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  • 2022-11-07 (xsd:date)
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  • Musk Tweets Photo of Nazi Soldier Carrying Homing Pigeons (en)
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  • On Nov. 7, 2022, Elon Musk tweeted a meme that showed a picture of a soldier wearing a cage of carrier pigeons on his back, kind of like a backpack. They're sometimes referred to as homing pigeons. Soon after, users identified the photograph as showing a soldier with the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany during World War II. The image posted by Musk said, 3 Unread Messages, a joke that acted as if the pigeons in the cages represented unread emails or Twitter notifications. Musk captioned the image as, How times have changed. For any readers not keeping up with Musk's first few weeks as the new owner of Twitter, this referenced that he had indicated that he was inundated with messages. Days earlier, he had changed his Twitter bio to read, somewhat in jest, Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator. In this story, we've laid out a summarized history of the many thousands of pigeons and falcons that were said to have been an important part of the war effort. Several users replied to Musk and pointed out that the photograph showed a soldier with the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany. One helpful Twitter user pointed to the Getty Images media licensing website, where an official caption could be found. It read as follows: A German Wehrmacht soldier carries a cage of carrier pigeons used for relaying messages on the western front during the German invasion of France, known as the Battle of France, in World War II, circa May 1940. Despite the joke meme that mentioned 3 Unread Messages, it's possible that the pigeons seen in the picture were on standby to be outgoing, not incoming, messengers. We found no further information about the specific pigeons in the photograph. On July 24, 1945, the Dayton Journal in Ohio published an article from The Associated Press that described the efforts made by pigeons and falcons during World War II. The article, which before now had never been transcribed for online reading, showed the headline, Carrier Pigeons, Dive Bombing Hawks Played Big Role in Allied Victory. The story described the fact that between 50,000 and 75,000 birds were in military service in the U.K. alone, and that carrier pigeons and dive bombing hawks played a tremendous part in the allied victory over Germany. According to the article, many important German messages were taken off Nazi pigeons 'shot down' by a specially trained flock of falcons attached to the RAF (Royal Air Force), which also maintained a large pigeon 'air force' of its own throughout the war. We took specific note of two words in the article: suspicious pigeons. The 1945 article from The Associated Press detailed two specific pigeons that performed incredible feats. Perhaps even more remarkable, we stumbled upon another fascinating story about a pigeon that carried a message for six years. On Sept. 6, 1949, Reuters reported, Nazi Carrier Pigeon Takes Long Way Home. Another interesting story about one of the pigeons from WWII was described in this video report from CBS This Morning. (en)
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