Krivasoo area is a swamp. Mortar rounds and artillery shells didn't explode very often and are still there. Place is littered with uxos. Danish EODs tried to do good and clear up area. After few days work they had picked up truckload of uxos and cleared area of 20x20 meters :) Also digging trenches was impossible, so both sides made palisades instead.
Another amazing video. The way you weave the larger story with personal accounts and historical video is awesome. The courage and suffering of these men in horrendous conditions is humbling.
This is by far the best WW ll You Tube channel. Expert reviews comments and chronology. I have been waiting for this episode and can not wait for the next one! Thank you.
I just love it when I know there is a new episode released on video. So interesting..brings it home the horror of war. The original film make it come alive. Thanks as always.
My Grandfather was in Narva, where he also fell. He was killed at the Grenadier Hill August 28th 1944. My dad never met his own father. Cause he was born September 1th.
Well done again, Ace. The illustration of Soviet tactics: throw a crapton of corpses at the enemy and you'll get results. And you mention Otto, The Man In The Iron Mammoth.
Great Job again! A new Ace Destroyer Upload is Always a Highlight and I take my time to watch it asap :) Compared to the lecture of Armeegruppe Narwas Diary, the Maps do a huge Job on visualizing the Events. Your series adds another perspective to the historical documentation and put the Primary Sources into context. Fresh!
Great series, Ace. Thanks for reporting on this little known campaign of WWII. By the way, I recently saw an interview with Prof. Robert Gerwarth expressing his desire to examine the phenomenon of thousands of Europeans volunteering to fight on the German side of this conflict, many of whom saw action in this campaign.
I would take "volunteering" with a grain of salt. Nazi Germany was so desperate for manpower that it conscripted Russian POWs, the same likely occurred in the Baltic.
@@pantherace1000 Fair enough - good distinction to make. Prof. Gerwarth's comments at time 1:40 of the following video first got me interested in this subject. ruclips.net/video/0xVFQGZdtQo/видео.html
Excellent video! To add to a previous comment, if you ever gather the time and resources, a video on the Korsun pocket would be wonderful as well! Great work!
Great Video! Gruß aus Deutschland. You can also make on the Ende of the Video some statistics from each Fight/Video Many thanks for this work and go on.
Maybe, I was planing on doing a video relating to the Korsun-Cherkassy pocket, but I found it hard to find sources. Perhaps I'll find some more now, or at least after this Narva 1944 series.
@@TheAceDestroyer I highly recommend the book ''The Korsun Pocket, the encirclement and breakout of a German army in the east, 1944'' by Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson. Excellent book, I got it myself as well. Most if not all info you need is in there. Good luck.
Went to Narva a few years ago. The Soviets bulldozed the German graveyard there. After the fall of Soviet union, the German wargrave society started making the graveyard new. Was looking for Dutch fallen.
Hungerburg is actually called Narva-Jõesuu. Hungerburg is not well known name form of that. Good to know it was once called such. Splendid resort place.
Thank you for the video, very interesting to see. I usually live and detect on that places you are talking about, also investigating the archive documents from the Russian Central archive of Military of Defence. Some small mistakes you have, like, for example, when you say about the Marine troops in Mereküla, 260th Marine Infantry Brigade, the brigade consists of 432 man, total number of people was 517 , so - 6 crossed the frontline and returned back, 418 were KIA and I know only about 8 people captured. Also, some number of guys returned back to the ships and escaped (because they were injured), some number also returned back by the ice on sea during next 2 days, it was a crew of 2 boats with the injured soldiers. And you say on your video - 400 dead and 200 captured. We already know them all by name, so looks like your sources are not the complete with information. Some years ago we found a bomb hole full of marine infantry soldiers, like, 50 people in one hole. It was the mass grave of 260th Marine Infantry Brigade, and some of them had the bullet holes in the head, means, that they were shot down by the Germans, so they were injured and POW, but shot down. Crazy war. Also, it was a 3 girls in that team and they all have been found and identified during last years. Two medical soldiers and one operated with radio.
My pleasure! Thank you very much for the information. I only have access to German sources from English books. The Russian Archives are unfortunately overlooked in many of these books. It's great to see that you actually go in the field to find these soldiers. I do a similar thing for WW1 casualties buried in Belgium. Thanks again! I really appreciate it. Crazy war indeed.
@@TheAceDestroyer sure! I just watch your videos and see, that some info is missing or lost, because you got this info only from one source, but not from many. If you will have any requests you can write to me, I can supply you with data and documents, translate it. Anyway I am doing that for my detecting expeditions. Keep up the good work!
Lastekodumägi - Orphanage Hill. No one knows the reason how the name was derived but it has been so for a century. Probably some local stories based on their experience with the local German manor lord.
The series will consist out of 5 episodes. I initially had 4 in mind but I split one up. Coming up next will be the 4th episode about the Narva Bridgehead itself and the series will end at the Battle of the Tannenberg line.
Well, it became more or less exhausted to attack. Due to the casualties (mostly wounded men), the Soviets were unable to continue with their attacks and were thus forced to stay on the defense for a while until they got sufficient reinforcements to resume further attacks again.
@@TheAceDestroyer So a shock army did attack? The strength of each attack was that of a shock army, or alot of small attacks? Each attack for that shock army was against what size element? Why was the attack so unsuccessful? Why no artillery prep, or large tank support? Were they so outsmarted? You mentioned there were ten assaults in one fight. Why didn't the Russian learned of the strength of the defenders and reinforced each consecutive attack accordingly?
@@pancakes3250 From the information I gathered most assaults were corps-sized (on paper). Being on the defense really helped in this case. The terrain was and the weather made large scale tank assaults nearly impossible with the bogs and large forests and the snow really didn't work in the favor of the Soviet tanks. The Germans could deploy their panzers more easily as they held the main highway to Talinn which was favourable tank terrain. As I mentioned in the video, it was the division that mentioned them repulsing 10 attacks. These could actually be 1 main attack and 9 recce parties for all I know.
@@TheAceDestroyer Ok, the terrain made tanks unusable. The Russians did manage to take it once, then repulsed, i guess due to lack of tank support. So since there was a success thats why the kept pushing. So an entire army was lost just because the Russians didn't know the enemy strength in the sector. Ok. Is this common Russian practice to throw an army size unit into bad terrain unsupported against unknown odds? I understand it. Its is not wrong per say. The odds of a catastrophe are very high, especially if enemy is ready to defend. Was the Russian army rushed, or they were prepared for such losses?
@@pancakes3250 I think there was a lot at stake. If they were successful in any one of their attacks, they had to potential of surrounding all the Narva defenders including frankly the entirety of the 3. SS Panzer Korps along with various other Wehrmacht units. Also parts of the 502. Heavy Panzer Battalion were in the sector. So a lot depended on the attacks, certainly if you take a look at the battle of the Tannenberg line which would have looked different should the Soviets have been able to push through with their Krivasoo bridgehead offensives.
Sure, many Obersturmbannfuhrers were brave and brilliant soldiers, Ace. They truly deserved their Iron Crosses. But what about the women of defeated Germany? Surely their bravery and talent for survival was equally remarkable. Shouldn't they, too, have won some Iron Crosses for surviving the apocalyptic aftermath of World War II? For example, among the deceased SS ( Death's Head ) Obersturmbannfuhrers, which officers' mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives made love with the most Soviet Army of Occupation soldiers, both enlisted personnel and officers? Were there awards for bedding the most soldiers, or for having sex the most times? Would having sex ten or more times with one soldier, or perhaps ten times with ten different soldiers have constituted one Iron Cross, with the diamond clusters? How do you think these awards should have been distributed among the German female population? Maybe it's just me, but you'd think our Russian friends, who lost eighteen million war dead fighting against Germany would have been pretty upset about it when they entered your country as its conquerors. We're so looking forward to your next video, Ace. Cheers!
Krivasoo area is a swamp. Mortar rounds and artillery shells didn't explode very often and are still there. Place is littered with uxos. Danish EODs tried to do good and clear up area. After few days work they had picked up truckload of uxos and cleared area of 20x20 meters :)
Also digging trenches was impossible, so both sides made palisades instead.
Excellent scholarly production again Ace, delivered with outstanding clarity and objectively balanced. I so look forward to your work!
I am a simple man. I see an AceDestroyer upload, I watch, I like.
Haha! Thank you very much Khurdur!
Another amazing video. The way you weave the larger story with personal accounts and historical video is awesome. The courage and suffering of these men in horrendous conditions is humbling.
Good to see the suffering that these brave soldiers have to endure and still do their duty. Thank you, Sir.
This is by far the best WW ll You Tube channel. Expert reviews comments and chronology. I have been waiting for this episode and can not wait for the next one! Thank you.
I'm always very happy to hear that! Thank you very much!
Otto Carius definitely helped keep the soviets back, some of his actions were instrumental in the defense of the Narva sector.
Held them back for what, it was a lost cause
@@More_Row holding off the enemy and doing his duty. Those men were fighting for their homeland so I doubt for them it was a “lost cause”.
I just love it when I know there is a new episode released on video. So interesting..brings it home the horror of war. The original film make it come alive. Thanks as always.
Looking at some of your earlier posts from years ago until now, the quality and professionalism of your work is very much improved .Well done sir
My Grandfather was in Narva, where he also fell. He was killed at the Grenadier Hill August 28th 1944. My dad never met his own father. Cause he was born September 1th.
Amazing, now we know why the north held on for so long.
THE KNIGHTS CROSS W OAK LEAVES, SWORDS AND DIAMONDS !!! HAVE YOU EVER HEARD ANYTHING SO BEAUTIFUL IN YOUR LIFE !!😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Well done again, Ace. The illustration of Soviet tactics: throw a crapton of corpses at the enemy and you'll get results. And you mention Otto, The Man In The Iron Mammoth.
No not how they did it.
@@EstParum Whatever.
This series shows exquisite taste in ww2 history, loving it. Thank you.
Yes, finally. I love this series
Great Job again! A new Ace Destroyer Upload is Always a Highlight and I take my time to watch it asap :) Compared to the lecture of Armeegruppe Narwas Diary, the Maps do a huge Job on visualizing the Events. Your series adds another perspective to the historical documentation and put the Primary Sources into context. Fresh!
Another AMAZING video.
I love them all.
Such detailed explanation about some battles is more than we could ever expect.
Thank AceDestroyer, excellent as always!
Very interesting account of a little known battle.
Another excellent piece of work from the ace historian, I am very glad that I wasn't there.
I'm impressed ... it's so thorough . . . like you were there !
Спасибо за репортаж. Я в этом месте Кривасоо работаю 25 лет. Много раз лазил по остаткам блиндажей. Теперь документально посмотрел.
I hope you do the Courland Pocket sometime.
EDIT: You should also do the Laconia Incident.
Great series, keep them coming.
I like the way you are speaking about events. You are unique.
Great series, Ace. Thanks for reporting on this little known campaign of WWII. By the way, I recently saw an interview with Prof. Robert Gerwarth expressing his desire to examine the phenomenon of thousands of Europeans volunteering to fight on the German side of this conflict, many of whom saw action in this campaign.
I would take "volunteering" with a grain of salt.
Nazi Germany was so desperate for manpower that it conscripted Russian POWs, the same likely occurred in the Baltic.
@@pantherace1000 Fair enough - good distinction to make. Prof. Gerwarth's comments at time 1:40 of the following video first got me interested in this subject. ruclips.net/video/0xVFQGZdtQo/видео.html
They came willingly from many Countries to fight the evil that is Communism. They were great men and should be honoured and remembered.
Besides D-Day and nuclear bombs most everything else is little known about 7% of the worlds population dying violent deaths.
Expertly researched. Amazing details. Love it! 👍
Wow, Otto Carius himself.
great information about battlefield Narva
Awesome documentary, thank you
Superb, as usual. Well done, Ace.
Great video, really enjoying this series well done.
Once again, a great job! I look forward to every video you put out!
Fantastic production. Really detailed and makes me want to make a Narva campaign for our wargames club. :)
Excellent video! To add to a previous comment, if you ever gather the time and resources, a video on the Korsun pocket would be wonderful as well!
Great work!
Great Video! Gruß aus Deutschland. You can also make on the Ende of the Video some statistics from each Fight/Video
Many thanks for this work and go on.
Brave soldiers on both sides shame their highest leader of each didn't appreciate that much!
brilliant video, this channel deserves more subscribers
Excellent as usual - great series, cheers.
Great work Ace, can't wait for the next video.
I live in Estonia, I have a metal detector, and recently I discovered a German personal token 10 kilometers from Auvere.
Do you mean a dogtag? And if so did you consider trying to get it to the family of the bereaved? Best of luck in your search for historical artifacts
Ace, could you do an episode on the Korsun pocket sometime?
Maybe, I was planing on doing a video relating to the Korsun-Cherkassy pocket, but I found it hard to find sources. Perhaps I'll find some more now, or at least after this Narva 1944 series.
@@TheAceDestroyer The Gross Deutschland panzer division unit diary is an excellent source.
Thanks! I think I got a book about the Gross Deutschland laying around somewhere.
@@TheAceDestroyer I highly recommend the book ''The Korsun Pocket, the encirclement and breakout of a German army in the east, 1944'' by Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson. Excellent book, I got it myself as well. Most if not all info you need is in there. Good luck.
@C D very good book, really demonstrated the strength of the german officer and nco corps
Your Estonian pronunciation is actually pretty good !
Went to Narva a few years ago. The Soviets bulldozed the German graveyard there. After the fall of Soviet union, the German wargrave society started making the graveyard new. Was looking for Dutch fallen.
ruclips.net/video/XbQrGaTm02Y/видео.html
Hungerburg is actually called Narva-Jõesuu. Hungerburg is not well known name form of that. Good to know it was once called such. Splendid resort place.
Indeed! It has changed names now. I just used the name that was used back in WW2.
Great info. thanks again for sharing.
Great video, enjoy watching your productions 👍
I'm very happy to hear that! Thank you Jason Harry!
Great video. Thanks. How about a future one on Crimea.
Video on Otto Carius's life and military career please, anyway Happy New Year🎉🎉🎉🎉 wish you health and prosperity
brilliant work, as usual
Feel bad for the men on both sides. The Eastern Front was such a vicious struggle in horrific conditions. May they all RIP!
Nice One Ace ~ Keep the Videos coming until I Exspire! Cheers Xxx
Great episode
Great episodes
Thank you for the video, very interesting to see. I usually live and detect on that places you are talking about, also investigating the archive documents from the Russian Central archive of Military of Defence.
Some small mistakes you have, like, for example, when you say about the Marine troops in Mereküla, 260th Marine Infantry Brigade, the brigade consists of 432 man, total number of people was 517 , so - 6 crossed the frontline and returned back, 418 were KIA and I know only about 8 people captured. Also, some number of guys returned back to the ships and escaped (because they were injured), some number also returned back by the ice on sea during next 2 days, it was a crew of 2 boats with the injured soldiers. And you say on your video - 400 dead and 200 captured. We already know them all by name, so looks like your sources are not the complete with information.
Some years ago we found a bomb hole full of marine infantry soldiers, like, 50 people in one hole. It was the mass grave of 260th Marine Infantry Brigade, and some of them had the bullet holes in the head, means, that they were shot down by the Germans, so they were injured and POW, but shot down. Crazy war.
Also, it was a 3 girls in that team and they all have been found and identified during last years. Two medical soldiers and one operated with radio.
My pleasure! Thank you very much for the information. I only have access to German sources from English books. The Russian Archives are unfortunately overlooked in many of these books. It's great to see that you actually go in the field to find these soldiers. I do a similar thing for WW1 casualties buried in Belgium. Thanks again! I really appreciate it. Crazy war indeed.
@@TheAceDestroyer sure! I just watch your videos and see, that some info is missing or lost, because you got this info only from one source, but not from many.
If you will have any requests you can write to me, I can supply you with data and documents, translate it. Anyway I am doing that for my detecting expeditions.
Keep up the good work!
Keep up the good work you really do a fantastic job 👍🏼
Thanks John! I'm very happy to hear that you enjoyed it!
thx for your comments great job
Great intro music.
Made my day, thx.
As someone who doesn't like to be cold, I really feel for those Russians.
Those poor Russians.....I mean when it's that cold out, MASS MURDER is just exhausting.....
Lastekodumägi - Orphanage Hill. No one knows the reason how the name was derived but it has been so for a century. Probably some local stories based on their experience with the local German manor lord.
Thanks
Excellent work!
Great series.
Awesome. More please!
Missed you ace
great video as always
This is just awesome !
Enjoyed thank you.
U are awesome .
Exceptional
So many casualties😯
Nice video very informative
Something about dutch ss volunteers would be interesting
The Dutch SS Volunteers will be featured quite a lot in the next two episodes, so do stay tuned for that!
Thx love ur content
At @2:15 it's Siiversti, nit Ssiversti. The village is called Siiversti.
Ah, thanks! I'll change it for the next episode!
This video is so good
Thanks! I'm happy to hear that!
Nice!
How many episode have this series? Hello from Italy :)
The series will consist out of 5 episodes. I initially had 4 in mind but I split one up. Coming up next will be the 4th episode about the Narva Bridgehead itself and the series will end at the Battle of the Tannenberg line.
00:02 looks like an orginal Legend of Zelda map 😆
A great battle you could look at was 3rd SS Totenkopf at Grodno, summer 1944 against some 10 Soviet division. cheeers
Hi. I am sorry, did the russian loose an entire shock army, to the defense strength of a core i am assuming?
This episode was interesting.
Well, it became more or less exhausted to attack. Due to the casualties (mostly wounded men), the Soviets were unable to continue with their attacks and were thus forced to stay on the defense for a while until they got sufficient reinforcements to resume further attacks again.
@@TheAceDestroyer So a shock army did attack? The strength of each attack was that of a shock army, or alot of small attacks?
Each attack for that shock army was against what size element?
Why was the attack so unsuccessful?
Why no artillery prep, or large tank support?
Were they so outsmarted?
You mentioned there were ten assaults in one fight. Why didn't the Russian learned of the strength of the defenders and reinforced each consecutive attack accordingly?
@@pancakes3250 From the information I gathered most assaults were corps-sized (on paper). Being on the defense really helped in this case. The terrain was and the weather made large scale tank assaults nearly impossible with the bogs and large forests and the snow really didn't work in the favor of the Soviet tanks. The Germans could deploy their panzers more easily as they held the main highway to Talinn which was favourable tank terrain. As I mentioned in the video, it was the division that mentioned them repulsing 10 attacks. These could actually be 1 main attack and 9 recce parties for all I know.
@@TheAceDestroyer
Ok, the terrain made tanks unusable. The Russians did manage to take it once, then repulsed, i guess due to lack of tank support. So since there was a success thats why the kept pushing. So an entire army was lost just because the Russians didn't know the enemy strength in the sector. Ok.
Is this common Russian practice to throw an army size unit into bad terrain unsupported against unknown odds?
I understand it. Its is not wrong per say.
The odds of a catastrophe are very high, especially if enemy is ready to defend. Was the Russian army rushed, or they were prepared for such losses?
@@pancakes3250 I think there was a lot at stake. If they were successful in any one of their attacks, they had to potential of surrounding all the Narva defenders including frankly the entirety of the 3. SS Panzer Korps along with various other Wehrmacht units. Also parts of the 502. Heavy Panzer Battalion were in the sector. So a lot depended on the attacks, certainly if you take a look at the battle of the Tannenberg line which would have looked different should the Soviets have been able to push through with their Krivasoo bridgehead offensives.
Nice voice the speaker has!?
Thank you?
0:52 is that frozen corpse's used as sandbags ? WTF
Even by 1944 the Russians still hadn't learnt how to fight the Germans without losing too many men and too much equipment.
If only the genius dictator Stalin hadn’t executed all of his best generals during the purges.
YT comment
Sure, many Obersturmbannfuhrers
were brave and brilliant soldiers, Ace. They truly deserved their Iron Crosses. But what about the women of defeated Germany?
Surely their bravery and talent for survival was equally remarkable.
Shouldn't they, too, have won some Iron Crosses for surviving the apocalyptic aftermath of World War II?
For example, among the deceased SS ( Death's Head ) Obersturmbannfuhrers, which officers' mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives made love with
the most Soviet Army of Occupation soldiers, both enlisted
personnel and officers? Were there awards for bedding the most soldiers, or for having sex the most times? Would having sex ten or more times with one soldier, or perhaps ten times with ten different soldiers have constituted one Iron Cross, with the diamond clusters? How do you think these awards should have been distributed among the German female population? Maybe it's just me, but you'd think our Russian friends, who lost eighteen million
war dead fighting against Germany
would have been pretty upset about it when they entered your country as its conquerors. We're
so looking forward to your next video, Ace. Cheers!