The future of Poland will be on the agenda at the Yalta Conference early next month. Indy and Sparty will be covering those discussions, so stay tuned for more.
Yay! I'm glad you guys were able to cover the creation of the 5 star US rank this week. I wish you guys were able to talk more about Fleet Admiral and FDR's Chief of Staff William D. Leahy though. He hasn't been talked about really at all during the series which doesn't put you guys out of the norm as Leahy is almost always overlooked. But he really should be given SO MUCH more attention by everyone doing a history of WW2 that involves covering the US. Perhaps a special can be done on him called "The Real President of the United States"? Because in reality it is Leahy who is acting as the President during WW2 through FDR when it comes to anything to do with the war (which is of course the vast majority of the attention of the office of the President from 1939 forward). It is so often forgotten that FDR has no military experience. So to FDR's credit when it comes to any military decisions that he as the President has to make he leans on Leahy to give him the answer that he should go with. Leahy's specialty was in the grad tactical decisions of war. So anything to do with sourcing of war materials, production and creation of weapons, recruiting and training recruits, anything to do with logistics and much more would have the input of Leahy in it. Leahy did such a good job during WW2 he is never even given any criticism which is incredibly rare for officers during WW2 today as they are all given criticism today by armchair generals acting with the benefit of hindsight criticising decisions those heros made in the midst of the largest and most important war in human history. 2 other things also. I know it isn't your quote but saying MacArthur abandoned his troops in the Philippines is a pretty ridiculous quote for any historian to make I think. He didn't abandon his troops in the Philippines AT ALL. He was at first told to leave the Philippines but refused to do so saying his fate would be the same as his soldiers. He said he was willing to stay and fight to the death. And you can look at MacArthur's actions throughout his career, he was clearly not afraid of death. The man was nominated of the Medal of Honor THREE times. MacArthur only left the Philippines after FDR ORDERED him to do so and explained how his death or capture by the Japanese would have been a MASSIVE morale hit to not just the United States but all of the Allied nations (especially Australia) as MacArthur during the early years of the war was by far the most known officer of the Western Nations in the world. And then second thing, am I misremembering, I thought you said last week that there would be further coverage/follow-up on what happened after Montgomery's talk he had with the media where he tried to make it sound like he was a major player in the Battle of the Bulge and that his British troops played a major action in the fight. Maybe you guys will talk about it next week? Because it was a pretty big issue that talk he had with the media. Many AMerican officers threatened to resign if something wasn't done about what Montgomery did and it resulted in Montgomery having to give a public apology for the speech he gave to the media where he had to admit the battle of the Bulge was a primarily vastly American victory.
There should be an episode about stolen goods by nazis from Poland (and other countries too) in the future... And perhaps even the legend about the golden train 👀
A rather unusual sidenote this week on January 18 1945 is that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill will, in a speech before the House of Commons, announce that "US troops have done almost all the fighting (in the Ardennes) suffering losses equal to those of both sides at the Battle of Gettysburg". This was however interpreted by many as a direct and insulting attack on the abilities of Bernard Montgomery and the British fighting forces in Europe.
Monty insulted American fighting forces in Europe last week with his disaster of a press conference. Perhaps Churchill was doing diplomatic damage control.
Indy : "So, for my weekly report of the war, I need to know how many offensives do you guys launch this week ?" Stavka : "Yes." Indy : "Alrighty, then."
Not enough credit is given the Filipino guerillas for much of the US success on Luzon. If it weren't for them the landings would have been more difficult(can you imagine Eisenhower strolling up on the Normandy beaches the first day). They were instrumental in freeing American soldiers at Cabanatuan and liberating internees at St Tomas. There were an estimated 250,000 guerillas on Luzon alone and they controlled more of the islands then the Japanese
If it makes you feel better, they still get plenty of credit in the current-day military, or at least they did when I was in from the late 80's to 2001. Filipino contributions to the war were huge and they were one of our staunchest cold war allies for decades.
Yes. My wife's uncle, Eulagio Borres, was a guerrilla fighter on the island of Cebu, in the central Philippines during WW2. After the war he became active in politics. He eventually served three terms as mayor of Cebu City, the second largest city in the Philippines. He had a stellar reputation for putting the interests of the working class over the ruling class. He also had a reputation of being incorruptible, a rare attribute in Philippine politics.
It took even longer for us. They came March 15th 1939 and left May 8th 1945, because Americans closed the front for German prisoners at midnight between 8th-9th. So the May 8th was a big run for the front in western Bohemia.
For the first russian to occupy it afterward just like it was in the 19th century and in 1939 sadly, stay strong Poland, another 30 or so years until you can truly liberate yourself by the power of solidarity!
@@AAaa-wu3el More than that, Białystok and Przemyśl, as part of the Pact. The fact is that the country of Poland at the time was also invaded by Russia just as it was in czarist times and in 1945.
It went from "The Japanese wont defend Leyte because they will put all their ressources on luzon" To "the japanese wont offer serious resistance on luzon"
The concept of military maxim, aka "plan not based on what you think the enemy will do, but what they are capable of" seems completely alien to MacArthur. A pretty appalling commander if you ask me. From his disastrous leadership of the defense of the Philippines to the current battles.
MacArthur loved Manila, he abandoned it rather than see it destroyed. For whatever reason he was convinced Yamishita would do the same. Not quite. But Yamishita did eventually pull out of Manila to have the real fight up north. It was his subordinate Iwabuchi who decided to fight to the death AND kill as many civilians as possible.
To be fair, Yamashita didn’t want to fight over Manila either, the officers under him disobeyed orders to abandon the city. It’s less that he was wrong about Yamashita’s intentions so much as his ability to actually control his subordinates.
@@_ArsNovahe actualy defend the phillipine very well, considering the odds stack against him, making the luzon pocket a massive pain in the ass in japanese plans for months, until forced to leave his mans behind by Roosevelt order. There is a reason why he want to return to the phillipine so badly.
Saying "the Soviets drive the Germans out of Warsaw" is technically correct but it paints a picture that's perhaps a bit too nice. "The Soviets drive the Germans out of the ruins where Warsaw once stood" is more closely aligned to what happened, after the German campaign of deliberately destroying the city as a punishment for the uprising. By the time they were pushed out, almost the entire city was essentially destroyed, with only the places like the Praga district past the Vistula that weren't easily accessible to them still standing in a relatively good condition, and even then the word "relatively" does a lot of heavy lifting. The reconstruction of Warsaw post-WW2 was a truly massive project, and it's honestly incredible how successful it was.
What I find remarkable is that Polands communist government rebuilt Warsaw in its old glory instead of just a collection of ugly concrete boxes. Which is more then what countries in the West did, which did often build a collection of ugly concrete boxes. The old historic heart of Nijmegen here in the Netherlands was destroyed in the war and what the war did not destroy post war municipal governments would. Even today the city is but a pale shadow of what it used to be before the war. Also, most cities on the Eastern Front, especially the big and important ones that Hitler turned into fortresses, were leveled when the Red Army retook them. So Warsaw is perfectly in character in that regard.
@@stevekaczynski3793 They also survived here in Nijmegen. But our municipal government made the decision to not rebuild the city as it was but turn it into ugly concrete blocks. Warsaw is at least 1 thing the commies did get right.
Monty gets a lot of the hate but only for being a glory hound. His actual skill as a commander was quite good and he tried to minimize casualties. The same cannot be said for McArthur, except also being a glory hound.
@@evancrum6811 His actions during WW1? His ability to handle politics in the Philippines in the 1920s was also quite good. Just because you don’t like someone, doesn’t mean you should belittle their achievements.
@@evancrum6811 I don’t disagree that MacArthur made some bad decisions during WW2. I just think it’s inaccurate to declare that he never did anything right.
I don't know if anyone pointed this out yet, but I *LOVE* how Buda and Pest were respectively colored for the German and Soviet territories, since Budapest is actually comprised of two seperate cities. Little details like that are proof you guys are absolute masters of your craft.
MacArthur wanting to hold a victory parade in Manila brings to mind what Eisenhower once said, “I studied dramatics under him [MacArthur] for seven years.”
@@modest_spice6083 Unfortunately MacArthur never received a sixth star and the rank "General of the Armies" he desperately wanted. This was later posthumously arwarded to George Washington. Although it would be fun if Eisenhower sacked a six-star-general and replaced him with himself linke two little kids quarreling who has more stars.
@@modest_spice6083 Of course if MacArthur had succeeded in his run for the Presidency. And keep in mind that Truman wasn't Roosevelt's first choice as Veep. Truman once said that he would rather have the Medal of Honor than be President. He got his wish, while MacArthur became one of only two sets of father/son recipients ever.
I have an interesting and unexpected story told me by my grandmother. She lived in countryside in central Poland, where it was relatively peaceful and they didn't suffer much repressions (maybe because they already were the uneducated, poor working class the Germans wanted to turn Poles into, who knows?) After the Soviet offensive into Poland in 1945, when they shattered local German forces, a neighbour of hers has found a young German soldier, left alone already behind the Soviet lines and hiding for his life - he knew that if he was captured, he would be send to Siberia and die. That neighbour allowed him to stay in his house for a while, hiding him. After some time, when it was a bit more safe, he let that German take his horse to return to his country. Many years later, that German returned to thank for saving his life. He lived in West Germany, had a family, was quite successfull in life and in his gratitute he gave that neighbour money to build a new house.
@@AAaa-wu3el You'd be surprised by the compassion human beings are capable of. Compassion for fellow man is not determined solely by ethnic lines. "Poland" had also been a German territory for the past 700 years anyhow, so it's not as if they were alien people.
@@_ArsNova don't spread your propaganda. Poland has NOT been a german territory, in fact that region has only seen a few years total of German occupation in its history
Also in Budapest on 17th January, Sweden’s special envoy Raoul Wallenberg has been called to Malinovsky’s headquarter and SMERSH agents detained him on suspicion of espionage and he had disappeared since then. Soviets had never clearly explained what happened to him. Wallenberg was responsible for saving of thousands of Jews from being murdered by Nazis. He was issuing them protective passports - in one occasion handling them to the people who were already boarded on the train to Auschwitz. He also rented buildings in the city, declaring them as extraterritorial (protected by diplomatic immunity) and marked them with Swedish flags and labels like “Swedish library” and these building then worked as shelter for thousands people.
@@fortpark-wd9sx Like I said, it's a theory I heard. I'm not sure, but there might be more going on then just USSR bad. And I am saying that as someone who despises marxists.
Hello from Romania! I've been watching WWII documentaries for over 20 years now and this series is by far the best ever made. Since September 2023 I wanted to catch up to the latest episode and the journey was fantastic. I only want to congratulate the entire team working at this unique project. Great job!!! Thank you for your dedication and work!!!! Noroc (chears) 🍻
Also how good the Soviets had become. Men like Zhukov, Konev, Malinovski, Tolbukhin, they had been commanding Fronts since 1941 and 1942. They had taken every lesson the Germans had dished out on them and then returned the favor. For all the talk of Stalin shooting officers that failed him he did so very rarely and over time showed more trust in his generals then Hitler had done even in the early days when things had gone still well.
Frankly it's more shocking how the German Army is still intact and hasn't simply disintegrated. Hopelessly outnumbered in every conceivable metric, and with a now outright delusional dictator helming the military.
Hitler's order to place the German reserves near (or at) the front line (as covered by Indy and the gang) didn't help their case, as it placed them well within the range of the Soviet artillery, allowing the Red Army to savage them as soon as the offensive started and excluding any possibility of defense in depth. It's a completely crazy decision, especially hard to understand as it seemingly echoes how the Germans had caught the Soviets off guard in 1941, when if I remember correctly, Stalin had made a similar error with troop deployment.
He should be, he's been commanding Fronts since 1942 and commanded the army that stopped Manstein in his tracks south of Stalingrad. So he (and almost all of the Soviet front commanders) have been commanding at army and front level for almost the entire year. Whereas the average German army or army group had a new commander every couple of months. Almost none of the generals commanding armies or armygroups in 1941 when Barbarossa began is still in command at this point. Except a certain someone who we will soon hear a lot of the coming months. 😉
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 In the Hürtgen Forest fighting in the west, the Germans managed for a time to recapture the village of Schmidt. Not much of a victory but it was given the full propaganda treatment.
Every time I think this channel can not possibly get any better, another video drops that is an improvement in every single aspect. This channel is a treasure and will always exist as the greatest WW2 documentary ever made.
"Last week the allies, well the Americans, made big landings on Luzon in the Philippines." It was primarily a US force because Macarthur saw his most combat experienced units in the Australian Army as second rate unfortunately. This attitude, particularly from Macarthur but also senior Australian Commanders such as Thomas Blamey, would later lead to the Morotai Mutiny as Australian forces were relegated to mopping up operation despite having years more combat experience than their US counterparts.
The Australians could never be as numerous as the Americans anyway, and that’s a fact. Look at the size of population and industrial output of both countries. That’s not to say the Australians deserve no credit, but to say that their help would have changed much in the Invasion of Luzon is overstating things. And yes, like most American commanders, General MacArthur was nationalistic and so supported using American troops over other allied ones. Even Admiral King, who detested MacArthur, used American troops over allied ones. He didn’t even want the British navy in the Pacific.
@@graceneilitz7661 Oh, by no means do I think that Australian forces could go it alone. In the New Guinea Campaign Australian Forces needed significant logistics support from their US allies. The Australian's wouldn't even have been able to deploy in New Guinea without US help. What I'm highlighting is that Australian forces, some of which having battle experience from 1939 in Greece, Syria, North Africa and New Guinea, significantly more than their US counterparts, were left in New Guinea on little more than Garrison Duty. That would be akin to leaving the US 82nd Airborne on the beaches of Normandy, or more accurately, leaving British 30 Corps in North Africa or Sicily. Australian Forces would have most definitely needed US logistics and Transport to participate, and I'm not saying Luzon specifically would have benefited. I mean to highlight that when you look at your order of battle of units in the Pacific the Australian 6th, 7th and 9th Divisions had far more combat experience and when you are undertaking operations, you generally want to put your best units at the tip of the spear rather than on garrison duty. In fact, Australian division were moved into Garrison duties in the Solomons and New Guinea to free up US soldiers for the Philippines operations. Granted some of these divisions had similar experience to their US counterparts. Australian and British commanders also cannot be absolved of the blame of Australian Forces being side-lined either, however Macarthur (incorrectly) saw Australian forces under his command as less capable than the US forces under his command.
@@thebats5270 Your points are valid, but I think you are missing the political and nationalistic part of thinking. American commanders generally wanted to use American units above other allied units. I gave the example of Admiral King who hated MacArthur. It also looked better politically if American troops were seen liberating an American colony by themselves.
When April comes around I'd like to have Indy receive a phone call from the bunker in Berlin where an enraged Bruno Ganz reenactor can be heard shouting through the phone "NEIDELL! GEBEN SIE MIR NEIDELL! Von WO kommt der Beschuss!!?" And then Indy could answer something absolutely hilarious. 🤣
@@patrickstephenson1264 It's strength on the Eastern Front did drop, but they still have almost 3 mln men deployed there. I wouldn't call that tiny. Although most of the troops were green and either very young or very old.
I never understood the differences between Blitzkrieg and Deep battle. The tactics and general premise seem to be the same. The only difference is one military has been out of oil since 1942 and the other floats on a sea of it.
We aren't going anywhere, we'll have plenty of more things to cover after the war ends and we'll be starting the Korean War with Indy later this year on another channel! Thanks for watching and thank you for the comment.
@@WorldWarTwo Well, I hope it won’t be going weekly for 4 years as there wasn’t much going on in 1952 and 1953 except armistice negotiations, two very boring years to be covering.
@@CrasusC I watched the entirety of the Franco-Prussian War Week-by-Week series by the original crew of the Great War channel in their new channel (Real Time History), and while 5 months of the entire series was largely about the siege of Paris, it remained just as interesting. Also, did you forget the original Great War channel covered World War 1 (you know... the one where much of the war was spent in trenches?).
@@WorldWarTwo I would prefer a more generalized coverage of the Cold war, something like your "Between two wars" series. Covering the major developments between the major hot wars.
"We are waiting for you, Red Plague, to save us from the Black Death, having torn our country into quarters beforehand, to be a salvation greeted with loathing." Józef Szczepański, 29.08.1944 Author died 12 days later
@@fortpark-wd9sx You have NO idea what you're talking about. Repressions, executions, censorship, imprisonment. Fighting for survival because food was rationed and you never knew if your children will have enough. Monthly salaries equal to those people in African villages earn today. Even for engineers and doctors. Not being abe to leave the country unless you were a commie or had one in the family. Poland only existed on paper. I just wish people of the west experienced a fraction of what we did. It would cure you of your arrogance pretty quickly. Yours is the kind of remark only someone who never truly suffered could make.
According to the "Maus" graphic novel, a Polish Kapo in Auschwitz got Vladek Spiegelman to give him English lessons, in the first few months of 1944. He was aware that the Allies were bombing Germany and calculated that knowledge of English would stand him in good stead if the Germans lost. As matters developed perhaps he would have done better to study Russian, but Kapos often had bigger problems to worry about following liberation.
@@caryblack5985 Polish Kapos at the Stutthof camp near Danzig were hanged in 1946, along with a number of the female German camp overseers. I don't know about the Auschwitz ones.
I started watching the Great War week by week sometime in 2017. Then finished that and switched to WW2 in maybe 2020 or 2021. Then made a pause but picked up last October again from where I left and binged watched daily since the start of Barbarossa and now I've caught up finally. Looking forward to Korean and Vietnam wars week by week!
Luckily my family survived the war... but yeah, part of it was forcibly relocated by the Soviets once the war ended. Fate many families shared. Fortunate that nobody died to Germans or Soviets though. Some had their property "liberated" by the Soviets too (favorite family story being of a relative who was "relieved" of his bicycle and watch). Still, everyone being alive at the end was a luxury not many Polish families had.
After waiting from the end of August to the middle of January to build up forces from Tilsit in the north ( East Prussia) to south of Krakow the Soviet armies attack and even with over 4 months to dig in and fortify the German armies in the east immediately begin to crumble.
As usual, mad props for Indy for pronouncing the Polish placenames exemplarily! (except Ciechanów, but I can't even think of English words to describe the sounds. It sounds somewhat like "Check a noof", not that it has any big bear inspection industry nowadays. 🐻 🔎
You can only put a half a million soldiers in a 20 km bridgehead if you have complete control of the skies. It's unimaginable what constant air raids could do to men and equipment in that kind of compacted situation.
Contrary to what many think, the Luftwaffe was not completely absent from the skies here and actually did everything they could. By 1944-45now the Red Air Force had not only the numerical, but the qualitative edge or at the very least parity thanks to greatly improved fighter and bomber performance, highly skilled and experienced ace pilots, a better command and control system incorporating radar and fighter direction systems similar to the West, and a colossal logistics and effort. IIRC, Ivan Kozhedub (the highest scoring Allied ace) would score one of his many FW-190 victories over this battle, flying his typical La-7. And he was far from the only one.
Of all the monumental things that happened this week, I think the thing that hit me the most was FDR's fourth term. I've been reminded off and on, as I happened to run into this or that on TV or some other material, in the last weeks about his impending passing and your announcement did it again. The other thing was Hitler's directive about himself having total control over the movement of his forces and the size and speed of the Soviet offensives and how diametrically opposed those two things are. It's such that I can't help feeling the German armies sinking hearts, knowing that a lot of them are gonna end up dying for fool's reasons.
"...Literally the marionette pulling the strings..." Uh, I see a couple of problems with that sentence. Otherwise a superb piece of writing, as always.
The battle for East Prussia and Konigsberg will be an awful, savage one. Inconceivable amounts of carnage both on the military level and against civilians, eclipsed only by the likes of Berlin, in 1945 at least.
Well, with the Italian front currently quiet and the Battle of the Bulge over, I'm fairly confident that we will see Burma and China in action next week, specially as the Japanese attempt to complete Ichi-Go through the capture of Canton
1. Canton (Guangzhou) has been in Japanese hands since 1938. 2. I salute your eternal optimism, but look at your comments week by week, it has unfortunately never been rewarded.
@@porksterbob They were back in March and April of '44. December was a disappointment, no doubt, but considering how the Eastern Front will be fairly slow (and the Italian outright dormant) for much of February and March, I'm fairly certain that China will be covered in that timeslot.
@@simonycontesta4296 Honestly, I'm fairly confident on my convictions that either Week 283 or Week 284 will feature the Burma and/or China campaigns. A quick analysis of what would be happening in other fronts compared to the China-Burma front will quickly reveal why. In the Western Front: - the last major German operation in the Western Front (Operation Nordwind) will come to end - There is only going to be relatively minor action in the Netherlands and Comar. In the Eastern Front: - Operation Konrad III comes to an end - Vistula-Oder Offensive will run out of steam very quickly In the Italian Front: Dormant In the Pacific Front: - The Drive to Manila In the China-Burma Front: - Capture of the Hubei-Canton Railway - The Last Arakan Campaign - The Road to Lashio - The Final Push out of the Shewbo Plains - The Finale of the Salween Campaign Thus, it is fairly safe to assume that with multiple operations coming to an end in other fronts, the Italian front dormant and fairly slow action in the Pacific, that the China-Burma front will finally get more attention.
Love these videos! I recommend them to everyone I know with an interest in WWII. Thank you! I wish I could support you monetarily but that's not possible at this point in time.
Former USSR, taken from it by the Polish invasion in 1920, and populated by ethnic Russians. Edit: Russian SFSR, and populated by Belorussians and Ukrainians
Are you calling Ukrainians, Belarussians, Jews, Poles or Lithuanians "ethnic Russians"? Or are you implying that these territories were under control of the USSR before the USSR was even formed? Or that Lwów has ever before in history belonged to any Moscow state?
@@howardzhang5421 dude, USSR wasn't even formed until 1922, these areas just couldn't have been "former ussr" in 1920. And they weren't populated by ethnic Russians - there were only about 1-3% of Russians in those areas. Vast majority of population there was Polish, Ukrainian, Belarussian and Jewish.
@@jakubcesarzdakos5442 Sorry, was referring to the Russian SFSR. The land was land that had belonged to the Russian SFSR, but also included extra territories to serve as a buffer against Nazi Germany.
@@markvorobjov6185 Yes, I was referring to the Russian SFSR, and the peoples were Ukrainian and Belorussian, sorry. But the point is - the land was not Polish, and populated by Belorussians and Ukrainians, as part of the Russian SFSR. Actual polish made up for an extremely small percent in those areas, as evident in ethnic maps of that time.
I have no insights to offer this week, but I did want to thank the team for another great episode. Also, I hope Indy is having fun with that new bowling ball 🙂
Thank you for delivering such detailed, engaging and objective coverage of the WW2 events. I've learned much more from your videos than at school years ago.
I know this has been said over and over again, but it's really incredible to see how far this Channel has come since embarking upon this project back in September 2018. Towards the end of that particular month, Indy recounted how Germany and the Soviet Union invested Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War. Now we are at the point where the Soviet Union is "liberating" all of Poland from Nazi Germany here in January 2024. How time has flown by!
01:42 The fighting near Kielce would see a large tank battle between Dimitri Lelyushenko's 4th Guards Tank Army and Walter Nehring's 24th Panzer Corps, reinforced with 424th Heavy Panzer Battalion, when the latter launched a powerful counterattack. The heaviest fighting was near the village of Lisow, where the 40 T-34/85s and submachinegunners of the 61st Guards Tank Brigade of Colonel Chuprov's 10th Guards Tank Corps clashed with the 424th and the Panthers of the 16th Panzer Division. Soviet tanks reached Lisow on the 13th. The enemy fled without a fight. Abandoned cars and warehouses with munitions, two anti-tank guns and 40 Germans were captured, among which was the commander of the artillery regiment of the 168th Infantry Division. In response, the Germans attacked with 424th's 27 Tigers and 23 King Tigers attacked from the south and west, while 13 Panthers from the 16th attacked from the north. The whole thing ended very poorly for the Germans. Between 12th-13th of January, the 61st Guards tankers and their infantry support deflected up to a dozen tank and infantry attacks. Using cover provided by the village houses, the Soviet tankers and infantry would let the them get close, using ambush and hit and run tactics. They were undoubtedly helped by the fact that their 85 guns provided just enough punch to handle Tigers and Panthers from the front (King Tigers were trickier but could still be disabled). The end result? For the loss of 23 T-34/85s (4 permanently), the 61st Guards knocked out 7 Tigers, 5 King Tigers, and 5 Panthers around the village and damaged several more tanks which were evacuated, effectively ending the 424th in all but name. Both the commanders of the 61st Guards and 424th (Colonel N. Zhukov and Major Saemisch) were killed in the fighting. The nearby 17th Panzers were also defeated by the Corps and Pavel Rybalko's 3rd Guards Tank Army. In a particularly humorous note, the Soviets severely downplayed what they had achieved, 'only' reporting the destruction of a 'few panthers'. Meanwhile, the Germans overclaimed, thinking they fought IS-2 tanks and claimed '50-60 of them knocked out'. www.tankarchives.ca/2016/04/world-of-tanks-history-section-tiger.html www.tankarchives.ca/2015/02/cheating-at-statistics-10-liars-at-lisow.html
The most surprising part of this is that the Germans were willing to counterattack in the first place. I mean, I'm sure there was some reason or logic behind essentially abandoning a position and then (idiotically, imo) counterattacking the same position after the enemy has reinforced it with heavy tanks. But still, if you've got that many Tigers and Panthers at your disposal, why not just set up ambush positions around the village and wait for the Soviets to move out and catch them in the open? Sounds like more of a command clusterf--k than anything else.
The marionette is the one with the strings, not the one who pulls them! But that was a minor point in an otherwise brilliant update! Thank you Indy and crew as always!
Soviet: "Can I call you 'Comrade?' Yes, I think I will call you 'comrade.' Welcome to our family!" Poland: "But I don't want to be part of..." S: "Ssh! Ssh! Ssh! Of course you do! Comrade Stalin SAID you do, so there you go!" P: "But--but--" S: "Are you arguing with Comrade Stalin's orders?" P: "But--what? I...I..." S: "Because it sure sounds like you're arguing with Comrade Stalin's OOORRRders." P: "I...I..." S: "Take him away, boys! NEXT!"
My grandfather, fighting somewhere in East Prussia told harrowing stories of the retreat in the cold winter of 1945. But he made it out alive and managed to get to Kiel towards the end of the war. Which will soon be over, I hope. Soviets are on the move, while it seems that the western Allies are somewhat stuck.
nitially, Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, forbade evacuation of civilians (until 20 January 1945), and ordered that civilians trying to flee the region without permission should be instantly shot. Any kind of preparations made by civilians were treated as defeatism and "Wehrkraftzersetzung" (undermining of military morale). Koch and many other Nazi functionaries were among the first to flee during the Soviet advance. Between 12 January and mid-February 1945, almost 8.5 million Germans fled the Eastern provinces of the Reich.[18][19] Most of the refugees were women and children heading to western parts of Germany, carrying goods on improvised means of transport, such as wooden wagons and carts, as all the motorized vehicles and fuel had been confiscated by the Wehrmacht at the beginning of the war
I like how Macarthur also landed in Lingayen like the Japanese did a few years earlier. Though the way he pressured Kruger doesn’t seem right as it might force them to make unnecessary risks and casualties. On Hitler: what is called Blitzkrieg is actually a confluence of Bevegunskreig (maneuver warfare) and Auftragstaktik (mission command, letting subordinates more freedom in command decisions). Removing the latter makes them more inflexible unlike earlier in the war.
My grand father was taken prisoner on the 17th of January in Poland, near "Kiernewitz" (i guess it does not exist and he messed 2 different cities up). He was part of the Infanterie Ersatz Bataillon 65, conscripted against his will as an alsatian, French Citizen is November 1944. His frontline service lasted 15 days. After being captured, he saw most of the stragglers he had been with being shot in a trench by the Soviet from the second wave (the first one were even nice with them). When he was near trench, with the pistol being loaded tobe executed, an soviet officer arrived and insulted its troop, sending the POW to captivity. During the march to the first Pow Camp, tanks and troops were often driving on the opposite side of the road. Russian troops were shooting from the tanks on the pow. My grand father had encountered an alsatian, he was shot this way. Captivity time was very difficult at Tambov, one of the worst Pow camps from urss. The camp 185 was the one specific for the alsatian and lorraine soldiers. He never felt any hatred against neither the german, the russian or anyone else. It was a shit* time for everyone.
POWs and others often noticed that second-line troops were often more brutal than combat ones. And this was a universal phenomenon. Survivors of the Bataan Death March in 1942 noted that rear echelon Japanese troops were often more cruel than the combat ones. Martin Brech, a US soldier guarding German POWs in the Rhine meadow camps in spring and summer 1945, thought that brutality towards POWs was often a case of non-combat troops trying to show how tough they were. I wonder if the town was Skierniewice. It is an important rail junction in Poland (I passed through it in 1995).
This week on January 20th 1945, the following missions in the Call of Duty series will begin: *January 15 1945* Noville (Call of Duty: United Offensive) - As Corporal Scott Riley in Noville, Belgium, you are to defend your position from waves of enemies until reinforcements arrive. This level has some parallels to the Pavlov's House level in Call of Duty. Festung Recogne (Call of Duty) - As Private Martin in Festung Recogne, Northeast of Bastogne, Belgium, you are to raid two enemy bunkers and capture all enemy documents. You will also have to use Flak 88 guns to eliminate two enemy tanks. *January 17 1945* Warsaw Factory (Call of Duty) - As Sergeant Alexei Ivanovich Voronin in Warsaw, Poland, you and your squad are to secure the tank repair facility, carefully navigating the rooms and hallways of the factory and eliminating enemies along the way. Warsaw Railyard (Call of Duty) - As Sergeant Alexei Ivanovich Voronin in Warsaw, Poland, you are to clear the railyards of enemy soldiers while trying to avoid both enemy fire and friendly artillery. Eventually, you are to regroup with the 4th Army on the outskirts of the factory complex. *January 19 1945* The Last Train (Call of Duty 2: Big Red One) - As Sergeant Roland Roger near Buchholz, Germany, you will first have to eliminate some enemies in house to house fighting, before eliminating a mortar team, as well as a Flak 88. Eventually, you will take command of a enemy Panzer IV tank and make your way to the train station, eliminating waves of enemy tanks and anti-tank squads. The Dragon's Teeth (Call of Duty 2: Big Red One) - As Sergeant Roland Roger in the Siegfried Line, Germany, you are to secure a route for General Patton's tanks to cross over the Siegfried Line. Ultimately this would include destroying two V2 rockets while taking heavy casualties. This is the final level of the campaign.
The writing's been on the wall for quite a while now, but it's incredible how events happening this week will severely affect Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia for the next 50 years.
After the war ended,Winston Churchil actually thought of a plan to declare war on Soviet to push them out of Poland. It was called operation unthinkable.
In January 1945 NKVD invited 16 Polish underground leaders for "talks" and arrested simply them. Miracleously, they were not shot, but "just" sent to Gulags.
I have said this in the D-Day livestream and I will say it again, I would have loved to see Montgomery and MacArthur fight on the same front just to see how they would try to out diva each other with pressconferences and the like.
Montgomery had enough trouble with Patton's "diva-ness." MacArthur would end up sending Montgomery into an apoplectic fit from which he'd likely NEVER recover.
It's pretty clear the War is lost... makes you wonder what the Generals and high ranking officers thought... I mean, they had to realize it's over, right? Also, this makes the millions who have yet to perish even more tragic.
Most high ranking officers knew the war was lost after they failed to take moscow, there's a reason almost none of the high ranking commanders that began the war are still commanders at this point
After (kind of) binge-watching for some months, I finally caught you up. The final words of each video are sometimes perfect, I wonder how it will be the last words for the last one, after the surrendering of Japan. Will you make us cry? Will we make you cry with our comments?... let's see.
I always like to play this "game" were I compare this series with were I am and think how each event would impact my life. From 1939 to 1941 I didn't leave Spain so neutral territory and everything ok. In 1942 I went to study for a year in Germany and returned in 1943. Since France was under german occupation I didn't have to cross or get close to any frontlines. I was in the city of Constance, which is famous because they left the lights on at night so that allied bombers would mix it up with nearby neutral Switzerland and not bomb it. In between I traveled to Sweden, Berlin and to Danzing. Occupied Poland being the closest to the front I'd get. So in 1943 I was back in Spain and I visited the french alps in december 1943 so unless I stumble with resistance fighters of some type I think I'd enjoy a nice vacation. It seemed like I was going to survive without any problems until a took a really good job offer in Poland in the end of 1944. So yeah, now the Red Army is coming here and I don't want to play this game anymore.
If I were playing that game, I'd stick with being non-draftable in a nice small town somewhere in the US for the duration of the war. One of the few countries left untouched by the end.
@@livethefuture2492 Yeah, of course if WW2 was happening right now I wouldn't leave Spain that much. The Germany year could be ok though, since I don't belong to any group the nazis want to exterminate. And of course nobody would take a job offer in Danzig in 1944.
20 January 1945. Sergeant John Evans of the 7th Armoured Division is fighting near the German border in the southern tip of the Netherlands after the first attack of Operation Blackcock failed to cook off. A new attack starts today with hopes of liberating Susteren and making some progress into the Roer Triangle. Sergeant Artyom Ivanov of the 13th Guards Rifle Division continues to plough through Poland this week, helping to liberate the city of Częstochowa on 16 January. Yesterday on 19 January, a major milestone was reached, a sacred moment for Ivanov and many of his friends, especially the ones who are no longer with him. That day, the 13th Guards reached the border, and Artyom marched onto German soil for the first time.
I know that getting these episodes out is a herculean effort every week, but is it possible to add a graphic in the top right of the screen on the maps showing the day that the movements being pictured happened? Like it would spin down as Indy talks and then reset when he moves on to a different area of the front at the start of the week?
Your closing notes this week were very powerful. While Hitler is often depicted as always demanding such inefficient and personal control over the military, it's only around now that the depictions are hardly different from reality. Let's see how well one drugged up middle aged man who last held military duty 30 years ago can lead against three fronts of well equipped, numerous and motivated enemies with seemingly limitless industrial output and manpower.
![Six Hundred Strike [EPIC: The Musical] Full Animatic](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zov6NXIAuow/mqdefault.jpg)
The future of Poland will be on the agenda at the Yalta Conference early next month. Indy and Sparty will be covering those discussions, so stay tuned for more.
Yay! I'm glad you guys were able to cover the creation of the 5 star US rank this week. I wish you guys were able to talk more about Fleet Admiral and FDR's Chief of Staff William D. Leahy though. He hasn't been talked about really at all during the series which doesn't put you guys out of the norm as Leahy is almost always overlooked. But he really should be given SO MUCH more attention by everyone doing a history of WW2 that involves covering the US. Perhaps a special can be done on him called "The Real President of the United States"? Because in reality it is Leahy who is acting as the President during WW2 through FDR when it comes to anything to do with the war (which is of course the vast majority of the attention of the office of the President from 1939 forward). It is so often forgotten that FDR has no military experience. So to FDR's credit when it comes to any military decisions that he as the President has to make he leans on Leahy to give him the answer that he should go with. Leahy's specialty was in the grad tactical decisions of war. So anything to do with sourcing of war materials, production and creation of weapons, recruiting and training recruits, anything to do with logistics and much more would have the input of Leahy in it. Leahy did such a good job during WW2 he is never even given any criticism which is incredibly rare for officers during WW2 today as they are all given criticism today by armchair generals acting with the benefit of hindsight criticising decisions those heros made in the midst of the largest and most important war in human history.
2 other things also. I know it isn't your quote but saying MacArthur abandoned his troops in the Philippines is a pretty ridiculous quote for any historian to make I think. He didn't abandon his troops in the Philippines AT ALL. He was at first told to leave the Philippines but refused to do so saying his fate would be the same as his soldiers. He said he was willing to stay and fight to the death. And you can look at MacArthur's actions throughout his career, he was clearly not afraid of death. The man was nominated of the Medal of Honor THREE times. MacArthur only left the Philippines after FDR ORDERED him to do so and explained how his death or capture by the Japanese would have been a MASSIVE morale hit to not just the United States but all of the Allied nations (especially Australia) as MacArthur during the early years of the war was by far the most known officer of the Western Nations in the world. And then second thing, am I misremembering, I thought you said last week that there would be further coverage/follow-up on what happened after Montgomery's talk he had with the media where he tried to make it sound like he was a major player in the Battle of the Bulge and that his British troops played a major action in the fight. Maybe you guys will talk about it next week? Because it was a pretty big issue that talk he had with the media. Many AMerican officers threatened to resign if something wasn't done about what Montgomery did and it resulted in Montgomery having to give a public apology for the speech he gave to the media where he had to admit the battle of the Bulge was a primarily vastly American victory.
There should be an episode about stolen goods by nazis from Poland (and other countries too) in the future... And perhaps even the legend about the golden train 👀
@@badAim2I second this!
Also, VERY good episode as normal guys!
@@badAim2 I think they did do an episode about stolen goods (art) already but not on Poland specifically.
This week in Life magazine, an article is published named, "Allies squeeze the German Bulge."
Sheesh, that got my T-34's barrel wet.
I wonder what British MP *Seymour Cocks* would have said about that 😅
🥵
Thanks for the chuckle, I didn't know that! Thanks for sharing and thanks for watching.
- Jake
It ranks with the famous Times of London headline from the Tunisian campaign - "Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans"
A rather unusual sidenote this week on January 18 1945 is that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill will, in a speech before the House of Commons, announce that "US troops have done almost all the fighting (in the Ardennes) suffering losses equal to those of both sides at the Battle of Gettysburg". This was however interpreted by many as a direct and insulting attack on the abilities of Bernard Montgomery and the British fighting forces in Europe.
As it was.
Monty insulted American fighting forces in Europe last week with his disaster of a press conference. Perhaps Churchill was doing diplomatic damage control.
@@indraneelmassie5994 Monty and MacArthur were both preening prima donnas who's egos got in the way of success.
@@randylucas2458at the expense of tens of thousands of lives lost
@@mgway4661 damn shame.
Indy : "So, for my weekly report of the war, I need to know how many offensives do you guys launch this week ?"
Stavka : "Yes."
Indy : "Alrighty, then."
Yup.
SO. MANY. SOVIET. OFFENSIVES!!! :D
@@squaretex Wow so excited for Eastern Europe to fall to communism
"You mean OUR weekly report of the war."
RIP to my great uncle, Francis Connelly, killed this month in the Ardennes.
Thank you for sharing, and thank you for watching.
@@WorldWarTwo : Thank you for making these!
I love the detalles that when the soviets capture pest the map shows the "buda" part of budapest still in Red 11:15
Yo nice catch
*details*
Not enough credit is given the Filipino guerillas for much of the US success on Luzon. If it weren't for them the landings would have been more difficult(can you imagine Eisenhower strolling up on the Normandy beaches the first day). They were instrumental in freeing American soldiers at Cabanatuan and liberating internees at St Tomas. There were an estimated 250,000 guerillas on Luzon alone and they controlled more of the islands then the Japanese
Very well said.
If it makes you feel better, they still get plenty of credit in the current-day military, or at least they did when I was in from the late 80's to 2001. Filipino contributions to the war were huge and they were one of our staunchest cold war allies for decades.
Yes. My wife's uncle, Eulagio Borres, was a guerrilla fighter on the island of Cebu, in the central Philippines during WW2. After the war he became active in politics. He eventually served three terms as mayor of Cebu City, the second largest city in the Philippines. He had a stellar reputation for putting the interests of the working class over the ruling class. He also had a reputation of being incorruptible, a rare attribute in Philippine politics.
I can't believe it's been over 5 years already. My town (Ciechanów) was occupied on September 4, 1939, and on January 17, 1945 the last Germans fled.
Thanks for sharing and thank you for watching. It's been a long journey,
It took even longer for us. They came March 15th 1939 and left May 8th 1945, because Americans closed the front for German prisoners at midnight between 8th-9th. So the May 8th was a big run for the front in western Bohemia.
For the first russian to occupy it afterward just like it was in the 19th century and in 1939 sadly, stay strong Poland, another 30 or so years until you can truly liberate yourself by the power of solidarity!
@@AAaa-wu3el More than that, Białystok and Przemyśl, as part of the Pact. The fact is that the country of Poland at the time was also invaded by Russia just as it was in czarist times and in 1945.
@@AAaa-wu3el I'm not sure I understand where you're going with this.
It went from "The Japanese wont defend Leyte because they will put all their ressources on luzon"
To "the japanese wont offer serious resistance on luzon"
Did MacArthur say that?
The concept of military maxim, aka "plan not based on what you think the enemy will do, but what they are capable of" seems completely alien to MacArthur. A pretty appalling commander if you ask me. From his disastrous leadership of the defense of the Philippines to the current battles.
MacArthur loved Manila, he abandoned it rather than see it destroyed.
For whatever reason he was convinced Yamishita would do the same. Not quite.
But Yamishita did eventually pull out of Manila to have the real fight up north. It was his subordinate Iwabuchi who decided to fight to the death AND kill as many civilians as possible.
To be fair, Yamashita didn’t want to fight over Manila either, the officers under him disobeyed orders to abandon the city. It’s less that he was wrong about Yamashita’s intentions so much as his ability to actually control his subordinates.
@@_ArsNovahe actualy defend the phillipine very well, considering the odds stack against him, making the luzon pocket a massive pain in the ass in japanese plans for months, until forced to leave his mans behind by Roosevelt order.
There is a reason why he want to return to the phillipine so badly.
Saying "the Soviets drive the Germans out of Warsaw" is technically correct but it paints a picture that's perhaps a bit too nice. "The Soviets drive the Germans out of the ruins where Warsaw once stood" is more closely aligned to what happened, after the German campaign of deliberately destroying the city as a punishment for the uprising. By the time they were pushed out, almost the entire city was essentially destroyed, with only the places like the Praga district past the Vistula that weren't easily accessible to them still standing in a relatively good condition, and even then the word "relatively" does a lot of heavy lifting. The reconstruction of Warsaw post-WW2 was a truly massive project, and it's honestly incredible how successful it was.
Also, 7:33 - I believe that's Pułtusk, not Pulutsk
Stalin-era Polish propaganda posters tend to focus heavily on glorifying building workers, but there was indeed much to glorify.
What I find remarkable is that Polands communist government rebuilt Warsaw in its old glory instead of just a collection of ugly concrete boxes. Which is more then what countries in the West did, which did often build a collection of ugly concrete boxes. The old historic heart of Nijmegen here in the Netherlands was destroyed in the war and what the war did not destroy post war municipal governments would. Even today the city is but a pale shadow of what it used to be before the war. Also, most cities on the Eastern Front, especially the big and important ones that Hitler turned into fortresses, were leveled when the Red Army retook them. So Warsaw is perfectly in character in that regard.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 The architectural plans for most parts of Warsaw apparently survived, which helped the process of rebuilding.
@@stevekaczynski3793 They also survived here in Nijmegen. But our municipal government made the decision to not rebuild the city as it was but turn it into ugly concrete blocks. Warsaw is at least 1 thing the commies did get right.
This week's report reminds me of one of the many reasons I was told by my mom to NEVER mention MacArthur's name around my father...
Monty gets a lot of the hate but only for being a glory hound. His actual skill as a commander was quite good and he tried to minimize casualties. The same cannot be said for McArthur, except also being a glory hound.
He was good in post war Japan but that's it.
@@evancrum6811
His actions during WW1?
His ability to handle politics in the Philippines in the 1920s was also quite good.
Just because you don’t like someone, doesn’t mean you should belittle their achievements.
@@graceneilitz7661 Yea that's true but some of his decisions in WW2 weren't good.
@@evancrum6811
I don’t disagree that MacArthur made some bad decisions during WW2.
I just think it’s inaccurate to declare that he never did anything right.
I don't know if anyone pointed this out yet, but I *LOVE* how Buda and Pest were respectively colored for the German and Soviet territories, since Budapest is actually comprised of two seperate cities. Little details like that are proof you guys are absolute masters of your craft.
Thank you! I enjoy these animated maps as well.
-TimeGhost AMbassador
MacArthur wanting to hold a victory parade in Manila brings to mind what Eisenhower once said, “I studied dramatics under him [MacArthur] for seven years.”
And MacArthur said that Eisenhower was " the best clerk I ever had"...
@@george217And Eisenhower eventually became president, while MacArthur was eventually sacked by Truman.
@@modest_spice6083 A fitting peice of karma I'd say
@@modest_spice6083 Unfortunately MacArthur never received a sixth star and the rank "General of the Armies" he desperately wanted. This was later posthumously arwarded to George Washington. Although it would be fun if Eisenhower sacked a six-star-general and replaced him with himself linke two little kids quarreling who has more stars.
@@modest_spice6083 Of course if MacArthur had succeeded in his run for the Presidency. And keep in mind that Truman wasn't Roosevelt's first choice as Veep. Truman once said that he would rather have the Medal of Honor than be President. He got his wish, while MacArthur became one of only two sets of father/son recipients ever.
I have an interesting and unexpected story told me by my grandmother. She lived in countryside in central Poland, where it was relatively peaceful and they didn't suffer much repressions (maybe because they already were the uneducated, poor working class the Germans wanted to turn Poles into, who knows?)
After the Soviet offensive into Poland in 1945, when they shattered local German forces, a neighbour of hers has found a young German soldier, left alone already behind the Soviet lines and hiding for his life - he knew that if he was captured, he would be send to Siberia and die. That neighbour allowed him to stay in his house for a while, hiding him. After some time, when it was a bit more safe, he let that German take his horse to return to his country.
Many years later, that German returned to thank for saving his life. He lived in West Germany, had a family, was quite successfull in life and in his gratitute he gave that neighbour money to build a new house.
Wonderful story.
@@AAaa-wu3el that's what I was told
@@AAaa-wu3el You'd be surprised by the compassion human beings are capable of. Compassion for fellow man is not determined solely by ethnic lines. "Poland" had also been a German territory for the past 700 years anyhow, so it's not as if they were alien people.
@@_ArsNova don't spread your propaganda. Poland has NOT been a german territory, in fact that region has only seen a few years total of German occupation in its history
Most of the POW will return home anyway
But he knew what happened in Soviet territories and fear reprisals anyway
Also in Budapest on 17th January, Sweden’s special envoy Raoul Wallenberg has been called to Malinovsky’s headquarter and SMERSH agents detained him on suspicion of espionage and he had disappeared since then. Soviets had never clearly explained what happened to him.
Wallenberg was responsible for saving of thousands of Jews from being murdered by Nazis. He was issuing them protective passports - in one occasion handling them to the people who were already boarded on the train to Auschwitz. He also rented buildings in the city, declaring them as extraterritorial (protected by diplomatic immunity) and marked them with Swedish flags and labels like “Swedish library” and these building then worked as shelter for thousands people.
Its been theorized that the dealings of the Wallenberg family with Nazi Germany may have been a contributing factor in that.
@@fortpark-wd9sx Like I said, it's a theory I heard. I'm not sure, but there might be more going on then just USSR bad. And I am saying that as someone who despises marxists.
Hello from Romania! I've been watching WWII documentaries for over 20 years now and this series is by far the best ever made. Since September 2023 I wanted to catch up to the latest episode and the journey was fantastic. I only want to congratulate the entire team working at this unique project. Great job!!! Thank you for your dedication and work!!!! Noroc (chears) 🍻
its shocking how the german army this week was totally shattered in days by the soviets, really shows just how little they have left.
Also how good the Soviets had become. Men like Zhukov, Konev, Malinovski, Tolbukhin, they had been commanding Fronts since 1941 and 1942. They had taken every lesson the Germans had dished out on them and then returned the favor. For all the talk of Stalin shooting officers that failed him he did so very rarely and over time showed more trust in his generals then Hitler had done even in the early days when things had gone still well.
Yep. The ostheer has been bled dry.
Frankly it's more shocking how the German Army is still intact and hasn't simply disintegrated. Hopelessly outnumbered in every conceivable metric, and with a now outright delusional dictator helming the military.
Meat waves make wonders lol
Hitler's order to place the German reserves near (or at) the front line (as covered by Indy and the gang) didn't help their case, as it placed them well within the range of the Soviet artillery, allowing the Red Army to savage them as soon as the offensive started and excluding any possibility of defense in depth. It's a completely crazy decision, especially hard to understand as it seemingly echoes how the Germans had caught the Soviets off guard in 1941, when if I remember correctly, Stalin had made a similar error with troop deployment.
**Reads Title**
Poland: Aah shit. Here we go again.
Is there a Polish equivalent to Shevchenko’s “Calamity Again”?
"All we had to do was follow the damn supply lines, CJ."
The map team really earned their pay on this one. The eastern front action was insane!
This Rodion Malinovsky seems to be quite a competent general, good at his job.
He should be, he's been commanding Fronts since 1942 and commanded the army that stopped Manstein in his tracks south of Stalingrad. So he (and almost all of the Soviet front commanders) have been commanding at army and front level for almost the entire year. Whereas the average German army or army group had a new commander every couple of months. Almost none of the generals commanding armies or armygroups in 1941 when Barbarossa began is still in command at this point. Except a certain someone who we will soon hear a lot of the coming months. 😉
Really nice map work this episode.
I'll pass the kind message onto the map maker, thank you very much!
- Jake
I'll pass it onto the map maker, thank you very much!
- Jake
I have a photo of my grandfather standing next to an abandoned soviet tank when Hungarian and German forces reentered his town in January 1945
Well, that didn't last...
@@stevekaczynski3793 But it did happen from time to time. And Goebbels exploited each and every one of such small victories to inspire the Germans.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 In the Hürtgen Forest fighting in the west, the Germans managed for a time to recapture the village of Schmidt. Not much of a victory but it was given the full propaganda treatment.
@@stevekaczynski3793 Exactly. And they probably milked their victory at Arnhem for every pfennig that it was worth. I know I would.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 himler on loudspeaker: we took this random Hungarian town!
Whisper: we also may have lost poland.
0:00 Poland
12:19 West
17:33 USA
23:15 Notes
we need more heroes like you.
Every time I think this channel can not possibly get any better, another video drops that is an improvement in every single aspect. This channel is a treasure and will always exist as the greatest WW2 documentary ever made.
I agree. It is amazingly well done and so comprehensive!
"Last week the allies, well the Americans, made big landings on Luzon in the Philippines." It was primarily a US force because Macarthur saw his most combat experienced units in the Australian Army as second rate unfortunately. This attitude, particularly from Macarthur but also senior Australian Commanders such as Thomas Blamey, would later lead to the Morotai Mutiny as Australian forces were relegated to mopping up operation despite having years more combat experience than their US counterparts.
The Australians could never be as numerous as the Americans anyway, and that’s a fact.
Look at the size of population and industrial output of both countries.
That’s not to say the Australians deserve no credit, but to say that their help would have changed much in the Invasion of Luzon is overstating things.
And yes, like most American commanders, General MacArthur was nationalistic and so supported using American troops over other allied ones. Even Admiral King, who detested MacArthur, used American troops over allied ones. He didn’t even want the British navy in the Pacific.
@@graceneilitz7661 Oh, by no means do I think that Australian forces could go it alone. In the New Guinea Campaign Australian Forces needed significant logistics support from their US allies. The Australian's wouldn't even have been able to deploy in New Guinea without US help.
What I'm highlighting is that Australian forces, some of which having battle experience from 1939 in Greece, Syria, North Africa and New Guinea, significantly more than their US counterparts, were left in New Guinea on little more than Garrison Duty.
That would be akin to leaving the US 82nd Airborne on the beaches of Normandy, or more accurately, leaving British 30 Corps in North Africa or Sicily. Australian Forces would have most definitely needed US logistics and Transport to participate, and I'm not saying Luzon specifically would have benefited. I mean to highlight that when you look at your order of battle of units in the Pacific the Australian 6th, 7th and 9th Divisions had far more combat experience and when you are undertaking operations, you generally want to put your best units at the tip of the spear rather than on garrison duty.
In fact, Australian division were moved into Garrison duties in the Solomons and New Guinea to free up US soldiers for the Philippines operations. Granted some of these divisions had similar experience to their US counterparts. Australian and British commanders also cannot be absolved of the blame of Australian Forces being side-lined either, however Macarthur (incorrectly) saw Australian forces under his command as less capable than the US forces under his command.
@@thebats5270
Your points are valid, but I think you are missing the political and nationalistic part of thinking.
American commanders generally wanted to use American units above other allied units. I gave the example of Admiral King who hated MacArthur. It also looked better politically if American troops were seen liberating an American colony by themselves.
When April comes around I'd like to have Indy receive a phone call from the bunker in Berlin where an enraged Bruno Ganz reenactor can be heard shouting through the phone "NEIDELL! GEBEN SIE MIR NEIDELL! Von WO kommt der Beschuss!!?" And then Indy could answer something absolutely hilarious. 🤣
WO IST OLSSON!? Was heißt Sie können ihn nicht finden? Dann suchen Sie ihn! OLSSON! OLSSON!
@@friedrichweitzer3071 🤣🤣🤣RIP Bruno Ganz. The best Hitler impersonator EVER.
The pushes the Red Army makes look so enormous. Deep battle indeed.
It took them a while to master it, but 1945 sees the epitome of Deep Battle in practice. Especially when August Storm will happen.
In fairness the Wehrmacht is also tiny now
@@patrickstephenson1264 It's strength on the Eastern Front did drop, but they still have almost 3 mln men deployed there. I wouldn't call that tiny. Although most of the troops were green and either very young or very old.
This was the largest land battle in human history. It was enormous!
I never understood the differences between Blitzkrieg and Deep battle. The tactics and general premise seem to be the same. The only difference is one military has been out of oil since 1942 and the other floats on a sea of it.
My favorite series to watch! Thank y'all for providing this much educational material every week! I don't want 1945 to end....
We aren't going anywhere, we'll have plenty of more things to cover after the war ends and we'll be starting the Korean War with Indy later this year on another channel!
Thanks for watching and thank you for the comment.
@@WorldWarTwo Well, I hope it won’t be going weekly for 4 years as there wasn’t much going on in 1952 and 1953 except armistice negotiations, two very boring years to be covering.
woooo hoooo@@WorldWarTwo
@@CrasusC I watched the entirety of the Franco-Prussian War Week-by-Week series by the original crew of the Great War channel in their new channel (Real Time History), and while 5 months of the entire series was largely about the siege of Paris, it remained just as interesting.
Also, did you forget the original Great War channel covered World War 1 (you know... the one where much of the war was spent in trenches?).
@@WorldWarTwo
I would prefer a more generalized coverage of the Cold war, something like your "Between two wars" series. Covering the major developments between the major hot wars.
Lol did you guys reference the "More like under new management" meme in the thumbnail?
Looks like they saw Megamind
"We are waiting for you, Red Plague,
to save us from the Black Death,
having torn our country into quarters beforehand,
to be a salvation greeted with loathing."
Józef Szczepański, 29.08.1944
Author died 12 days later
@@fortpark-wd9sx yes there was Poland after but not a free one
@@fortpark-wd9sx You have NO idea what you're talking about. Repressions, executions, censorship, imprisonment. Fighting for survival because food was rationed and you never knew if your children will have enough. Monthly salaries equal to those people in African villages earn today. Even for engineers and doctors. Not being abe to leave the country unless you were a commie or had one in the family.
Poland only existed on paper. I just wish people of the west experienced a fraction of what we did. It would cure you of your arrogance pretty quickly. Yours is the kind of remark only someone who never truly suffered could make.
Surprised you haven’t mentioned the Soviet offensive into northern Norway
According to the "Maus" graphic novel, a Polish Kapo in Auschwitz got Vladek Spiegelman to give him English lessons, in the first few months of 1944. He was aware that the Allies were bombing Germany and calculated that knowledge of English would stand him in good stead if the Germans lost. As matters developed perhaps he would have done better to study Russian, but Kapos often had bigger problems to worry about following liberation.
It depended whether he ended up in East Germany or West unless he wound up dead.
Ah " Maus" from Art Spiegelman. A man of culture !
@@caryblack5985 Polish Kapos at the Stutthof camp near Danzig were hanged in 1946, along with a number of the female German camp overseers. I don't know about the Auschwitz ones.
I started watching the Great War week by week sometime in 2017. Then finished that and switched to WW2 in maybe 2020 or 2021. Then made a pause but picked up last October again from where I left and binged watched daily since the start of Barbarossa and now I've caught up finally.
Looking forward to Korean and Vietnam wars week by week!
Thanks for all your support!
- Time Ghost Community Ambassador
Luckily my family survived the war... but yeah, part of it was forcibly relocated by the Soviets once the war ended. Fate many families shared. Fortunate that nobody died to Germans or Soviets though. Some had their property "liberated" by the Soviets too (favorite family story being of a relative who was "relieved" of his bicycle and watch). Still, everyone being alive at the end was a luxury not many Polish families had.
After waiting from the end of August to the middle of January to build up forces from Tilsit in the north ( East Prussia) to south of Krakow the Soviet armies attack and even with over 4 months to dig in and fortify the German armies in the east immediately begin to crumble.
Just formations on paper at this point. Also Hitler did not allow for even tactical withdrawals to better ground.
Was just waking up and got the update on the Patreon app. Misread it as "The Time Ghost Army Overruns Poland" 😂
Just a teaser ... -TimeGhost Ambassador
24:01 ISU152 spotted ! One of my favorites
As usual, mad props for Indy for pronouncing the Polish placenames exemplarily! (except Ciechanów, but I can't even think of English words to describe the sounds. It sounds somewhat like "Check a noof", not that it has any big bear inspection industry nowadays. 🐻 🔎
You can only put a half a million soldiers in a 20 km bridgehead if you have complete control of the skies. It's unimaginable what constant air raids could do to men and equipment in that kind of compacted situation.
Contrary to what many think, the Luftwaffe was not completely absent from the skies here and actually did everything they could.
By 1944-45now the Red Air Force had not only the numerical, but the qualitative edge or at the very least parity thanks to greatly improved fighter and bomber performance, highly skilled and experienced ace pilots, a better command and control system incorporating radar and fighter direction systems similar to the West, and a colossal logistics and effort. IIRC, Ivan Kozhedub (the highest scoring Allied ace) would score one of his many FW-190 victories over this battle, flying his typical La-7. And he was far from the only one.
Of all the monumental things that happened this week, I think the thing that hit me the most was FDR's fourth term. I've been reminded off and on, as I happened to run into this or that on TV or some other material, in the last weeks about his impending passing and your announcement did it again. The other thing was Hitler's directive about himself having total control over the movement of his forces and the size and speed of the Soviet offensives and how diametrically opposed those two things are. It's such that I can't help feeling the German armies sinking hearts, knowing that a lot of them are gonna end up dying for fool's reasons.
The intro should probably have been lighted to give Indy four shadows with the foreshadowing of the fate of Manila in it.
The 8th wonder of the world is the advance of the Red Army from Moscow to Berlin
"...Literally the marionette pulling the strings..." Uh, I see a couple of problems with that sentence. Otherwise a superb piece of writing, as always.
Always the most knowledgeable and best presented history !
The battle for East Prussia and Konigsberg will be an awful, savage one. Inconceivable amounts of carnage both on the military level and against civilians, eclipsed only by the likes of Berlin, in 1945 at least.
Well, with the Italian front currently quiet and the Battle of the Bulge over, I'm fairly confident that we will see Burma and China in action next week, specially as the Japanese attempt to complete Ichi-Go through the capture of Canton
1. Canton (Guangzhou) has been in Japanese hands since 1938.
2. I salute your eternal optimism, but look at your comments week by week, it has unfortunately never been rewarded.
@@porksterbob They were back in March and April of '44. December was a disappointment, no doubt, but considering how the Eastern Front will be fairly slow (and the Italian outright dormant) for much of February and March, I'm fairly certain that China will be covered in that timeslot.
@@porksterbob Also, you are right. They didn't capture Canton, but rather the Wuhan-Canton Railway.
@@extrahistory8956 wow good timing for me because I just came back from your past comment in week 238 bout the Japanese invasion of India
@@simonycontesta4296 Honestly, I'm fairly confident on my convictions that either Week 283 or Week 284 will feature the Burma and/or China campaigns. A quick analysis of what would be happening in other fronts compared to the China-Burma front will quickly reveal why.
In the Western Front:
- the last major German operation in the Western Front (Operation Nordwind) will come to end
- There is only going to be relatively minor action in the Netherlands and Comar.
In the Eastern Front:
- Operation Konrad III comes to an end
- Vistula-Oder Offensive will run out of steam very quickly
In the Italian Front: Dormant
In the Pacific Front:
- The Drive to Manila
In the China-Burma Front:
- Capture of the Hubei-Canton Railway
- The Last Arakan Campaign
- The Road to Lashio
- The Final Push out of the Shewbo Plains
- The Finale of the Salween Campaign
Thus, it is fairly safe to assume that with multiple operations coming to an end in other fronts, the Italian front dormant and fairly slow action in the Pacific, that the China-Burma front will finally get more attention.
Love these videos! I recommend them to everyone I know with an interest in WWII. Thank you! I wish I could support you monetarily but that's not possible at this point in time.
Always put yourself first financially, thank you for watching Jim!
The “ cold open” phone calls are always great.
Indy does a great job with them, glad you like them!
Ironic how McArthur being so desperate for fame ended up being one of the things he's most famous for.
1945: The Red Army Overruns Poland!
Flashback
1939: The Red Army Overruns EASTERN Poland!
Former USSR, taken from it by the Polish invasion in 1920, and populated by ethnic Russians.
Edit: Russian SFSR, and populated by Belorussians and Ukrainians
Are you calling Ukrainians, Belarussians, Jews, Poles or Lithuanians "ethnic Russians"? Or are you implying that these territories were under control of the USSR before the USSR was even formed? Or that Lwów has ever before in history belonged to any Moscow state?
@@howardzhang5421 dude, USSR wasn't even formed until 1922, these areas just couldn't have been "former ussr" in 1920. And they weren't populated by ethnic Russians - there were only about 1-3% of Russians in those areas. Vast majority of population there was Polish, Ukrainian, Belarussian and Jewish.
@@jakubcesarzdakos5442 Sorry, was referring to the Russian SFSR. The land was land that had belonged to the Russian SFSR, but also included extra territories to serve as a buffer against Nazi Germany.
@@markvorobjov6185 Yes, I was referring to the Russian SFSR, and the peoples were Ukrainian and Belorussian, sorry. But the point is - the land was not Polish, and populated by Belorussians and Ukrainians, as part of the Russian SFSR. Actual polish made up for an extremely small percent in those areas, as evident in ethnic maps of that time.
I have no insights to offer this week, but I did want to thank the team for another great episode. Also, I hope Indy is having fun with that new bowling ball 🙂
I heard he's on a "roll", thanks for the comment!
This Roosevelt fellow seems like he's got a long career ahead of him.
Thank you for delivering such detailed, engaging and objective coverage of the WW2 events. I've learned much more from your videos than at school years ago.
Thanks for the superchat and thanks for the comment!
Me at the 16th minute: Operation WHAT???
Operation black what 😳
I know this has been said over and over again, but it's really incredible to see how far this Channel has come since embarking upon this project back in September 2018. Towards the end of that particular month, Indy recounted how Germany and the Soviet Union invested Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War. Now we are at the point where the Soviet Union is "liberating" all of Poland from Nazi Germany here in January 2024. How time has flown by!
All possible thanks to the TimeGhost army, thank you for watching!
Oh wow they got to Heinsberg where I may or may not live 17:04. Didn't expect it to be named directly during all of this. Feels kind of weird.
Top notch, thank you
Thanks for the comment and thanks for watching!
Indy, props for Polish cities' and region's names pronunciation!
01:42 The fighting near Kielce would see a large tank battle between Dimitri Lelyushenko's 4th Guards Tank Army and Walter Nehring's 24th Panzer Corps, reinforced with 424th Heavy Panzer Battalion, when the latter launched a powerful counterattack. The heaviest fighting was near the village of Lisow, where the 40 T-34/85s and submachinegunners of the 61st Guards Tank Brigade of Colonel Chuprov's 10th Guards Tank Corps clashed with the 424th and the Panthers of the 16th Panzer Division. Soviet tanks reached Lisow on the 13th. The enemy fled without a fight. Abandoned cars and warehouses with munitions, two anti-tank guns and 40 Germans were captured, among which was the commander of the artillery regiment of the 168th Infantry Division. In response, the Germans attacked with 424th's 27 Tigers and 23 King Tigers attacked from the south and west, while 13 Panthers from the 16th attacked from the north.
The whole thing ended very poorly for the Germans. Between 12th-13th of January, the 61st Guards tankers and their infantry support deflected up to a dozen tank and infantry attacks. Using cover provided by the village houses, the Soviet tankers and infantry would let the them get close, using ambush and hit and run tactics. They were undoubtedly helped by the fact that their 85 guns provided just enough punch to handle Tigers and Panthers from the front (King Tigers were trickier but could still be disabled). The end result? For the loss of 23 T-34/85s (4 permanently), the 61st Guards knocked out 7 Tigers, 5 King Tigers, and 5 Panthers around the village and damaged several more tanks which were evacuated, effectively ending the 424th in all but name. Both the commanders of the 61st Guards and 424th (Colonel N. Zhukov and Major Saemisch) were killed in the fighting. The nearby 17th Panzers were also defeated by the Corps and Pavel Rybalko's 3rd Guards Tank Army.
In a particularly humorous note, the Soviets severely downplayed what they had achieved, 'only' reporting the destruction of a 'few panthers'. Meanwhile, the Germans overclaimed, thinking they fought IS-2 tanks and claimed '50-60 of them knocked out'.
www.tankarchives.ca/2016/04/world-of-tanks-history-section-tiger.html
www.tankarchives.ca/2015/02/cheating-at-statistics-10-liars-at-lisow.html
The most surprising part of this is that the Germans were willing to counterattack in the first place. I mean, I'm sure there was some reason or logic behind essentially abandoning a position and then (idiotically, imo) counterattacking the same position after the enemy has reinforced it with heavy tanks. But still, if you've got that many Tigers and Panthers at your disposal, why not just set up ambush positions around the village and wait for the Soviets to move out and catch them in the open? Sounds like more of a command clusterf--k than anything else.
The marionette is the one with the strings, not the one who pulls them! But that was a minor point in an otherwise brilliant update! Thank you Indy and crew as always!
Good point, thanks for watching!
Poland: “we are free!”
Soviets: “more like under new management”
In the coming weeks…
Eastern Europe: The Soviets have freed us!
Soviets: Oh I wouldn’t say freed, more like under new management
The USSR's preferred way of a friend, a puppet entirely dependent on and/or controlled by the Kremlin. A mentality still contnuing in Russia.
@@indianajones4321 but... it is still better that the nazis
Soviet: "Can I call you 'Comrade?' Yes, I think I will call you 'comrade.' Welcome to our family!"
Poland: "But I don't want to be part of..."
S: "Ssh! Ssh! Ssh! Of course you do! Comrade Stalin SAID you do, so there you go!"
P: "But--but--"
S: "Are you arguing with Comrade Stalin's orders?"
P: "But--what? I...I..."
S: "Because it sure sounds like you're arguing with Comrade Stalin's OOORRRders."
P: "I...I..."
S: "Take him away, boys! NEXT!"
I don't think anyone was under any illusions. You had to been seen cheering as to avoid being shot in a forest.
My grandfather, fighting somewhere in East Prussia told harrowing stories of the retreat in the cold winter of 1945. But he made it out alive and managed to get to Kiel towards the end of the war. Which will soon be over, I hope. Soviets are on the move, while it seems that the western Allies are somewhat stuck.
nitially, Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, forbade evacuation of civilians (until 20 January 1945), and ordered that civilians trying to flee the region without permission should be instantly shot. Any kind of preparations made by civilians were treated as defeatism and "Wehrkraftzersetzung" (undermining of military morale). Koch and many other Nazi functionaries were among the first to flee during the Soviet advance. Between 12 January and mid-February 1945, almost 8.5 million Germans fled the Eastern provinces of the Reich.[18][19] Most of the refugees were women and children heading to western parts of Germany, carrying goods on improvised means of transport, such as wooden wagons and carts, as all the motorized vehicles and fuel had been confiscated by the Wehrmacht at the beginning of the war
I like how Macarthur also landed in Lingayen like the Japanese did a few years earlier. Though the way he pressured Kruger doesn’t seem right as it might force them to make unnecessary risks and casualties.
On Hitler: what is called Blitzkrieg is actually a confluence of Bevegunskreig (maneuver warfare) and Auftragstaktik (mission command, letting subordinates more freedom in command decisions). Removing the latter makes them more inflexible unlike earlier in the war.
My grand father was taken prisoner on the 17th of January in Poland, near "Kiernewitz" (i guess it does not exist and he messed 2 different cities up).
He was part of the Infanterie Ersatz Bataillon 65, conscripted against his will as an alsatian, French Citizen is November 1944. His frontline service lasted 15 days.
After being captured, he saw most of the stragglers he had been with being shot in a trench by the Soviet from the second wave (the first one were even nice with them).
When he was near trench, with the pistol being loaded tobe executed, an soviet officer arrived and insulted its troop, sending the POW to captivity.
During the march to the first Pow Camp, tanks and troops were often driving on the opposite side of the road. Russian troops were shooting from the tanks on the pow. My grand father had encountered an alsatian, he was shot this way.
Captivity time was very difficult at Tambov, one of the worst Pow camps from urss. The camp 185 was the one specific for the alsatian and lorraine soldiers.
He never felt any hatred against neither the german, the russian or anyone else. It was a shit* time for everyone.
POWs and others often noticed that second-line troops were often more brutal than combat ones. And this was a universal phenomenon. Survivors of the Bataan Death March in 1942 noted that rear echelon Japanese troops were often more cruel than the combat ones. Martin Brech, a US soldier guarding German POWs in the Rhine meadow camps in spring and summer 1945, thought that brutality towards POWs was often a case of non-combat troops trying to show how tough they were.
I wonder if the town was Skierniewice. It is an important rail junction in Poland (I passed through it in 1995).
@@stevekaczynski3793 many thanks. That's very helpful!!
Thanks as always. I know Sparty will cover this but the fact the camps and killings keep going is just awful.
The wild fanatical killing until the very end is just mind boggling.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
To me Tilsts fall is significant because it was the border of Napoleon’s empire. So the Russians have entered what was once the first French empire
This week on January 20th 1945, the following missions in the Call of Duty series will begin:
*January 15 1945*
Noville (Call of Duty: United Offensive) - As Corporal Scott Riley in Noville, Belgium, you are to defend your position from waves of enemies until reinforcements arrive. This level has some parallels to the Pavlov's House level in Call of Duty.
Festung Recogne (Call of Duty) - As Private Martin in Festung Recogne, Northeast of Bastogne, Belgium, you are to raid two enemy bunkers and capture all enemy documents. You will also have to use Flak 88 guns to eliminate two enemy tanks.
*January 17 1945*
Warsaw Factory (Call of Duty) - As Sergeant Alexei Ivanovich Voronin in Warsaw, Poland, you and your squad are to secure the tank repair facility, carefully navigating the rooms and hallways of the factory and eliminating enemies along the way.
Warsaw Railyard (Call of Duty) - As Sergeant Alexei Ivanovich Voronin in Warsaw, Poland, you are to clear the railyards of enemy soldiers while trying to avoid both enemy fire and friendly artillery. Eventually, you are to regroup with the 4th Army on the outskirts of the factory complex.
*January 19 1945*
The Last Train (Call of Duty 2: Big Red One) - As Sergeant Roland Roger near Buchholz, Germany, you will first have to eliminate some enemies in house to house fighting, before eliminating a mortar team, as well as a Flak 88. Eventually, you will take command of a enemy Panzer IV tank and make your way to the train station, eliminating waves of enemy tanks and anti-tank squads.
The Dragon's Teeth (Call of Duty 2: Big Red One) - As Sergeant Roland Roger in the Siegfried Line, Germany, you are to secure a route for General Patton's tanks to cross over the Siegfried Line. Ultimately this would include destroying two V2 rockets while taking heavy casualties. This is the final level of the campaign.
Excellent work Indy & team!
Thanks for the comment and thanks for watching!
I can't believe I'm 4 years deep into a you tube show. In the past I didnt even like a "to be continued" TV show.
Stick around, it's gonna get even better!
-TimeGhost Ambassador
omg..you have a LOT of work in this video. ..i am very impressed
Thank for your kind words.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
The writing's been on the wall for quite a while now, but it's incredible how events happening this week will severely affect Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia for the next 50 years.
Thank you Indy and team
Still the best and quickest 20 minutes in my week! 😀💓
Thank you for your contunied support. You could always reduce playback speed to make it last longer ;)
-TimeGhost Ambassador
@@WorldWarTwo that's a good idea👍
Indy: "I hope nobody wrecks the city."
Me, a Filipino: *immediately understands what Indy meant*
I am already dreading the next WAH episodes.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
But he'd be the only Field Marshal Marshall we have!
I think I need to watch this episode a few more times. Too much to absorb in one viewing.
The scale of this war is truly mind boggeling. Especially looking at todays troop levels
After the war ended,Winston Churchil actually thought of a plan to declare war on Soviet to push them out of Poland. It was called operation unthinkable.
And it involved rearming the Germans
😂
Of course, no one else would go along with such a plan. And then Churchill lost the 1945 election.
Aptly named.
U watched a RUclips video about it😂😂 why do I feel the need to post it here idiot ur not smart
This episode is one of the best-offs of the whole series in my opinion! Go Indy goooo!
I'm going! I'm going!!
Fantastic episode as usual - many thanks!!!
Thanks for your support!
- Time Ghost Community Ambassador
This is a great series. (I've followed it from the start.) Thanks a lot for your efforts.
23:40 TRU-M4N has entered the game
I can't wait to see the look on Monty's face...
Neil Richie, now that’s a blast from the past
Soviets: "Poland you have been liberated....stop resisting"
"It is for your own good, little polish kids, that you let us russian grown ups take over, take our offer...or else"
In January 1945 NKVD invited 16 Polish underground leaders for "talks" and arrested simply them. Miracleously, they were not shot, but "just" sent to Gulags.
I have said this in the D-Day livestream and I will say it again, I would have loved to see Montgomery and MacArthur fight on the same front just to see how they would try to out diva each other with pressconferences and the like.
Montgomery had enough trouble with Patton's "diva-ness." MacArthur would end up sending Montgomery into an apoplectic fit from which he'd likely NEVER recover.
Field Marshal Marshal, commanding Major Major.
It's pretty clear the War is lost... makes you wonder what the Generals and high ranking officers thought... I mean, they had to realize it's over, right?
Also, this makes the millions who have yet to perish even more tragic.
They believed there was hope of a negotiated peace - at very least, with the supposedly morally weak Western powers.
Most high ranking officers knew the war was lost after they failed to take moscow, there's a reason almost none of the high ranking commanders that began the war are still commanders at this point
@@alphamikeomega5728 It was a fantasy.
@@caryblack5985 But it's all they had, and it kept them fighting nonetheless.
Don't forget about Major Major . 18:57
That's Major Major Major Major to you!
Truely a Catch 22...
@@tobybartels8426 touche
@@tobybartels8426 LOL, you beat me to it.
@@tobybartels8426that much???
After (kind of) binge-watching for some months, I finally caught you up. The final words of each video are sometimes perfect, I wonder how it will be the last words for the last one, after the surrendering of Japan. Will you make us cry? Will we make you cry with our comments?... let's see.
Wonderful historical coverage video introduced about week 282 . Events during WW2.
Thank you for watching!
I always like to play this "game" were I compare this series with were I am and think how each event would impact my life. From 1939 to 1941 I didn't leave Spain so neutral territory and everything ok. In 1942 I went to study for a year in Germany and returned in 1943. Since France was under german occupation I didn't have to cross or get close to any frontlines. I was in the city of Constance, which is famous because they left the lights on at night so that allied bombers would mix it up with nearby neutral Switzerland and not bomb it. In between I traveled to Sweden, Berlin and to Danzing. Occupied Poland being the closest to the front I'd get. So in 1943 I was back in Spain and I visited the french alps in december 1943 so unless I stumble with resistance fighters of some type I think I'd enjoy a nice vacation.
It seemed like I was going to survive without any problems until a took a really good job offer in Poland in the end of 1944. So yeah, now the Red Army is coming here and I don't want to play this game anymore.
If I were playing that game, I'd stick with being non-draftable in a nice small town somewhere in the US for the duration of the war. One of the few countries left untouched by the end.
Honestly you should have stayed in Spain...
@@livethefuture2492 Yeah, of course if WW2 was happening right now I wouldn't leave Spain that much. The Germany year could be ok though, since I don't belong to any group the nazis want to exterminate. And of course nobody would take a job offer in Danzig in 1944.
I’ve always wondered why we didn’t use the term Marshal or Field Marshal, now I know the answer is funny.
Thanks TG
Thanks for watching!
@@WorldWarTwo Why don't you guys upload in 4K?
Man, there's a lot of ego going on in this war.
You can see Hitler’s head from Svalbard.
20 January 1945.
Sergeant John Evans of the 7th Armoured Division is fighting near the German border in the southern tip of the Netherlands after the first attack of Operation Blackcock failed to cook off. A new attack starts today with hopes of liberating Susteren and making some progress into the Roer Triangle.
Sergeant Artyom Ivanov of the 13th Guards Rifle Division continues to plough through Poland this week, helping to liberate the city of Częstochowa on 16 January. Yesterday on 19 January, a major milestone was reached, a sacred moment for Ivanov and many of his friends, especially the ones who are no longer with him. That day, the 13th Guards reached the border, and Artyom marched onto German soil for the first time.
I know that getting these episodes out is a herculean effort every week, but is it possible to add a graphic in the top right of the screen on the maps showing the day that the movements being pictured happened? Like it would spin down as Indy talks and then reset when he moves on to a different area of the front at the start of the week?
SAC should have put Omar Bradley further to the north.
Theodor is bussin'
Your closing notes this week were very powerful. While Hitler is often depicted as always demanding such inefficient and personal control over the military, it's only around now that the depictions are hardly different from reality. Let's see how well one drugged up middle aged man who last held military duty 30 years ago can lead against three fronts of well equipped, numerous and motivated enemies with seemingly limitless industrial output and manpower.
Thanks for your kind words!
-TimeGhost Ambassador