As Indy said, this episode has been dedicated by TimeGhost Army Brigadier Steven Przybylski to his grandmother Helena and all the Poles who played a part in the battle against the occupiers. We’re glad that we could do this for Steven and we’re grateful for his loyal membership of the Timeghost Army. Have you got someone who you would like to pay tribute to? You can do this by joining the Timeghost Army for a year at brigadier level or by making a one-time contribution.
A deepest and everlasting thank you to Indy and whole crew for such a terrific job on the memorial. In researching these memorials and pulling at nearly forgotten threads of family history, I am forced to confront the uncomfortable question: how would I have reacted if challenged but such extreme circumstances? For me, the most charitable answer I can come up with is “I don’t know, but I hope I could make Helena proud.” I also recommend to all the Polish Museum on the Rising: Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego ( www.1944.pl/en ) and another personal story told during D-Day Hour 6: ruclips.net/video/CGAk6kg8ZUQ/видео.html
What a great episode and a wonderful story of courage and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. Thank you Steven Przybylski for sharing this. Stories like these really help alot to bring history to life!
My great grandfather hid under a pile of bodies during the uprising, and my great grandmother was fortunate to be on the other bank of the Vistula river when the uprising begun. The scars this uprising left run deep to this day. I was born in this city and I still live here and you can still find a building here and there with bullet holes.
You can still see bullet and shrapnel scars on buildings in many towns. When I went to Caen and Dunkirk the churches had them 😔 It’s so sad we could have achieved so much more if we put all of our energies into doing good for the world instead of war.
"When they ran out of guns they used knives, sticks and bare hands. They were magnificient. They never ran out of courage, but in the end, they ran out of time." - Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
"Only an idiot would fight a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts." - Londo Mollari
"Guess there'll be a war now, huh? All that running around and shooting at one another? One would've thought that sooner or later it would've gone out of fashion." Londo has some of the best writing in that show coupled with a great performer.
29 minute episode? All the photos you have? All the interactive maps you are using? Such a deep level of research? I must conclude that just about every penny given by the TimeGhost is ending up on the screen. You all have definitely kept your word about pouring almost every cent into making this series the best it can be. I believe that this series will be looked back upon as THE quintessential World War 2 documentary. Thanks to everyone who works on these videos or helps make them possible. Your effort is much appreciated. 👍🏼
My grand grandfather saw his first combat around these days. He turned 18 in 1943 and was conscripted at a red army early in 1943. He has gone through basic training in 6 months, than he was assigned to a reserve batalion in a 417 id. He recalls that the batalion consisted of a new recruits with some veteran sergeants and officers, usually ones that were wounded earlier, to train them. He recalls that all the Frontline divisions were eager to be understrength but with only trained troops on the Frontline. He was assigned to heavy mg team (maxim mg). He recalls the drills, how to choose a position, to fortify it, camouflage, build reserve and false ones, to change them, everything on a clock and in shortest time possible. He hated to be near a Frontline for a year but never to go into combat and hated these endless drills. In October 1944 his batalion was finally moved into line as a proper combat unit. He told that all the drills they had were extremely helpful and saved his lives multiple time. He described that when they began to shoot, after a belt or two shot, german mortrars began to hit them, every time without exclusions. They waited until a "fork" was achieved (one overshoot and one undershoot), they knew that the next mine will hit their trench and they had around 30 seconds to grab their 50 kg mg, ammo, water for cooling, and abandon the position. Luckily they were training for a year to do so. This continued for 3 months until one time they weren't fast enough. A mine hit their trench. Two men were killed, my grand grandfather lost an eye and some fingers, 4th man had some wounds too. The bulky mashinegun saved them. He spent a year in a hospital, his lightly wounded teammate was again assigned to a reserve batalion after a short hospital time, and even participated in a siege of Berlin. But for my grand grandfather the war was over. One and a half years of training, 3 months of war and a year in hospital afterwards
Idk, a rifle or granades, molotovs vs sturmpanzers and machineguns feels pretty friggin brave to me. Also, not only thinning the hoard, but tieing up resources and damaging/ destroying equipment probably helped more than hurt. The nazis doomed them anyway, better to sit on their hands?
"The wounded happy for getting out of there." YOU BET! My brother was sure as hell happy despite losing an eye, parts of his left arm, and a couple of fingers. As he lay bleeding in a ditch, realizing what had happened, and he thought, "now I can go home".
Stephen Ambrose reported in one of his books on US soldiers that after one soldier was wounded and being evacuated to the rear, he shouted to the others in his platoon, "Clean sheets, you bastards! Clean sheets!"
My great uncle stepped on a landmine that blew his left leg off, just below the knee. He was medvac'd back to London and survived. After the war he used to smuggle bottles of whiskey through customs in his tin leg.
@@jamesharmer9293 - Your great-uncle, wow! My great-uncle died in 1919. What a difference in time scale. My brother was flown to England in a DC3 (first flown in 1936, the year I was born). He didn't have a tin leg, but he did have a glass eye.
@@fredrichenning1367 He told me it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. It happened shortly after D-Day. The rest of his squad went on down the road and were ambushed and wiped out by the Germans.
@@jamesharmer9293 - War is hell, for sure. Just the fear 24/7 must have taken a toll. My brother's sergeant got fatally hit in the chest the day before when doing Recon. And, when my brother went to climb into the halftrack next morning, a new kid was sitting in "his seat". Instead of making a fuss, my brother went three seats farther in. All those sitting near the rear where killed when an 88 from a Tiger went through the rear end (it didn't even explode, just the shrapnel was enough). The new kid lasted less than one day. That could have been my brother!
I appreciate these videos talking about Poland. When I was a kid, the lady who lived across the street from us was a Polish immigrant. My parents mentioned that she was sent to a concentration camp during the war, but she was Catholic. As a kid I was confused because we only learned about the Jewish holocaust in school. Now I have an idea of what my neighbor and her family went through.
Some how somebody wants to erase Polsh victims of IIWW. 3 milions non-jewish Poles died, 80% of industry destroyed + 3 milion Polsh Jews died. Polish ware second nation killed in concentration capms, and due go General plan Ost Polish nation was set for extermination. Why you haven't head this and thare are some environments who want to blame Polish nation (no bady in Poland deny that there ware Poles who cooperate with Germans but it was less than 0.2%) for holocaust (silly but its true :) ). First Germany own Poland a lot for this destruction and .. havent payad enything yet, remembering Poland as victim wont help them. Second Jews want to get properties of Poles with JEwish origin, you cant take mony from victim, you have to make them responsible for Germans crimes ;). Its long story short, politics and money :).
Good job mentioning the cumulative psychological effects of war, especially how one cannot get “used to it” - Too many books/accounts/myths, to me, glorifies the war a bit too much. I, for one, appreciates not experiencing fighting on the frontline. If everyone is shown at school those who survived combat but with mental impairment and physical mutilation, I think there’ll be more acceptance/effort that war is to be treated as an absolute last resort and avoided as much as possible. Definitely shocked the hell out of me seeing the negative effects of the war on the human body.
There is an episode by Perun on the medical side of the Ukraine war. Pretty awful, what soldiers go through physically. And then the psychological toll is just as bad if not worse.
This week was the week that I finally caught up with the series. It's honestly such an incredible achievement, and I want to thank the Time Ghost staff for all of their amazing efforts over the years. I'm particularly enamoured with the quality of the maps. Whoever makes them is so talented.
This week may be a good week to watch the first half of Episode 5 *Crossroads* of the 2001 television miniseries *Band of Brothers* , where Dick Winters writes an after-action report about Easy Company’s actions during the Battle of the Nijmegen salient. One particular note that is shown is Winters being troubled by his shooting of an unarmed German teenage soldier during the battle.
Really hoping the soon to release Apple+ show Masters of the Air (also made by Spielberg and Hanks) will be as good as Band of Brothers or the Pacific.
To tie in with gunman47's excellent suggestion, it might also be a good time to watch episode 7 of The Pacific, which is set partially set during the fighting for Umurbrogol on Peleliu that was described by Indy this episode. The death of Captain "Ack Ack" Haldane was on October 12, 1944 during K/3/5's assault Hill 140, which is part of Umurbrogol. That event described by Eugene Sledge in With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa... "My first thought was that the Japanese had slipped in thousands of troops from the northern Palaus and that we would never get off the island… My imagination went wild, but none of us was prepared for what we were about to hear. "Howdy, Johnny," someone said as he came up to us. "OK, you guys, OK, you guys," he repeated, obviously flustered. A couple of men exchanged quizzical glances. "The skipper is dead. Ack Ack has been killed," Johnny finally blurted out.… I was stunned and sickened. Throwing my ammo bag down, I turned away from the others, sat on my helmet, and sobbed quietly … Never in my wildest imagination had I contemplated Captain [Andrew A.] Haldane's death. We had a steady stream of killed and wounded leaving us, but somehow I assumed Ack Ack was immortal . Our company commander represented stability and direction in a world of violence, death, and destruction. Now his life had been snuffed out. We felt forlorn and lost. It was the worst grief I endured during the entire war. The intervening years have not lessened it any."
I had a Polish officemate in grad school who intensely hated the Russians. The Soviets used to present a face of wonderful-beautiful-workers-paradise. He was the first to tell me about the massacre of the Polish officers. Amongst other things.
Looking at the uprising with hindsight it was silly. The Polish Government in Exile had seen what the USSR did in Lviv, so why would Warsaw be different? And even then, the government should have at least made sure the Soviets planned to cross the river to begin with. Due to the Soviets being stretched at the limits of their supply lines. Obviously this is 20’20 hindsight, and I don’t mean to disparage the brave men and women. But, I believe that if you do decide to revolt in such a position, you should be strong enough to fight the occupying power on your own, like Yugoslavia.
@@captainyossarian388 they had their areas of excellence. Rocket engineering, theoretical and cryogenic physics, non linear control theory, flight dynamics, ballet, chess, music, etc. The quality of life was abysmal. It was not a worker’s paradise.
Certain psychological conditions could be interpreted as "getting used to combat". Dissociation, depersonalization, verneunung and verwerfung are all mechanisms to avoid the kind of frightful behavior that gets you killed. The problem is that it might get you "suicided".
0 Battle hardened. Temporary psychopathy. The ability to do things that would normally give rise to endless doubt. To do them quickly , and without hesitation. Use of a bayonet for example; or rifle shooting an advancing enemy; 10,yads away from cover or (in my father's case) calling down an artilery strike on a target surrounded by civilians in hiding. To avoid the behaviour or avoid the conseequrences?
Thank you Steven Przybylski for sharing the story of your family. We are used to have more personal stories in Spartys WAH series, but it is good to have those personal stories also here. My grandfather fought in the Wehrmacht from 1941 to 1945, as far as I know Army group north. So when Indy talks about the fighting there, I think of my grandfather and where he might have been at that time. He had the luck to survive the war, like Helena and her family, and could reunite with his family in 1946. And it was not only war fatigue that plagued the soldiers. For decades many would suffer under PTSD, as we know it today. I know for sure my grandfather did.
most German soldiers on the eastern front committed war crimes and if your grandpa was really there for all four years, there is a 100% chance he did. I can help you find out what he was involved in if you have his unit.
@@HealthyCigarette864 Nah, the Germans tend to glorify their foot soldiers as if they weren't an armored fist of the nazi governemnt that murdered, pillaged and raped. The simple fact this guy is not ashamed of what his grandfather did is very telling.
I just downloaded the Kindle Edition of FORGOTTEN ALLY by Rana Mitter for $2.99. Thanks for recommending it. It truly is a forgotten theater of the war. If I'm remembering correctly, we staged B-29 raids on Japan from China before moving close enough to stage them from the Pacific Islands. Although Stillwell made our relations with China difficult, the Chinese who fought with us retained fond memory of Americans for decades, and probably made our relations with China better from the 70s onward than they would have been if we didn't have those shared experiences of fighting the Japanese together. I read the book DEVOTION by Adam Makos about Americans trapped behind the Chinese lines in the Korean War. Chinese enlisted soldiers saved the Americans' lives rather than turning them over to their officers for torture and execution because the Chinese enlisted men remembered fighting with Americans against the Japanese.
@@porksterbob The book DEVOTION mentioned that. The victorious Communists told them: "Join our army or die." (DEVOTION is about the first African-American Navy pilot who flew many missions over Chinese-occupied North Korea before being shot down. A heroic rescue mission behind Chinese lines was undertaken to attempt to recover him).
I think Ike's report from the Surgeon General could well be why the men who fought in WWII never talked about it. I was part of the baby boom and I remember we would ask father's who had been in the war about their stories and to a man they would just say benign things like 'it was just another day' or I don't remember much except rise, fight, march and sleep repeat'. No one sat around 'telling war stories' even when asked.
Brilliant episode. So many civilians sacrificed everything just as the soldiers did. Dark times with small beacons of light shining here and there to help and to encourage others to carry on.
Nobody asked civilians to give up their lives to satisfy politicians' ambitions. Great Britain lost about 380 thousand troops during WW II and 70 thousand + civilians who perished during Luftwaffe bombing. In Warsaw the losses were 200 thousand + only in Warsaw Uprising in 1944. I let you decide if it was worth it. In addition the entire city has been erased completely.
Every week in every episode of every series of WW2 channel's comments: "Why don't you mention the thing I want mentioned the way I want it mentioned?!?!?!??" ... Even if they did a month earlier or tell us it will be covered in the other series. Carry on team, you are doing good work. I can't and don't expect EVERYTHING to be included the way I want it but here there's more than usual.
Yep, we're already up to 28 minutes for this week's episode and they're only going to get longer. If people want their pet battle covered, maybe they should fund the TG Army and have them make a special episode? Just an idea.....
A footnote this week on October 7 1944 is that P-51 fighter pilot 1st Lieutenant Urban Drew will shoot down two Me 262 fighters (flown by Oberfeldwebel Heinz Arnold and Leutnant Gerhard Kobert) as they were taking off from Achmer Airfield. The only witness to these victories was his wingman 2nd Lieutenant Robert McCandliss. However, he would be shot down by anti-aircraft fire and captured before the end of the mission, so Drew did not receive credit for these two downings until after the war when McCandliss was released from captivity. This is noted to be the first and only time in the war a pilot scored two jet victories in one mission.
When you look into it the evidence is very shaky. For example Heinz Arnold has no record of being s hot down, Kobert does. The evidence supposedly from Georg-Peter Eder is unverifiable. German reports also indicate it was not one Fighter but mutiple that were firing at the planes taking off, which when you think for 2 seconds, makes more sense than just one plane deciding to go for two easy targets and everyone else just idk just starring
@@firingallcylinders2949 when they were taking off which is the second easiest time the only easier one being Landing. He also didn't pull it off, as reports indicate mutiple planes in the group were firing at them not one.
the evidence for this is shaky. E.g. Kobert was shot down, Heinz Arnold has no record of being shot down. The evidence supposedly from Georg-Peter Eder is unverifiable. German reports also indicate it was not one Fighter but mutiple that were firing at the planes taking off, which when you think for 2 seconds, makes more sense than just one plane deciding to go for two easy targets and everyone else just idk just starring.
It's a fascinating story it just seems to have not been the exact truth. Arnold for example has no evidence of him being sh ot down in this event. Also german records say it was mutiple fighters that were firing at the Aircraft taking off.
Combat fatigue was an issue in 1944. There was increasing delay waiting for air and artillery support after even small contacts. I can't recall which source it was, suggested the difference in the East was that Russians conserved their elite units for key moments and pulled them out of the line quickly after breakthroughs. Montgomery used his elites at the front until there were none left. Sounds too simplistic, but your closing remarks were widely recognised at the time. 6 months of combat is still used as a yardstick today for combat tours in the British Army. Thank you for these memorials.
Sad thing is the Germans figured this out back during the Great War. They build up elite units but used them sparingly for assaults, then pulled them back immediately. The US did a somewhat better job in the Pacific with the USMC, bringing in Army units to replace them after the intital assault phase in most cases. But it's still an issue in modern armies as well, I have a few friends who did 13-14 month tours in Iraq during the height of that occupation in the mid-2000s. You can only take so much.
Ohhh but the world can forget. all too easily. The world forgets more each year. Where once on Remembrance Sunday there marched maybe 50,000? today wed be lucky to get 1,000. Wheelchairs commonplace. We can never let the world forget for fear of repitition.
It's a really great idea and so wonderful to give the opportunity for subscribers to share their family's photos and stories in conjunction with the events of the episodes.
I was hyped to see this week’s episode after watching Pacific on Netflix. It just how shocking how harrowing warfare was no matter how small and insignificant it’s outcome is to the greater military picture
Thank you for this episode and the vignette at the end. I had Polish friends in grade school, highschool and a number of universities. My Uncle Clarence told me of the atrocities he observed as a US POW in a Nazi prison. As a fifth grader, I was thoroughly disgusted when a friend inked a toothbrush mustache on his school picture, them bragged how he looked like Adolf Hitler. I did not think, I just punched him in the face, knocking flat on the sidewalk and grass, then walked off in a huff, not wanting to do more harm.
My dad was a pilot, flying transport and medevac, so not getting shot at much. Still, he was away from home for 5 years straight and I still wonder just how that affected him.
My chemistry teacher in High School was involved in the Warsaw uprising (I will not attempt to spell his name because it would only be an insult to do so). He told us stories of things he did as a boy scout before the uprising and some of what he did during the actual uprising itself. He did say that he and his friends did see the writing on the wall when it came to Stalin and what the future post war would hold for Poland. At the first opportunity he, some of his family and friends headed west looking for refuge with a Western power and eventually settle in the UK where he lived out his life.
16:04 - Soviet scout cars of American manufacture - they also have US .50 calibre machine guns. They may be part of an armoured spearhead. It looks like autumn mud, so perhaps October 1944.
Soviet tank brigade had a battalion of mechanized infantry. All of them (if there was any) were mounted on a lend lease armored vehicles, because ussr didn't produce any of them. Also there were several armored cores armed only by lend lease vehicles (from tanks to trucks)
@@ВячеславФролов-д7я Postwar, the Soviets began to develop armoured personnel carriers. Up to that point they had had to rely on tank rider battalions, with infantry riding on tanks, jumping off to attack enemy strongpoints and then climbing back on again. They were crack troops but their life expectancy was short. Gunfire that could not harm the tank itself took a toll of the exposed tank riders. Soviet tanks up to the T-62 had handles on the turret and sides, to make the tank rider function a possibility. Even though by then they did have personnel carriers.
@@stevekaczynski3793 soviet tank brigade in 1944 had two infantry bstalions. One had to be mechanized (in apcs), one motorized (in trucks). All mechanized batalions that were actually mechanized used lend lease (usually American half tracks, sometimes British bren carriers) vehicles. Yes, you see a lot of photos of tank riders, there are three reasons: 1. There weren't enough apcs avaliable, so mechanized batalion was mounted on tanks 2. Later in 1944, when urban fighting was taking place, it was a common practice to assign several soliders as a "tank's bodyguards". They were riding on top of a tank, and, in urban combat, disembarked and were covering their specific tank from panzerfausts. 3. Armored spearhead incorporated some infantry from another unit and mounting them on tanks was the only option to make them move fast enough. Overall tank riding was in a soviet tank doctrine before the war, in 1941-42 in heavy Frontline combat its ineffectiveness was realized, but around 1944, with the start of a maneuvering war, it was returned as a temporary measure. By 1944 the red army wanted its tank unit's infantry to move in armored carriers, but it simply wasn't possible everywhere
23:10 Really like the fact you paid attention to the psychological implications of being in a war. Soldiers being shell shocked. Humans not being able to cope with the hell on earth they landed in. People making decisions they know will end countless lives. To me this is unfathomable...luckily for me. Made me think of George Carlin's bit on euphemisms too, btw. That, on the other hand, is a bonus 😊
Hey Indy love your show I would like to give you guys a idea for some ww1 and ww2 specials, can you guys do some detailed episodes about how in both wars Naval combat, Navys from both sides and Naval ships fought and involved and what we're their tasks, incredible missions, doctrines about specifications and any special details about them I am sure it would be an interesting topic to discuss on this show thanks and good luck .
Thanks to the team for another excellent show and special thanks to Indy: he could read the telephone book and make it entertaining! Bravo, sir - keep on keeping on. 👍🏻
No mention of the start of the Battle of Overloon, also sometimes called "The Second Battle of Caen" due to it being relatively unknown for the size and bloody nature of it? Hmm, hoping for more of that in a nearby epsiode.
I think at this point Indy is like Bart in that Simpsons meme every time he talks about German counterattacks on the western front: *The Germans send counter attacks* "Say the line, Indy." Indy: "They also fail"
In Italy in WW2,a British officer did a study of men in combat,concerning Commonwealth forces.He found that in general men would hardly fire a shot,and were happy to let artillery do the job,and in fact were quite willing to retreat and give up hard won ground.Some men would fight hard and encourage others,but in general men would try to survive.Mongomery did not agree and had it suppressed.Morale i guess..The Germans had 4 categories of soldier-from those who actually enjoyed the fighting,to those who would be known as "Shirkers"..I guess these types were in ALL armies.This is according to Antony Beevor,"D-Day".
Perhaps a coincidence but the Germans also had four categories of "Volksdeutsch" or ethnic Germans, certainly in occupied Poland. Categories I and II were genuinely seen as German - perhaps left in Poland by the Treaty of Versailles. Categories III and IV were seen as technically German but really Poles and often with little knowledge of the German language. Category III was an especially large group and many were conscripted into the German armed forces. They were considered potentially unreliable in battle, though more so against the Western Allies than against the Soviets. Quite a lot of Category III Volksdeutsche were sent to Hungary to try and stop the Red Army advance.
The Marshall studies done after WWII found the same phenomenon. Most individual infantry soldiers didn't ever fire their rifles because they felt the battle was bigger than them and didn't feel like there was any point. It led to a lot of changes in the way soldiers were trained and to equipping them with weapons with higher rates of fire in order to make the more aggressive and effective in combat.
@@Raskolnikov70 Artillery was the biggest killer.Modern war-you shove thousands of guys into holes and trenches and towns etc,then the other guys shell them to bits,just in time for replacements to fill in.
@@Raskolnikov70 Ive always believed one way the Red Army was able to defeat the Germans was its widespread use of the Ppsh-41 with its large capacity,over the German Kar-98k bolt action rifle..In close battle id rather have the machine gun,than long cumbersome rifle.
@@j.4332 IIRC the percentage of U.S. casualties caused by artillery was 65% according to the studies. I could be off, it's been a while since I read that stuff, but it was pretty high for the reason you mentioned - a lot of 'combat' was just sitting around waiting to get blasted by artillery or air strikes. The Red Army didn't just have the PPSh, but better tactics overall. They organized a lot of their infantry battalions with one assault company armed entirely with them; the entire BN would advance under cover of rifle and MG fire, then the assault company would perform the final approach. Ironically this was the same thing the Germans did in WWI and what the Americans had been planning to do with their Pedersen device - a drop-in SMG modification for their Springfield rifles. Armies keep having to learn the same lessions over and over...
Brazil side of the war this week: the FEB troops are moved to the Sercchio Valley region, where by the 7th they will occupy between other cities, the city of Fornacci di Barga, securing the Catarozzo Ammunition Factory, being captured by the 6th RI. By the 7th they'll also enter without resistance in the cities of Gallicano, Fabricche and Cardoso, securing the Fabbriche-Coreglia-Antelminelli transversal highway, a important point for the Allied supply chain; Also by the 4th the 1st Fighter Aviation Group of the brazilian air force, the FAB, will disembark in Naples, receiving already their motto that would become synonimous with them ('Senta a Púa!') and their iconic badge. They would arrive in Livorno by the 6th, where they would be incorporated under the american air force 350th Fighter Group; Also in the 7th a counter-attack by the Axis to try and retake Fornaci was succesfully repelled by FEB troops.
These episodes just keep getting longer and longer. Hard to believe that in your first season the average episode was 11 minutes. Now they're almost three times as long. Is that because there is more happening now (almost the entire world is involved) or that you have more resources and can therefore spend more time covering events? Or a combination? This really is a remarkable series. It would likely be prohibitively expensive, but have you considered when it is finally over putting the weekly summaries and the War Against Humanity series on Blu-Ray for purchase? I know many people would appreciate having these on physical media.
It’s entirely because there is more happening. I mean, until the fall of France there was only one European front at a time to cover, and No Africa, no eastern front. There was the winter war, the phoney war, and occasionally stuff in China. But that’s it. Now there’s stuff everywhere every week. I still write these all by myself and sure it takes more time and research now, but it’s not overwhelming. We are now though at maximum editing capacity so that’s a limit to them being any longer.
Watching this series week by week gives a real appreciation for the sheer scale and duration of the war. It seems forever ago now that we saw the Russians falling back in the face of blitzkrieg, or the British fighting in Egypt, or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, let alone the Germans invading Poland so many years ago now.
It can be hard to imagine that it wasn't just a series of events but years of sustained effort, sacrifice, and upheaval for countless individuals. The transformation of the global landscape over those years and the evolution of strategies and allegiances are mind-boggling. Thank you for watching.
I know a lot of people with first hand accounts of WW2. I work as a activity coordinator with elderly people in Leuven, Belgium, and some of them have been born in the early 30s. They have amazing stories about their lives under german occupation and allied liberation, but also allied bombing of their town. Is there a way or a platform we can share these stories with people who might be interested?
15:17 Very rare uncensored Soviet photograph. The Russians are on USA 🇺🇸 half tracks with .30 cal machine guns. The American supply to the Soviets was incredible.
.50 calibres actually. They weren't censored though the American (or British) origin of the equipment might go unmentioned. Most people wouldn't recognise equipment as foreign.
Fucking a, Indy what an ending. You have such a mindset of our history that just leaves me dumbfounded. I’ll always be an eager student to your historical coverage.
I can remember as a nurse in the late '80's dealing with a patient who had some interesting psychological damage following WW2 service - An elderly patient with severe depression (along with other medical problems related to age). The cause of his depression was his service as a concentration camp guard. An interesting ethical situation when it came to treating him (No, I never discussed the specifics of it with him - don't ask a question unless you REALLY want to know the answer!). I wasn't a psychiatric nurse, so I confined myself to his physical ailments. Not everyone who served and required treatment afterwards was a good guy...
17:47 - Bulgarian troops occupied a significant part of southern Yugoslavia, which is now Northern Macedonia. I still don't understand when they withdrew the troops from there and returned the pre-war borders?
An armistice with the Allies was signed on the 28 October 1944 in Moscow. Signatories were George F. Kennan, Andrey Vyshinsky, and Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr represented by Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin and Lieut. Gen James Gammell for the Allies and the United Nations Organization, and for the Bulgarians the Foreign Minister Petko Stainov, Finance Minister Petko Stoyanov, and Nikola Petkov and Dobri Terpeshev as ministers without portfolio.[70] In Macedonia, the Bulgarian troops, surrounded by German forces, and betrayed by high-ranking military commanders, fought their way back to the old borders of Bulgaria. Unlike the Communist resistance, the right wing followers of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) saw the solution of the Macedonian Question in creating a pro-Bulgarian Independent Macedonian State. At this time the IMRO leader Ivan Mihailov arrived in German reoccupied Skopje, where the Germans hoped that he could form a Macedonian state on the base of former IMRO structures and Ohrana. Seeing that Germany had lost the war and to avoid further bloodshed, after two days he refused and set off.[7
On September 16, 1944, the pro-German government of Bulgaria was formed in Vienna under the leadership of Alexander Tsolov Tsankov. However, he had no support in Bulgaria itself and almost all Bulgarian troops in Yugoslavia were disarmed. The “Italian and Romanian scenario” repeated itself and the entire burden of the fighting in Yugoslavia fell on the Wehrmacht. In Greece, the Bulgarian army did not allow itself to be disarmed and it was subordinate to the government in Sofia. Today, October 10, 1944, it gave the command to begin the evacuation of officials and the army to the territory of the pre-war border.
I had 2 Uncles that were at Monte Casino. Another uncle wh was a para and his younger brother was in Coventry the night it was bombed. They all saw terrible things and I realise I could see it in their eyes even as a child. My Grandfather is buried in Malta. He didn't make it through his second world war..
It's crazy looking at the general map of Europe and how quickly everything has changed - now the Allies are touching Germany itself from East and West.
That is how overextension often works. You see it through out history, expansion to the breaking limit of armies and then rapid loss of conquered territory due to counterattacks.
In so many cases the wish to lay blame outweighs the wish to understand. But fully understanding is impossible, so the best we can do is try to put ourselves in the other man's shoes for a few miles. It takes me ½ an hour to walk two miles, how many of us can say we've put ourselves in someone else's position for that long? I know I haven't, and I've tried many times for many years.
Weird. I love your maps, they are stylistically "period," and aesthetically pleasing. However, sometimes all that comes across is a field divided into a "red" zone and an uncolored zone, with little dots with unpronounceable names standing in for towns and cities. I was about to suggest that you should have insets in the corner with a "zoomed out" view so we can (at least) see where, in the "big picture" the action was happening. Just as I was about to hit pause... there was EXACTLY such an inset. Thank you!!! I am familiar enough with Europe that I can follow events there, but as far as China and the Pacific go? Thank you! Please continue (and expand) this policy.
I can recommend Rana Mitters book on the Chinese war.I cant remember its title,"Chinas war with Japan" or something,but do try check it out,interesting on a war that little is really known about outside China.
It is incredible that the british keep fighting, they stuck with it for so long to the benefit of many small countries in Europe, every time someone tried to take the continent over, the british stepped in. The surgeon general report at the end really makes me appreciate that they kept the war going few years back even alone and suffering many failures and the psychological pressure mounting on their soldiers and people back home
Warsaw, city at war! Voices from underground, whispers of freedom! 1944, help that never came! Calling Warsaw, city at war! Voices from underground, whispers of freedom! Rise up and hear the call! History calling to you, *WARSZAWO WALCZ!*
Marshall Bagramyian must surely win the Logistics award in moving all that Equipment let alone Men in such short order and completely changing His Axis of Advance ..A lesson to all would be Army Commanders on how Flexibility and a Good Command structure are Key ( All on the back of American Lend lease Trucks!)
Don't worry, I will be backtracking to cover it during the offensive in November. This was a choice I had to make. See, the episodes lately have been well over 4,000 words- that's not too much extra for me to write or shoot, it's a bunch but dealable. However, it is on the verge of very much not dealable for our editors and map designers. We are at and even a bit beyond max capacity with scripts this long with this many different fronts to cover. So my choice was either water down everything to include everything, or leave something out that I can come back to and pick up when it becomes relevant how it got to the point it's at. It's not just Lorraine, I had to do the same thing with Hurtgen Forest, and even a little bit with the fight for the Scheldt. Apologies, but we don't have the resources to make the episodes any longer.
I like the China coverage this week. It would be good to have a special about the utterly abysmal state of the Chinese economy/army at this moment. People dont realize that US lend lease in the past three years has yet to reach the level that the soviets sent in just 1938. The Hump is finally running in the tens of thousands of supplies per month since the seizure of myitkyina in august, but more than 90% of that tonnage is going to support US forces in China. Some of these, like the 20th airforce, are explicitly forbidden from operating against japanese forces in China itself. The Chinese themselves are bending over backwards to accomodate the US presence. They are building airfields and dormitories by hand, with no heavy equipment. The Columbia educated finance minister Kong Xiangxi will mention how the Chinese are killing their plow oxen to satisfy the american taste for beef.
Może też o polskiej gospodarce Jaki wielki mamy dług, po tym jak przyjęliśmy przyjęliśmy z otwartymi rękami 5 milionów naszych sąsiadów w naszych domach A teraz mają nas obrażają Pewien Pan napisał w komentarzu Szczury wasze dzieci będą się uczyć naszego języka
I have talked about my granduncle before. He came across Africa, up through Sicily. All the way through Italy, France and into Germany. My grandad was the youngest and his unit came over just in time to be in Batstone. He was fortunate to have been picked up by a Generals command unit. He had won and 'art contest' and was able to hand letter the new command building commandeered by the General's staff. The offices doors and the staff cars and trucks. He was not there when his unit was wiped out in the battle. The third brother, the oldest was in the Navy when the war started and fought his way across the Pacific with his shipmates. My granduncle had many books about WWII. He often outlined the battels he was in, marked the maps in pen with his locations. I have one of them to this day along with his dress uniform with his ruptured duck.
As Indy said, this episode has been dedicated by TimeGhost Army Brigadier Steven Przybylski to his grandmother Helena and all the Poles who played a part in the battle against the occupiers. We’re glad that we could do this for Steven and we’re grateful for his loyal membership of the Timeghost Army.
Have you got someone who you would like to pay tribute to? You can do this by joining the Timeghost Army for a year at brigadier level or by making a one-time contribution.
So many millions of stories to be told from this war, we mustn't forget that not all stories come from the front lines
A deepest and everlasting thank you to Indy and whole crew for such a terrific job on the memorial.
In researching these memorials and pulling at nearly forgotten threads of family history, I am forced to confront the uncomfortable question: how would I have reacted if challenged but such extreme circumstances? For me, the most charitable answer I can come up with is “I don’t know, but I hope I could make Helena proud.”
I also recommend to all the Polish Museum on the Rising: Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego ( www.1944.pl/en ) and another personal story told during D-Day Hour 6:
ruclips.net/video/CGAk6kg8ZUQ/видео.html
What a great episode and a wonderful story of courage and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. Thank you Steven Przybylski for sharing this. Stories like these really help alot to bring history to life!
Warsaw Uprising - Germany lost about 2000 killed not 10000!!’ They all are known by names !!!
Total German losses were about 10-13000 - you are using incorrect sources !!!!
This series really helps me appreciate my own peaceful life.
History has a way of making you reflect on the present. Thank you for watching.
My great grandfather hid under a pile of bodies during the uprising, and my great grandmother was fortunate to be on the other bank of the Vistula river when the uprising begun. The scars this uprising left run deep to this day. I was born in this city and I still live here and you can still find a building here and there with bullet holes.
God bless.
God bless you and your people forever and may Poland remain free until the world shakes off the yoke of war and oppression.
You can still see bullet and shrapnel scars on buildings in many towns. When I went to Caen and Dunkirk the churches had them 😔
It’s so sad we could have achieved so much more if we put all of our energies into doing good for the world instead of war.
The number of bullet impact sites on the corners of the old Luftwaffe Ministerium in Berlin are impressive.
Wow. Thank you for sharing some of their story. Even that little bit hits me.
"When they ran out of guns they used knives, sticks and bare hands. They were magnificient. They never ran out of courage, but in the end, they ran out of time." - Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
Damn didn't think to see a star wars reference here.
"Only an idiot would fight a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts." - Londo Mollari
Poles always fighted on two Fronts, we did not choose it. Thats the diffrence.
"Guess there'll be a war now, huh? All that running around and shooting at one another? One would've thought that sooner or later it would've gone out of fashion." Londo has some of the best writing in that show coupled with a great performer.
Probably the best writing of that whole series
Helena's story was moving. Such a rare happy end among the sea of suffering. Never forget.
Indeed, stories like Helena's provide hope amidst the darkness of war. Thanks for watching.
"...among the sea of suffering." How poetic, well put. 'Mooi gesproken' in my native language (Dutch)
29 minute episode? All the photos you have? All the interactive maps you are using? Such a deep level of research? I must conclude that just about every penny given by the TimeGhost is ending up on the screen. You all have definitely kept your word about pouring almost every cent into making this series the best it can be. I believe that this series will be looked back upon as THE quintessential World War 2 documentary. Thanks to everyone who works on these videos or helps make them possible. Your effort is much appreciated. 👍🏼
Thank you very much for the lovely words and thanks for watching!
The Liturgy of WW2
My grand grandfather saw his first combat around these days.
He turned 18 in 1943 and was conscripted at a red army early in 1943. He has gone through basic training in 6 months, than he was assigned to a reserve batalion in a 417 id.
He recalls that the batalion consisted of a new recruits with some veteran sergeants and officers, usually ones that were wounded earlier, to train them. He recalls that all the Frontline divisions were eager to be understrength but with only trained troops on the Frontline. He was assigned to heavy mg team (maxim mg). He recalls the drills, how to choose a position, to fortify it, camouflage, build reserve and false ones, to change them, everything on a clock and in shortest time possible. He hated to be near a Frontline for a year but never to go into combat and hated these endless drills.
In October 1944 his batalion was finally moved into line as a proper combat unit. He told that all the drills they had were extremely helpful and saved his lives multiple time. He described that when they began to shoot, after a belt or two shot, german mortrars began to hit them, every time without exclusions. They waited until a "fork" was achieved (one overshoot and one undershoot), they knew that the next mine will hit their trench and they had around 30 seconds to grab their 50 kg mg, ammo, water for cooling, and abandon the position. Luckily they were training for a year to do so.
This continued for 3 months until one time they weren't fast enough. A mine hit their trench. Two men were killed, my grand grandfather lost an eye and some fingers, 4th man had some wounds too. The bulky mashinegun saved them.
He spent a year in a hospital, his lightly wounded teammate was again assigned to a reserve batalion after a short hospital time, and even participated in a siege of Berlin. But for my grand grandfather the war was over.
One and a half years of training, 3 months of war and a year in hospital afterwards
How many watches did he steal?
As a Czech, long live the Poland! What a brave nation, even though we had some problems in the past, I salute you and your bravery.
Idk, a rifle or granades, molotovs vs sturmpanzers and machineguns feels pretty friggin brave to me. Also, not only thinning the hoard, but tieing up resources and damaging/ destroying equipment probably helped more than hurt. The nazis doomed them anyway, better to sit on their hands?
Poland is literally an American slave state.
Dont forget they bullied you too in 1938 along with the Germans and Hungarians
"The wounded happy for getting out of there." YOU BET! My brother was sure as hell happy despite losing an eye, parts of his left arm, and a couple of fingers. As he lay bleeding in a ditch, realizing what had happened, and he thought, "now I can go home".
Stephen Ambrose reported in one of his books on US soldiers that after one soldier was wounded and being evacuated to the rear, he shouted to the others in his platoon, "Clean sheets, you bastards! Clean sheets!"
My great uncle stepped on a landmine that blew his left leg off, just below the knee. He was medvac'd back to London and survived. After the war he used to smuggle bottles of whiskey through customs in his tin leg.
@@jamesharmer9293 - Your great-uncle, wow! My great-uncle died in 1919. What a difference in time scale. My brother was flown to England in a DC3 (first flown in 1936, the year I was born). He didn't have a tin leg, but he did have a glass eye.
@@fredrichenning1367 He told me it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. It happened shortly after D-Day. The rest of his squad went on down the road and were ambushed and wiped out by the Germans.
@@jamesharmer9293 - War is hell, for sure. Just the fear 24/7 must have taken a toll. My brother's sergeant got fatally hit in the chest the day before when doing Recon. And, when my brother went to climb into the halftrack next morning, a new kid was sitting in "his seat". Instead of making a fuss, my brother went three seats farther in. All those sitting near the rear where killed when an 88 from a Tiger went through the rear end (it didn't even explode, just the shrapnel was enough). The new kid lasted less than one day. That could have been my brother!
I appreciate these videos talking about Poland. When I was a kid, the lady who lived across the street from us was a Polish immigrant. My parents mentioned that she was sent to a concentration camp during the war, but she was Catholic. As a kid I was confused because we only learned about the Jewish holocaust in school. Now I have an idea of what my neighbor and her family went through.
Some how somebody wants to erase Polsh victims of IIWW. 3 milions non-jewish Poles died, 80% of industry destroyed + 3 milion Polsh Jews died. Polish ware second nation killed in concentration capms, and due go General plan Ost Polish nation was set for extermination.
Why you haven't head this and thare are some environments who want to blame Polish nation (no bady in Poland deny that there ware Poles who cooperate with Germans but it was less than 0.2%) for holocaust (silly but its true :) ).
First Germany own Poland a lot for this destruction and .. havent payad enything yet, remembering Poland as victim wont help them. Second Jews want to get properties of Poles with JEwish origin, you cant take mony from victim, you have to make them responsible for Germans crimes ;). Its long story short, politics and money :).
4:31 "There've been issues in Japanese command" - woah, that took me by surprise!
''The Germans get pushed back''- woah, couldnt have seen that coming!
Good job mentioning the cumulative psychological effects of war, especially how one cannot get “used to it” - Too many books/accounts/myths, to me, glorifies the war a bit too much. I, for one, appreciates not experiencing fighting on the frontline. If everyone is shown at school those who survived combat but with mental impairment and physical mutilation, I think there’ll be more acceptance/effort that war is to be treated as an absolute last resort and avoided as much as possible. Definitely shocked the hell out of me seeing the negative effects of the war on the human body.
War is the ultimate failure of humanity. And everyone who exalts or glorifies combat is just a propagandist, to put it politely.
There is an episode by Perun on the medical side of the Ukraine war. Pretty awful, what soldiers go through physically. And then the psychological toll is just as bad if not worse.
This week was the week that I finally caught up with the series. It's honestly such an incredible achievement, and I want to thank the Time Ghost staff for all of their amazing efforts over the years. I'm particularly enamoured with the quality of the maps. Whoever makes them is so talented.
Same! I started this august and caught up just in time for his episode! This show is incredible and I can’t believe it took me this long to find it.
I think they're made by the YT channel Eastory, who has some nice WW2 videos of their own
@@awesome24712That is correct.
but did you get caught up on indies "the great war" channel?
Thank you so much for your kind words and dedication to the series!
This week may be a good week to watch the first half of Episode 5 *Crossroads* of the 2001 television miniseries *Band of Brothers* , where Dick Winters writes an after-action report about Easy Company’s actions during the Battle of the Nijmegen salient. One particular note that is shown is Winters being troubled by his shooting of an unarmed German teenage soldier during the battle.
Really hoping the soon to release Apple+ show Masters of the Air (also made by Spielberg and Hanks) will be as good as Band of Brothers or the Pacific.
Its always a good week to watch Band of Brothers
@@PhillyPhanVinnyI feel like that show has been in production forever
To tie in with gunman47's excellent suggestion, it might also be a good time to watch episode 7 of The Pacific, which is set partially set during the fighting for Umurbrogol on Peleliu that was described by Indy this episode. The death of Captain "Ack Ack" Haldane was on October 12, 1944 during K/3/5's assault Hill 140, which is part of Umurbrogol.
That event described by Eugene Sledge in With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa...
"My first thought was that the Japanese had slipped in thousands of troops from the northern Palaus and that we would never get off the island… My imagination went wild, but none of us was prepared for what we were about to hear.
"Howdy, Johnny," someone said as he came up to us.
"OK, you guys, OK, you guys," he repeated, obviously flustered. A couple of men exchanged quizzical glances. "The skipper is dead. Ack Ack has been killed," Johnny finally blurted out.…
I was stunned and sickened. Throwing my ammo bag down, I turned away from the others, sat on my helmet, and sobbed quietly …
Never in my wildest imagination had I contemplated Captain [Andrew A.] Haldane's death. We had a steady stream of killed and wounded leaving us, but somehow I assumed Ack Ack was immortal . Our company commander represented stability and direction in a world of violence, death, and destruction. Now his life had been snuffed out. We felt forlorn and lost. It was the worst grief I endured during the entire war. The intervening years have not lessened it any."
@@PhillyPhanVinnyfirst episode is released Jan 24th next year on Apple TV
The tragedy of Poland continues. What a brave nation.
I had a Polish officemate in grad school who intensely hated the Russians. The Soviets used to present a face of wonderful-beautiful-workers-paradise. He was the first to tell me about the massacre of the Polish officers. Amongst other things.
Arguably still present today. Extreme right wing nationalism is a dangerous foe. @Scar_instinct
@@rajeshkanungo6627 The Soviet Union, much like Russia today, was painted rust.
Looking at the uprising with hindsight it was silly. The Polish Government in Exile had seen what the USSR did in Lviv, so why would Warsaw be different?
And even then, the government should have at least made sure the Soviets planned to cross the river to begin with. Due to the Soviets being stretched at the limits of their supply lines.
Obviously this is 20’20 hindsight, and I don’t mean to disparage the brave men and women. But, I believe that if you do decide to revolt in such a position, you should be strong enough to fight the occupying power on your own, like Yugoslavia.
@@captainyossarian388 they had their areas of excellence. Rocket engineering, theoretical and cryogenic physics, non linear control theory, flight dynamics, ballet, chess, music, etc. The quality of life was abysmal. It was not a worker’s paradise.
Certain psychological conditions could be interpreted as "getting used to combat". Dissociation, depersonalization, verneunung and verwerfung are all mechanisms to avoid the kind of frightful behavior that gets you killed. The problem is that it might get you "suicided".
0
Battle hardened. Temporary psychopathy. The ability to do things that would normally give rise to endless doubt. To do them quickly , and without hesitation. Use of a bayonet for example; or rifle shooting an advancing enemy; 10,yads away from cover or (in my father's case) calling down an artilery strike on a target surrounded by civilians in hiding. To avoid the behaviour or avoid the conseequrences?
Żyjąc między dwoma mocarstwa i które w przeszłości podzieliły się nami . Byliśmy pod ich zaborami mamy prawo się obawiać
Thank you Steven Przybylski for sharing the story of your family. We are used to have more personal stories in Spartys WAH series, but it is good to have those personal stories also here. My grandfather fought in the Wehrmacht from 1941 to 1945, as far as I know Army group north. So when Indy talks about the fighting there, I think of my grandfather and where he might have been at that time. He had the luck to survive the war, like Helena and her family, and could reunite with his family in 1946.
And it was not only war fatigue that plagued the soldiers. For decades many would suffer under PTSD, as we know it today. I know for sure my grandfather did.
most German soldiers on the eastern front committed war crimes and if your grandpa was really there for all four years, there is a 100% chance he did.
I can help you find out what he was involved in if you have his unit.
@@HealthyCigarette864 Nah, the Germans tend to glorify their foot soldiers as if they weren't an armored fist of the nazi governemnt that murdered, pillaged and raped. The simple fact this guy is not ashamed of what his grandfather did is very telling.
I just downloaded the Kindle Edition of FORGOTTEN ALLY by Rana Mitter for $2.99. Thanks for recommending it. It truly is a forgotten theater of the war. If I'm remembering correctly, we staged B-29 raids on Japan from China before moving close enough to stage them from the Pacific Islands. Although Stillwell made our relations with China difficult, the Chinese who fought with us retained fond memory of Americans for decades, and probably made our relations with China better from the 70s onward than they would have been if we didn't have those shared experiences of fighting the Japanese together. I read the book DEVOTION by Adam Makos about Americans trapped behind the Chinese lines in the Korean War. Chinese enlisted soldiers saved the Americans' lives rather than turning them over to their officers for torture and execution because the Chinese enlisted men remembered fighting with Americans against the Japanese.
A lot of the People's Volunteer Army soldiers in Korea were actually former nationalist units.
@@porksterbob The book DEVOTION mentioned that. The victorious Communists told them: "Join our army or die." (DEVOTION is about the first African-American Navy pilot who flew many missions over Chinese-occupied North Korea before being shot down. A heroic rescue mission behind Chinese lines was undertaken to attempt to recover him).
I think Ike's report from the Surgeon General could well be why the men who fought in WWII never talked about it. I was part of the baby boom and I remember we would ask father's who had been in the war about their stories and to a man they would just say benign things like 'it was just another day' or I don't remember much except rise, fight, march and sleep repeat'. No one sat around 'telling war stories' even when asked.
*"We're falling back faster than the enemy can advance."* Field Marshall Gert Von Runstedt
These episodes only get better and better.
Appreciate the kind words!
Brilliant episode. So many civilians sacrificed everything just as the soldiers did. Dark times with small beacons of light shining here and there to help and to encourage others to carry on.
Nobody asked civilians to give up their lives to satisfy politicians' ambitions. Great Britain lost about 380 thousand troops during WW II and 70 thousand + civilians who perished during Luftwaffe bombing. In Warsaw the losses were 200 thousand + only in Warsaw Uprising in 1944. I let you decide if it was worth it. In addition the entire city has been erased completely.
Long love Poland 🇵🇱 from Canada 🇨🇦 ❤
Every week in every episode of every series of WW2 channel's comments: "Why don't you mention the thing I want mentioned the way I want it mentioned?!?!?!??" ...
Even if they did a month earlier or tell us it will be covered in the other series.
Carry on team, you are doing good work. I can't and don't expect EVERYTHING to be included the way I want it but here there's more than usual.
Yep, we're already up to 28 minutes for this week's episode and they're only going to get longer. If people want their pet battle covered, maybe they should fund the TG Army and have them make a special episode? Just an idea.....
A footnote this week on October 7 1944 is that P-51 fighter pilot 1st Lieutenant Urban Drew will shoot down two Me 262 fighters (flown by Oberfeldwebel Heinz Arnold and Leutnant Gerhard Kobert) as they were taking off from Achmer Airfield. The only witness to these victories was his wingman 2nd Lieutenant Robert McCandliss. However, he would be shot down by anti-aircraft fire and captured before the end of the mission, so Drew did not receive credit for these two downings until after the war when McCandliss was released from captivity. This is noted to be the first and only time in the war a pilot scored two jet victories in one mission.
That's actually insane, how did he manage that.
When you look into it the evidence is very shaky. For example Heinz Arnold has no record of being s hot down, Kobert does. The evidence supposedly from Georg-Peter Eder is unverifiable. German reports also indicate it was not one Fighter but mutiple that were firing at the planes taking off, which when you think for 2 seconds, makes more sense than just one plane deciding to go for two easy targets and everyone else just idk just starring
@@firingallcylinders2949 when they were taking off which is the second easiest time the only easier one being Landing. He also didn't pull it off, as reports indicate mutiple planes in the group were firing at them not one.
the evidence for this is shaky. E.g. Kobert was shot down, Heinz Arnold has no record of being shot down. The evidence supposedly from Georg-Peter Eder is unverifiable. German reports also indicate it was not one Fighter but mutiple that were firing at the planes taking off, which when you think for 2 seconds, makes more sense than just one plane deciding to go for two easy targets and everyone else just idk just starring.
It's a fascinating story it just seems to have not been the exact truth. Arnold for example has no evidence of him being sh ot down in this event. Also german records say it was mutiple fighters that were firing at the Aircraft taking off.
8:55 That's the village where my granddad was born...
Combat fatigue was an issue in 1944. There was increasing delay waiting for air and artillery support after even small contacts. I can't recall which source it was, suggested the difference in the East was that Russians conserved their elite units for key moments and pulled them out of the line quickly after breakthroughs. Montgomery used his elites at the front until there were none left. Sounds too simplistic, but your closing remarks were widely recognised at the time. 6 months of combat is still used as a yardstick today for combat tours in the British Army. Thank you for these memorials.
Sad thing is the Germans figured this out back during the Great War. They build up elite units but used them sparingly for assaults, then pulled them back immediately. The US did a somewhat better job in the Pacific with the USMC, bringing in Army units to replace them after the intital assault phase in most cases. But it's still an issue in modern armies as well, I have a few friends who did 13-14 month tours in Iraq during the height of that occupation in the mid-2000s. You can only take so much.
Thankyou again Time Ghost for the episodes. The world can never forget.
Ohhh but the world can forget. all too easily. The world forgets more each year. Where once on Remembrance Sunday there marched maybe 50,000? today wed be lucky to get 1,000. Wheelchairs commonplace.
We can never let the world forget for fear of repitition.
Thanks for watching!
Thank you for the little personal story at the end. I always appreciate the little stories.
Piotrków Trybunalski my home town!
It's a really great idea and so wonderful to give the opportunity for subscribers to share their family's photos and stories in conjunction with the events of the episodes.
Cool to see you work with Squire. Thanks for all the wonderful content Time Ghost cast and crew.
Hats off to Helena. One tough lady.
For the also curious; Cpl Eugene Sledge and Cpl Merriell "Snafu" Shelton were in the 5th Marine Division on Peleliu.
Also, people should read Eugene sledge's second book "China Marine" about his time in China in the latter half of 1945.
As was Chester Nez, a Navajo Codetalker.
@@nicholasconder4703 I just finished reading his 2011 book "Code Talker".
I was hyped to see this week’s episode after watching Pacific on Netflix. It just how shocking how harrowing warfare was no matter how small and insignificant it’s outcome is to the greater military picture
Thank you for this episode and the vignette at the end.
I had Polish friends in grade school, highschool and a number of universities. My Uncle Clarence told me of the atrocities he observed as a US POW in a Nazi prison.
As a fifth grader, I was thoroughly disgusted when a friend inked a toothbrush mustache on his school picture, them bragged how he looked like Adolf Hitler. I did not think, I just punched him in the face, knocking flat on the sidewalk and grass, then walked off in a huff, not wanting to do more harm.
You are my hero!
My dad was a pilot, flying transport and medevac, so not getting shot at much. Still, he was away from home for 5 years straight and I still wonder just how that affected him.
I often feel a sense of tragedy whenever I think of the Warsaw uprising in WWII.
I realize there were - literally - countless tragedy's in this war.
But the Warsaw Uprising seems like one of the sadder one's to me.
☮
My chemistry teacher in High School was involved in the Warsaw uprising (I will not attempt to spell his name because it would only be an insult to do so). He told us stories of things he did as a boy scout before the uprising and some of what he did during the actual uprising itself. He did say that he and his friends did see the writing on the wall when it came to Stalin and what the future post war would hold for Poland. At the first opportunity he, some of his family and friends headed west looking for refuge with a Western power and eventually settle in the UK where he lived out his life.
Love the smaller maps in the corner
16:04 - Soviet scout cars of American manufacture - they also have US .50 calibre machine guns. They may be part of an armoured spearhead. It looks like autumn mud, so perhaps October 1944.
Soviet tank brigade had a battalion of mechanized infantry. All of them (if there was any) were mounted on a lend lease armored vehicles, because ussr didn't produce any of them. Also there were several armored cores armed only by lend lease vehicles (from tanks to trucks)
@@ВячеславФролов-д7я Postwar, the Soviets began to develop armoured personnel carriers. Up to that point they had had to rely on tank rider battalions, with infantry riding on tanks, jumping off to attack enemy strongpoints and then climbing back on again. They were crack troops but their life expectancy was short. Gunfire that could not harm the tank itself took a toll of the exposed tank riders.
Soviet tanks up to the T-62 had handles on the turret and sides, to make the tank rider function a possibility. Even though by then they did have personnel carriers.
@@stevekaczynski3793 soviet tank brigade in 1944 had two infantry bstalions. One had to be mechanized (in apcs), one motorized (in trucks). All mechanized batalions that were actually mechanized used lend lease (usually American half tracks, sometimes British bren carriers) vehicles. Yes, you see a lot of photos of tank riders, there are three reasons:
1. There weren't enough apcs avaliable, so mechanized batalion was mounted on tanks
2. Later in 1944, when urban fighting was taking place, it was a common practice to assign several soliders as a "tank's bodyguards". They were riding on top of a tank, and, in urban combat, disembarked and were covering their specific tank from panzerfausts.
3. Armored spearhead incorporated some infantry from another unit and mounting them on tanks was the only option to make them move fast enough.
Overall tank riding was in a soviet tank doctrine before the war, in 1941-42 in heavy Frontline combat its ineffectiveness was realized, but around 1944, with the start of a maneuvering war, it was returned as a temporary measure. By 1944 the red army wanted its tank unit's infantry to move in armored carriers, but it simply wasn't possible everywhere
Yeah, my grandfather was in the Finnish army, and he never really recovered from the horrors of the war.
This episode got me. Thank you for bringing it to us. Never forget.
Always loving this great historical content that is put out every week for the past 5 years in the face of all the challenges & obstacles!
Thanks!
Many thanks for all your work
Thank you so much!
Great episode, seriously. Never forget.
Absolutely brilliant.
Another stunning episode.
Love the work y’all put into the series, thank you 🙏
Thanks for watching!
Thanks indy and crew
23:10 Really like the fact you paid attention to the psychological implications of being in a war. Soldiers being shell shocked. Humans not being able to cope with the hell on earth they landed in. People making decisions they know will end countless lives. To me this is unfathomable...luckily for me. Made me think of George Carlin's bit on euphemisms too, btw. That, on the other hand, is a bonus 😊
Hey Indy love your show I would like to give you guys a idea for some ww1 and ww2 specials, can you guys do some detailed episodes about how in both wars Naval combat, Navys from both sides and Naval ships fought and involved and what we're their tasks, incredible missions, doctrines about specifications and any special details about them I am sure it would be an interesting topic to discuss on this show thanks and good luck .
Thanks to the team for another excellent show and special thanks to Indy: he could read the telephone book and make it entertaining! Bravo, sir - keep on keeping on. 👍🏻
No mention of the start of the Battle of Overloon, also sometimes called "The Second Battle of Caen" due to it being relatively unknown for the size and bloody nature of it? Hmm, hoping for more of that in a nearby epsiode.
I think at this point Indy is like Bart in that Simpsons meme every time he talks about German counterattacks on the western front:
*The Germans send counter attacks*
"Say the line, Indy."
Indy: "They also fail"
What a great channel. I am always waiting for the upload on Saturday.
Sleep well, Helena. May the earth hold you like feathers.
Thank you for the kind words.
Thank you.
28 minutes and it is just a single week.
This episode is easily double of that what we had a few years ago and it is mind boggling.
Why am I crying? again! Thank you TG just thank you.
In Italy in WW2,a British officer did a study of men in combat,concerning Commonwealth forces.He found that in general men would hardly fire a shot,and were happy to let artillery do the job,and in fact were quite willing to retreat and give up hard won ground.Some men would fight hard and encourage others,but in general men would try to survive.Mongomery did not agree and had it suppressed.Morale i guess..The Germans had 4 categories of soldier-from those who actually enjoyed the fighting,to those who would be known as "Shirkers"..I guess these types were in ALL armies.This is according to Antony Beevor,"D-Day".
Perhaps a coincidence but the Germans also had four categories of "Volksdeutsch" or ethnic Germans, certainly in occupied Poland. Categories I and II were genuinely seen as German - perhaps left in Poland by the Treaty of Versailles. Categories III and IV were seen as technically German but really Poles and often with little knowledge of the German language. Category III was an especially large group and many were conscripted into the German armed forces. They were considered potentially unreliable in battle, though more so against the Western Allies than against the Soviets. Quite a lot of Category III Volksdeutsche were sent to Hungary to try and stop the Red Army advance.
The Marshall studies done after WWII found the same phenomenon. Most individual infantry soldiers didn't ever fire their rifles because they felt the battle was bigger than them and didn't feel like there was any point. It led to a lot of changes in the way soldiers were trained and to equipping them with weapons with higher rates of fire in order to make the more aggressive and effective in combat.
@@Raskolnikov70 Artillery was the biggest killer.Modern war-you shove thousands of guys into holes and trenches and towns etc,then the other guys shell them to bits,just in time for replacements to fill in.
@@Raskolnikov70 Ive always believed one way the Red Army was able to defeat the Germans was its widespread use of the Ppsh-41 with its large capacity,over the German Kar-98k bolt action rifle..In close battle id rather have the machine gun,than long cumbersome rifle.
@@j.4332 IIRC the percentage of U.S. casualties caused by artillery was 65% according to the studies. I could be off, it's been a while since I read that stuff, but it was pretty high for the reason you mentioned - a lot of 'combat' was just sitting around waiting to get blasted by artillery or air strikes.
The Red Army didn't just have the PPSh, but better tactics overall. They organized a lot of their infantry battalions with one assault company armed entirely with them; the entire BN would advance under cover of rifle and MG fire, then the assault company would perform the final approach. Ironically this was the same thing the Germans did in WWI and what the Americans had been planning to do with their Pedersen device - a drop-in SMG modification for their Springfield rifles. Armies keep having to learn the same lessions over and over...
A couple of years ago I visited Bergen Belsen where a lot of prisoners from the uprising were killed.
It is worth a visit
dziękuje Indy
I live in geilenkirchen its cool to see that there was fighting here
Brazil side of the war this week: the FEB troops are moved to the Sercchio Valley region, where by the 7th they will occupy between other cities, the city of Fornacci di Barga, securing the Catarozzo Ammunition Factory, being captured by the 6th RI. By the 7th they'll also enter without resistance in the cities of Gallicano, Fabricche and Cardoso, securing the Fabbriche-Coreglia-Antelminelli transversal highway, a important point for the Allied supply chain;
Also by the 4th the 1st Fighter Aviation Group of the brazilian air force, the FAB, will disembark in Naples, receiving already their motto that would become synonimous with them ('Senta a Púa!') and their iconic badge. They would arrive in Livorno by the 6th, where they would be incorporated under the american air force 350th Fighter Group;
Also in the 7th a counter-attack by the Axis to try and retake Fornaci was succesfully repelled by FEB troops.
These episodes just keep getting longer and longer. Hard to believe that in your first season the average episode was 11 minutes. Now they're almost three times as long. Is that because there is more happening now (almost the entire world is involved) or that you have more resources and can therefore spend more time covering events? Or a combination? This really is a remarkable series. It would likely be prohibitively expensive, but have you considered when it is finally over putting the weekly summaries and the War Against Humanity series on Blu-Ray for purchase? I know many people would appreciate having these on physical media.
It’s entirely because there is more happening. I mean, until the fall of France there was only one European front at a time to cover, and No Africa, no eastern front. There was the winter war, the phoney war, and occasionally stuff in China. But that’s it. Now there’s stuff everywhere every week. I still write these all by myself and sure it takes more time and research now, but it’s not overwhelming. We are now though at maximum editing capacity so that’s a limit to them being any longer.
Uprising begin 18:00
Watching this series week by week gives a real appreciation for the sheer scale and duration of the war. It seems forever ago now that we saw the Russians falling back in the face of blitzkrieg, or the British fighting in Egypt, or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, let alone the Germans invading Poland so many years ago now.
It can be hard to imagine that it wasn't just a series of events but years of sustained effort, sacrifice, and upheaval for countless individuals. The transformation of the global landscape over those years and the evolution of strategies and allegiances are mind-boggling. Thank you for watching.
Bravo Indy🎉🎉🎉
Commenting for the algorithms. A brilliant episode, so much war and yet the murder will continue on.
Thanks for the comment and thank you for watching.
Outstanding presentation this week (just like every other week).
Bless you, Helena Kolasa
Thank you.
I know a lot of people with first hand accounts of WW2. I work as a activity coordinator with elderly people in Leuven, Belgium, and some of them have been born in the early 30s. They have amazing stories about their lives under german occupation and allied liberation, but also allied bombing of their town. Is there a way or a platform we can share these stories with people who might be interested?
15:17
Very rare uncensored Soviet photograph.
The Russians are on USA 🇺🇸 half tracks with .30 cal machine guns.
The American supply to the Soviets was incredible.
.50 calibres actually. They weren't censored though the American (or British) origin of the equipment might go unmentioned. Most people wouldn't recognise equipment as foreign.
Lend-Lease Vehicles in the Red Army (in Russian, quantities appear in video, oil is in metric tons)
ruclips.net/video/WS57EhE063c/видео.html
Fucking a, Indy what an ending. You have such a mindset of our history that just leaves me dumbfounded. I’ll always be an eager student to your historical coverage.
I can remember as a nurse in the late '80's dealing with a patient who had some interesting psychological damage following WW2 service - An elderly patient with severe depression (along with other medical problems related to age). The cause of his depression was his service as a concentration camp guard.
An interesting ethical situation when it came to treating him (No, I never discussed the specifics of it with him - don't ask a question unless you REALLY want to know the answer!). I wasn't a psychiatric nurse, so I confined myself to his physical ailments.
Not everyone who served and required treatment afterwards was a good guy...
Wow, Indy, that was deep. Can't stop conflating that last thought with modern times.
17:47 - Bulgarian troops occupied a significant part of southern Yugoslavia, which is now Northern Macedonia. I still don't understand when they withdrew the troops from there and returned the pre-war borders?
An armistice with the Allies was signed on the 28 October 1944 in Moscow. Signatories were George F. Kennan, Andrey Vyshinsky, and Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr represented by Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin and Lieut. Gen James Gammell for the Allies and the United Nations Organization, and for the Bulgarians the Foreign Minister Petko Stainov, Finance Minister Petko Stoyanov, and Nikola Petkov and Dobri Terpeshev as ministers without portfolio.[70]
In Macedonia, the Bulgarian troops, surrounded by German forces, and betrayed by high-ranking military commanders, fought their way back to the old borders of Bulgaria. Unlike the Communist resistance, the right wing followers of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) saw the solution of the Macedonian Question in creating a pro-Bulgarian Independent Macedonian State. At this time the IMRO leader Ivan Mihailov arrived in German reoccupied Skopje, where the Germans hoped that he could form a Macedonian state on the base of former IMRO structures and Ohrana. Seeing that Germany had lost the war and to avoid further bloodshed, after two days he refused and set off.[7
On September 16, 1944, the pro-German government of Bulgaria was formed in Vienna under the leadership of Alexander Tsolov Tsankov. However, he had no support in Bulgaria itself and almost all Bulgarian troops in Yugoslavia were disarmed. The “Italian and Romanian scenario” repeated itself and the entire burden of the fighting in Yugoslavia fell on the Wehrmacht.
In Greece, the Bulgarian army did not allow itself to be disarmed and it was subordinate to the government in Sofia. Today, October 10, 1944, it gave the command to begin the evacuation of officials and the army to the territory of the pre-war border.
The 15th army commander is actually general der Infanterie gustav adolf von zangen not Kurt Student
Thank you for the lesson.
Congratulations on the great video!
Thank you, Steven, and kudos to your grandmother for being part of the resistance.
I had 2 Uncles that were at Monte Casino. Another uncle wh was a para and his younger brother was in Coventry the night it was bombed. They all saw terrible things and I realise I could see it in their eyes even as a child. My Grandfather is buried in Malta. He didn't make it through his second world war..
It's crazy looking at the general map of Europe and how quickly everything has changed - now the Allies are touching Germany itself from East and West.
That is how overextension often works. You see it through out history, expansion to the breaking limit of armies and then rapid loss of conquered territory due to counterattacks.
Something very special about the last third of this episode
In so many cases the wish to lay blame outweighs the wish to understand. But fully understanding is impossible, so the best we can do is try to put ourselves in the other man's shoes for a few miles. It takes me ½ an hour to walk two miles, how many of us can say we've put ourselves in someone else's position for that long? I know I haven't, and I've tried many times for many years.
Weird. I love your maps, they are stylistically "period," and aesthetically pleasing. However, sometimes all that comes across is a field divided into a "red" zone and an uncolored zone, with little dots with unpronounceable names standing in for towns and cities. I was about to suggest that you should have insets in the corner with a "zoomed out" view so we can (at least) see where, in the "big picture" the action was happening. Just as I was about to hit pause... there was EXACTLY such an inset. Thank you!!! I am familiar enough with Europe that I can follow events there, but as far as China and the Pacific go? Thank you! Please continue (and expand) this policy.
I can recommend Rana Mitters book on the Chinese war.I cant remember its title,"Chinas war with Japan" or something,but do try check it out,interesting on a war that little is really known about outside China.
It is incredible that the british keep fighting, they stuck with it for so long to the benefit of many small countries in Europe, every time someone tried to take the continent over, the british stepped in. The surgeon general report at the end really makes me appreciate that they kept the war going few years back even alone and suffering many failures and the psychological pressure mounting on their soldiers and people back home
Very nice story at the end.
Warsaw, city at war!
Voices from underground, whispers of freedom!
1944, help that never came!
Calling Warsaw, city at war!
Voices from underground, whispers of freedom!
Rise up and hear the call!
History calling to you,
*WARSZAWO WALCZ!*
Oskar Dirlewanger
@@gartik2367 may that scum be remembered as the worst in humanity
@@gartik2367 Who is rotting in hell right now.
Wow, the timing of this is uncanny. History doesnt repeat, but it sure does rhyme.
Man it's really weird to now finally see my hometown on the map in an episode!
Greetings from Hungary!
I have the feelng that the Germans must make a move in Hungary, like an armoured fist.
Marshall Bagramyian must surely win the Logistics award in moving all that Equipment let alone Men in such short order and completely changing His Axis of Advance ..A lesson to all would be Army Commanders on how Flexibility and a Good Command structure are Key ( All on the back of American Lend lease Trucks!)
Did yall Skip over the battles of Nancy and Lorraine valley in September
Don't worry, I will be backtracking to cover it during the offensive in November. This was a choice I had to make. See, the episodes lately have been well over 4,000 words- that's not too much extra for me to write or shoot, it's a bunch but dealable. However, it is on the verge of very much not dealable for our editors and map designers. We are at and even a bit beyond max capacity with scripts this long with this many different fronts to cover. So my choice was either water down everything to include everything, or leave something out that I can come back to and pick up when it becomes relevant how it got to the point it's at. It's not just Lorraine, I had to do the same thing with Hurtgen Forest, and even a little bit with the fight for the Scheldt. Apologies, but we don't have the resources to make the episodes any longer.
Gotcha
I like the China coverage this week. It would be good to have a special about the utterly abysmal state of the Chinese economy/army at this moment.
People dont realize that US lend lease in the past three years has yet to reach the level that the soviets sent in just 1938.
The Hump is finally running in the tens of thousands of supplies per month since the seizure of myitkyina in august, but more than 90% of that tonnage is going to support US forces in China. Some of these, like the 20th airforce, are explicitly forbidden from operating against japanese forces in China itself.
The Chinese themselves are bending over backwards to accomodate the US presence. They are building airfields and dormitories by hand, with no heavy equipment. The Columbia educated finance minister Kong Xiangxi will mention how the Chinese are killing their plow oxen to satisfy the american taste for beef.
I didn't realize that up to now. Thank you.
Może też o polskiej gospodarce Jaki wielki mamy dług, po tym jak przyjęliśmy przyjęliśmy z otwartymi rękami 5 milionów naszych sąsiadów w naszych domach A teraz mają nas obrażają Pewien Pan napisał w komentarzu Szczury wasze dzieci będą się uczyć naszego języka
I have talked about my granduncle before. He came across Africa, up through Sicily. All the way through Italy, France and into Germany. My grandad was the youngest and his unit came over just in time to be in Batstone. He was fortunate to have been picked up by a Generals command unit. He had won and 'art contest' and was able to hand letter the new command building commandeered by the General's staff. The offices doors and the staff cars and trucks. He was not there when his unit was wiped out in the battle. The third brother, the oldest was in the Navy when the war started and fought his way across the Pacific with his shipmates. My granduncle had many books about WWII. He often outlined the battels he was in, marked the maps in pen with his locations. I have one of them to this day along with his dress uniform with his ruptured duck.
Can y’all believe it’s already 1944 I’ve been watching since the start of this series. And I gotta say…It’s gone faster than I expected. Time flies.