These World War II facts are hard to believe.

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00][clears throat] >> During the Second World War, some soldiers froze to death inside their own tanks. This happened most often on the Eastern Front during the winter of 1941.

[00:00:11]Temperatures fell below minus 30° C.

[00:00:13]Engine oil turned thick, weapons stopped working, and the metal became so cold that human skin would stick to it.

[00:00:20]Sometimes tank crews could not light a fire because the smoke would immediately reveal their position to the enemy. Men sat inside steel machines for endless hours without proper heat or sleep. Some soldiers fell asleep because of hypothermia and never woke up again. The most horrifying part? Many of them were discovered later, still sitting in the exact same positions, as if they were simply waiting for their next order.

[00:00:41]During the Siege of Leningrad, hunger became so extreme that people began eating things never meant to be food.

[00:00:47]People ate leather belts, glue, wallpaper, and even carpenter's gelatin.

[00:00:52]Some people boiled pieces of shoe leather just to make a little broth. In winter, the streets were covered with snow and with bodies. Many people no longer had the strength to bury their own relatives. But the most terrifying part was this. The human body slowly adapts to starvation. People stopped feeling hunger pains. They moved slower and slower, gradually fading away while still walking through the city. Some people died while standing in bread lines, still holding their ration cards in their hands. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the average life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was sometimes less than a single day. Many troops were sent into the city with almost no training at all because of severe weapon shortages, sometimes only one soldier out of several received a rifle. The others were told, "Take weapons from the dead." Combat took place inside apartment buildings, basements, and narrow stairwells. Enemy soldiers sometimes remained on opposite sides of the same wall for days at a time. Some soldiers slept beside dead bodies because escaping the building was impossible. Stalingrad became more than just a battlefield. It became a giant trap where entire military units vanished without a trace. Some soldiers during the war died without ever seeing the enemy. During massive artillery bombardments, men spent weeks inside trenches under constant explosions. The ground shook almost non-stop. The air was filled with smoke, mud, and screams.

[00:02:14]And for some soldiers, their minds simply could not endure it anymore. A man would stop speaking normally. He could no longer move properly. His hands trembled uncontrollably, or he would just sit in silence staring at a single point for hours. Back then, people called it shell shock or battle fatigue.

[00:02:31]But the most terrifying part was this.

[00:02:33]Sometimes a soldier was completely healthy physically, but his mind could no longer function normally after everything he had witnessed. The Nazis attempted to create weapons that looked like something from science fiction.

[00:02:44]Near the end of the war, Germany was developing giant cannons, jet-powered aircraft, and even technology resembling early stealth systems. One example was the Messerschmitt It was so fast that many Allied pilots at first could not even understand what had just flown past them. The aircraft would appear, attack, and disappear before regular fighter planes could gain enough speed to chase it. For soldiers at that time, it felt almost unreal, as if technology from the future had suddenly appeared on the battlefield.

[00:03:15]Some cities during the bombings turned into enormous fire tornadoes. When hundreds of buildings caught fire at the same time, the temperature became so extreme that the air itself was pulled toward the center of the flames. This created a massive firestorm. The winds inside it were so powerful that people were knocked off their feet and dragged toward the fire. The heat became so intense that metal began to melt, and entire streets burst into flames almost instantly. But the most horrifying part was this. Many people did not die from the flames themselves. The fires consumed the oxygen around them, and people simply could no longer breathe.

[00:03:51]Some soldiers lived in trenches for so long that dead bodies remained beside them for weeks. In many areas, the fighting never stopped, and removing the dead became impossible, especially during the winter. The bodies froze in the exact positions where the soldiers had fallen. Sometimes men slept only inches away from dead comrades or even enemy soldiers. Over time, the human mind began to accept it as a normal part of everyday life, and that is one of the most terrifying things about war. A person can eventually adapt even to things that should be impossible to accept. Some submarines during the war disappeared with their entire crews, and the people inside sometimes remained alive for a short time afterward. If a submarine was damaged and sank at a shallow enough depth, some compartments could remain sealed. The sailors became trapped underwater in complete darkness.

[00:04:38]Oxygen slowly ran out. The air filled with carbon dioxide, and communication with the surface was often already lost.

[00:04:46]Sometimes rescue teams could hear knocking sounds coming from inside the hull. The crew knew they were dying and tried to send one final signal, but reaching the submarine in time was not always possible. Some soldiers realized their comrades had died only because of the silence. During intense battles, men lived side by side for weeks. They slept in the same trenches and spoke to each other constantly. But after another artillery strike, the person beside them would suddenly stop responding. No scream, no final words. Sometimes the soldier remained sitting in the exact same position as if nothing had happened, and only a few seconds later did the others realize that he was already dead. In war, death often came so suddenly that the human mind could not process it in time. Some people during the war died simply from the sound. During massive artillery bombardments, explosions happened so often and so close together that shockwaves passed directly through the human body. Some soldiers began bleeding from their ears, their lungs were damaged, and their brains suffered severe trauma. Sometimes no shell even hit them directly, but the non-stop noise, vibration, and pressure waves slowly destroyed both the body and the mind. After bombardments like these, some soldiers completely lost their hearing, and others could no longer properly understand the reality around them. Some children during the war learned to identify aircraft just by the sound of their engines. People lived under constant bombing raids for so long that they began recognizing danger by sound alone. From a single noise in the sky, they could tell whether it was a reconnaissance aircraft, a fighter plane, or a bomber. Sometimes civilians had only a few seconds to find shelter, but the most horrifying part was this.

[00:06:22]For many children, this became a normal part of childhood. They did not learn to play musical instruments. They learned to recognize which aircraft might kill them within the next minute. Some soldiers during the winter slept close to each other on purpose simply to avoid freezing to death. On the front lines, temperatures sometimes dropped so low that people woke up with frost covering their clothes and even their faces.

[00:06:44]Gloves froze solid, boots became stiff, and the metal of their weapons burned the skin with cold. If a soldier fell asleep alone during extreme freezing weather, he might never wake up again.

[00:06:55]So, men pressed against each other inside trenches, bunkers, and ruined buildings trying to preserve even a small amount of warmth. And sometimes by morning, they realized that the person beside them had frozen to death in his sleep. Some people during the war lived underground for months at a time. During constant bombing raids, civilians hid inside subway stations, basements, and bomb shelters almost every day. Children were born there. People slept directly on the floor, ate their meals, received medical treatment, and tried to live normal lives. Many barely saw sunlight for weeks. The air felt heavy. Sirens, explosions, and crying could be heard constantly. But the most terrifying part was this. After some time, people slowly became used to it, and life underground started to feel more normal than life above the surface. Some soldiers during the war feared not the battle itself, but the silence that came afterward.

[00:07:49]After hours of gunfire and explosions, there would suddenly be a moment when everything became quiet. No gunshots, no screaming, no engines, only smoke, destruction, and complete silence. It was during these moments that soldiers finally began to understand how many people had died around them. Some men later said that the silence after battle terrified them more than the fighting itself, because only then did the human mind finally comprehend what had truly happened. Some soldiers during the war never saw the face of the person who killed them. In many battles, people fired not at a specific enemy, but at silhouettes, flashes, or movement in the distance. Artillery could destroy an entire area from several kilometers away. Bombs fell at night, through the clouds, without warning. Sometimes, a person died without ever understanding where the attack had come from. War became so massive and chaotic that death often came from someone you had never even seen. Some cities after the war were so heavily destroyed that people could no longer recognize where the streets had once been. After massive bombing campaigns, entire neighborhoods turned into piles of concrete, bricks, and twisted metal. Homes disappeared, roads vanished, shops and schools were gone. Everything became one enormous field of rubble. Sometimes, the only thing left from a building was a staircase leading nowhere. People returned home and could no longer recognize the place where they had lived their entire lives. Some cities looked as if they had simply been erased from the face of the earth. Some soldiers during the war lost their sense of time because of constant fighting, lack of sleep, and extreme stress, the days began to blend together. For weeks, people lived surrounded by the same explosions, the same cold, mud, and fear. Many soldiers later recalled that they stopped understanding what day it was, what month it was, or or how much time had passed at all. For the human mind, everything became one endless day of survival. And the most terrifying part was this: Over time, people slowly became used to living in that state, as if it were the new normal. Some soldiers during the war slept for only a few minutes at a time. During intense battles, people had almost no opportunity to rest. They fell asleep inside trenches, beside explosions, surrounded by mud, cold, and constant noise. Sometimes a soldier slept for only a few minutes, and even that was enough for the body to recover slightly.

[00:10:09]The brain became so exhausted that men could fall asleep almost instantly. Some soldiers even slept while sitting upright, still holding their weapons in their hands, because their bodies could no longer endure the exhaustion. Some people during the war were never able to sleep normally again. After months of bombings and constant fear, the human brain became conditioned to expect danger every second. Even years after the war had ended, people still woke up from loud noises, dropped to the floor after sudden bangs, or panicked to the sound of an aircraft overhead. Many suffered from constant nightmares in which they found themselves back on the front lines or trapped beneath another bombing raid. But the most terrifying part was this: For some people, the war ended only on paper. Inside their minds, it continued for decades.