at 20:52 I definitely meant Saving Private Ryan not BoB. I should also mention that some Rangers did end up landing at Dog Green, but not in the first wave.
VTH: WW2 isn't really my area of expertise. Also VTH: *adds more context to WW2 with 15 minutes of added content than my history book did in a semester*
@@badcornflakes6374what are you smoking hes not talking about salt lake City Utah. 🤣🤣🤣 This is ww2 buddy we didn't fight it on American main land. It was only the Pacific Africa and Europe. 🤣🤣 I hope to hell you were being sarcastic.
As a Canadian it is taught in school how well we did on D Day and that we had to stop to have the other beaches (and countries) catch up. In WW1 we became a nation, in WW2 we gained a reputation.
I've heard some crazy stories of Canadians in WW1 during the Christmas cease fire taking revenge when others were celebrating Christmas. Don't know if they're true.
fellow Canadian here, fun fact...only two nations have never lost a war, Australia and us, Canada. I've heard the joke countless times, Canadians are really nice...until it's time to go, then we go!
Rommel felt that Allied airpower would prevent the German Panzer units, and its logistics to move around, so they had to be close to the coast or they would not be able to react. There was also a shortage of fuel. Gerd von Rundstedt thought naval gunfire was a big threat, and had no faith in the atlantic wall and that a defence in depth inland was a better option.
It turned out Rommel was right and Runstedt was wrong. Or I mean we can’t know 100% but the way Runstedt wanted it was more followed and we know what happened. Rommel never got his way.
To a degree, both were correct; Germany by mid-1944 was strategically so compromised that all options were sub-optimal. Perhaps by following Rommel's plan they may have slowed the invasion but naval gunfire did cause huge damage so perhaps not. Either way, it was already a matter of when not if Germany would lose the war by this point.
Also, when D-Day happened, the French Resistance did coordinated sabotage missions against infrastructure all over France, further slowing down the arrival of German reinforcements to the landing zones.
@@anderskorsback4104 Yep. However, the units on the coast did get mauled badly by naval bombardment, so stationing more units there may have just resulted in them being blown up too.
Of course it can all be debated to death, but with the benefit of hindsight, Rommel was probably more correct, although Runstedt had valid points. If D--Day was going to be stopped, it had be the Germans pushing it entirely back into the sea.
I'm glad you mentioned about the British engineers manning the landing crafts. I had the fortune of visiting Omaha beach in 2004 and our (British) tour guide said that he had a relative who fought on Omaha beach. I was (naturally) surprised at this until he explained that the US landing forces requested the aid of British engineers.
In regards to the US Navy in the Pacific, they are in route to the Marianas for the invasion of Saipan that would commence the following week. It’s scale is equal in size to the forces that the Americans would put towards the Normandy landings.
I've been to the Normandy beaches, specifically Point DuHoc aka Utah Beach. The first thought I'd imagine what a German soldier would've thought when the Allied invasion force came in. That must've been the largest amount of ships they would ever see in their entire lives! It must've felt that the entire world is bearing down on them!
They probably were, 2 thirds of the worlds industrial power and a large percentage of the world's warships and landing craft were concentrated at those beaches.
I second that comment about James Holland’s book on Normandy. Absolutely superb author with many other books on WWII including the Battle of Britain, Burma and Sicily.
For the American/allied perspective, I highly recommend visiting the D-Day memorial in Bedford, VA for anyone who is able to make the trip. Lots of interesting history to read there. And it's an impressive memorial that's on par with those in Washington DC. The flags of every country that participated in Operation Overlord/Neptune are flying there and they have an explanation of how they all contributed. Bedford is a small town about halfway between Ronoake and Lynchburg. The memorial was built there because 19 of the 30 "Bedford Boys" that were enlisted died during the operation, which means that Bedford suffered the highest per Capita loss of any town/city on D-Day. A very nice gesture to build it there, even though that puts it out of the way for some potential visitors.
Congrats on your trip next week, I hope you have a great time with your daughter! France and England are beautiful countries with an abundance of history going back thousands of years.
I visited normandy in 2018 and we had this really great tour that showed german and american perspective and omaha beach was really a killzone when you saw how good the germans had visibility to the beach
It's pretty dang long, but I think you'd enjoy the iwo Jima series from the operation room. Goes in depth into the specifics and forces you to understand the genuine and unexpected brutality of that fight
My wife and I are going to London and Paris in July. Won't be particularly history focused, since that's not her thing, but very much looking forward to it. Great that you're working with P. Woodadge. I've watched a ton of his video's and am amazed at this knowledge of WWII generally, but D-Day in particular. I envy his ability to speed read and comprehend all of the books he reads. Also, it would have been hilarious if Armchair Historians paid ad about Patton, Rommel and Montgomery would've been Manscaped instead of Keeps!
I'm glad that you mentioned James Holland. He is a very talented writer, and he also co-hosts a discussion podcast (We Have Ways Of Making You Talk) about WWII that gets uploaded several times a week.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (III) lived one town away from me in Enfield, CT. His father insisted that he find work just like anyone else, so he spent some time working there. Our good friend lives in an apartment that is the second floor of the house he lived in. She found out by chance, well after she moved in.
In the Pacific Theater, at this time, the USN is preparing for the invasion of Saipan on June 14th, which leads to one of the major naval engagements, the Battle of the Phillipine Sea. You have two of the largest amphibious operations in history occurring near enough simultaneously.
Will you be visiting Juno Beach? I think it’s important to remember that it wasn’t just the Americans who landed on D day it was the Canadians and the British to hack through even other nations that weren’t landing on the beaches, but helped in a multitude of other ways to prepare for operation overlord through the Polish British subjects from India, Vichy, French, and many more I think it’s important that we remember everyone who helped contribute on D-Day not just the individual people who landed
This was so well done and as someone who likes to study and research the German perspective on things like WWI and WWII this was fantastic. I loved the Pokémon and meme references as well!
Would be great if you could do the Royal British Legion's "Pedal to Paris" which is a bicycle ride from London to Paris. On the road to Dover you stop at the Battle of Britain memorial. And you ride through northern France from Calais to Paris. And at each day you have a small ceremony remembering the fallen. And on the last day you have the ceremony at the Champs Elysees.
Dieppe: One author contends that Dieppe was cover for part of the operation which targeted the German radar station right next to the beach. Rommel wanted the Panzers close to the beach, based on his experience fighting the Allie in North Africa when the Allies had massive air superiority. He knew that supply and mobility would be greatly curtailed by allied airpower. The Commonwealth launched their DDs much closer to the beach than the Americans, which is why they lost far fewer DDs.
I heard that Dieppe was primarily about capturing a radar setup too. I think it was a video on WW2TV but I can’t remember the historian’s name Woody at WW2TV was interviewing.
If you visit Normandy, you definitively need to pay a visit at Juno Beach Centre. It's brilliantly done and they will expand the history and explanations to all the beaches. I heard it's better made than in Omaha beach (might be biased because I'm Canadian 😉)
My Great Grandpa was a SS Soldier from the Division Das Reich, he fought in France,Barbarossa and Kursk but then got captured in the normandy in 1944, but before he got captured he cut out the SS Rune under his arms my mom told me he told her that was probably one of the reasons he survived bc he got shot and was in bad condition so nobody really paid attention to the cut by his armpit we still have his pictures, his iron cross, wounded badge, eastern front medal, and his cufftitle from his uniform with the unit name Das Reich on it but its in very bad condition my mom told me he never talked about the war just a few things like it was all bad, trauma, executions, etc and if you didnt shoot you can lay next to them was told by some commanders he also was after the war a heavy drinker and died in 1988 at the age of 71
Learning through trial and error is how humanity got where we are. Our roads are safe because we learned from traffic accidents. We typically lead long lives as a result of medical experiments which sometimes went horribly wrong. Spaceflight us so common today because rockets were and are being tested to their limits. And, not unimportantly, we become adults after making many, many mistakes
If you like the other sides perspective , Alexander Watson a very good professor at Goldsmiths university London does this. He specialises in the Great War and Austria-Hungry. His book Ring of steel covers Austria hungry at war and Germany. One of the best history books I’ve ever read. And I have a signed copy yay 😀
Hey Chris, James Holland has a podcast called We Have Ways of Making you Talk where he and Al Murray cover all sorts of WW2 topics, I think you’d really like it.
I knew a man who was at D-day. He flew a B-17. Leo Bartley (who later worked for NASA). He flew a bombing raid and noted he felt safe flying because B-24s flew under him. That made him safe because flak guns targeted B-24s. Just a side story Im aware of
I remember reading about Warspite, she literally wore out her guns here, fired every shell and went to port and rearmed, I went out and emptied her stock again. Could you imagine being on that ship constantly firing non stop.
The final stage in deception which led to the Germans being so supremely confident in Calais being the target (nights off, heavy drinking, and orders not to be disturbed etc.) was the huge convoy spotted on radar slowly crossing the Strait of Dover, at a speed to make landfall just before dawn. This was actually an elite group of Lancaster bombers flying what must have been about the most spectacularly precise formation flying of the entire war. How do you make fairly fast aircraft appear to be a slow-moving convoy of transport ships? You fly in very precise racetrack patterns on the stopwatch, dropping a bundle of "window" aluminium foil strips at a carefully timed point on each circuit, just a few yards ahead of the last one and timed to be exactly at the time that last bundle hit the water. And to keep it up hour after hour after hour, replacements carefully slotting into the formation as fuel and bundles of window fan low. A second out in starting a turn, rolling out, dropping the window or deviating just a tiny amount in altitude or speed would have led to a suspicious jump in at least a portion of the convoy's position on radar, but not one single mistake was made all night long. As the sun started appearing at their altitude (much earlier than at ground level) they got their reward - the big coastal defence anti-ship batteries opened up, turning the water far below them to foam as they engaged a completely fictitious invasion fleet with every ground to ship asset in their armoury. It may come as little surprise that this precision flying was led by the 617 "Dambusters" squadron, who had been disappointed not to have been involved in the general bombardment, although they had many more chances later, interfering with the transport of the Panzer divisions in their attempt to provide belated reinforcements to the beleaguered Normandy defences.
I just want to peek my head up and comment about the role of the Coast Guard. They were tasked to run the landing craft. Also, notably for the Candians and Brits they trained with on sword, Juno, Gold. People also forget how many of the Coast Guard were plucked to fill the duties for Navy and Transport ships.
My mom actually has copies of plans from D-Day. Iirc they were from her grandfather who served in WWII and was in Germany. The paperwork is super old and you can't handle it without it trying to fall apart, but it's a bunch of diagrams and names with "operation overlord" at the top.
Since we are doing armchair history videos. Could you do a reaction to German invasion in 1939 from the polish perceptive? It’s really good and I would love to get your commentary
The idea of letting them land then converging makes sense if they were referencing what was happening in the Pacific. The desperation of a soldier to fight forward when retreating means drowning was a serious consideration and led the Japanese to switch their tactics during the battle of Okinawa. The logic of allowing them in then crushing them was not unfounded.
Boing Boing Chris 😃. I am a 100% Black Country Baggie and I remember 1 of your other videos where you mentioned your family history and links to God’s country (as some of us call the Black Country lol).
my parents and 2 of my siblings just went to europe so they could be at normandy on d-day's anniversary. it'd be really funny if they bump into you there
8:47 I've learn on the channel ww2tv that the bombing operation carried out on France for DDAY is the largest synchronized air operation in history to this day. Apparently it was a failure, they missed all the targets on Omaha, Gold and Sword beach, in the end the German batteries were destroyed by naval fire which wasn't part of the original plan. The sad part is that due to these massive allied bombings there was actually more french civilians killed on DDAY than German, American or British soldiers.
Rommel's 'defeat them on the beach' idea almost certainly would not have worked. The allies had the initiative. If it looked that tough they would land somewhere else. They could force the action. Also, tanks near the beach would have been pounded by airplanes and heavy naval guns. A disaster.
Hi, Chris, very interesting, there are also three more videos, D Day from the American Perspective, D Day from the British Perspective and D Day from the Canadian Perspective. It would be interesting to do those as well
Hey I’m commenting before watching to request a reaction on if the swedesh won the great northern war from alternate history hub. I loved that series we did on that so would love to see that.
Some important things should be mentioned. Dieppe had as an objective to destroy the Luftwaffe in the area but instead ended with the RAF units being destroyed, in Normandy the Luftwaffe was not even present in the entire region of Normandy, In Omaha there where up to 10,000 casualties, of course only a fifth were killed, but the casualties on D-Day overall were higher than the 15,000 KIA
Just a couple of points, 1/ most of the German armoured vehicles in use were French (,21st panzer was a unique organisation not copied by any other unit and was made up from modified Loraine tractors carring a mixture of either a 75mm AT guns or 105mm Howitzers), and so was much of the heavy coastal artillery. Both armour and those heavy guns were obsolete even when they were captured in 1940.. 2/ the RN were perfectly aware that the DD tanks were ill suited in waves that high and the landing craft carrying them were told to drop them almost on the shoreline, but those orders were either "ignored or not correctly followed" at Omaha and the lack of armour support is often sited as a reason fot the higher casually rate. Almost all the other DD tanks on the other four beaches followed the modified landing instructions and they got ashore. 3/ not much references to the efforrs of the resistance cutting German telephone communications on the night of the 5th/6th, which delayed the calls for limited availabile reinforcements that there were. FINALLY 4/ Germany by June 44 lost control of their own airspace over Germany, so the source that was quoted as enquiring where is the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe had no understanding of the circumstances his side were under by the time of the invasion. Much like the French in 1812-15 Germany had burned through its strategic reserves of young recruits in the meat grinder in Russia and now the soviets were unleashing "Operation Bagration" to destroy army group centre (which is said to start 22 June), at a point where they has not enough heavy fuel to move significant numbers of ships, nor enough aviation fuel to train enough new replacement pilots to fly the wonderwaffe plane or medium grade fuel to move those Panzer divisions- German logistics relied on railways and the USAAF and Bomber Command had both eliminated fuel storage and rail heads TO MOVE THAT LIMITED SUPPLY.
I can see both arguments for focusing on defending the beaches or holding mobile units in reserve, since it's often oversimplified. The benefits of having the panzers on the beaches is well known, and probably would have been the better strategy given the Allied air supremacy making moving reserves much more difficult. But, the disadvantage that isn't often mentioned is it thins out your forces since you have to cover a long stretch of coastline and makes it more difficult to move reinforcements to the actual invasion site. Having a mobile reserve that can respond from a central location quickly to any location reduces the risk of not choosing to defend the right location with enough forces and then not being able to move enough units in to hold the area to prevent a breakout. Despite not being able to hold the beaches, the Germans were able to bottle up the Allies in Normandy for nearly 2 months by rushing in reserves.
I've always felt that the Allies were very fortunate that Hitler was in charge of Nazi Germany. Despite the terrible evil he wrought, and the devestation and suffering, he was not a strategist. If he had been replaced early on by one of his more competent generals, things might have gone very differently - or at least a lot longer.
Do you have plans to do reactions to the history videos by Overly Sarcastic Productions? They tend to focus on classical history but their videos are great!
That's rather flippant to say that Rommel was probably right to say keeping the panzers close to the beach would have turned the tide in Normandy. The Germans and Allies had plenty of experience to know what happens to tanks situated within range of battleships during combat.
When the Panzer reserves where under Rundstdent, but he only have comand of those if Hitler, give the order and at the same time he had first to inform Keitel, and Himmler to authorize the use of the Panzer units of the Whermacht and the SS. And Kreiss defended the beaches on Rommel orders but Rommel was not the comander neither of the area nor of the front, and was relegated. At the end the Germans on the beaches were alone, to add insult to the calamity of the OKW and Hitler, the 5th of June the air units at Normandy had been moved towards Ukraine and only 2 ME-109 remained in the area.
DD tanks were not meant to be offloaded miles out. The American commander scoffed at the British invention "funniest and didn't use them properly .. brought in closer to shore they'd have survived the sea and given much needed armor support on Omaha..
Some did. Most were swamped at Omaha beach but out of the 32 tanks of "B" and "C" of the 741st Tank Battalion, 5 managed to get ashore and put in good service dealing with German strongpoints. The follow-up by tanks of the 743rd Tank Battalion landed their tanks directly on the beach and had more success with fewer losses. Source- Pierre Fallet, WWII Trainee of Normandy American Heroes.
@@celston51 5 survivors out of a force of 32 can hardly be described as a ringing endorsement of the Captain's cowardice in refusing to put in as close to shore as ordered, or achieved by any of the other ships' Captains though, the rest of who managed to get into close enough and calm enough waters drop their DD Tanks with very few losses. He was what yardarms were retained for, long after the end of sailing ships. Sadly, he was never charged.
@@celston51 interesting.. commanders not knowing how to use new tech. a lot of vehicles and equipment had been developed since Dieppe raid of 1942. to get vehicles ashore and off the beaches. 30 tanks on Omaha would have seen a big difference, perhaps not the day long battle and the commanders on the point of withdrawing by evening.. ?
@@ChrisCrossClash oh? Can you document this well known fact for me? Because the reason I know that nearly 80% were piloted by the Royal Navy is precisely BECAUSE I've read up on D-Day.
@@ChrisCrossClash here's the UNITED STATES Department of defense stating it was 80% British, 16.5% were US dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/2016/0516_dday/docs/d-day-fact-sheet-the-beaches.pdf
Very interesting video. I've never really considered what it was like for the Germans during the war. While I don't agree with the policies of the German High Command during the war, especially the ... "labor camps" ... part of me feels some sympathy for the regular German soldiers fighting the war. I can't imagine what it must have been like for them facing such overwhelming odds with the knowledge that most likely you aren't going to survive the day.
It’s a shame about TR Jr. Absolutely powerhouse of a family but seemingly weird genes. TR Jr died before the war ended at 56. TR died at 60, and FDR at 63.
I am terrified to think how the invasion would have ended up if Rommel got a "yes to everything" card... Honestly, if Hitler would have listened to his advisors and generals who knows what world we could be living in. I'm glad all evil people have a weakness... What if we landed exactly where they thought? What if we DIDN'T crack the enigma code? These crucial things that seem soooo miniscule in history could literally change the outcome of the entire event. Think of a crit in Pokemon. ...THE CRIT MATTERED! Anyways, thank you for your constant content that's genuinely intriguing, as well as shining a light on a potentially smaller channel that is not quiiiiite as good as you, but almost! Have a great trip to Europe and I am very excited for the future content.
![Quando Rondo - Grow Up [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8zFnCg3BO4Q/mqdefault.jpg)
at 20:52 I definitely meant Saving Private Ryan not BoB. I should also mention that some Rangers did end up landing at Dog Green, but not in the first wave.
VTH: WW2 isn't really my area of expertise.
Also VTH: *adds more context to WW2 with 15 minutes of added content than my history book did in a semester*
Just went to Normandy back in April. You're gonna love it. Gotta do the Utah museum
Love Salt Lake city
@@badcornflakes6374what are you smoking hes not talking about salt lake City Utah. 🤣🤣🤣 This is ww2 buddy we didn't fight it on American main land. It was only the Pacific Africa and Europe. 🤣🤣 I hope to hell you were being sarcastic.
As a Canadian it is taught in school how well we did on D Day and that we had to stop to have the other beaches (and countries) catch up. In WW1 we became a nation, in WW2 we gained a reputation.
Canadians were fantastic in combat in the First World War as well.
alot of us hunt and we are crazy drunks alot of the time when we're having fun, so this might have something to do with it lol
Mad respect to the Canadians across the border
I've heard some crazy stories of Canadians in WW1 during the Christmas cease fire taking revenge when others were celebrating Christmas. Don't know if they're true.
fellow Canadian here, fun fact...only two nations have never lost a war, Australia and us, Canada.
I've heard the joke countless times, Canadians are really nice...until it's time to go, then we go!
Rommel felt that Allied airpower would prevent the German Panzer units, and its logistics to move around, so they had to be close to the coast or they would not be able to react. There was also a shortage of fuel. Gerd von Rundstedt thought naval gunfire was a big threat, and had no faith in the atlantic wall and that a defence in depth inland was a better option.
It turned out Rommel was right and Runstedt was wrong. Or I mean we can’t know 100% but the way Runstedt wanted it was more followed and we know what happened. Rommel never got his way.
To a degree, both were correct; Germany by mid-1944 was strategically so compromised that all options were sub-optimal. Perhaps by following Rommel's plan they may have slowed the invasion but naval gunfire did cause huge damage so perhaps not. Either way, it was already a matter of when not if Germany would lose the war by this point.
Also, when D-Day happened, the French Resistance did coordinated sabotage missions against infrastructure all over France, further slowing down the arrival of German reinforcements to the landing zones.
@@anderskorsback4104 Yep. However, the units on the coast did get mauled badly by naval bombardment, so stationing more units there may have just resulted in them being blown up too.
Of course it can all be debated to death, but with the benefit of hindsight, Rommel was probably more correct, although Runstedt had valid points. If D--Day was going to be stopped, it had be the Germans pushing it entirely back into the sea.
I'm glad you mentioned about the British engineers manning the landing crafts. I had the fortune of visiting Omaha beach in 2004 and our (British) tour guide said that he had a relative who fought on Omaha beach. I was (naturally) surprised at this until he explained that the US landing forces requested the aid of British engineers.
Man, I love these perspective series he's done! I hope you continue reacting to them in the future!
Weather Looks good for Normandy next week!
In regards to the US Navy in the Pacific, they are in route to the Marianas for the invasion of Saipan that would commence the following week. It’s scale is equal in size to the forces that the Americans would put towards the Normandy landings.
Drinking game add on. When @vlogging Through History mentions a place he is going soon.
I've been to the Normandy beaches, specifically Point DuHoc aka Utah Beach. The first thought I'd imagine what a German soldier would've thought when the Allied invasion force came in. That must've been the largest amount of ships they would ever see in their entire lives! It must've felt that the entire world is bearing down on them!
They probably were, 2 thirds of the worlds industrial power and a large percentage of the world's warships and landing craft were concentrated at those beaches.
I second that comment about James Holland’s book on Normandy. Absolutely superb author with many other books on WWII including the Battle of Britain, Burma and Sicily.
The streets in the subdivision where I grew up were all named after WWII battles. A boy in my class lived on Dieppe. We lived on St. Lo
For the American/allied perspective, I highly recommend visiting the D-Day memorial in Bedford, VA for anyone who is able to make the trip. Lots of interesting history to read there. And it's an impressive memorial that's on par with those in Washington DC.
The flags of every country that participated in Operation Overlord/Neptune are flying there and they have an explanation of how they all contributed.
Bedford is a small town about halfway between Ronoake and Lynchburg. The memorial was built there because 19 of the 30 "Bedford Boys" that were enlisted died during the operation, which means that Bedford suffered the highest per Capita loss of any town/city on D-Day. A very nice gesture to build it there, even though that puts it out of the way for some potential visitors.
One of my videos will be on the Bedford Boys when I’m there next week. They are the Able company I referred to in this video.
@@VloggingThroughHistory Ah, very good. Have a safe and fun trip! Looking forward to the videos.
Congrats on your trip next week, I hope you have a great time with your daughter! France and England are beautiful countries with an abundance of history going back thousands of years.
I love that Chris always warms up front that he is not an expert on the subject… then proceeds to be an expert
I visited normandy in 2018 and we had this really great tour that showed german and american perspective and omaha beach was really a killzone when you saw how good the germans had visibility to the beach
It's pretty dang long, but I think you'd enjoy the iwo Jima series from the operation room. Goes in depth into the specifics and forces you to understand the genuine and unexpected brutality of that fight
My wife and I are going to London and Paris in July. Won't be particularly history focused, since that's not her thing, but very much looking forward to it. Great that you're working with P. Woodadge. I've watched a ton of his video's and am amazed at this knowledge of WWII generally, but D-Day in particular. I envy his ability to speed read and comprehend all of the books he reads.
Also, it would have been hilarious if Armchair Historians paid ad about Patton, Rommel and Montgomery would've been Manscaped instead of Keeps!
Hope you enjoy both of these great cities. I live just outside London.
I'm glad that you mentioned James Holland. He is a very talented writer, and he also co-hosts a discussion podcast (We Have Ways Of Making You Talk) about WWII that gets uploaded several times a week.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (III) lived one town away from me in Enfield, CT. His father insisted that he find work just like anyone else, so he spent some time working there. Our good friend lives in an apartment that is the second floor of the house he lived in. She found out by chance, well after she moved in.
I just watched this video last night. Now I get a nice treat by listening to your reaction to it. Thanks VTH. 😄
In the Pacific Theater, at this time, the USN is preparing for the invasion of Saipan on June 14th, which leads to one of the major naval engagements, the Battle of the Phillipine Sea. You have two of the largest amphibious operations in history occurring near enough simultaneously.
Every time you post a video, My day gets 10x better. thank you!
Will you be visiting Juno Beach? I think it’s important to remember that it wasn’t just the Americans who landed on D day it was the Canadians and the British to hack through even other nations that weren’t landing on the beaches, but helped in a multitude of other ways to prepare for operation overlord through the Polish British subjects from India, Vichy, French, and many more I think it’s important that we remember everyone who helped contribute on D-Day not just the individual people who landed
This was so well done and as someone who likes to study and research the German perspective on things like WWI and WWII this was fantastic. I loved the Pokémon and meme references as well!
Highly recommend looking at Real Engineerings' series "The Logistics of D-Day". Gives another angle to look at the invasion.
Normandy is incredible!! I would go back and visit again for sure.
Would be great if you could do the Royal British Legion's "Pedal to Paris" which is a bicycle ride from London to Paris. On the road to Dover you stop at the Battle of Britain memorial.
And you ride through northern France from Calais to Paris. And at each day you have a small ceremony remembering the fallen. And on the last day you have the ceremony at the Champs Elysees.
Dieppe: One author contends that Dieppe was cover for part of the operation which targeted the German radar station right next to the beach.
Rommel wanted the Panzers close to the beach, based on his experience fighting the Allie in North Africa when the Allies had massive air superiority. He knew that supply and mobility would be greatly curtailed by allied airpower.
The Commonwealth launched their DDs much closer to the beach than the Americans, which is why they lost far fewer DDs.
I heard that Dieppe was primarily about capturing a radar setup too.
I think it was a video on WW2TV but I can’t remember the historian’s name Woody at WW2TV was interviewing.
If you visit Normandy, you definitively need to pay a visit at Juno Beach Centre. It's brilliantly done and they will expand the history and explanations to all the beaches. I heard it's better made than in Omaha beach (might be biased because I'm Canadian 😉)
My Great Grandpa was a SS Soldier from the Division Das Reich, he fought in France,Barbarossa and Kursk but then got captured in the normandy in 1944, but before he got captured he cut out the SS Rune under his arms my mom told me he told her that was probably one of the reasons he survived bc he got shot and was in bad condition so nobody really paid attention to the cut by his armpit we still have his pictures, his iron cross, wounded badge, eastern front medal, and his cufftitle from his uniform with the unit name Das Reich on it but its in very bad condition my mom told me he never talked about the war just a few things like it was all bad, trauma, executions, etc and if you didnt shoot you can lay next to them was told by some commanders he also was after the war a heavy drinker and died in 1988 at the age of 71
Was he actually in the SS or u talking about he was just a German soldier?
@@scottbivins4758 Actually
@@nah3826 oh
Rommels proposed strat was the correct one...
Learning through trial and error is how humanity got where we are. Our roads are safe because we learned from traffic accidents. We typically lead long lives as a result of medical experiments which sometimes went horribly wrong. Spaceflight us so common today because rockets were and are being tested to their limits.
And, not unimportantly, we become adults after making many, many mistakes
Hobart’s funnies were such a rabbit hole to look into
Love your reactions man! Keep up the amazing work!
Claims to not be an expert on World War 2*
Proceeds to describe tactics and background used throughout the war and in this battle.
You love to see it
If you like the other sides perspective , Alexander Watson a very good professor at Goldsmiths university London does this. He specialises in the Great War and Austria-Hungry. His book Ring of steel covers Austria hungry at war and Germany. One of the best history books I’ve ever read. And I have a signed copy yay 😀
Thanks for the book recommendation! I was wondering what I would listen to after my current Dan Carlin podcast - it's going to be Normandy '44!
Hey Chris, James Holland has a podcast called We Have Ways of Making you Talk where he and Al Murray cover all sorts of WW2 topics, I think you’d really like it.
17:52 inspired by the tense and brilliant Inglorious Basterds scene in the basement tavern, right down to the "King Kong" clue.
The candians are some of the mkst underrated troops im ww2.
I knew a man who was at D-day. He flew a B-17. Leo Bartley (who later worked for NASA). He flew a bombing raid and noted he felt safe flying because B-24s flew under him. That made him safe because flak guns targeted B-24s.
Just a side story Im aware of
I would like to recommend the "Invasion of Italy" video also by The Armchair Historian.
I saw this just as I was writing about this stuff as part of a 4 piece compilation for my history final essay
I remember reading about Warspite, she literally wore out her guns here, fired every shell and went to port and rearmed, I went out and emptied her stock again. Could you imagine being on that ship constantly firing non stop.
I’m glad this got uploaded so quickly!
The final stage in deception which led to the Germans being so supremely confident in Calais being the target (nights off, heavy drinking, and orders not to be disturbed etc.) was the huge convoy spotted on radar slowly crossing the Strait of Dover, at a speed to make landfall just before dawn.
This was actually an elite group of Lancaster bombers flying what must have been about the most spectacularly precise formation flying of the entire war. How do you make fairly fast aircraft appear to be a slow-moving convoy of transport ships? You fly in very precise racetrack patterns on the stopwatch, dropping a bundle of "window" aluminium foil strips at a carefully timed point on each circuit, just a few yards ahead of the last one and timed to be exactly at the time that last bundle hit the water. And to keep it up hour after hour after hour, replacements carefully slotting into the formation as fuel and bundles of window fan low. A second out in starting a turn, rolling out, dropping the window or deviating just a tiny amount in altitude or speed would have led to a suspicious jump in at least a portion of the convoy's position on radar, but not one single mistake was made all night long. As the sun started appearing at their altitude (much earlier than at ground level) they got their reward - the big coastal defence anti-ship batteries opened up, turning the water far below them to foam as they engaged a completely fictitious invasion fleet with every ground to ship asset in their armoury.
It may come as little surprise that this precision flying was led by the 617 "Dambusters" squadron, who had been disappointed not to have been involved in the general bombardment, although they had many more chances later, interfering with the transport of the Panzer divisions in their attempt to provide belated reinforcements to the beleaguered Normandy defences.
Saint Mere-Eglise is also a background of first few mission on American side of first Call of Duty game. Fun fact.
Have you thought about doing a licence plate tier list? I thought since you did the state flags video that might be something you would consider!
Always love your content...Thank you!
I just want to peek my head up and comment about the role of the Coast Guard. They were tasked to run the landing craft. Also, notably for the Candians and Brits they trained with on sword, Juno, Gold. People also forget how many of the Coast Guard were plucked to fill the duties for Navy and Transport ships.
Petition for a tour of the D-Day beaches (heard you are doing your first tour of Rome/Florence, so I’d second a future tour to these beaches 😊)
Yep I deal with dyslexia. People didn’t think I knew much.
My mom actually has copies of plans from D-Day. Iirc they were from her grandfather who served in WWII and was in Germany.
The paperwork is super old and you can't handle it without it trying to fall apart, but it's a bunch of diagrams and names with "operation overlord" at the top.
Since we are doing armchair history videos. Could you do a reaction to German invasion in 1939 from the polish perceptive? It’s really good and I would love to get your commentary
The idea of letting them land then converging makes sense if they were referencing what was happening in the Pacific. The desperation of a soldier to fight forward when retreating means drowning was a serious consideration and led the Japanese to switch their tactics during the battle of Okinawa. The logic of allowing them in then crushing them was not unfounded.
Loved griffins video on ww2 from china's perspective. This was great too. Keep up the good work Chris 👍
Nice, I watched this when it was first released.
if you want to learn more about d-day, the ww2 in real time channel will be doing a 24 hours special covering the events of the day
Boing Boing Chris 😃.
I am a 100% Black Country Baggie and I remember 1 of your other videos where you mentioned your family history and links to God’s country (as some of us call the Black Country lol).
my parents and 2 of my siblings just went to europe so they could be at normandy on d-day's anniversary. it'd be really funny if they bump into you there
Nothing better than a video with my 2 favorite history based youtubers in one. Amazing video as usual, both of you!
8:47 I've learn on the channel ww2tv that the bombing operation carried out on France for DDAY is the largest synchronized air operation in history to this day. Apparently it was a failure, they missed all the targets on Omaha, Gold and Sword beach, in the end the German batteries were destroyed by naval fire which wasn't part of the original plan. The sad part is that due to these massive allied bombings there was actually more french civilians killed on DDAY than German, American or British soldiers.
The Pokémon References in the video 😂 “outdated tank I choose you” 😂 and they battle the Missile 😂
I have to say as a german your pronunciation of Widerstandsnest is very good
Appreciate that! Been working on my German.
Coasties drove LC on D-Day as well, I personally know one that did.
They definitely did. But they were a small minority of the total, which was overwhelmingly British.
Each beach contacted their HQ claiming every ship in the US and UK was in their sector.
Rommel's 'defeat them on the beach' idea almost certainly would not have worked. The allies had the initiative. If it looked that tough they would land somewhere else. They could force the action. Also, tanks near the beach would have been pounded by airplanes and heavy naval guns. A disaster.
Hi, Chris, very interesting, there are also three more videos, D Day from the American Perspective, D Day from the British Perspective and D Day from the Canadian Perspective. It would be interesting to do those as well
Omaha was the toughest beach to land on for the Allies. Sword was the toughest beach to hold once landed.
The video for me was constantly interupted by ads. There were so many that it became very difficult to refocus when the content finally resumed.
Hey I’m commenting before watching to request a reaction on if the swedesh won the great northern war from alternate history hub. I loved that series we did on that so would love to see that.
I thought the Coast Guard operated the Higgins Boats used during D-Day.
If they did, it was a small number of them. There were over 4000 boats and over 3000 were operated by the Royal Navy.
Love your videos, binge watching all of them lol
Some important things should be mentioned. Dieppe had as an objective to destroy the Luftwaffe in the area but instead ended with the RAF units being destroyed, in Normandy the Luftwaffe was not even present in the entire region of Normandy,
In Omaha there where up to 10,000 casualties, of course only a fifth were killed, but the casualties on D-Day overall were higher than the 15,000 KIA
If I remember correctly Rommel was hungover when he learned of the invasion.... 32 min in.
You and that ww2 week by week history guy need to collaborate for his Normandy project especially because your going in france
Glad to be early to a VTH. GOAT of history RUclips
Just a couple of points,
1/ most of the German armoured vehicles in use were French (,21st panzer was a unique organisation not copied by any other unit and was made up from modified Loraine tractors carring a mixture of either a 75mm AT guns or 105mm Howitzers), and so was much of the heavy coastal artillery. Both armour and those heavy guns were obsolete even when they were captured in 1940..
2/ the RN were perfectly aware that the DD tanks were ill suited in waves that high and the landing craft carrying them were told to drop them almost on the shoreline, but those orders were either "ignored or not correctly followed" at Omaha and the lack of armour support is often sited as a reason fot the higher casually rate. Almost all the other DD tanks on the other four beaches followed the modified landing instructions and they got ashore.
3/ not much references to the efforrs of the resistance cutting German telephone communications on the night of the 5th/6th, which delayed the calls for limited availabile reinforcements that there were.
FINALLY
4/ Germany by June 44 lost control of their own airspace over Germany, so the source that was quoted as enquiring where is the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe had no understanding of the circumstances his side were under by the time of the invasion.
Much like the French in 1812-15 Germany had burned through its strategic reserves of young recruits in the meat grinder in Russia and now the soviets were unleashing "Operation Bagration" to destroy army group centre (which is said to start 22 June), at a point where they has not enough heavy fuel to move significant numbers of ships, nor enough aviation fuel to train enough new replacement pilots to fly the wonderwaffe plane or medium grade fuel to move those Panzer divisions- German logistics relied on railways and the USAAF and Bomber Command had both eliminated fuel storage and rail heads TO MOVE THAT LIMITED SUPPLY.
I can see both arguments for focusing on defending the beaches or holding mobile units in reserve, since it's often oversimplified. The benefits of having the panzers on the beaches is well known, and probably would have been the better strategy given the Allied air supremacy making moving reserves much more difficult. But, the disadvantage that isn't often mentioned is it thins out your forces since you have to cover a long stretch of coastline and makes it more difficult to move reinforcements to the actual invasion site. Having a mobile reserve that can respond from a central location quickly to any location reduces the risk of not choosing to defend the right location with enough forces and then not being able to move enough units in to hold the area to prevent a breakout. Despite not being able to hold the beaches, the Germans were able to bottle up the Allies in Normandy for nearly 2 months by rushing in reserves.
I've always felt that the Allies were very fortunate that Hitler was in charge of Nazi Germany. Despite the terrible evil he wrought, and the devestation and suffering, he was not a strategist. If he had been replaced early on by one of his more competent generals, things might have gone very differently - or at least a lot longer.
if you see a green aircraft is the raf if you see a blue aircraft is the usaf if you see nothing is the luftwaffe at least how i remember it
Do you have plans to do reactions to the history videos by Overly Sarcastic Productions? They tend to focus on classical history but their videos are great!
I’ve done several but it’s been a while
That's rather flippant to say that Rommel was probably right to say keeping the panzers close to the beach would have turned the tide in Normandy. The Germans and Allies had plenty of experience to know what happens to tanks situated within range of battleships during combat.
I don't mean to sound desperate, but why haven't there been any new podcast episodes since February?
Posted 13 seconds ago. Holy Moly this might be the fastest i’ve clicked on a video.
Another awesome video man!
When the Panzer reserves where under Rundstdent, but he only have comand of those if Hitler, give the order and at the same time he had first to inform Keitel, and Himmler to authorize the use of the Panzer units of the Whermacht and the SS. And Kreiss defended the beaches on Rommel orders but Rommel was not the comander neither of the area nor of the front, and was relegated. At the end the Germans on the beaches were alone, to add insult to the calamity of the OKW and Hitler, the 5th of June the air units at Normandy had been moved towards Ukraine and only 2 ME-109 remained in the area.
DD tanks were not meant to be offloaded miles out. The American commander scoffed at the British invention "funniest and didn't use them properly .. brought in closer to shore they'd have survived the sea and given much needed armor support on Omaha..
Some did. Most were swamped at Omaha beach but out of the 32 tanks of "B" and "C" of the 741st Tank Battalion, 5 managed to get ashore and put in good service dealing with German strongpoints. The follow-up by tanks of the 743rd Tank Battalion landed their tanks directly on the beach and had more success with fewer losses.
Source- Pierre Fallet, WWII Trainee of Normandy American Heroes.
@@celston51 5 survivors out of a force of 32 can hardly be described as a ringing endorsement of the Captain's cowardice in refusing to put in as close to shore as ordered, or achieved by any of the other ships' Captains though, the rest of who managed to get into close enough and calm enough waters drop their DD Tanks with very few losses.
He was what yardarms were retained for, long after the end of sailing ships. Sadly, he was never charged.
@@celston51 interesting.. commanders not knowing how to use new tech. a lot of vehicles and equipment had been developed since Dieppe raid of 1942. to get vehicles ashore and off the beaches. 30 tanks on Omaha would have seen a big difference, perhaps not the day long battle and the commanders on the point of withdrawing by evening.. ?
Yeah and also what you may not know is that Rommel wasn’t there the day of d day because it was his wife’s birthday
Most of the landing craft were piloted by U.S. Coast Guardsman. The famous picture " Into the gates of Hell "was taken by a Coast Guard Coxswain.
Sorry but that is not correct. 80% of all landing craft were piloted by the Royal Navy. Exact numbers - 4126 landing craft, 3261 were British.
Wrong, you need to read up on D-Day as it’s a well known fact most of them were piloted by Navy Navy personnel.
@@ChrisCrossClash oh? Can you document this well known fact for me? Because the reason I know that nearly 80% were piloted by the Royal Navy is precisely BECAUSE I've read up on D-Day.
@@ChrisCrossClash here's the UNITED STATES Department of defense stating it was 80% British, 16.5% were US dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/2016/0516_dday/docs/d-day-fact-sheet-the-beaches.pdf
James Holland in his excellent book Normandy '44 also puts it at 80% British.
I wonder if 17:46 is where Quentin Tarantino got the idea for that scene in "Inglorious Basterds" 🤔
Pretty sure it's the other way around.
You should take a look at The Alternate Historian
Very interesting video. I've never really considered what it was like for the Germans during the war. While I don't agree with the policies of the German High Command during the war, especially the ... "labor camps" ... part of me feels some sympathy for the regular German soldiers fighting the war. I can't imagine what it must have been like for them facing such overwhelming odds with the knowledge that most likely you aren't going to survive the day.
It’s a shame about TR Jr.
Absolutely powerhouse of a family but seemingly weird genes. TR Jr died before the war ended at 56.
TR died at 60, and FDR at 63.
Kubiatai made the same mistake at Iwo Jima. He did let the Marines land. If Rommel's tactics had been followed it might have prolonged the war.
it boggles the imagination at what the allied armies might have done to the Wehrmacht with out Montgomery working so effectively for them
My man even reacts to the ad.
I am terrified to think how the invasion would have ended up if Rommel got a "yes to everything" card... Honestly, if Hitler would have listened to his advisors and generals who knows what world we could be living in. I'm glad all evil people have a weakness... What if we landed exactly where they thought? What if we DIDN'T crack the enigma code? These crucial things that seem soooo miniscule in history could literally change the outcome of the entire event. Think of a crit in Pokemon. ...THE CRIT MATTERED!
Anyways, thank you for your constant content that's genuinely intriguing, as well as shining a light on a potentially smaller channel that is not quiiiiite as good as you, but almost! Have a great trip to Europe and I am very excited for the future content.