I love reading about WWII stuff. So many weird things went on that we knew nothing of, particularily those of us not born yet.
I remember reading about the Fermi Manhattan project- they had no idea that the nuclear reaction would stop for certain, but they went ahead with it anyway. They used dead bodies to try and plant false info with the enemy and pretended to be amassing an invasion platform in Coventry (I think it was, anyway) using blow-up fake tanks and planes, while all the time they were actually prepping the real invasion force elsewhere. Wartime can be an incredibly- and horrifyingly- innovative time.