled toward the gun gallery, he did not run away.

Instead, Chewning deliberately ran toward the wreck, stepped on the burning external fuel tank, which was hemorrhaging and fueling the flames, forced the plane's jammed canopy open, and saved the stunned young pilot's life.

The USS Enterprise would go down in history as an exemplary ship and crew in the Pacific theater of World War II, and the first carrier to respond after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Selfless acts of bravery, like the one captured in this image, typify the kind of spirit that helped the Allied powers win the war when things looked most bleak. Chewning would receive the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his actions on that day.

SEE ALSO: The 5 greatest warships of all time

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The Pentagon plans to hunt enemy submarines using this drone warship

A 92-year-old Holocaust survivor held a heartbreaking Reddit AMA, in which he answered questions about his experience, how he survived the ordeal, and how he has come to terms with the world after World War II.

Henry Flescher, originally from Vienna, Austria, took to Reddit — with the aid of his grandson — to help share the story of the Holocaust through the lens of a survivor of the tragedy. Flescher's answers, although at times difficult to read, are more vital than ever as fewer Holocaust survivors are still alive.

We have shared some of the most powerful elements of Flesher's story below.

His experience first started with an incredible twist of luck:

I was first sent to Drancy, a transit camp.

I was then transported in a cattle car packed with people with no food or water and one bucket in the middle to use as a toilet.

I was 16 18 at the time. The smell was unfathomable.

After six days in the train the train came to stop. The guards started to count men. They selected 300 men. I was number 298. We were taken off the train. The train then continued on its way to Auschwitz and everyone was killed.

I will never forget the number 298.

After being sent to Drancy, Flescher, in brief, was forced to experience a range of camps and death marches:

They took 300 men off the train to work in a shoe factory in Ohrdruf. After about four weeks I was transferred to Peiskretscham where I helped build bridges. After a few months there I was then transferred to Blechhammer. It was there that my name became 177153. Blechhammer was hell. Punishments were a daily routine and my front teeth were knocked out here. I was there during the winter. One time we had to stand for several hours and one person couldn't contain their urine and peed on himself. The man was hanged. After about two years at Blechhammer we went on a death march to Gross Rosen. Buchenwald was the next camp. Then Altenberg and Waldenburg. This is a brief timeline!

During this time, Flescher noted that he and his fellows were forced to take drastic means to survive:

I used to go out at night risking my life to steal some raw potatoes from the kitchen at Peiskretscham and at Blechhammer. I took chances. At Blechhammer some inmates caught a dog, a German Shepard, and cooked it. It was a feast. Tasted like rabbit. That was the only time I've eaten dog, and it was the best meal I had in a long time. These days I prefer steak.

In response to how it felt to be liberated, Flescher wrote:

I didn't know it. I didn't understand. I was on another death march at the time from Altenburg to Waldenburg. I managed to slip away and hide in a chicken coop along the way and at that time the American convoy was advancing. I saw an American tank and an American soldier and thought he was going to kill me because I didn't know the uniform. I still left the coop and went up to them, because at that time I could barely stand up and weighed about 70 pounds. I was liberated on April 11.

I didn't know that day would come. I was very sick when I was liberated and could barely eat, talk, or walk.

He then went on to clarify: "I have two birthdays. March 14th, and April 11th."

When asked how he managed to stay alive throughout the Holocaust and not give up hope, Flescher wrote:

Everyday you think of living. We are born to die, but I appreciate life. We live day by day, and I always say: yesterday is history, today's reality, and tomorrow's a dream.

In response to a question about how accurate Holocaust movies presented the experience, Flescher shared his own anecdote of the brutality of the camps:

I have watched most of them. I don't find it difficult to watch because I went through it. I've seen it all. I still remember a friend of mine who was hanged because he was using a telephone wire as a belt to hold up his pants. They hung him and he fell back down. They put him back up and hung him again.

Ultimately, Flescher wants the stories of the Holocaust to be preserved and told exactly as they were so that the world can continue to understand what happened:

They need to tell story as it is. You cannot shy away from history and its brutality. We usually learn about history through books, but this is an event that happened in my lifetime, I witnessed it, and I am still alive today to discuss it. Soon, there will not be any survivors left. I am 92. Once all the survivors are gone, the skeptics will probably come into the picture unfortunately. And that is why we need to educate everyone about what really happened. It didn't happen 500 years ago. It happened in my lifetime.

SEE ALSO: 94-year-old who served behind Nazi lines reveals the most terrifying thing he experienced

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Startling facts about World War II

Here are some of the more fun facts that occurred during World War II that you maybe did not know. 

SEE ALSO: The Atomic Cannon was a thing during the Cold War

Fact 1: In 2014, a 90-year-old British veteran – named Bernard Jordan – was reported missing from his nursing home. It turned out they’d said no to him going to Normandy to celebrate the D-Day 70-year anniversary. But he went anyway and left the facility wearing a grey mack concealing a jacket underneath with his war medals attached.

Source: ITV

Fact 2: During World War II King George VI was at war with Germany as King of the UK, but as King of Ireland he was at peace with Germany and validated the credentials of German ambassadors. After WWII he was at war with himself as King of Pakistan and separately King of India.

Source

Fact 3: "The Mad Piper” Bill Millin, was the only bagpiper to land on the beach in Normandy. While men fell around him, he played his pipes throughout the battle. A group of captured German snipers was asked why they hadn’t shot him. They replied that they thought he’d gone insane and felt bad for him.

Source: The Economist

In 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of a massive 3-mile-long row of buildings, destined to be an enormous beach resort for Nazi Germany. It was abandoned three years later, when World War II broke out. It would sit empty for the next 75 years. Today, German real estate company Metropole Marketing plans to convert several blocks into luxury homes and hotels.

Produced by Rob Ludacer and Chris Weller

Follow TI: On Facebook

Join the conversation about this story »

Radioactive waste has been leaking from a storage tank at Hanford Site — a nuclear waste storage facility in Washington State — since at least 2011. In an effort to fix the problem, the U.S. Department of Energy recently started pumping all of the waste out of the World War II-era AY-102 tank. This may have only exacerbated the problem.

Produced by Zach Wasser

Follow TI: On Facebook

Join the conversation about this story »

The author of a best-selling book about his father and other men who raised a US flag at Iwo Jima during World War II said Tuesday he no longer believes his father was in an iconic photograph of the event.

James Bradley, who wrote the book "Flags of Our Fathers," said in a telephone interview that questions raised about the photo by two amateur historians, which have prompted a Marine Corps investigation, led him to think back on comments his father made about the 1945 flag-raising.

Those comments by John Bradley, who died in 1994, now lead James Bradley to believe his father participated in an earlier flag-raising, but not the one captured in the famous picture.

"My father raised a flag on Iwo Jima," Bradley told The Associated Press. "The Marines told him way after the fact, 'Here's a picture of you raising the flag.' He had a memory of him raising a flag, and the two events came together."

AP photographer Joe Rosenthal shot the photo on Feb. 23, 1945, on Mount Suribachi, only days into a bloody battle with the Japanese that would stretch on for weeks. The picture was displayed on front pages of newspapers across the US, later was used in a war bond sale and was depicted in the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.

Since 1947, the Marines have identified the Iwo Jima flag-raisers as John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Harlon Block, Michael Strank and Franklin Sousley. All were Marines except Bradley, who was a Navy corpsman.

On Monday, the Marine Corps announced it had begun investigating whether it mistakenly identified one of the men after history buffs Eric Krelle, of Omaha, Nebraska, and Stephen Foley, of Wexford, Ireland, began raising doubts about the matter. They argued that the man believed to be Bradley actually was Sousley, and that the person for decades thought to be Sousley was Harold Henry Schultz, who previously wasn't thought to have any connection to the flag-raising.

All of those involved in the flag-raising have died, including three who were killed in later fighting at Iwo Jima.

Bradley, whose book was made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood, said misidentifying the men who joined in the second flag-raising would be an easy mistake.

"The key is, no one was keeping track," he said. "There was the fog of war, post-traumatic stress."

Bradley said after reviewing his father's statements and photographs from that day on Mount Suribachi, he's confident his father wasn't in the famous picture, but it's impossible to be 100 percent certain.

"I know what these guys look like. I've studied them for years," he said. "But I could be wrong."

SEE ALSO: 'If a man can carry a weapon, a woman can do the same': An all-female combat unit is taking revenge on ISIS in Iraq

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The US is showing its strength against Russia by sending its most advanced warplanes to the Black Sea

The V-3 “supergun” was meant to win the war for Germany.

In 1943, for the first time since World War II began, Hitler was on the back foot. Allied bombs were devastating German cities and the Fuhrer was rattled. His proposed V-3 cannon would be the biggest gun the world had seen.

The V-3 was built in a truly enormous bunker buried deep in a chalk hill in northern France. Millions of metric tons of rock were excavated by hand and among the workers were hundreds of slave laborers.

In its original conception, 25 barrels were to point at London – about 100 miles away – delivering up to one bomb per minute and to create an environment of fear that would turn the course of the war back in Hitler’s favor.

And it was a doomed secret “drone” mission to destroy the V-3 that led to the death of Joe Kennedy Junior, a pilot and older brother of the future US president, John F Kennedy.

 The workings of the German supergun remain something of a mystery, because so much of it was destroyed and so few photographs and documents have survived.

We estimated that a projectile reaching London must achieve speeds in excess of 1,500 meters per second. Each barrel of Hitler’s gun was 130 metres long, inclined at 50 degrees and we worked out that this is the perfect angle to reach London - they seem to have got it right.

The projectile was to be accelerated by means of a sequence of charges along the barrel. Precise timing of these additional charges was very important and it has been supposed that this was done electrically.

In our research for a TV documentary on Channel Four, PBS Nova and National Geographic International, we found no evidence for this. Photographs from the time have no sign of electrical wiring or triggering devices and our own experiments suggest that the charges were triggered by the heat of the advancing gas behind the projectile.

Hitler’s engineers had great difficulty perfecting the all-important timing, we think because of leakage of hot gas past the seal behind the projectile. They encountered other problems with their design, particularly to perfect a shape of projectile that would be aerodynamic at supersonic speeds. It had to remain stable without the benefit of spin (the barrel was not rifled) but in early tests the projectile was found to tumble uncontrollably.

This problem was never solved, as far as we know. The Allies knew nothing of the supergun until Canadian forces overran the site after D-Day. But they knew that for the Germans to be expending that many resources on the site – they were certainly up to no good.

It wasn’t easy to see how to destroy the supergun. The Americans planned to attack the installation with a “drone” (not known by that name back then) which was a remote-controlled heavy bomber packed with 12 tonnes of high explosives. The idea was to crash the unmanned aircraft directly into the site at Mimoyecques, near Calais.

The mission, code named Project Anvil, ended badly.

The Joe Kennedy Jr mission

Joe Kennedy Junior was piloting a B-24 Liberator on August 12 1944. He and co-pilot Wilford Willy were supposed to take the plane up to cruising altitude, set the correct course and bail out. A second aircraft flying nearby was to take over the controls (aided by a primitive television transmission system). But completely without warning, the plane exploded over Blythburgh in Suffolk only 20 minutes after it had taken off. Kennedy and Willy were killed and their bodies never found, such was the violence of the explosion.

The circumstances of Kennedy’s death weren’t well known for the best part of 70 years.

Recent documents have been found that show that the bomb-arming mechanism was flawed and that efforts to make it safe only exacerbated the hazards. In our documentary we show that solenoids – a type of electromagnet – used for arming the bombs were likely to have overheated causing premature detonation.

This tragedy was all in vain. Unknown to the allies at the time, the complex at Mimoyecques had been abandoned after it was successfully destroyed in a bombing raid on July 6 1944.

British engineer Barnes Wallis, the brains behind the bouncing bomb, had developed the Tallboy bomb. Dropped from a height of 15,000 ft it was designed to bury itself deep into the chalk and to trigger a small earthquake.

Eight Tallboys hit the supergun site and the network of tunnels and the foundations, bunkers and munitions stores were all damaged beyond repair.

The genius of Barnes Wallis cannot be overstated. He had worked out the right shape for the nose cone of the Tallboy so that it would remain aerodynamic while approaching the speed of sound and at the same time being strong enough to penetrate 15 metres underground. He discovered that if the fins were tilted by only 5 degrees the bomb would spin, stabilizing it in flight.

It is unlikely that the supergun would ever have been a successful game-changing weapon, even if the Normandy landings had failed. The numerous technical challenges of the gun itself were proving difficult to resolve but perhaps more importantly a fixed gun installation is an easy target. If it hadn’t been the Tallboys of July 6, or the ill-fated Kennedy mission of August 12, then the installation at Mimoyecques would have been destroyed one way or another before it could do much damage to London.

But from a purely engineering perspective I’m sorry that it was never test-fired (though it’s hard to imaging how to do that safely!) I would like to have seen it work. What an amazing contraption.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A mysterious lost Nazi train — supposedly filled with gold — may have been found

Frank Levingston, the oldest living World War II veteran, died on May 3 in Bossier Parish, Louisiana. He was 110 years old, which also made him the oldest living man in the United States.

According to his Wikipedia page, he was born on November 13, 1905 in North Carolina, one of seven children. Levingston enlisted in the US Army in 1942. He served as private during the war in the Allied invasion of Italy which lasted from September 1943 to January 1944. After receiving an honorable discharge in 1945, he became a union worked specializing in cement finishing. He never married.

On August 16, 2015, he became the oldest recognized living military veteran in the United States, following the death of Emma Didlake.

“I’ve been through so many dangerous things and I’m still here. I’m thankful to the almighty God for it,” Levingston said in an interview with WTVR marking his 110th birthday. “I think I’m one of the blessed ones.”

Pamela Gobert, one of Levingston’s good friends, said in that interview: “He’s always got a kind word and he lets me know that sometimes it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” said Gobert. “One time we were at Memorial and a young lady asked him ‘Mr. Frank how old are you going to live?’ and he said ‘110.’”  He was right.

In December of 2015, he went on an honor flight to Washington, D.C. – it was his first time to ever visit the nation’s capital and war monuments. He helped to mark Pearl Harbor Day by taking part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the World War II Monument.  He was unable to meet the President but did meet representatives of his state.

(Watch footage of his visit here.)

Levingston, a member of the Greatest Generation who had little formal education, gave his most valuable lesson in life: “Be honest. That’s about all I can tell you.”

SEE ALSO: Amazing colorized photos show a unique side of World War II

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Rare color film shows what it was like for Marines during WWII, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War

Russia marked the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany 71 years ago by holding one of the largest Victory Day military parades in Moscow in years today.

President Vladimir Putin presided over the parade, which included tanks, aircraft, and ballistic missiles.

The parade in Moscow was a strong reminder of Russia's dedication in recent years to modernize its military. It is also a show of strength by Putin as he continues his claims of being the defender of Russians even outside of the Russian border. 

SEE ALSO: Incredible colorized photos show Russia before the Communist revolution

Russian MiG-29SMT fighter jets fly in formation during the Victory Day parade, marking the 71st anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, above the monument of Minin and Pozharsky at Red Square in Moscow, Russia May 9, 2016.

Russian servicemen march during the Victory Day parade, marking the 71st anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2016.

Russian Mi-28N military helicopters fly in formation during the Victory Day parade, marking the 71st anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, above GUM department at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2016.

At the time of the surrender on May 7, 1945, Nazi forces had all but disintegrated. Hitler had committed suicide and Soviet forces had already taken Berlin, which resulted in 70,000 Nazi soldiers putting down their arms.

The failure of Nazi troops to check this advance resulted in them having no choice but to sign a treaty of unconditional surrender. The declaration of surrender stipulated that Nazi Germany recognize the authority of both the Soviet Union and the Allied Forces. Nazi forces also had to immediately cease hostilities and remain in their bases. The signed Act of Surrender (click to enlarge) went into effect on May 8, 1945. 

Immediately after the surrender, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower sent out a top secret cable announcing unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and the victory of the Allied Forces. 

John S. D. Eisenhower, the son of General Eisenhower, recounts the moment of Germany's total surrender in his book "The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge": 

General Eisenhower was sitting in his office awaiting the outcome of the surrender negotiations. Past the desk of his secretary and into the office came the Nazis, erect and cold. Eisenhower stood up. Rigid, and fixing a cold eye on his enemies, he demanded, "Do you understand all the provisions of the document you have just signed?" 

"Ja!" 

"You will, officially and personally, be held responsible if the terms of this surrender are violated, including its provision for German commanders to appear in Berlin at the moment set by the Russian High Command, to accomplish formal surrender to that government. That is all." 

The Nazis saluted and left, and Eisenhower relaxed. A few minutes later he sent a message to the Combined Chiefs of Staff:  "The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945."

Although these documents put an end to the war with Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan continued to fight for an additional four months before it finally surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945.

Only once Japan surrendered was World War II officially brought to a close.

SEE ALSO: A Holocaust survivor shares how he survived multiple concentration camps and death marches in a heartbreaking Reddit AMA

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Startling facts about World War II

Until December 11, 1941, the US and Nazi Germany were technically neutral despite World War II having ravaged large portions of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

But following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of hostilities between the US and the Axis Powers on December 7, 1941, Nazi Germany followed Japan's lead and declared war on the US.

According to Rare Historical Photos, the decision to declare war was entirely Adolf Hitler's. Even before Pearl Harbor, Hitler was aware that the US and Nazi Germany would eventually come to blows, since the US was supporting the British war effort.

The decision to enter the war was announced by Hitler at a speech at the Reichstag after the German and Italian embassies burned their cables in Washington, DC.

SEE ALSO: What the Nazis said to Gen. Eisenhower upon surrendering 71 years ago this month

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Startling facts about World War II

During World War II, the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the 2nd Polish Corps had an unusual soldier among its ranks, a 440-pound Syrian bear named Wojtek.

Wojtek first came to the company as a cub, but over the course of the war he matured and was given the rank of corporal in the Polish army.

Here's Wojtek's amazing story below.

SEE ALSO: 10 shocking facts about World War II

After being released from a Siberian labor camp during the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1942, the 22nd Polish Supply Brigade began a long trek south toward Persia. Along the way, they bought an orphaned bear.

Source: The Soldier Bear

"He was like a child, like a small dog. He was given milk from a bottle, like a baby. So therefore he felt that these soldiers are nearly his parents, and therefore he trusted in us and was very friendly," Wojciech Narebski, former Polish soldier, told the BBC.

Source: BBC

As he grew, his diet changed, but he remained friendly.

Source: The Soldier Bear

A well-groomed lawn is a classic image of idealized American life.

Walled off by a white picket fence, our grassy yards are where we host barbecues, lay out to stargaze, teach our children how to toss the pigskin (while dispensing valuable parental advice), and generally exude our American-ness during warm summer months.

But the origins of lawns are far from American. In fact, the grasses we prize consist of species that are from nowhere near North America.

Here's how the United States accrued the strange tradition of obsessing over these foreign and thirsty plants.

There's nothing quite as American as a well-manicured lawn. But the grassy feature has complicated roots that begin outside North America.

Before Europeans began colonizing eastern North America, the landscape was mostly forest and prairie.

The native grasses of the United States were plants like buffalo grass...

On November 7, 1937, the Los Angeles Examiner published a prescient map predicting how Imperial Japan could attack the US during World War II.

Created by Howard A. Burke, the map imagined a Japanese attack on the US that closely predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor four years later on December 7, 1941. Burke rightly noted that Japan's first target would be Hawaii and the US fleet docked at Pearl Harbor.

"The first objective must be capture of Hawaii," Burke notes on the map. "This would mean crippling or annihilating the U.S. fleet, giving Japan one of the world's greatest naval bases — Pearl Harbor."

After that attack, Burke then imagined that Japan would follow up the assault with a two-pronged naval and aerial strike from Hawaii against Los Angeles and San Francisco, with a simultaneous Japanese assault from Alaska working its way down the Pacific Northwest.

You can see Burke's map below:

SEE ALSO: What the Nazis said to Gen. Eisenhower upon surrendering 71 years ago this month

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's the high-tech military equipment Russia could use against the world

The picture above shows the airmen of the RAF's 617 "Dambusters" squadron in front of two F-35Bs with their World War II counterparts superimposed behind them.

The black-and-white counterparts were on the forefront of military aviation technology in World War II, when the multinational squadron of bombers needed a way to knock out Nazi Germany's hydroelectric dams. Besides air and sea defenses, the Germans devised torpedo nets that protected their dams from conventional attacks.

Not to be defeated, the British devised a "bouncing bomb" to be dropped from Lancaster bombers flying just 60 feet above the water. The mission was bold and dangerous, but the 617th prevailed, earning them a sort of legendary status in history.

Here's an illustration of how the bouncing bomb worked (from Weymouth College):

Now, airmen from the same squadron train with US Marines in Beaufort, South Carolina, to fly the most advanced jet in the world, the F-35 Lightning II.

“We work alongside the US Marines flying the jets and training pilots and maintainers every day. We’ve been working with our US partners since the beginning of the F-35 programme and we continue to develop the capabilities of the aircraft together,"said RAF Wing Commander John Butcher, 35, the officer commanding of the 617 Squadron, whose grandfather flew Lancasters during World War II.

"We work very closely with the US Air Force, US Navy, US Marine Corps and other international partners in making decisions on the programme; the relationships really couldn’t be better.”

SEE ALSO: One graphic shows 75 years of Air Force innovation

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The US is showing its strength against Russia by sending its most advanced warplanes to the Black Sea