The History Underground
Published 9 Feb 2022In the days after D-Day, the Canadians of the 3rd Infantry Division found themselves up against the German 12th SS Panzer Division as they were making their way south through Normandy. Tragically, some of these men would find themselves as the victims of one the battle’s worst atrocities at a place called Abbey Ardenne. In this episode, we’re joining Paul Woodadge of @WW2TV as we retrace the final steps of these men as they made their way to a tragic fate at the hands of Kurt Meyer and a division of the most fanatical fighters that Germany threw into the Battle of Normandy.
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June 7, 2025
The 12th SS Massacre of the Canadians in Normandy | History Traveler Episode 195
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June 6, 2025
Juno Beach Landings | D-Day Normandy June 6, 1944
World War II – Epic Battles
Published 30 Jun 2021Juno Beach was assigned to the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. It was one of the five invasion beaches of Normandy on D-Day and the second deadliest beach after Omaha.
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QotD: D-Day landing on Sword Beach
A few hours before the Canadians aboard the Prince Henry climbed into that landing craft, 181 men in six Horsa gliders took off from RAF Tarrant Rushton in Dorset to take two bridges over the River Orne and hold them until reinforcements arrived. Their job was to prevent the Germans using the bridges to attack troops landing on Sword Beach. At lunchtime, Lord Lovat and his commandos arrived at the Bénouville Bridge, much to the relief of the 7th Parachute Battalion’s commanding officer, Major Pine-Coffin. That was his real name, and an amusing one back in Blighty: simple pine coffins are what soldiers get buried in. It wasn’t quite so funny in Normandy, where a lot of pine coffins would be needed by the end of the day. Lord Lovat, Chief of Clan Fraser, apologized to Pine-Coffin for missing the rendezvous time: “Sorry, I’m a few minutes late,” he said, after a bloody firefight to take Sword Beach.
Lovat had asked his personal piper, Bill Millin, to pipe his men ashore. Private Millin pointed out that this would be in breach of War Office regulations. “That’s the English War Office, Bill,” said Lovat. “We’re Scotsmen.” And so Millin strolled up and down the sand amid the gunfire playing “Hieland Laddie” and “The Road to the Isles” and other highland favorites. The Germans are not big bagpipe fans and I doubt it added to their enjoyment of the day.
There was a fair bit of slightly dotty élan around in those early hours. As I mentioned during On the Town, I knew a chap who was in the second wave of gliders from England, and nipped out just before they took off to buy up the local newsagent’s entire stack of papers — D-Day special editions, full of news of the early success of the landings. He flew them into France with him, and distributed them to his comrades from the first wave so they could read of their exploits.
But for every bit of dash and brio there were a thousand things that were just the wretched, awful muck of war. Many of those landing craft failed to land: They hit stuff that just happened to be there under the water, in the way, and ground to a halt, and the soldiers got out waist-deep in the sea, and struggled with their packs — and, in the case of those men on the Prince Henry, with lumpy old English bicycles — through the gunfire to the beach to begin liberating a continent while already waterlogged and chilled to the bone.
The building on the other side of the Bénouville Bridge was a café and the home of Georges Gondrée and his family. Thérèse Gondrée had spent her childhood in Alsace and thus understood German. So she eavesdropped on her occupiers, and discovered that in the machine-gun pillbox was hidden the trigger for the explosives the Germans intended to detonate in the event of an Allied invasion. She notified the French Resistance, and thanks to her, after landing in the early hours of June 6th, Major Howard knew exactly where to go and what to keep an eye on.
Shortly after dawn there was a knock on Georges Gondrée’s door. He answered it to find two paratroopers who wanted to know if there were any Germans in the house. The men came in, and Thérèse embraced them so fulsomely that her face wound up covered in camouflage black, which she proudly wore for days afterward. Georges went out to the garden and dug up ninety-eight bottles of champagne he’d buried before the Germans arrived four years earlier. And so the Gondrée home became the first place in France to be liberated from German occupation. There are always disputes about these things, of course: some say the first liberated building was L’Etrille et les Goélands (the Crab and the Gulls), subsequently renamed — in honour of the men who took it that morning — the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada house. But no matter: the stylish pop of champagne corks at the Café Gondrée was the bells tolling for the Führer‘s thousand-year Reich.
Arlette Gondrée was a four-year old girl that day, and she has grown old with the teen-and-twenty soldiers who liberated her home and her town. But she is now the proprietress of the family café, and she has been there every June to greet those who return each year in dwindling numbers […] The Bénouville Bridge was known to Allied planners as the Pegasus Bridge, after the winged horse on the shoulder badge of British paratroopers. But since 1944 it has been called the Pegasus Bridge in France, too. And in the eight decades since June 6th no D-Day veteran has ever had to pay for his drink at the Café Gondrée.
Mark Steyn, “June 6th, 1944”, SteynOnline, 2024-06-06.
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June 5, 2025
German judges seem to be dedicated to ensuring that the government never changes policy, regardless of voter preference
The times I despair of the pathetic Canadian government, I look to Germany where eugyppius helpfully explains that German judges are even more dedicated to thwarting the will of the voters than Canadian judges are (and that’s a major achievement):
At the start of May, CSU Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt effectively abolished asylum as a path into Germany, empowering federal police to push back all illegal migrants at our national borders.
There ensued a period of messaging chaos, in which Chancellor Friedrich Merz assured our neighbours and the EU that nothing much was happening, while Dobrindt quietly insisted that yes, indeed, he was serious. He gave police orders to step up border checks and to send back all illegal migrants regardless of asylum claims – save for pregnant women, the underage and the sick.
These new borders policies have yet to exercise any significant influence on asylum statistics. It is relatively easy to cross into Germany despite the police spot checks, and we don’t yet know how many asylees are managing to evade them.
The deeper legal issues are much more significant right now. We want to know whether Dobrindt’s intervention is workable in theory, and whether our judges will swallow it. Unfortunately, he is already under siege from asylum advocates on the left and the broader migration industry, who have set and sprung a very telling trap, with the aim of getting courts to overturn even these preliminary and quite meagre interventions.
To understand the issues here, we need a brief legal primer: According to German law (the so-called Asylgesetz), foreigners who enter Germany from “secure” states do not get to claim asylum. They are to be sent straight back to wherever it is they came from. Because Germany is surrounded entirely by secure states, that should really be the end of this insane problem. Alas, this sensible law has been superseded since 1997 first by the Dublin Convention, and later by the Dublin II and now the Dublin III Regulation. The latter forbids the Federal Republic from using her own laws, holding that foreigners entering Germany from secure third states must be welcomed pending a procedure to establish which EU member state is actually responsible for them. Effectively, this means that almost all of these aspiring asylees remain in Germany indefinitely, because deporting people who do not belong here is beyond the meagre capacities of our enormous bureaucracy.
Dobrindt sought to get around Dublin by appealing to Article 72 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which allows member states to set aside EU regulations when this is necessary to maintain order and security.
Many have eyed this Article 72 strategy for a long time, but nothing is easy, particularly not in countries unduly enamoured of “the rule of law”, which is a lofty euphemism for “the rule of obscure crazy people in robes for whom nobody ever voted and who enjoy lifetime appointments”. These days the government cannot do anything at all except what it was already doing (and sometimes not even that), or unless it is obviously stupid, expensive and inadvisable, because lurking around every corner is a clinically insane judge eager to explain why sensible things are not allowed. In recent years, our extremely learned and far-sighed judiciary has explained why combating climate change is anchored in the German constitution and why basically everybody is entitled to exorbitant social welfare. All that remains for them is to explain why everybody on earth is also entitled to live in Germany and draw benefits from the state, and they will have completed their suicidal triad.
On Monday, 2 June, the Berlin Administrative Court struck the first blow in this direction. Effectively, they called the whole basis for Dobrindt’s new border policy into question, issuing what amounts to a preliminary injunction in the case of three Somalis (two men and one woman) who had crossed from Poland into Germany on 9 May. Federal police intercepted the trio at the train station in Frankfurt an der Oder; they claimed asylum and the police, in line with Dobrindt’s order, sent them back to Poland anyway. Lawyers from the advocacy organisation Pro Asyl then helped them bring suit in Berlin, and the court intervened in their favour. They get to be professional asylees in Germany now.
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D-Day and the Battle of Normandy on screen
Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 4 Jun 2025Following on from the video about tank battles on screen, we look at the coverage of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy in movie and television dramas. This will be posted two days before the 81st anniversary of D-Day. As usual, this is a little about how good they are as drama and more about the historical background.
00.00 Introduction
02.50 Churchill
11.38 “Men on a mission” movies INTRO
16.45 Female Agents
20.20 The Dirty Dozen
32.06 The Big Red One
38.10 D Day: The Sixth of June
41.58 Patton
46.00 Night of the Generals
47.48 Breakthrough (1950)
49.36 Breakthrough (1971)
50.24 Pathfinders
57.48 Overlord
01.00.00 Storming Juno
01.04.48 My Way
01.12.12 They were not divided
01.17.24 Band of Brothers
01.51.00 Saving Private Ryan
02.33.45 The Longest Day
03.00.48 Conclusion and the “Ones that got away”For the discussion of the Pegasus Bridge project:
• Fighting On Film Podcast: Pegasus Bridge S…
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June 4, 2025
Remarkable Victory – The Bomber War Episode 5 – Jan to June 1944
HardThrasher
Published 28 Feb 2024In which the USAAF and RAF finally start to Get Good at their jobs and tie up their respective campaigns for literally the first time.
00:00 – 04:01 – Introduction
04:06 – 08:12 – Forward Operating Base
08:15 – 11:30 – Changes in Command
11:32 – 16:16 – Doolittle’s Plan
16:20 – 22:25 – Big Week
22:34 – 29:32 – Aftermath
29:35 – 32:06 – Berlin
32:09 – 33:59 – Overlord
34:02 – Survivor’s Club
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June 3, 2025
Exercise Tiger: The WW2 Cover-Up Before D Day
The History Chap
Published 23 May 2024Exercise Tiger 1944, was a large-scale dress rehearsal for the D-Day landings, off the Slapton Sands in England, that went horribly wrong. Over 700 US servicemen were killed, more than were killed on Utah beach on D-Day itself! With D-Day imminent, Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, ordered the disaster to be hushed up.
Following a friendly fire incident on Slapton Sands on the 27th April 1944, a convoy carrying US troops was attacked in the early hours of the 28th by German E-Boats. In what is called the Battle of Lyme Bay, two ships in the convoy were sunk resulting in the loss of over 700 US servicemen. Whilst rumours suggest that there were many casualties resulting from the friendly fire on Slapton Sands, the US Army has always remained tight-lipped. To this day, the mystery remains as to what extent the casualty figures were covered up.
In the 1980’s, a Sherman tank was raised from the seabed. It now stands at the end of Slapton Sands (near the village of Torcross) as a memorial to the young men who died 6 weeks before D-Day during Exercise Tiger.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:42 D-Day 1944
1:40 Slapton Sands
2:30 Civilian Evacuation
3:22 Military Build-up
4:58 Exercise Tiger
6:07 Live Fire Disaster
7:37 Convoy T-4
9:15 Spotted by Germans
10:03 E-boat attack
11:41 Battle of Lyme Bay
14:06 Casualty Figures
14:43 D-Day Compromised?
15:37 Cover-up?
17:00 D-Day Success
18:08 Exercise Tiger Remembered
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June 1, 2025
Panzers Attack! – Ten Days in Sedan
World War Two
Published 31 May 2025May 10, 1940. A new kind of warfare comes to the fore as a German Panzer Group rumbles through the Ardennes towards Sedan. Heinz Guderian has one goal in mind — Get to the Meuse! If he can manage that, then the Battle of France may be over before it even begins. Can the Allies hold back the armoured armada?
Chapters
01:05 German Forces
04:13 Blitzkrieg Theory, Applied
07:37 The Advance Begins
14:50 The Allied Plan
17:59 A Tight Schedule
20:57 Summary
21:16 Conclusion
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May 30, 2025
Was Germany Really Starved Into Surrender in WW1?
The Great War
Published 10 Jan 2025From 1914 to 1919, Allied warships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean controlled maritime trade to and from the Central Powers – stopping shipments of weapons and raw materials, but also food, from reaching their enemies. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of German civilians died of hunger-related causes. Often, these deaths and even the outcome of the war are attributed to the naval blockade – but did the British really starve Germany into surrender in WW1?
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May 28, 2025
Masters of the Air – The Bomber War Episode 4 – 8th Air Force 1942-1943
HardThrasher
Published 6 Jan 2024If you’d like to be a cool kid, then become a Patreon or if you’d like to email me send a message to lordhardthrasher@gmail.com
0:00 Intro
4:30 We’re Going to North Africa 1st
8:36 But you’re not doing it properly
16:16 Play it Again Ira
22:30 Mid 1943 – The Crisis Begins
26:53 The Black Summer
28:03 Operation Tidal Wave
34:21 Into The Valley of Death – Schweinfurt
41:34 What Now?
48:37 Survivors Club
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May 25, 2025
Rommel’s Dark Secrets in North Africa – WW2 Fireside Chat
World War Two
Published 24 May 2025Indy and Sparty handle your questions on the German intervention in North Africa. Why did Rommel make such an impact so quickly? What was the war like for the local populations? How deeply involved was Rommel in the persecution of North African Jews?
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BD-44: The New Semiauto Sturmgewehr from D-K Productions
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Jan 2025D-K Productions is a collaboration between the German company Sport System Dittrich (SSD) and an American partner. SSD has been making reproductions of German World War Two small arms for something like 20 years — including Sturmgewehrs. Their guns are really good recreations of the 1940s originals, but there have long been issues importing them into the US. This was solved at last by forming a US company and doing the receiver manufacturing here in the States. While the company has plans to offer a whole bunch of different models, the one currently available is the BD-44, a copy of the standard production model of MP-44/StG-44.
I was really impressed by the use of not-finish-machined forgings for parts like the stacking rod and gas block, correctly duplicating the original German production. The stampings look good, and the handling matches the original guns (don’t expect it to be AR-level ergonomic!). The gut “feel” of the gun is an excellent match for an original MP-44. The 8×33 chambering and use of original magazines (alongside new-production magazines made by D-K) is the correct choice, of course.
I did not like the mismatch between the magazine well and magazine stops, and I did have a couple malfunctions in the two magazines I ran through it so far. Note that the gun I have at the range is my second one; the first one (which is what you see on the table) had consistent feed problems and D-K replaced it when I sent it back to them.
Whether the gun is worth the steep asking price is a personal decision, naturally. Hopefully this video gives you the information necessary to make your decision if you were considering getting one!
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May 24, 2025
German democracy trembles as the extremely extreme extreme right AfD aren’t going to be banned
eugyppius updates us on the continued shaky state of German democracy, as the scary extremely extreme right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party seems to have somehow escaped being banned from participation in politics due to some ridiculous “lack of substantive evidence” excuse:
Last week, a supersecret assessment of Alternative für Deutschland by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) leaked to the press. This document was supposed to prove, in excruciating detail, why the AfD are so evil and so fascist and so Nazi and so Hitler, and in this way make a preliminary case for banning the party. In fact its contents turned out to be such an arrant joke that it sapped all remaining momentum within the German political class to prohibit the AfD. I suspect even the “right-wing extremist” classification of the AfD is now in jeopardy and may well be thrown out by the courts, that is how bad this much-heralded supersecret assessment turned out to be.
It took a few days for the full impact of the report’s idiocy to really sink in. That’s how it is with really stupid things – the incredulity they inspire must first dissipate. Finally, though, on Tuesday of this week, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that the dubious evidence marshaled by the BfV was “not sufficient” to support ban proceedings. Dobrindt also said that the whole debate had become “counterproductive” and that it was time to begin finding ways to “end social polarisation”, whatever that means. Hours later, it emerged that Chancellor Friedrich Merz had ordered the entire CDU leadership never to say another word about banning the AfD. If everyone will just shut up, Merz believes his party can “avoid further debate” and avoid “giving voters the impression that the CDU is aiming to eliminate a rival party” – which is of course exactly what the CDU were hoping to do until the BfV fucked everything up with their retarded 1,108-page collection of dyspeptic Facebook-grade political takes.
There’s still a few scattered calls for ban proceedings coming from the left, but their heart isn’t in it and they don’t matter anyway. Without Union votes, no ban application will ever get to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Raed Saleh, an extremely obnoxious politician who heads the SPD faction in the Berlin House of Representatives, whined to the press this morning about how “appalling and disgraceful” it is that outlawing the opposition is no longer on the table and that his party is now being asked to “engage in political debate” with the AfD instead. Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, also of the SPD, likewise fervently hopes that the AfD might still be banned and she thinks the Interior Ministry should spend more time “evaluating” that BfV dumpster-fire assessment. Since Hubig is Justice Minister and not Interior Minister it doesn’t really matter what she thinks the Interior Ministry should be doing. I don’t understand why so many are citing Hubig’s remarks like they mean anything.
The implosion of this ban-the-AfD arc seems like kind of a big deal to me. Since 2021, the party have been “under suspicion” of right-wing extremism, but despite four years of snooping the BfV have been able to come up with nothing that is not some combination of legally irrelevant, harmless, banal, uninteresting, stupid and a complete waste of government resources. At some point, you have to put the question: If the AfD are so evil and so Nazi and so fascist and so Hitler, why can’t anybody, anywhere, adduce any evidence of their evil Nazi Hitler fascism?
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May 23, 2025
Did Germany Just Choose a King? – Rise of Hitler 17, May 1931
World War Two
Published 22 May 2025May 1931: 150,000 Stahlhelm men parade through Breslau before Crown Prince Wilhelm and other imperial relics, reviving monarchist hopes. Hitler hails his SA and calls for eastern expansion. But it’s economic collapse that dominates — Austria’s top bank nears default, threatening Germany’s own system. As Berlin pushes for a reparations pause and clings to its customs union with Vienna, France stands firm. And in Oldenburg, the Nazis take their first Landtag.
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May 21, 2025
The Butt Report – Nadir of the RAF – The Bomber War Episode 3
HardThrasher
Published 15 Dec 2023As the powers that be on YT have decided that this video is Evil and naughty they’ve removed the ads — which, like, is great from your point of view but a bit shite from mine. So if you wanted to it’d be awesome if you’d consider either hitting the Super Thanks button or consider becoming a super cool kid and joining my Pateron.
If you’d like to email me send a message to lordhardthrasher@gmail.com
In this episode, the Butt Report, what happened next and the arrival of Bomber Harris. Despite this being more than 50 minutes, I’ve skipped some detail e.g. The Singleton Report which basically said “eh – bit difficult this bombing thing” nor Tizard’s rubbishing of Cherwell’s Memorandum, nor really the detail of the Cherwell Memorandum. You’ll live. However if you want more on the subject then I recommend the Official History of Bomber Command to get more into the civil service fire fights.
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