World War Two
Published 22 Jun 2023How do you blast through the obstacles and minefields on the beaches of Normandy? How do you get thousands of tonnes of tanks, guns, and men into the fight? And what about reopening the shattered French ports? You need men who are as skilled in construction as they are destruction. You need the engineers.
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June 23, 2023
The Combat Engineers of D-Day – WW2 Special Documentary
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From Operation Barbarossa in 1941 to the disinformation and cover-up over the origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus
Chris Bray outlines the utterly amazing situation between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany on the eve of Hitler launching Operation Barbarossa — where Stalin refused to believe that Hitler would attack Russia despite overwhelming evidence from many sources — to the parallel situation over Covid:
Several sources quite specifically reported to the Soviet government that the Germans would invade around dawn on June 22. Their reports can be found in the Soviet archives in a “folder of dubious and misleading reports”. Then, shortly before dawn on June 22, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Military leaders on the border called in reports of the invasion, and the people they talked to in Moscow declined to believe them. Soviet border troops held their fire, seeing Germans while being ordered to understand that no true invasion could possibly be underway. Stalin knew better, and contradicting Josef Stalin was known to be a fatal mistake. Achieving an entirely avoidable surprise, the Germans destroyed much of the Soviet air force on the ground, parked wingtip-to-wingtip for the convenience of the invader’s bombers.
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An invasion that could have been met with brutal severity from the first moment instead achieved considerable initial success against a supine nation because the Soviet leader, and the chain of subordinates beneath him who were forced to adopt his conception of facts and truth, assumed that things they didn’t wish to believe constituted disinformation. Millions of lives were wasted for that illusion. A society that categorizes inconvenient truths in this way is committing a form of suicide, hiding from hard facts that demand acknowledgment.
Now: In 2021, the lab leak theory was a disgusting lie with “racist roots”.
In June of 2023, the, uh, first people who got sick with Covid turn out to have been, uh, scientists at the lab in Wuhan. BUT THEY PROBABLY HAD SOME BAT SOUP AT THE WET MARKET, IS WHY, or something.
Stupid conspiracy theorists, you people are such MORONS, do you actually bel— okay, that one’s true too.
We’ve somehow developed an industry of professional information barriers, dimwitted parasitical human garbage whose sole function in life is to prevent understanding by pasting “disinformation” stickers on things that you’re not supposed to know.
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FG-42: Perhaps the Most Impressive WW2 Shoulder Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 8 Mar 2023The first production version of the FG42 used a fantastically complex milled receiver and a distinctive sharply swept-back pistol grip. A contract to make 5,000 of them was awarded to Krieghoff in late spring of 1943, but by the fall its replacement was already well into development. The milled receiver used a lot of high-nickel steel which was becoming difficult for Germany to acquire, and it was decided to develop a stamped receiver to ease production obstacles. Ultimately only about 2,000 of the early Type E FG42 rifles were actually made, and only 12 or 15 are registered in the US. They are a remarkably advanced rifle, and extremely interesting.
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June 18, 2023
Titanic Clash Looms In Pacific – WW2 – Week 251 – June 17, 1944
World War Two
Published 17 Jun 2023Japanese and American navies are heading for a showdown in the Philippine Sea, even as American forces land on Saipan in the Marianas in force. The Japanese have Changsha under siege in China, the Allies advance in both Normandy and Italy, the Soviets advance in Finland, and the massive Soviet summer operation is coming together and will begin in a matter of days.
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June 17, 2023
Why Rommel Lost the Battle for North Africa
Real Time History
Published 16 Jun 2023The North African campaign of WW2 is one of the most famous ones. The almost mythical story of the British “Desert Rats” defeating Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. But why did Rommel lose in North Africa?
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June 15, 2023
See Inside King Tiger | Tank Chats Reloaded
The Tank Museum
Published 10 Mar 2023In this video, Chris Copson gives us a glimpse inside one of the most formidable German tanks of World War II – the King Tiger.
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June 14, 2023
Michael Wittmann: The Fascination with the Panzer Ace of Villers-Bocage
OTD Military History
Published 13 Jun 2023American historian, Carlo D’Este seemed to have an intense admiration for Michael Wittmann, the SS Panzer ace best known for his actions at Villers-Bocage in Normandy on June 13 1944. This video shows why this problematic and even misplaced.
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Battle Of The Rivers (1944)
British Pathé
Published 13 Apr 2014Title reads: “Battle of the Rivers”.
Allied Forces invasion of France.
Various shots of mechanised units of the British and Canadian army preparing for assault on the Rivers Odon and Orne. Infantry mount the Sherman tanks and they head along the dusty road. Various shots of Sherman flail tanks passing camera (not flailing). Road bank collapses and one tank rolls onto its side
Various shots of Lancaster bombers over industrial area of Vaucelles. Aerial shots of bombs dropping from planes. Night shot of coloured markers cascading down to light up target area. More aerial shots, including L/S of Lancaster bomber crashing in flames.
Various shots of heavy artillery in action in the fields. Various shots of Royal Engineers putting Bailey Bridge across the Caen Canal. L/S of tanks crossing the bridge. Various shots of badly damaged industrial area near Caen. L/S of Canadian tanks on the move over open countryside and tracks. We see a soldier extinguishing flames where a tank’s grass camouflage has caught fire. The tanks cross a railway line.
Various shots of Winston Churchill being greeted by American officers as he arrives by plane in the Cherbourg area. He then tours the peninsula, looking at structures that were supposed to be V2 sites. M/S of Churchill climbing into spotter plane (“flying jeep”), piloted by Air Vice Marshal Broadhurst. Various shots of Churchill driving around Caen in an open-topped car, with him are Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Monty) and General Dempsey. Various shots of Churchill posing with a group of soldiers, he then spends some time chatting to them.
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June 11, 2023
The Invasion of Normandy begins! – WW2 – Week 250 – June 10, 1944
World War Two
Published 10 Jun 2023The Allies’ gigantic amphibious invasion of France begins and by the end of the week they’ve carved out a decent-sized beachhead. Meanwhile in Italy the Allied advance takes Rome. The Soviets are launching new attacks of their own — now against the Finns, and the Japanese at Kohima … have just plain had enough.
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June 10, 2023
George MacDonald Fraser – Quartered Safe Out Here
We Have Ways of Making You Talk
Published 16 Jan 2023Merry Christmas from “We Have Ways of Making You Talk”. Over the next 12 days Al and James are reading extracts from some of their favourite books about the Second World War. Today Al is reading from Quartered Safe Out Here, by George MacDonald Fraser.
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June 8, 2023
1954: The END of RATIONING
BBC Archive
Published 5 Mar 2023“The ration book has done its job. It’s been a long job. Indeed, children up to school-leaving age have never known life without the ration book.”
On the fourth of July, the rationing of meat in Britain came to an end, the final step in dismantling Britain’s whole wartime system of food distribution. After fourteen long years, Britons can at last tear up their ration books.
Richard Baker looks back at some of the key moments in the story of rationing and de-rationing.
Originally broadcast 5 July, 1954.
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June 7, 2023
German Counterattack – D-Day [Part 4]
World War Two
Published 6 Jun 2023When the amphibious landings begin, they run straight into Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Eisenhower has predicted a third of his troops may fall. While they land, the news breaks across the world.
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Piercing the Atlantic Wall – D-Day [Part 3]
World War Two
Published 6 Jun 2023With wide gaps struck in the Atlantic Wall, it is now up to the Allies to secure the beachheads and move inland. There they will face off with new German defenses, and the Norman geography.
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A Harbour goes to France – Mulberry Harbours – Normandy Landings
British Army Documentaries
Published 24 Jun 2020Mulberry harbours were temporary portable harbours developed by the United Kingdom during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. After the Allies successfully held beachheads following D-Day, two prefabricated harbours were taken in sections across the English Channel from UK with the invading army and assembled off Omaha Beach (Mulberry “A”) and Gold Beach (Mulberry “B”).
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QotD: A “second front” in 1943
Which brings us to the debate about the possibility of an invasion in 1943 – Roundup. Something that a surprising number of historians, and even a few not entirely incompetent generals, have suggested might have been possible, and should have been tried.
There are some points in their favour. The invasions of North Africa definitely took resources that could have been built up in Britain, and therefore slowed things down. (And the withdrawal of the new escort carriers, escort groups, and shipping from the Battle of the Atlantic for the North African adventure, definitely did huge damage in the loss of shipping and supplies, slowing things down further.) As a result the huge buildup in North Africa was much easier to use against Italy before moving on to France. Certainly another distraction or delay … but only if you don’t think that knocking Italy out of the war would make Germany weaker!
But once Sledgehammer [the plan to invade France in 1942] was abandoned, this operation was the only possible way to get US troops into combat in Europe, short of shipping some to Russia. It was also the only possible way of coming close to keeping Roosevelt’s ridiculous promise to the Russians.
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Nonetheless it is wrong to think that the British never had any intention of [mounting Operation] Roundup. Despite what Roosevelt and many other Americans convinced themselves, the British were, at the start of 1942, far more optimistic about the possibility of invading Europe through France in 1943 than they had been about Sledgehammer. Their studies seemed to show that Germany would only have to be weaker, not suddenly collapse, to make invasion in 1943 a realistic possibility. Realistic that is as long as the rest of the plans for training and shipping troops, building and concentrating invasion craft, and moving enough supplies to make it sustainable, all came together.
They didn’t.
For the British, the middle of 1942 revealed how little would be available in time for the middle of 1943. Even on the best assumptions of American training and preparation, there was no chance that the majority of forces for Roundup would not be British … assuming they could supply them either. In practice mid-1942 saw the Axis continue to advance on every front. Burma collapsed; the Allied position in New Guinea was under threat; the Japanese were still expanding to places like Guadalcanal; Rommel was advancing in Egypt; the Germans were advancing on the Caucasian oil fields and towards the Middle East; and more and more was needed just to keep Russia in the war. As a result British troops, shipping and supplies were continuing to flow away from Britain, not towards it.
Much of the Royal Navy was trying to save the dangerous losses caused by [US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral] King’s refusal to have convoys in American waters (too “defensive-minded” he thought.) These alone, the worst eight months of the war, were threatening to scupper Roundup. The rest was so busily deployed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans against the Japanese, or North Atlantic trying to fight supplies through to Russia (a high proportion of tanks and planes defending Moscow were British-supplied), that there was virtually nothing left in the Med to slow Rommel’s advance. The merchant ships surviving the fight across the oceans were actually more vitally needed to take men and equipment from the UK to other places than to bring in a buildup for the UK.
Nor was the American buildup going to plan. Less well-trained troops were becoming available too slowly, could not be shipped in adequate numbers anyway, and were in no condition to face German veterans. (The very best US units to go into action in 1942 – the Marines in Guadalcanal – and 1943 – the 1st Infantry and 1st Armored divisions which were actually professional troops not conscripts in North Africa – had very steep learning curves. Particularly at Kasserine. They were clearly not fit to face German veterans yet.
And American resource buildup was also not up to promises. King and MacArthur were milking supplies far beyond what had originally been agreed under “Germany first”. In practical terms they were doing so for the same reasons the British were: an immediate desperate situation had to be saved before a future ideal one could be pursued.
Nonetheless I have read all sorts of apparently serious suggestions that after North Africa was cleared, or at the very least after Sicily was cleared, an invasion of France should have happened.
Delusional.
Nigel Davies, “The ‘Invasion of France in 1943’ lunacy”, rethinking history, 2021-06-21.
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