The Nazi Legacy: 35 Shocking Facts About Hitler’s Regime

More high-ranking Nazi officers died in the Czechoslovakian car Tatra 77a and Tatra 87 than in active combat, prompting Hitler to ban his officers from driving them. It was nicknamed the “Czech secret weapon” by the Allied forces. These high-ranking Nazi officers drove this car fast but unfortunately, the handling was rubbish, so at a sharp turn, they would lose control, spin out and wrap themselves around a tree killing the driver more often than not.

2. Lionel Royce was an Austrian actor who lost his job for being Jewish in Nazi Germany. He then went to the Alps, grew a beard, and bleached all of his hair, head, and body, by bathing every ten days in diluted hydrogen peroxide. He returned to the stage claiming to be Kaspar Brandhofer, a self-taught peasant actor and was praised by the Nazis as “proof of the superiority of Aryan blood.”

3. Werner Goldberg was a blond-haired blue-eyed German soldier who was used in Nazi propaganda and recruiting as the “ideal German Soldier.” He was later dismissed as he was found to be part Jewish.

4. Before Paris was liberated from the Nazis, Hitler ordered military governor Dietrich von Choltitzthe to demolish the Eiffel Tower and other major landmarks. He refused this direct order, and surrendered to the Allies instead, saving the tower.

5. The head of the Nazi SA “brownshirt” paramilitary group was gay. He appointed other gays to prominent Nazi SA positions and was so close to Hitler, he was the only person who called him by nicknames like “Adi” instead of “Mein Fuhrer.”

Nazi physicists rejected Einstein’s theory of relativity as “Jewish science.”

7. Hitler’s Third Reich awarded a gold, diamond-engraved Cross of the German Mother to women upon the birth of their thirteenth child.

8. When France was occupied by the Germans in 1940, Citroen was forced to produce vehicles for the Nazis. To sabotage production, workers were instructed to move the fill line on their oil dipsticks lower, causing the trucks to seize under stress from low oil.

9. The Nazis considered Native Americans to be part of the Aryan race.

10. Henry Ford was an anti-semite and a Nazi supporter and used his company, money, and influence to spread and legitimize antisemitic views. He blamed every national problem on Jews, from strikes to depressions, and received the “Grand Cross of the German Eagle” from the Nazis in 1938.

In the 1950s, more than 77% of all German government officials and judges were (former) Nazis, which is an even higher percentage than during the actual Third Reich itself.

12. Nazi leader Hermann Göring once claimed “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You may call me Meyer.” This would later come back to haunt him as Allied bombers devastated Germany and citizens began to call him “Meyer.”

13. Hitler and his architect Albert Speer believed in the “Ruin Value” of buildings. He aimed for every building that the Third Reich built to have aesthetically pleasing ruins 1000 years from their completion.

14. During the Night of the Long Knives, the Nazis accidentally killed a music critic called Willi Schmid, when their intended target had been someone with a similar surname. A few days after his death, Rudolf Hess visited Willi’s widow and apologized for the mistake, and offered her a pension.

15. When the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars during World War 2, it backfired. Doing so increased sympathy for the Jews, who were (contrary to Nazi propaganda) obviously not responsible for how badly the war was going. People began tipping hats to Jews as a symbol of anti-German resistance.

Designer Coco Chanel was a Nazi spy and was directly involved in a plan for the Third Reich to take control of Madrid during World War 2.

17. Atheism was banned within the Nazi SS. All SS men were required to list themselves as Protestant, Catholic or “believer in God.”

18. Stella Kübler was a German Jewish who collaborated with the Nazis in hunting down thousands of hiding Jews even after the Nazis killed her parents. The Nazis called her “blonde poison.” After the war, she converted to Christianity and became an open anti-Semite.

19. The fuel for each of Nazi Germany’s V2 rockets was made from 30 tons of potatoes.

20. At the Dachau Concentration Camp, the Nazis conducted experiments on how to make seawater drinkable. So they forced approximately 90 Gypsy inmates to drink nothing but seawater just to see what would happen. The resulting dehydration was so severe that inmates licked newly mopped floors just to get a single drop of freshwater.

It was the Third Reich who devised the idea of carrying the Olympic torch through a relay system.

22. Karl Plagge was a Wehrmacht Nazi officer who used his position to try and save 1240 Jews in Lithuania from Nazi extermination. At his trial, he did not speak in his own defense because he blamed himself for not doing enough. In 2005, he was awarded “Righteous Among the Nations.”

23. The Nazis introduced malaria-carrying mosquitos to Italy during World War 2 as revenge after Italy changed sides, causing a 7-year long outbreak in the region.

24. Nazi doctor Josef Mengele sewed two twins together back to back in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children died of gangrene after several days of suffering.

25. The only known armed Nazi military operation on North American soil, in October of 1943, was the installation of Weather Station Kurt by a German U-boat team in Newfoundland. It was accidentally discovered in 1977.