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Some questions from the Great War may never be answered. Join us as we count down the most baffling unsolved mysteries of World War One, from vanishing soldiers and ghost sightings to serial killers and lost treasure that's never been found! Let us know which surprised you the most!
Transcript
00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at mysteries from the First World War that we still have no reasonable
00:07answers to.
00:08I think it's a lot easier to put a label, such as the Bermuda Triangle, as the prime suspect for
00:16any kind of crime or any kind of loss.
00:19The artist behind the JM sketches.
00:22These sketchbooks are the key to a mystery nearly a century old.
00:26This is a representation of the crest of the Royal Regiment of Artillery.
00:32A pair of initials became the only clue to an unidentified wartime artist.
00:37During the First World War, a soldier using JM filled two sketchbooks with around 130 watercolors and drawings while serving
00:47in France and Belgium.
00:48His work captured soldiers, daily life, and the grim realities of the front, including scenes around the battlegrounds of Ypres
00:55and Menin.
00:56The sketchbooks will be on display starting in November.
00:58A chance for the public to see this remarkable piece of history firsthand.
01:04The albums were preserved by the University of Victoria, but his full name remained unknown.
01:10Clues suggest he served with the Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery and dedicated the books to a daughter named
01:16Adele.
01:17Yet no definitive identity has emerged.
01:19More than a century later, his art survives in full color, attached to a remarkable collection, and we're left wondering.
01:27We have on the dedication page his initials, which are JM, and indeed he signs his works in the same
01:35way.
01:36Kinmel Park Mutiny.
01:3742 had to sleep in a hut meant for 30, so they took turns sleeping on the floor with one
01:42blanket each.
01:43The war was already over when the shooting started.
01:46It was March 1919, and thousands of Canadian troops were still stranded at Kinmel Park, waiting for ships home that
01:54never seemed to come.
01:55Frustration over delays, poor conditions, and shortages of food erupted into two days of rioting.
02:02So it gradually builds up.
02:04Any one of those issues could have caused an upset.
02:08The combination was absolutely, as it turned out, lethal.
02:12Five Canadian soldiers were killed, and 23 wounded by their own side.
02:18Of 78 men arrested, 25 were convicted of mutiny.
02:22But no investigation ever pinned down exactly who fired the fatal shots, or why.
02:28Four of the dead were buried at St. Margaret's Church in Bodle-Widon, while one of them was shipped home
02:33to Canada instead.
02:34The full story was never settled.
02:36World War I was over, but these men still didn't survive it.
02:40Was the Kaiser mentally unstable?
02:43Wilhelm would have carried an inferiority complex.
02:47I mean, he wasn't loved by his mum as much as, say, his brothers and sisters.
02:52He'd had this very harsh upbringing.
02:55This manifested itself in what seemed like superiority complex.
03:01Wilhelm II became one of the most controversial figures of the First World War.
03:06But another debate followed him into exile.
03:08Was the German Kaiser actually suffering from a mental disorder?
03:13After his abdication in 1918, psychiatrists, doctors, and writers published competing assessments of his personality and state of mind.
03:22Some described severe mental exhaustion or alleged megalomania, while later writers proposed modern diagnoses like bipolar disorder.
03:30All guilt was placed on the head of the Kaiser.
03:34And there were calls to have him put on trial.
03:37Even calls for him to be hanged as well.
03:39Hang the Kaiser was shouted through the streets of London, I think.
03:44Yet none had personally examined him, making the claims impossible to verify as clinical diagnoses.
03:50Historians also note that these judgments were shaped by post-war arguments over German responsibility for the conflict.
03:58So the real mystery isn't what was wrong with the erratic Wilhelm.
04:01It's whether we can trust anyone who claimed to know.
04:04And that's tricky.
04:06Perhaps Scott has not forgotten me after all.
04:10What happened to the 5th Norfolk Regiment?
04:12What are you guys doing?
04:13No, I'm going for the neck tomorrow.
04:15The neck?
04:16Yeah.
04:17I reckon the Turks have got machine guns everywhere.
04:18Yeah, my ship's guns are going to knock them out before we go.
04:21Gallipoli produced plenty of battlefield mysteries, but few became as famous as the disappearance of the 1-5th Norfolk Regiment.
04:29On August 12th, 1915, the battalion advanced across Sulva Plain and became separated from supporting units.
04:35Later accounts claimed the men vanished into a strange cloud.
04:39The reality appears less supernatural.
04:42What are we going to tell mother, Uncle Frank?
04:44I don't know, brother.
04:46What are we going to say?
04:47All right!
04:47The battalion had pushed into scrubland that caught fire around them as Turkish gunfire closed in.
04:54A graves registration officer found roughly 180 bodies near a farm in 1919.
05:00122 of them confirmed Norfolk's.
05:03That strongly supported the conclusion that many were killed during the attack or its aftermath,
05:08although the fate of every missing soldier was never fully established.
05:12That battlefield disaster has remained one of the war's most enduring mysteries.
05:17The warrior sank in the dust and his armor fell around him.
05:22Blood stained the gold of his hair.
05:25He is as a handsome tree that stands against each blast of wind and blossoms thickly with white flowers.
05:33Flaming onions.
05:34What looked like a supernatural weapon to First World War pilots was actually an ingenious piece of German artillery.
05:42The flaming onions appeared as glowing projectiles that seemed to twist through the sky and chase aircraft.
05:48Their strange appearance came from a 5-barrel 37mm revolving gun known as the Leichtspucher, or light spitter.
05:57It fired flares in rapid succession, creating the illusion that several glowing rounds were moving together.
06:04Aircraft were often fabric-covered and poorly protected, so the effect was more than frightening.
06:09Pilots also had little experience with rapid anti-aircraft fire and struggled to understand what they were seeing.
06:17The mystery was eventually solved, but the nickname never died.
06:21A century later, we still call them flaming onions.
06:24Who fired the first shot?
06:26Asking who fired the first shot of World War I, and the answer depends entirely on which war you mean.
06:33Fighting between Austria-Hungary and Serbia began on July 28th, 1914, when Belgrade was shelled after war was declared.
06:42Australia has its own claim.
06:44According to them, it was on August 5th, when Fort Nepean fired across the bow of the fleeing German ship
06:51SS Faltz.
06:52It's often called the first Allied shot fired anywhere.
06:55Britain's first firing on the Western Front came later, on August 22nd.
07:00Corporal Ernest Edward Thomas reportedly fired at German cavalry near Castaux.
07:05Which one counts could be whether we mean the first shot overall, British army shot, or Australian shot.
07:12Pinning it down is complicated, depending on who you ask.
07:16Conspiracy of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination.
07:19Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, together with his wife, has just escaped a first assassination attempt.
07:27They stop at City Hall to protest vehemently.
07:33These are the last images of the couple.
07:35The assassination in Sarajevo is often presented as a straightforward story about Gavrilo Princip pulling the trigger, with the Black
07:43Hand helping make it possible.
07:45The deeper conspiracy is far murkier.
07:48Black Hand members and Serbian military intelligence figures helped move weapons and conspirators into Bosnia.
07:55Then, Colonel Dragotin Dmitrievich, known as Apis, was later accused of orchestrating the entire plot.
08:02When word leaked that Franz Ferdinand would be visiting the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, the Black Hand swung into action.
08:10It recruited a group of Bosnian-Serb college dropouts, and armed them with pistols, bombs, and cyanide capsules to swallow
08:19if captured.
08:20The problem is determining how far that knowledge reached inside Serbia's government.
08:25Prime Minister Nikola Pazic reportedly heard whispers of an assassination plot, and sent Austria-Hungary a warning, one too vague
08:33to change anything.
08:35Apis later confessed to masterminding it all at his 1917 trial.
08:39But, historians argue whether that confession was true, or if he was just protecting someone above him.
08:46Identity of the Unknown Soldier
09:15The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was designed to represent thousands of men whose identities could never be recovered, but
09:22even its creation contains questions.
09:25In 1921, the United States selected four unidentified American servicemen from four cemeteries in France.
09:32Their records were searched to ensure there were no clues to their identities, and none existed.
09:38The caskets were then rearranged before Sergeant Edward Younger made the final selection at random.
09:43A thorough internal review was commissioned by then Secretary of Defense William Cohen.
09:49The investigation unearths the inventory of items from the Saigon mortuary that were initially paired with the remnants.
09:56This compelling evidence, combined with sensational media coverage, leads Cohen to exhume the remains of the Vietnam Unknown and order
10:04a DNA test.
10:05The chosen soldier was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, while the other three were reburied without identifying details.
10:13Modern DNA technology has since identified other World War I unknowns elsewhere, yet the Arlington Unknown was deliberately selected from
10:21remains believed to be beyond identification, and that anonymity has never been overturned.
10:26For me, it represents all soldiers past, present, and future, and it states that we will never forget their honor
10:33and everything that they did for this country.
10:36The Lost Battalion's pigeon share a me.
10:39Don't worry, sir. This is a good little English carrier pigeon. I'll tell him where we are.
10:45Around 550 American soldiers were trapped in the Argonne Forest in October 1918, and their own artillery was mistakenly shelling
10:54them.
10:54Major Charles Whittlesey had one option left – a carrier pigeon. Nearly every bird in his unit had already been
11:01killed.
11:01The one that survived, though severely injured, delivered Whittlesey's message and helped save 194 men.
11:21That pigeon became famously known as Cher Ami, and after the war, his preserved body was placed on display at
11:29the Smithsonian.
11:30But there's a catch – multiple pigeons were sent out that day, and the surviving wartime records are too messy
11:36to conclusively identify which bird made the famous journey.
11:40So while the rescue happened, nobody can say for certain that the displayed pigeon is actually Cher Ami.
11:46The Vanishing of the Zabrina's Crew
11:49There was this ghost ship called the Zabrina, British cargo ship, holding coal.
11:56A ship can survive completely and still leave behind an unsolvable mystery.
12:02In October 1917, the British sailing barge Zabrina left Falmouth for France, carrying coal and a crew of five.
12:10Two days later, she was discovered aground near Cherbourg, with her cargo aboard and only minor disarray to her rigging.
12:18The crew, including Captain Martin, had vanished without a trace.
12:22There wasn't any sign of struggle, wreckage, or even a body.
12:26One theory says a German U-boat pulled the men aboard before being forced to leave the area.
12:31Another suggests they were simply washed overboard in a sudden squall, and the empty ship sailed on without them.
12:37With the Zabrina itself enduring, the missing men became the real mystery, and their fate is still unknown.
12:44The Enigma of the Celtic Wood
12:46In October 1917, the 10th Battalion of the 1st Australian Division fought German forces in the Celtic Wood in West
12:54Flanders, Belgium, as part of the Battle of Pol Capel.
12:57However, out of the 85 soldiers that entered the forest, 37 of them were never seen again, and seemingly vanished
13:04into thin air.
13:04The lack of accurate recordings and misinterpretation of what happened added fuel to this mysterious fire.
13:10While some chalk it up to supernatural occurrences, others believe the 37 soldiers were slain in the battle and deposited
13:17into a hidden mass grave.
13:19In 2008, researchers Robert Kearney and Chris Henschke claimed the soldiers were obliterated by shelling, with no identifiable remains left
13:28behind.
13:28And the boys said, Charlie was reading a letter from home, and a shell came over, we couldn't find enough
13:38of Charlie to bury him.
13:41But so that you see, that war, war is hell on earth.
13:45The fate of the USS Cyclops
13:48One of the most enduring stories of the Bermuda Triangle is the disappearance of the USS Cyclops in 1918.
13:56In February 1918, US Navy ship the USS Cyclops left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, carrying 306 passengers and crew, along
14:06with a cargo of manganese ore.
14:07Concerns arose that the vessel was overloaded, which prompted an unscheduled stop in Barbados.
14:13Following a seemingly uneventful assessment, it resumed its journey bound for Baltimore, Maryland.
14:18Yet by March, the Cyclops hadn't arrived.
14:21Nothing is heard from the ship.
14:24There's no sightings.
14:27There's no radio communication.
14:30The ship was never seen again.
14:33The ship, its cargo, and all souls aboard were determined to have been inexplicably lost at sea.
14:39German records show they weren't involved, despite their presence in the West Indies.
14:43Other theories suggest the ship either succumbed to a storm, disappeared within the fabled Bermuda Triangle,
14:49or that its captain was a German sympathizer who handed them the Cyclops.
14:53It was difficult for somebody to understand how such a massive vessel, so many people, so much volume of metal,
15:04could just disappear off the face of the Earth.
15:07The specter of Ypres.
15:08After six weeks, we were informed that they were going to be posted overseas.
15:13They said you're leaving tomorrow morning for an unknown destination.
15:17You were never told where you were heading for.
15:20In December 1915, Lieutenant William Speight sat in the trenches in Ypres, Belgium.
15:26The location was infamous for the brutal fighting which claimed approximately one million lives, including an unnamed friend of Speight.
15:33When the lieutenant looked up as someone approached, he was startled to see the ghost of his fallen friend.
15:39The next night, Speight brought another officer who also saw the specter.
15:43The ghost pointed towards an area on the floor of the dugout before vanishing.
15:47Acting on the spectral guidance, Speight and other soldiers excavated the area.
15:51They found a tunnel created by the Germans below them that was filled with explosives, which were quickly diffused.
15:57This possible apparition saved many lives that night.
16:00We were expecting to get it pretty rough, but we never thought we were going to get it quite like
16:04we did.
16:05The lost treasure of the Tsars.
16:06If you're fascinated by stories of royalty and royal power, there's nowhere better than this.
16:12With World War I dominating everyone's attention, in Russia, a revolution was underway to remove the monarch.
16:18To keep the country's gold reserves out of Bolshevik hands, Tsar Nicholas II had the White Army move it from
16:24St. Petersburg to Kazan, then to Siberia.
16:26Eventually, the Bolsheviks' Red Army got their hands on the treasure.
16:30Yet, when they returned to Kazan, a large portion was missing, valued at a possible $80 billion today.
16:37It hasn't been recovered since.
16:38One theory states that Czechian soldiers hid the missing gold when they returned it to the Bolsheviks.
16:43However, while transporting it, the train derailed and sank in Lake Bakal, along with its riches.
16:49Another idea is that it's buried near train tracks in Serbia.
16:53There was so much Russian art, and you could argue that in fact Russia had plundered all Europe in the
16:5718th century.
16:58The Leaning Virgin, one of the most prized possessions of Albert France, was the Golden Virgin sculpture atop the Basilica
17:05of Our Lady of Bribiere.
17:07In 1915, as the Allied forces fought Germany to take back the town, the church was heavily damaged, causing the
17:15Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ statue to lean excessively.
17:17A superstition emerged amongst soldiers on both sides that the war would end when the sculpture fell.
17:24In April 1918, an intense skirmish between the British and Germans eventually caused the sculpture to fall.
17:30Only a few months later, the war was over.
17:32However, the fallen Golden Virgin disappeared in the fight and hasn't been seen since.
17:37A new version was recast and put on the Basilica in 1929.
17:41Nurse Margaret Maul's Suitcase
17:43These nurses, or VADs as they became known, after the voluntary aid detachments they had joined, were often from sheltered
17:51middle and upper class families.
17:53With only basic first aid training, it was a shock to find themselves suddenly nursing and comforting men close to
17:59death.
18:00In 2013, the Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, found a suitcase in the psychology department that appeared to belong to
18:08World War I nurse Margaret Maul.
18:10But what makes it strange is that Maul has no recorded connection to the university, and little is known about
18:16her.
18:16Within the case were faded photographs, a newspaper article she wrote, and her diary dating back to 1914.
18:22In the diary, Maul detailed her reluctance to treat injured Germans at the Dartford War Hospital in Kent, England, as
18:29her brother was killed by one in the war.
18:31But over time, her writings indicated those feelings diluted, as she treated both German and Allied soldiers.
18:37The case also had a book that contained autographs and sketches by her patients.
18:42The End of John Parr.
18:56In 1912, teenager John Parr lied about his age to join the British Army.
19:01By August 1914, he was working as a scout for the 4th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment.
19:07The Private and another soldier were sent on bicycles to gather information on the German forces in Auberg, Belgium.
19:14However, exactly what happened here is unknown.
19:16This is John.
19:18And John was in the Middlesex Regiment before the First World War, and he comes across with the British Expeditionary
19:23Force.
19:23And they're searching for the Germans here in Belgium, near the Belgian town of Mons.
19:28One eyewitness claimed Parr held off the Germans to allow his fellow scout to escape, before getting shot.
19:34This is a version of events most believed, making Parr the first British fatality of the war.
19:40However, another theory cast doubt on the presence of a German battalion in the area.
19:45Instead, claiming Parr met his end from friendly fire during the Battle of Mons.
19:50John is killed in action, and he becomes the very first British combat casualty on the Western Front, dying on
19:57the 21st of August 1914.
19:59The fall of the Red Baron.
20:01Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
20:04He's the most famous fighter pilot of all time.
20:07In World War I, he downed 80 Allied aircraft, before he too was shot out of the sky.
20:13In the history of fighter pilots, one of the best to take to the skies was Manfred von Richthofen, nicknamed
20:19the Red Baron.
20:20After all, he's credited with 80 air battle victories and led the famed Flying Circus Unit.
20:26But in April 1918, the 25-year-old was shot down near Vosiersomme, France, and didn't survive.
20:33Yet, the exact circumstances of his final flight remain a mystery.
20:37On the fateful day, he was in the air fighting Canadian pilots in the British Royal Air Force.
20:42A single bullet seemingly struck the German hero, causing his demise.
20:46But where it came from is up for debate.
20:49While the RAF attributes it to one Canadian pilot, others claim it came from anti-aircraft weaponry firing from the
20:56ground.
20:57Gunner Robert Buey, this is following from General Rawlinson, begins,
21:02Please convey to the 53rd Battery, 5th Division, my best thanks and congratulations on having brought down the celebrated German
21:10aviator.
21:11And that's all the proof you need.
21:12That's all the proof I need.
21:14The angels of moons.
21:15It's August 22, 1914, and World War I is just two weeks old, as the British forces are on their
21:23way to assist the French military in their defense against the advancing German army.
21:28In August 1914, the vastly outnumbered British army had the impossible task of holding the German forces at Mons, Belgium.
21:36Yet somehow, rather than being overwhelmed and destroyed, the British managed to resist the Germans before they eventually retreated.
21:43According to some who witnessed the combat, this was due to supernatural intervention.
21:48And it gave rise to one of the most famous stories of the war.
21:52The miracle of how they were rescued by heavenly guardians, the angels of Mons, blocking the Germans' path and guiding
22:01our boys to safety.
22:03Following the battle, Arthur Macken, inspired by these tales, published The Bowmen, which involved ghostly archers helping the British.
22:11Although Macken clarified that his work was fictional, rumors of specters and angels supporting the Allied forces soon began to
22:18spread, boosting morale among soldiers and civilians in the UK.
22:22Even years later, former soldiers spoke about the angels that saved them to their descendants.
22:27The apparition stunned the German troops.
22:29The sun went dark, and a deadly rain of arrows fell apart.
22:34The Vanishing of Bela Kiss.
22:36July 29th, 1916.
22:39Three soldiers were to confiscate gasoline barrels on Bela Kiss property for war use.
22:45What they discovered in the barrels was not gasoline.
22:48In 1916, the owner of a house near Budapest, Hungary, wanted to renovate the property previously rented to Bela Kiss.
22:56Kiss had been conscripted into the army for World War I, leaving the property empty.
23:01However, upon investigation, workers discovered several metal drums containing human remains.
23:07They had stumbled upon a serial killer who had taken the lives of over 24 people.
23:12With that, the hunt was on to find Kiss amid the chaos of war.
23:16Police eventually traced him to a Serbian hospital, but upon their arrival, he had vanished, leaving behind a deceased soldier
23:24in his bed.
23:25After Kiss's escape, sightings of him sprung up across Europe, and even in New York City, but he was never
23:31seen again.
23:32Which of these World War I mysteries baffles you?
23:35Let us know in the comments section!