I've fired an MG3 in Afghanistan. The 3 is a 42 rechambered in 7.62 NATO and the rate of fire reduced for economy. My first 15 round qual belt was gone in, "ZZZZzzip!" it was shocking! The idea that any of our guys faced that kind of fire and lived to tell the tale is amazing. The weapon was actually exhausting to fire as I really had to focus on quick squeezes to conserve ammo to engage 5 targets.
The MG42 had an even higher rate of fire. The MG3 has a spring that spring that reduces the r.o.f. You can also hear it very clearly. The MG3 sounds like a sewing machine on steroids while the 42 sounds like a gigantic swarm of locusts. In my military service I managed to only fire 3-4 bullets at a time with a MG3, that would have been impossible with the MG42. I can't imagine how insanely that had to heat up, with the MG3's barrel already glowing red after a belt.
@@StevenFox80 From a purely logistics point of view, with their rate of fire it would be extremely challenging for the supply trains to keep these guns fed for any period of sustained engagement.
Well in some ways that weapons fire rate may have actually saved American lives because 1) firing so many rounds so quickly burns ammo and we know only a tiny percentage of small arms rounds fired in combat actually hit an enemy soldier 2) the gun fired so fast it could literally melt barrels. The MG-42 had an easily removable barrel with gunners issued extra barrels and asbestos gloves to remove molten barrels for this reason
Fun fact about Utah Beach. It landed in the wrong place. The commanding officer, Theodore Roosevelt Jr, who also landed with the first wave, quickly realized where he landed was an even better location than where he was supposed to land.
The Utah first wave which also suffered way fewer casualties than those landing on the much bloodier Omaha and Juno were also the first Allied troops to land on any of the five beaches on that day.
"he was not fighting for germany, he was fighting for survival." as a grandson of german soldiers i am so incredibly grateful to hear such words from an american and that we live in a time sufficiently detached to talk about the war among sons and grandsons of former enemies in a friendly manner. let's hope we get around s&%t like that happening ever again.
The story of German POWs in the US is an interesting one. My dad, after being injured as a radio operator in B-17s, was given a desk job at one such prison in Nebraska. He told me it was great. Aside from very few German malcontents, most were actually happy to be out of the war and extremely well behaved. Things were so relaxed, as very, very few Germans tried to escape (where ya gonna go?), that some were even given jobs in town as the local populace wasn't large enough to work the stores and farms around town that supported the prison. Some even stayed at the farmers residences only occasionally getting checked on. I'm sure some of the prisons were not that way, such as those housing SS.
@@torresmat10 I've heard there were separate prisons for the SS, but haven't tried to verify that. I know there were none at the prison my dad worked at. At least none they knew about. Probably a few that were able to hide their identity.
@@antoninuspius1747 they did, after early bad experiences. think about it: imagine you got 30 GIs being happy to not die in an unjust war for a cause most of them don't even believe in. then you add one specialist, like a green beret or seal, who also is a fanatic who is able to a. pull their heartstrings and b. is incredibly well trained. now you're dealing with a commando-platoon behind your lines. same is true for adding ss-prisoners to "normal" german pows. had a few revolts, some bloody and even an incident where enough folks escaped to sabotage ... something, sry, too long ago i read about it, can't remember. (don't even know where exactly i read it, my fathers father actually was ss, and had an entire library on anything even mentioning it. so a grain of salt is in order.)
The World War 2 channel recently did a spin off channel covering D-Day hour by hour and one thing shocked me was how up to the evening hours the Allies had doubts the invasion would succeed given German resistance. In the end break throughs were made base on a combination of sheer determination of the Allied troops to get off the beaches and the Germans running out of ammo.
I just subscribe because History's cool! I'm about your age (45) from Montreal Quebec so its its fun to have an American neighboor with a good History channel. Keep on going!!! Good stuff
My father was born in 1940. He remembered meeting German POWs when he lived in Maine. There were Army camps over there and many POWs were corralled there. They worked the potato fields.
at the end i had to think about the story, where a bf109 escorted a damaged b17 through the anti air ring in north germany back to the north sea. The pilots of both aircraft met each other years later in america. I believe you already had a reaction to the sabaton song dedicated to this. I read the book "a higher call" which described that situation and a lot more. If any of you are interested in the story and everyday life of normal pilots on both german and american side through the war, i can recommend that book.
The story of "Ye Olde Pub" is recounted in the Sabaton song, "No Bullets Fly." The animated video includes footage of the pilots of the respective planes.
Severloh and Silva becoming close friends later on is one of the many hearth-warming stories of the post war time. These men didnt allow themselves to become beasts even tho they went through hell. For me such stories are a big W for humanity.
There’s a similar story you should check out where the Japanese ace, Saburo Sakai meets the American tail gunner who severely wounded Sakai in the head. Decades after the war was over and no animosity at all between the two. The video on RUclips is titled Legendary WW2 Aerial Dogfight: Puf vs Sakai. The meeting between Sakai and tail gunner is near the end of it. Extraordinary story.
Love watching you content working on a teaching degree for history and being able to see so many areas of history not only talked about in the videos but further explained by you is such a great resource. Thank you for all the time and effort you donate to this. (Since you love British history like I do you should look into reacting to Old Britannia who makes great videos on British policy and actions from the past)
I read WN62 about 8 Years ago for a presentation i did on D-Day and as a german myself i can confirm, that hein severloh did not brag about the killig and given his unique experience it is important to have it on paper. Very interesting stuff for example as a pow after dday when he was lying that he just came as support since he was caught carrying ammunition to the mg and not operating it.
There are two videos about Pointe du Hoc that I've seen. One is by Liveth For Evermore that covers the British that landed alongside the Rangers. The other video is by SNAFU DOCS and he talks about a group of paratroopers that got missed dropped ND joined the Rangers when they landed.
It's a bit ironic that at the beginning Chris talks about people from various occupied territories being forcibly recruited; because, the Atlantic Wall was partly defended with these recruits. There's even a scene in "Saving Private Ryan" where this is shown when some soldiers surrender and are then shot. What is hardly noticeable is that the soldiers who surrendered do not speak German, but Czech.
Yea what's really cool is how Spielberg didn't both using captions to translate when the "Nazi" soldiers try telling the Americans they're Czech and not German right before being shot. So only a very small subset of the audience(myself excluded) would have caught the fact they were forced conscripts and not Germans/speaking German.
Over 500,000 German pow were brought to America for forced labor , they used to have a pow hospital where a college is now here in Parma Ohio. We even had a Ukrainian SS camp guard in the area who retired from the ford plant on Brook park rd.
my uncle who was in the 2nd DB (2ND Free French Armored Brigade) told me that the soldiers recognized the sound of the MG42 and the skill of the shooter. Long shots...no danger...very short bursts...danger..the German shooter is experienced, aims, and hits...
There's a lot of stories of how soldiers thought they killed more than they actually did. It happened a lot with AA gunners, fighter pilots, etc. It's more likely he killed hundreds rather than thousands but that's still a frightening amount.
You might want to check out a video on Georg Elser, the clockmaker who nearly killed Hitler only a month before the outbreak of the war. Elser came to the realisation that Hitler was dragging Germany into another Great War that would all but destroy the country and so he planted a bomb at a celebration of the Nazi putsch where Hitler gave a speech. Hitler only survived because he ended his speech early. Elser's bomb went off as planned. Everyone remembers von Stauffenberg, whor equired an entire network of conspirators to get close but few remember the communist clockworker who nearly did it single-handedly.
Great video as always! I can't imagine the weight he had to carry throughout his life. Knowing you were responsible for 10, 100, or 1000 lives ending has to be incredibly difficult to wrestle with. My great-grandfather worked on Tinian as an engineer. He was responsible for the fire control systems of the b29s. It wasn't till he was well into his 60s that he started talking about Tinian at all.
As I understand it, the 42-machine-gun had a cyclic rate of fire of about 1100 rounds a minute. 12,000 rounds is less than fifteen minutes of fire. Over several hours that number of rounds, even given short bursts actually sounds low.
MG42 shot way more than 1100 rounds actually, it shot 1500 rounds/minute. the MG3 already which is very much the same has an 1200RoF but was quite "nerfed" compared to the MG42. Compared to MG42, the MG3 is also heavier and bit clunkier imo. We had some in our weaponsstorage, sadly demilitirized. Wouldve love to shoot that ngl. Many also say the RoF of the 42 gets even a bit higher if u shoot it nonburst. MG3 barrel needs exchange at around 200-300 rounds, in very hard situations it can be later aswell. Barrel gets ultra hot, but youre never alone, your mate puts on the hand protections, opens the MG and change the barrel, that stuff usually is done in under 5 seconds, its very simple. But yes 12k rounds is quite low actually. Probably they had alot of ammunition problems aswell and they shot more in normal weapons from time to time.
Its worth saying that one of the key advantages of MG42 that people don´t talk about is that it was quite cheap to produce (compare to other MG), and it was also really a quite good MG with fairly neutral recoil and easy to operate. Combine this with a very high rate of fire make it a very potent weapon. While all those advantages was not unique to MG42 (well possibly except for the high firing rate), the fact that the gunner was forced to fire in short burst, might actually be the gun largest advantage. During this period machine guns was typically fired in long bursts, sometimes even aquiering target while firing. MG42 the gunners was trained to fire a short burst, then reacquire the target in a small pause and fire a short burst. This proven to be very efficient.. Well.. sort of. The unability to fire continuous was a drawback in some cases, so there for MG42 was often mixed with MG34 that was used in that fashion. MG34 despite being more expensive to produce and had several downside was produced most of the war due top it being slightly complementary to the MG42. The fact that quite a lot of modern MG is either based on or use main features of the MG42 kind of suggest that it was a really good gun. Have to consider also that the west did have propaganda. The war was not going brilliantly in 1944, and even after the landing, there was quite a few month where the allies hardly got anywhere in France really until after battle of the bulge. So its really quite possible that the number of casualties have been tweeked a bit. Considering how wast the beach is, i would call BS on the 1900-3000 claim. The beach is 8 km long. 3000 would imply that there would be one body for every 2½ meter of beach length. Considering the beack is over 250m deep at places that is over 650m2 per dead body. There are ample of photo with 10 times the concentration from 1944, while of cause, that might very different from one part to a other. Of cause, worth saying that calculates is not dead, but put out of action. And most of the wounded once would be evacuated of the beach as soon as it was safe. I would say the 3000 number is propaganda number that survived to current day. Its worth saying that there is ample of sources estimating different numbers. Just because its the official number that claim a certain set of number don´t imply that its the correct tone. Sadly there is still ample propaganda of the war. People should realize that the war did last for 6 year because the axis was not push over. And it wasn´t like the Allies was winning prior to USA joined the war. (Granted, Allies could theoretically still win, one have to consider that Allies even before USA joined the war included Canada, South Africa, Australia New Zealand and India.).
You should cover potential history’s Joe byerle, an American soldier who fought on the Eastern front with the Russians, Normandy landings and was a pow in Germany by the gestapo. He would meet General Zhukov in a hospital also.
I would love if instead of channels like this you would watch something like Old Britannia. Dude on there masterfully presents mainly british history through the lens of diplomatic maneuvering. He even has a great series on British-American competiton covering two countries on which you are very knowledgeble and would certiany give you an opportunity for some amazing imput (I'am not saying that here it isn't the case), plus I am sure you will enjoy it very much. If not for reactions I genuinely recommend you to watch Old Britannia in your private time for the sake of great videos on that channel.
I would love to see you do something on Pastor Paul Schneider, the martyr of buchenwald. But I don’t see any English language videos on him. Vasily Zaytsev would be another one …(sp) that would be fun, but you might’ve done that already
You should do an episode about Albert Roche. Sabaton and NotaBene did a joined video about him. I'd love for you to review it. It's partly in another language, however the subtitles are very accurate and all over a great video.
I highly reccomend the WW2 Week by Week channel coverage of D-Day hour by hour. Maybe the whole thing is too much for a series, but you could react to select episodes that involve little known facts or important moments and aspects of the day.
And you could fire the MG42 in Full auto. You were ordered not to, because of the barrel heating problem and even more so the 1400rpm firerate that would spend all the ammo a single MG had within way to short a period and overheat the barrel much faster while not being neccessary at all. So it could fire through it‘s belt in one go, it didn‘t do so tho.
foreign conscripts were volunteers. Except for “ethnically Germans” like the Alsatians. My father was from Alsace and he joined the RAF at the age of 18. I don't understand the idea of good and bad German. The bad guys in the Waffen SS and the good guys in the army? As my father often told me: you have to know how to choose the right side of things.
@@VloggingThroughHistory sorry i m not a english speaker. So: foreigners in the german forces were volunteers. Drafted if they were "ethnically germans". So my father knew he would have been executed if captured as a RAF crewman. Now my point remains the same: we executed the french waffen SS and other collaborators. But the german regular army did horrible things in Europe too. I once asked my father if he felt guilty to bomb German civilians with "his"Mitchell bomber? His answer? Not one second...you did not see what the nazis did, I did. You have to choose the good side of your combat. Germans did, I did mine. I like your channel Chris, and your comments are always very interresting. But not your phrases about "the poor goid nazi fighter"
Not always the case. A man in our church was born in Yugoslavia and drafted into the German army. He was not ethnically German, and he was not given a choice.
@@VloggingThroughHistory it’s the exception that proves the rule ( french expression). Anyway...a guy who killed 100 US soldiers is not just à poor guy who did not understand what was nazism.... I heard an interview of that guy when I was a teenager ...here is what he said " I was a machine gunner, and realised that the american were too young and with no expérience of war. So I shot more than à hundred americans". Hardly a hero, no?
Before the video i'm just gonna straight up say he did not kill 1000 US soldiers in one day lmao. It's insanely hard to tell whether you killed someone and even harder to confirm that kill. That's the fog of war in action there. A position might come under a probing attack by a couple guys doing reconnaissance and the defending group might believe they just fought off a massive advance because of the volume of fire coming their way. That's one reason estimates of enemy casualties are always so overly exaggerated. They're not just for morale reason, it's also under false assumptions. For this situation I can definitely see this guy firing at the direction of a crowd of americans just to have them all be on the ground the next 10 minutes. He might not have single handedly just hit them with his own bullets but in the thick of battle with stress and adrenaline at an all time high, he probably felt like he did. I had these situations occur in gaming before. Not to compare war with gaming, they are entirely different, but lets say you're high on adrenaline and you just managed to score several kills, and you recorded your session and you look back and it was only 2 kills and an assist. Underwhelming, but your mind just seems to exaggerate details sometimes. It's just what we do.
Interesting sidenote: you were not allowed to be in any Political Party when you were part of the Armed Forces. Wehrmacht, Luftewaffe and Kriegsmarine. It was mandatory for the SS but technicly the are not part of the armed forces.
I think what you said about the friendship between enemy soldiers can be best seen by pow camps in neutral countries like Ireland where German and British soldiers lived in the same camp and most of the time where on friendly terms with each other and they Song soldier songs together with some of the German soldiers trying to get the British soldiers to sing nazi propaganda songs(if I remembered that correctly) on several occasions. There even was a camp official football game between England and Germany wich Germany won 8-2. Anyway thanks for the video
Not to be annoying or anything, but Chris, isn't it time to finish your reaction series to Epic History TV's Italian campaign? The last video and the only one you didn't react to is out for weeks at this point, can't wait for you to react to it.
You said, that the younger german soldiers wasn't that hardcore, but in reality it often was the other way around. The ones born in the 3rd Reich often were raised from the regime and were diehard supporters of fascist ideology. They were easy to manipulate.
Sorry to disagree. I’ll,grant you that you can’t say every German soldier was evil but… Clearly the regular Wehrmacht was involved in the murder of millions of Jews and others across Europe. It’s easy to find documentation. Ditto how the Luftwaffe was made up of gentlemen read about the British hiding microphones in their POW camps and the numerous conversations about how much fun the German aircrews had strafing British civilians. We needed the Germans as a bulwark against the Soviets and so the myth of the “good German” soldier was created to keep American public opinion under control. So..sire not every Herman soldier was a monster but your constant stress on that point is misguided. The Wehrmacht was absolutely involved in, and happily cooperated with the cold blooded murder of millions. Maybe you should do,an episode about that.
We had a POW camp in the state forest near where i live (SW Michigan). There is a local story where a couple prisoners planned on escaping and swim across lake michigan, once in wisconsin they could eventually make their way back home. They swam across Lake Allegan (abt 1 sq mile) and was very confused when a local farmer just drove around the lake to bring them back.
3:26 A weird caveat to Nazi Germany the individual is responsible for their actions. If punishment was given and the subject shows no inclination to repeat then its resolved. He likely had a minor reprimand on his record and that was that. There is a myth that permeates the entire subject of law in Nazi Germany. That being that Nazi Germany was some overwhelming edifice of absolute robot like authoritarianism with no wiggle room. In fact while there are aspects of that the majority is nothing of the kind. It was almost the opposite and, barring the obvious dictatorial powers of the state, there is almost more in common with Nazi Germany and modern western nations than not. In terms of how the law was applied to citizens* Non-citizens? well that is different. (This permeated into the Military and SS legal systems)
It's hard to say if he really did inflict that many personally, german records tend to count kills as a unit when they do record them and one common thing they'd do is attribute all the units kills to one man if they wanted to prop someone up
I don't really buy that most Wehrmacht infantry only "fought for their country" and were mostly conscripted. The German Army did large scale war crimes on all fronts they fought in. The SS operated the camps but German troops killed enemy soldiers, civilians and POWs during the fighting. And during WW2, there was an influx of 15 million German men that volunteered for the Wehrmacht as they were invading Europe. So those guys definitely *knew* what they're fighting for.
His gun shoot 1100 rounds a minut so it didn't last for 9 houers ( yes he shoots in bursts ) but there is no way he shoot for 9 houers. 1000 to 2000 men thats a deadly hit for every 6 rounds ( if he had 12000 rounds. ( german archives tell he had only 10.000 rounds like the other german mg42 in normandy had. ) Sadly he think he killed that many young American soldiers.
There was an audio book I listened to some time back called: D Day from the German Perspective, or something similar. I know some of the stories in it have been disputed, but hearing them was the first time I ever felt sympathy for any of the ordinary German soldiers. I can't imagine what it was like to see your comrades burned alive in a bunker with white phosphorous for example, but some of these men did see stuff like that. Since the validity of some of the stories has been called into question I'm not sure I'd recommend it but it was certainly eye-opening for me.
Men were real men back in those days. They didn't hold grudges and realized that most of the people they were fighting were normal human beings who were simply trying to get back home to their families.
@@CaptainFritz28 just didnt expect a fresh morning upload, I usually dont see him post till closer to lunch. And he is hard working fella, gotta get some sleep at somepoint
@georgemichaels3rdnut He probably recorded it all yesterday, but maybe finished late last night, and either had some editing to do or just didn't want to post it then, so waited until first thing the next morning. However, I do see your point.
@@CaptainFritz28 the joke is sailing over your head that i cant continue it. Dude is incharge of his channel he dont need to listen to Jesus’s acid trip
I think that only HE could have pulled off such a feat
HE was going to be invincible in the Cold War
HE inflicted over 1k casualties against the allies, but lost
HE made the nuclear bomb
HE is from Spain
HE assassinated Comrade Grand Vizier Rommel
I've fired an MG3 in Afghanistan. The 3 is a 42 rechambered in 7.62 NATO and the rate of fire reduced for economy. My first 15 round qual belt was gone in, "ZZZZzzip!" it was shocking! The idea that any of our guys faced that kind of fire and lived to tell the tale is amazing. The weapon was actually exhausting to fire as I really had to focus on quick squeezes to conserve ammo to engage 5 targets.
The MG42 had an even higher rate of fire. The MG3 has a spring that spring that reduces the r.o.f. You can also hear it very clearly. The MG3 sounds like a sewing machine on steroids while the 42 sounds like a gigantic swarm of locusts.
In my military service I managed to only fire 3-4 bullets at a time with a MG3, that would have been impossible with the MG42. I can't imagine how insanely that had to heat up, with the MG3's barrel already glowing red after a belt.
@@StevenFox80 From a purely logistics point of view, with their rate of fire it would be extremely challenging for the supply trains to keep these guns fed for any period of sustained engagement.
Well.. training for the MG42 was really important, using the ammo efficently
Well in some ways that weapons fire rate may have actually saved American lives because 1) firing so many rounds so quickly burns ammo and we know only a tiny percentage of small arms rounds fired in combat actually hit an enemy soldier
2) the gun fired so fast it could literally melt barrels. The MG-42 had an easily removable barrel with gunners issued extra barrels and asbestos gloves to remove molten barrels for this reason
2:20 I could be wrong, but didn’t foreign citizens from occupied countries get put in SS units?
Fun fact about Utah Beach.
It landed in the wrong place.
The commanding officer, Theodore Roosevelt Jr, who also landed with the first wave, quickly realized where he landed was an even better location than where he was supposed to land.
That’s true for just about everyone, not just Utah. Most of them drifted east of their planned landing sites.
The Utah first wave which also suffered way fewer casualties than those landing on the much bloodier Omaha and Juno were also the first Allied troops to land on any of the five beaches on that day.
"he was not fighting for germany, he was fighting for survival." as a grandson of german soldiers i am so incredibly grateful to hear such words from an american and that we live in a time sufficiently detached to talk about the war among sons and grandsons of former enemies in a friendly manner.
let's hope we get around s&%t like that happening ever again.
The story of German POWs in the US is an interesting one. My dad, after being injured as a radio operator in B-17s, was given a desk job at one such prison in Nebraska. He told me it was great. Aside from very few German malcontents, most were actually happy to be out of the war and extremely well behaved. Things were so relaxed, as very, very few Germans tried to escape (where ya gonna go?), that some were even given jobs in town as the local populace wasn't large enough to work the stores and farms around town that supported the prison. Some even stayed at the farmers residences only occasionally getting checked on. I'm sure some of the prisons were not that way, such as those housing SS.
Did America have separate POW camps depending on where the prisoners came from/what their role in the war was?
@@torresmat10 I've heard there were separate prisons for the SS, but haven't tried to verify that. I know there were none at the prison my dad worked at. At least none they knew about. Probably a few that were able to hide their identity.
@@antoninuspius1747 they did, after early bad experiences. think about it: imagine you got 30 GIs being happy to not die in an unjust war for a cause most of them don't even believe in. then you add one specialist, like a green beret or seal, who also is a fanatic who is able to a. pull their heartstrings and b. is incredibly well trained. now you're dealing with a commando-platoon behind your lines.
same is true for adding ss-prisoners to "normal" german pows. had a few revolts, some bloody and even an incident where enough folks escaped to sabotage ... something, sry, too long ago i read about it, can't remember. (don't even know where exactly i read it, my fathers father actually was ss, and had an entire library on anything even mentioning it. so a grain of salt is in order.)
This video is a reminder of the reality: “War is Hell”
The World War 2 channel recently did a spin off channel covering D-Day hour by hour and one thing shocked me was how up to the evening hours the Allies had doubts the invasion would succeed given German resistance. In the end break throughs were made base on a combination of sheer determination of the Allied troops to get off the beaches and the Germans running out of ammo.
I just subscribe because History's cool! I'm about your age (45) from Montreal Quebec so its its fun to have an American neighboor with a good History channel. Keep on going!!! Good stuff
My father was born in 1940. He remembered meeting German POWs when he lived in Maine. There were Army camps over there and many POWs were corralled there. They worked the potato fields.
at the end i had to think about the story, where a bf109 escorted a damaged b17 through the anti air ring in north germany back to the north sea. The pilots of both aircraft met each other years later in america. I believe you already had a reaction to the sabaton song dedicated to this. I read the book "a higher call" which described that situation and a lot more. If any of you are interested in the story and everyday life of normal pilots on both german and american side through the war, i can recommend that book.
The story of "Ye Olde Pub" is recounted in the Sabaton song, "No Bullets Fly." The animated video includes footage of the pilots of the respective planes.
@@MichaelScheeleNot to mention you can find a video of Brown and Stigler first meeting 45 years later. Amazing to see/hear them speak.
I picked up his book at a used book store last year. Its a really interesting book. A must read. Thanks for sharing this video
Another great video and thanks for the shout out chris I am glad to support you and your work!
Severloh and Silva becoming close friends later on is one of the many hearth-warming stories of the post war time.
These men didnt allow themselves to become beasts even tho they went through hell. For me such stories are a big W for humanity.
7:01 - Was there any news regarding the body that had washed up on Normandy when you visited? How they even got out there, who they were, etc.?
I once read that when the British retired the Vickers Mg . A team put 1mill rounds through it with the only stoppages being for changing the barrel
There’s a similar story you should check out where the Japanese ace, Saburo Sakai meets the American tail gunner who severely wounded Sakai in the head. Decades after the war was over and no animosity at all between the two. The video on RUclips is titled Legendary WW2 Aerial Dogfight: Puf vs Sakai. The meeting between Sakai and tail gunner is near the end of it. Extraordinary story.
Love watching you content working on a teaching degree for history and being able to see so many areas of history not only talked about in the videos but further explained by you is such a great resource. Thank you for all the time and effort you donate to this. (Since you love British history like I do you should look into reacting to Old Britannia who makes great videos on British policy and actions from the past)
Dude said it haunted him the rest of his life, he passed away in the 2000s.
I read WN62 about 8 Years ago for a presentation i did on D-Day and as a german myself i can confirm, that hein severloh did not brag about the killig and given his unique experience it is important to have it on paper. Very interesting stuff for example as a pow after dday when he was lying that he just came as support since he was caught carrying ammunition to the mg and not operating it.
There are two videos about Pointe du Hoc that I've seen.
One is by Liveth For Evermore that covers the British that landed alongside the Rangers.
The other video is by SNAFU DOCS and he talks about a group of paratroopers that got missed dropped ND joined the Rangers when they landed.
It's a bit ironic that at the beginning Chris talks about people from various occupied territories being forcibly recruited; because, the Atlantic Wall was partly defended with these recruits. There's even a scene in "Saving Private Ryan" where this is shown when some soldiers surrender and are then shot. What is hardly noticeable is that the soldiers who surrendered do not speak German, but Czech.
They show that dynamic in My Way as well
Yea what's really cool is how Spielberg didn't both using captions to translate when the "Nazi" soldiers try telling the Americans they're Czech and not German right before being shot. So only a very small subset of the audience(myself excluded) would have caught the fact they were forced conscripts and not Germans/speaking German.
9:10 That comment reminds me of the "It's a machine gun!" meme lmao.
Heinrich’s experience is just one of those stories that shows truth is crazier than fiction.
Love your content chris
Over 500,000 German pow were brought to America for forced labor , they used to have a pow hospital where a college is now here in Parma Ohio. We even had a Ukrainian SS camp guard in the area who retired from the ford plant on Brook park rd.
That same guard used to live here in Canfield where I am now. I remember that story well when they were in the process of deporting him.
my uncle who was in the 2nd DB (2ND Free French Armored Brigade) told me that the soldiers recognized the sound of the MG42 and the skill of the shooter. Long shots...no danger...very short bursts...danger..the German shooter is experienced, aims, and hits...
There's a lot of stories of how soldiers thought they killed more than they actually did. It happened a lot with AA gunners, fighter pilots, etc. It's more likely he killed hundreds rather than thousands but that's still a frightening amount.
You might want to check out a video on Georg Elser, the clockmaker who nearly killed Hitler only a month before the outbreak of the war. Elser came to the realisation that Hitler was dragging Germany into another Great War that would all but destroy the country and so he planted a bomb at a celebration of the Nazi putsch where Hitler gave a speech. Hitler only survived because he ended his speech early. Elser's bomb went off as planned.
Everyone remembers von Stauffenberg, whor equired an entire network of conspirators to get close but few remember the communist clockworker who nearly did it single-handedly.
Great video as always! I can't imagine the weight he had to carry throughout his life. Knowing you were responsible for 10, 100, or 1000 lives ending has to be incredibly difficult to wrestle with. My great-grandfather worked on Tinian as an engineer. He was responsible for the fire control systems of the b29s. It wasn't till he was well into his 60s that he started talking about Tinian at all.
As I understand it, the 42-machine-gun had a cyclic rate of fire of about 1100 rounds a minute. 12,000 rounds is less than fifteen minutes of fire. Over several hours that number of rounds, even given short bursts actually sounds low.
MG42 shot way more than 1100 rounds actually, it shot 1500 rounds/minute. the MG3 already which is very much the same has an 1200RoF but was quite "nerfed" compared to the MG42. Compared to MG42, the MG3 is also heavier and bit clunkier imo. We had some in our weaponsstorage, sadly demilitirized. Wouldve love to shoot that ngl. Many also say the RoF of the 42 gets even a bit higher if u shoot it nonburst. MG3 barrel needs exchange at around 200-300 rounds, in very hard situations it can be later aswell. Barrel gets ultra hot, but youre never alone, your mate puts on the hand protections, opens the MG and change the barrel, that stuff usually is done in under 5 seconds, its very simple. But yes 12k rounds is quite low actually. Probably they had alot of ammunition problems aswell and they shot more in normal weapons from time to time.
Reminds me of that 2d web browser D-day game on armorgames that i played back in middle school computer class
Can anyone explain what the point of the tracer is in the anti-aircraft fire? Is it so that the shooter can see where he’s actually shooting?
I would like u to watch the simple history of the man who liberated a town by himself.
Its worth saying that one of the key advantages of MG42 that people don´t talk about is that it was quite cheap to produce (compare to other MG), and it was also really a quite good MG with fairly neutral recoil and easy to operate. Combine this with a very high rate of fire make it a very potent weapon.
While all those advantages was not unique to MG42 (well possibly except for the high firing rate), the fact that the gunner was forced to fire in short burst, might actually be the gun largest advantage. During this period machine guns was typically fired in long bursts, sometimes even aquiering target while firing.
MG42 the gunners was trained to fire a short burst, then reacquire the target in a small pause and fire a short burst. This proven to be very efficient.. Well.. sort of.
The unability to fire continuous was a drawback in some cases, so there for MG42 was often mixed with MG34 that was used in that fashion.
MG34 despite being more expensive to produce and had several downside was produced most of the war due top it being slightly complementary to the MG42.
The fact that quite a lot of modern MG is either based on or use main features of the MG42 kind of suggest that it was a really good gun.
Have to consider also that the west did have propaganda. The war was not going brilliantly in 1944, and even after the landing, there was quite a few month where the allies hardly got anywhere in France really until after battle of the bulge. So its really quite possible that the number of casualties have been tweeked a bit. Considering how wast the beach is, i would call BS on the 1900-3000 claim. The beach is 8 km long. 3000 would imply that there would be one body for every 2½ meter of beach length. Considering the beack is over 250m deep at places that is over 650m2 per dead body. There are ample of photo with 10 times the concentration from 1944, while of cause, that might very different from one part to a other.
Of cause, worth saying that calculates is not dead, but put out of action. And most of the wounded once would be evacuated of the beach as soon as it was safe. I would say the 3000 number is propaganda number that survived to current day. Its worth saying that there is ample of sources estimating different numbers. Just because its the official number that claim a certain set of number don´t imply that its the correct tone.
Sadly there is still ample propaganda of the war. People should realize that the war did last for 6 year because the axis was not push over. And it wasn´t like the Allies was winning prior to USA joined the war. (Granted, Allies could theoretically still win, one have to consider that Allies even before USA joined the war included Canada, South Africa, Australia New Zealand and India.).
You should cover potential history’s Joe byerle, an American soldier who fought on the Eastern front with the Russians, Normandy landings and was a pow in Germany by the gestapo. He would meet General Zhukov in a hospital also.
Man, it's sad.. i bet that german soldier doesn't have many option at that point of his life
I would love if instead of channels like this you would watch something like Old Britannia. Dude on there masterfully presents mainly british history through the lens of diplomatic maneuvering. He even has a great series on British-American competiton covering two countries on which you are very knowledgeble and would certiany give you an opportunity for some amazing imput (I'am not saying that here it isn't the case), plus I am sure you will enjoy it very much. If not for reactions I genuinely recommend you to watch Old Britannia in your private time for the sake of great videos on that channel.
I would love to see you do something on Pastor Paul Schneider, the martyr of buchenwald. But I don’t see any English language videos on him.
Vasily Zaytsev would be another one …(sp) that would be fun, but you might’ve done that already
Good morning Chris, are you gonna do any videos on the German pows shipped to America? There's quite a few on RUclips.
👍
You should do an episode about Albert Roche. Sabaton and NotaBene did a joined video about him. I'd love for you to review it. It's partly in another language, however the subtitles are very accurate and all over a great video.
POV: You are a new recruit that just learned of the MG42 landing in.
Ah Shi- BR RAT TATATATTATATT
I looked up the body. One article mentions it had a lot of cocaine on it. Makes it even more wild.
I highly reccomend the WW2 Week by Week channel coverage of D-Day hour by hour. Maybe the whole thing is too much for a series, but you could react to select episodes that involve little known facts or important moments and aspects of the day.
And you could fire the MG42 in Full auto. You were ordered not to, because of the barrel heating problem and even more so the 1400rpm firerate that would spend all the ammo a single MG had within way to short a period and overheat the barrel much faster while not being neccessary at all. So it could fire through it‘s belt in one go, it didn‘t do so tho.
I didn’t say you couldn’t do it. I said you didn’t do it because it wasn’t an effective way to use the weapon.
The US soldiers killed in the Slapton sands incident were the combat engineers for Omaha 800 of them.
A thousand hits seems like an overstatement, but several hundreds seem possible.
Yeah my military school I went to in Camden sc held German pows
foreign conscripts were volunteers. Except for “ethnically Germans” like the Alsatians. My father was from Alsace and he joined the RAF at the age of 18. I don't understand the idea of good and bad German. The bad guys in the Waffen SS and the good guys in the army? As my father often told me: you have to know how to choose the right side of things.
By definition, a conscript is not a volunteer. The two words are not compatible. You cannot be both.
@@VloggingThroughHistory sorry i m not a english speaker. So: foreigners in the german forces were volunteers. Drafted if they were "ethnically germans". So my father knew he would have been executed if captured as a RAF crewman.
Now my point remains the same: we executed the french waffen SS and other collaborators. But the german regular army did horrible things in Europe too.
I once asked my father if he felt guilty to bomb German civilians with "his"Mitchell bomber?
His answer? Not one second...you did not see what the nazis did, I did. You have to choose the good side of your combat. Germans did, I did mine.
I like your channel Chris, and your comments are always very interresting.
But not your phrases about "the poor goid nazi fighter"
Not always the case. A man in our church was born in Yugoslavia and drafted into the German army. He was not ethnically German, and he was not given a choice.
@@VloggingThroughHistory it’s the exception that proves the rule ( french expression). Anyway...a guy who killed 100 US soldiers is not just à poor guy who did not understand what was nazism....
I heard an interview of that guy when I was a teenager ...here is what he said " I was a machine gunner, and realised that the american were too young and with no expérience of war. So I shot more than à hundred americans".
Hardly a hero, no?
I think you would like to hear to the song The Green Fields of France
Can you do Kraut's very first video?
This is a really unusual time for you to upload a video
Also keep in mind he could be mistaking the machine fire from other positions as his.
Very nice video
Before the video i'm just gonna straight up say he did not kill 1000 US soldiers in one day lmao. It's insanely hard to tell whether you killed someone and even harder to confirm that kill. That's the fog of war in action there. A position might come under a probing attack by a couple guys doing reconnaissance and the defending group might believe they just fought off a massive advance because of the volume of fire coming their way. That's one reason estimates of enemy casualties are always so overly exaggerated. They're not just for morale reason, it's also under false assumptions. For this situation I can definitely see this guy firing at the direction of a crowd of americans just to have them all be on the ground the next 10 minutes. He might not have single handedly just hit them with his own bullets but in the thick of battle with stress and adrenaline at an all time high, he probably felt like he did. I had these situations occur in gaming before. Not to compare war with gaming, they are entirely different, but lets say you're high on adrenaline and you just managed to score several kills, and you recorded your session and you look back and it was only 2 kills and an assist. Underwhelming, but your mind just seems to exaggerate details sometimes. It's just what we do.
It's still just a story.
Brothers take hands.
Interesting sidenote: you were not allowed to be in any Political Party when you were part of the Armed Forces. Wehrmacht, Luftewaffe and Kriegsmarine.
It was mandatory for the SS but technicly the are not part of the armed forces.
you should do simple historys worst and best rations :)
I think what you said about the friendship between enemy soldiers can be best seen by pow camps in neutral countries like Ireland where German and British soldiers lived in the same camp and most of the time where on friendly terms with each other and they Song soldier songs together with some of the German soldiers trying to get the British soldiers to sing nazi propaganda songs(if I remembered that correctly) on several occasions. There even was a camp official football game between England and Germany wich Germany won 8-2. Anyway thanks for the video
Probably exaggerated, but if any German soldier could have done it, it would have been Severloh.
British comedian Spike Milligan became friends with a Geman soldier who tried to kill him.
Even if he changed barrels, they would have been worn out after several thousand rounds.
Still waiting on epic history tv Napoleon in Italy part 5
Not to be annoying or anything, but Chris, isn't it time to finish your reaction series to Epic History TV's Italian campaign? The last video and the only one you didn't react to is out for weeks at this point, can't wait for you to react to it.
You said, that the younger german soldiers wasn't that hardcore, but in reality it often was the other way around. The ones born in the 3rd Reich often were raised from the regime and were diehard supporters of fascist ideology. They were easy to manipulate.
Sorry to disagree. I’ll,grant you that you can’t say every German soldier was evil but…
Clearly the regular Wehrmacht was involved in the murder of millions of Jews and others across Europe. It’s easy to find documentation. Ditto how the Luftwaffe was made up of gentlemen read about the British hiding microphones in their POW camps and the numerous conversations about how much fun the German aircrews had strafing British civilians.
We needed the Germans as a bulwark against the Soviets and so the myth of the “good German” soldier was created to keep American public opinion under control.
So..sire not every Herman soldier was a monster but your constant stress on that point is misguided. The Wehrmacht was absolutely involved in, and happily cooperated with the cold blooded murder of millions.
Maybe you should do,an episode about that.
casualties can mean wounded m i a and so on
We had a POW camp in the state forest near where i live (SW Michigan). There is a local story where a couple prisoners planned on escaping and swim across lake michigan, once in wisconsin they could eventually make their way back home. They swam across Lake Allegan (abt 1 sq mile) and was very confused when a local farmer just drove around the lake to bring them back.
Vary interesting
Tried to buy the Omaha Beach Body Bag tour and they said it didn't exist. Well, I never.
Karen
3:26 A weird caveat to Nazi Germany the individual is responsible for their actions. If punishment was given and the subject shows no inclination to repeat then its resolved. He likely had a minor reprimand on his record and that was that.
There is a myth that permeates the entire subject of law in Nazi Germany. That being that Nazi Germany was some overwhelming edifice of absolute robot like authoritarianism with no wiggle room. In fact while there are aspects of that the majority is nothing of the kind. It was almost the opposite and, barring the obvious dictatorial powers of the state, there is almost more in common with Nazi Germany and modern western nations than not. In terms of how the law was applied to citizens* Non-citizens? well that is different.
(This permeated into the Military and SS legal systems)
It's hard to say if he really did inflict that many personally, german records tend to count kills as a unit when they do record them and one common thing they'd do is attribute all the units kills to one man if they wanted to prop someone up
Fyi: Starvharv just uploaded another video on badly translated history
Yep now we wait for 2 reaction.
I don't really buy that most Wehrmacht infantry only "fought for their country" and were mostly conscripted. The German Army did large scale war crimes on all fronts they fought in. The SS operated the camps but German troops killed enemy soldiers, civilians and POWs during the fighting. And during WW2, there was an influx of 15 million German men that volunteered for the Wehrmacht as they were invading Europe. So those guys definitely *knew* what they're fighting for.
His gun shoot 1100 rounds a minut so it didn't last for 9 houers ( yes he shoots in bursts ) but there is no way he shoot for 9 houers. 1000 to 2000 men thats a deadly hit for every 6 rounds ( if he had 12000 rounds. ( german archives tell he had only 10.000 rounds like the other german mg42 in normandy had. ) Sadly he think he killed that many young American soldiers.
Are you french? Why type minute as minut and houer as hours? Genuinely curious why it kinda irks me a bit
Omaha U.S. offensive on HLL
There was an audio book I listened to some time back called: D Day from the German Perspective, or something similar. I know some of the stories in it have been disputed, but hearing them was the first time I ever felt sympathy for any of the ordinary German soldiers. I can't imagine what it was like to see your comrades burned alive in a bunker with white phosphorous for example, but some of these men did see stuff like that. Since the validity of some of the stories has been called into question I'm not sure I'd recommend it but it was certainly eye-opening for me.
Am I allowed to feel bad for the Germans because I don't want to experience a bombing
Hmml....Chriss if I were you, i would moderate remarks about good and bad germans....
Men were real men back in those days. They didn't hold grudges and realized that most of the people they were fighting were normal human beings who were simply trying to get back home to their families.
Yeah, people need to remember that not all German soldiers were Nazis...or even German...or wanted to be there.
Chris please sleep please.
Is 09:00 too early to upload?
@@CaptainFritz28 just didnt expect a fresh morning upload, I usually dont see him post till closer to lunch. And he is hard working fella, gotta get some sleep at somepoint
@georgemichaels3rdnut He probably recorded it all yesterday, but maybe finished late last night, and either had some editing to do or just didn't want to post it then, so waited until first thing the next morning. However, I do see your point.
@@CaptainFritz28 the joke is sailing over your head that i cant continue it. Dude is incharge of his channel he dont need to listen to Jesus’s acid trip
@@georgemichaels3rdnut Certainly a strange joke... even now that I know that it is such I can't see the humor... but sure.