8 Shocking Crimes That Were Secretly Committed By Governments

6. Operation Himmler

Whilst the principal point of the Nuremberg trials was to prosecute the remaining high-ranking figures of the Nazi Germany for the war crimes of the Second World War, an unexpected side-effect was the number of plots it exposed. With war an inevitability, and Hitler keen to make the first moves, a campaign of national and international propaganda was launched by the Nazis.

In it they accused Polish authorities of ethnically cleansing Germans living in Poland. However this alone wasn't enough to justify a full military invasion. On August 31st, under cover of darkness, SS personnel disguised as members of the Polish Army began to storm German border towns; attacking a number of train stations and customs houses. Finally, a radio station in the city of Gleiwitz was hijacked and began broadcasting anti-German messages. When the authorities turned up, they found a number of dead Polish soldiers at the scene - in fact already dead Polish occupants of a nearby concentration camp who had been dressed up to appear like members of the military.

The German press proudly displayed the images of these dead Polish soldiers and, with the world happy to accept that Germany had a justifiable reason to defend its borders, Hitler ordered the invasion the very next day. Officially recognised as the very first maneuver of the Second World War, the entire premise for the attack was exposed six years later.