265
votes
Accepted
Did the Nazis kill Jews with gas chambers?
The statements of Robert Faurisson plainly contradict and ignore a vast body of primary sources and academic research on the topic. Some of the documents that address the use of gas chambers by the ...
- 10.8k
151
votes
Did eight Jesuit priests survive the nuking of Hiroshima without serious injury?
Yes, they survived the blast. No, their survival was not unexplainable.
The Jesuits are at two locations: They reside at Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Nagatsuke two kilometers from the edge of ...
- 5,419
143
votes
Accepted
Did Obama defy precedent by not visiting the D-Day monument?
No, he did not.
Snopes says:
In fact, any public presidential activity paying tribute to fallen U.S. and Allied soldiers on the anniversary of D-Day has been an exception rather than the rule in ...
tim♦
- 51.9k
126
votes
Did Obama defy precedent by not visiting the D-Day monument?
The daily schedules of past US presidents are, in many cases, publicly available. So just for completeness, let's try to collect a list of what the sitting President was doing on June 6 of every year....
109
votes
Did the Nazis kill Jews with gas chambers?
Regarding the claims of Robert Faurisson,
Gas chambers: Rudolf Höß, the Auschwitz Kommandant swore in an affidavit that Zyklon-B was dropped into the death chamber through a small opening.
Referring ...
- 22.7k
92
votes
Accepted
Did the Allies reverse the threads on secret microfilm-hiding buttons to thwart the Germans?
This claim appears to have been distorted from an original about hidden compasses, not microfilm. The compass version has been confirmed by the British Military intelligence officer responsible, ...
- 106k
91
votes
Accepted
Does the "survivorship bias" airplane diagram come from World War II research on returning war planes?
You can just look at the Wikipedia page for the very same image, and find the following information:
Description English: Illustration of hypothetical damage pattern on a WW2 bomber. Based on a ...
- 2,033
89
votes
Accepted
Did WWII Japanese soldiers engage in cannibalism of their enemies?
I'd like to note that this answer contains mentions of particular instances of cannibalism, and while no unnecessary details have been included, it may still be upsetting to some people.
Yes, ...
- 11.1k
64
votes
Was the German V2 rocket the only weapon whose production killed more than its use?
Q.1: This struck me as a fairly extreme claim. Is it true that the V2 production killed more than its use?
In all likelihood, yes. The director of the Mittelbau-Dora commemoration site is quoted ...
- 44.1k
63
votes
Accepted
Did Truman say this about helping whichever of Germany and Russia were losing during the war?
Yes, in so far as he allegedly told these lines a reporter from the New York Times and was then quoted in that way in the New York Times.
The sought snippet reads as (image slightly manipulated to ...
- 44.1k
59
votes
Accepted
Did a million Germans die after World War 2 in "Eisenhower's death camps"?
Most likely, no: that number is not correct.
The article that you link to appears to be a re-published 1989 article by Canadian writer James Bacque. In the book Other Losses published in the same year,...
- 9,539
55
votes
Did eight Jesuit priests survive the nuking of Hiroshima without serious injury?
There were 4 priests at the closest location to ground zero, but they were 1,400 yards from ground zero according to John Hersey's 1946 book Hiroshima . Other people (non-priests) survived being as ...
- 106k
50
votes
Accepted
Was plastic from a seaplane shot down in 1944 recently found in an albatross stomach?
There are earlier sources and more information about this story.
The 23 April 2006 Pacific Northwest Sunday Magazine published by the Seattle Times says:
Take a piece of plastic marked "VP-101&...
- 106k
47
votes
Did New York Times post this Hitler apology stating Jews baited the Nazis by trying to fight back on June 15, 1934?
Thanks to Laurel for locating the original article. As we can see, the quoted text did appear in the New York Times on June 15, 1934. I wanted to point out some important context that makes the ...
- 9,325
42
votes
Accepted
Is "Syphilis: All of these men have it" a WWII propaganda poster?
A google search for "All of these men have it" "Stay away from dance halls" mainly got web 2.0 user generated content websites such as reddit and pinterest. I came across a thesis, but it gave a ...
- 38.9k
35
votes
Accepted
Did besieged Russians eat 'library candy' made from boiled down book binding glue?
I think the author did derive this from a real description of "candy." However, I find no support for the novel's depiction of Leningrad's books being decimated by people eating the bindings....
- 44.9k
34
votes
Accepted
Did New York Times post this Hitler apology stating Jews baited the Nazis by trying to fight back on June 15, 1934?
As the source of the image says, it’s from the June 15, 1934 issue of The New York Times. Here’s a screenshot of the article, "URGES GOOD WILL BY JEWS FOR NAZIS" by Henry J. Cadbury the ...
- 30.8k
33
votes
Accepted
Did 57% of people in France believe that the USSR contributed the most to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945?
Yes, it is true
This document (PDF, in french) is a summary of the recent and previous polling by IFOP, written by IFOP and hosted on their website. Page 5 has the question, and a table with answers ...
- 691
28
votes
Did the Allies reverse the threads on secret microfilm-hiding buttons to thwart the Germans?
I also read almost exactly this as a child, circa 50 years ago, in Of Spies and Stratagems (1963) by Stanley P Lovell, who was the head of the US's Office of Strategic Services R&D division:
...
- 380
25
votes
Accepted
Is this a photo of the result of a kamikaze attack on a ship in WWII?
According to Pacific Wrecks, a non-profit organization devoted to sharing information about the Pacific Theater of World War II and the Korean War, it does. The image description reads as:
HMS ...
- 30.3k
24
votes
Accepted
Did the No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron score the most kills in the Battle of Britain?
Per Kenneth K. Koskodan in the book 'No greater ally the untold story of Poland forces in World war II' chapter titled 'On the Wings of Eagles', "the most victorious fighter squadron of the Battle of ...
- 22.7k
23
votes
Accepted
Did Soviet soldiers commit two million rapes of German women in 1945?
I think the problem here is not so much the issue in and of itself, but the numbers. With the German authorities deposed and the Allied (especially Soviet) authorities not really being trusted by the ...
- 19k
22
votes
Does plutonium exist in the world, apart from being manufactured?
Two billion years ago, conditions in an ore body in present-day Gabon were suitable for the creation of naturally-occurring fission reactors, based on the fission of U-235, which at the time made up 3%...
- 369
18
votes
Accepted
Do only 49% of Americans know which country bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Richard Shenkman is taking his information from the 1997 book What Americans Know about Politics and why it Matters, and has corrected the statement in the 2010 version of his book.
The 1997 book ...
- 106k
17
votes
Accepted
Did Gen. Patton say "We defeated the wrong enemy?"
It is at least an accurate paraphrase:
The 1975 Bodyguard of Lies Volume II says:
Patton was relieved of command of the 3rd Army by Eisenhower just after the end of the war for stating publicly ...
- 106k
17
votes
Secret instructions for the German submarines for the cruise to Agartha, a hidden land in the Antarctic. Are they authentic?
No.
This is at first glance a quite elaborate but then on only slighty closer inspection quite sloppy fake in all respect.
Other versions of the same scam in varying qualities, click to enlarge:
...
- 44.1k
15
votes
Did 40% of the NKVD (Soviet police) leadership have Jewish nationality?
This is an at one time accurate and still highly misleading number. The total numbers and ratios of Jews in that organisation varied enormously. While true for at 'the highest point', this point is ...
- 44.1k
14
votes
Accepted
Did Germans receive corn instead of wheat and rye after WW2 due to a translation error?
Yes, they did, as far as I can tell.
I was looking for references to this in German media/academic publications, but could not find much.
I could however find this article from the archives of "Die ...
- 944
14
votes
Does plutonium exist in the world, apart from being manufactured?
I assume "the world" means Earth. It is likely that somewhere in the universe where a supernova (or a neutron star merger, see comment) has recently occurred during which the r-process prevailed, ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible