Comments by "Bullet-Tooth Tony" (@Bullet-Tooth-Tony-) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1.  @garymorris1856  I'm talking about Ikes broad front.
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  2.  @garymorris1856  Of course, I know Ike was Supreme Commander, but his strategy over Ground Forces still had faults, the first one being trying to supply multiple armies across a wide front, only makes them weaker as they are not strong enough in one place, which is how the Germans were able to capitalise on this and slam into the Ardennes. Montgomery's proposal after D-day was for 40 allied divisions to advance in a powerful thrust and take advantage of the weaker German position after their defeat in France ( They had only 11 divisions between the Allies) seize the Channel ports of Antwerp, allowing the Allies to recieve plenty of supplies which would address the issue of the Broad front, then sweep over the North German plain and advance on Berlin. Shortening the war.
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  3.  @bigwoody4704  One of the fault lines between the British and American high commands was General Eisenhower’s commitment to a broad front advance with no strategic reserve. This view was opposed by the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, who promoted a rapid advance on a narrow front with the other allied armies in reserve. This basic disagreement was the wedge Hitler exploited with his counter offensive and the fact that a breakthrough was achieved seemed to justify the British objections. Also the British remembered a similar German armoured counter attack at Kasserine Pass in North Africa where the American army was routed by the German strike once again confirming the British conservative view of strategy.
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  4.  @bigwoody4704  Market garden was a good idea. The goal of the operation was to strike at the center of power of Germany. the Ruhr industrial region and out flank the Siegfried Line. On paper that sounds good as it means no WW1 frontal assaults on Fortified positions. The British were looking for a way to reduce casualties and were not willing to put themselves through a meat grinder like the Huertgen forest battles. After the horrors of the Somme and Passchendale it's not a suprise that the British were totally against the Broad front attrition strategy.
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  5.  @bigwoody4704  "SINGLE ROAD - no room to manuever" It wasn't based on a single road. Horrocks XXX corps thrust was along that road, but VIII corps (O'Connor) and XII corps (Richie) attacked in the same direction along a different route. O'Connor's corps would cross the canal at Helmond and the Maas at Boxmeer, Richie's corps was to then follow the highway through Tilberg, S'Hertogenbosch and cross the Maas at the bridge north of Oss.
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  6.  @bigwoody4704  But XXX Corps also took a different route to Driel to relieve the Oosterbeck pocket, and as I mentioned above O'Connor's corps crossed the canal at Helmond and the Maas at Boxmeer, Richie's corps was to then follow the highway through Tilberg, S'Hertogenbosch and cross the Maas at the bridge north of Oss. So it's not a single road... People forget that it was 3 Corps involved, 2 of which (VIII and XII Corps) were covering Horrocks left and right flanks.
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  7. 150 divisions in the Eastern front and only 20 battered divisions in the Western front, meanwhile the Allies have 40 divisions in the Western front.
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  8. "Everyone hates Monty because he failed as a general in every battle and strategic plan," Eh? Did Monty lose at El Alamein? How about at the Mareth line? Tunisia? Avalanche? Overlord? Was Varsity a failure? What are you talking about? "His ego killed more soldiers than any single general on the Allied side" Monty's worst operation on paper as far casualties go is Market Garden with less than 9,000 casualties, Omar Bradley suffered 33,000 casualties in the Hurtgen Forest. Montgomery was more cautious by nature and kept casualties down compared to other generals.
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  9. Two roads actually.
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  10. @mohammadshabih5293 They did have good leaders, the trouble was, one of them was deployed in a different theatre ( Bill Slim) and the other was sitting in a POW camp at the time that this battle happened ( Richard O Connor)
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  11.  @connerwomack9990  I see the Soviets winning, but not getting to Berlin, more like they beat the Germans on the defensive, but fail to drive them fully out of the East since it was Lendlease that gave the Soviets the trucks and equipment the ability to mount offensives.
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  12.  @grjoe4412  The Broad Front strategy would only work if the Germans were in disarray, otherwise all 3 attacks would fail. Monty believed (correctly) that the Germans were reconstituting their defenses, therefore a single powerful thrust to seize a Rhine crossing was the best option.
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  13.  @nickdanger3802  "and was the only great land battle won by the British and Commonwealth forces " Nah Operation Compass is another great victory. And as it turns out, the only army to outflank and DESTROY a retreating army in the North African campaign was a British Commonwealth one.
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  14.  @johnlucas8479  One of the great what if's of WW2 History, is how things could have been had Richard O Connor not got captured on his recon patrol when he accidently ran into a couple of Rommels soldiers in North Africa along side his colleague Philip Neame. Maybe he would be the British armies field commander in France instead of Dempsey, with a more innovative commander in place like O Connor perhaps Goodwood and Epsom wouldn't have been such slogs in Normandy. I seem to recall O Connor had wanted APC's, infantry and air reconnaisance for Goodwood but he was denied those elements by Dempsey who chose to go ahead instead with just sending in his armoured divisions forward in a big frontal assault.
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  15. @darthcalanil5333 To be fair while this was going on, the best armoured officer of the British army who might have reversed this - Richard O Connor was sitting in a POW camp.
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  16.  @bigwoody4704  He was also given another chance in Operation Varsity, which succeeded.
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  17.  @bigwoody4704  In the official summary of the operation, Major General Ridgeway wrote that the operation had been flawless and that the two airborne divisions involved had destroyed enemy defences that might otherwise have taken days to reduce, ensuring the operation was successful. Several modern historians have also praised the operation and the improvements that were made for Varsity. G. G. Norton argued that the operation benefited from the lessons learned from previous operations. Historian Peter Allen states that while the airborne forces took heavy casualties, Varsity diverted German attention from the Rhine crossing onto themselves. Thus, the troops fighting to create a bridgehead, across the Rhine, suffered relatively few casualties, and were able to "break out from the Rhine in hours rather than days
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  18.  @bigwoody4704  "Never once getting driven off the continent " Driven out of the Phlippines though, i guess that makes us quits, lets just acknowledge that both our nations were unprepared against Germany and Japan in 1940-1941.
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  19.  @darthcalanil5333  It's a shame that Richard O Connor was not there at the time as well, he had lead the Eighth army to a stunning victory in Operation Compass.
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  20. "when they had pretty much lost every battle they had fought in that war so far." Not every battle. British battle victories over the Axis. Battle of the River Plate, 13 December 1939 Battle of Britain, 10 July – 31 October 1940 Siege of Malta, 11 June 1940 – 20 November 1942 Attack on Mers-el-Kébir . 3 July 1940 Battle of Cape Spada. 19 July 1940 Operation Hurry, 31 July-4 August 1940 Battle of Cape Passero, 12 October 1940 Operation MB8, 4 - 11 November 1940 Battle of Taranto, 11–12 November 1940 Battle of the Strait of Otranto, 12 November 1940 Operation Excess, January 10–11, 1941 Battle of Cape Matapan, 27–29 March 1941 Action off Sfax, 16 April 1941 Sinking of the Tirpitz, 12 November 1944 Sinking of the Bismarck, 26–27 May 1941- Sinking of the Scharnhorst, 26 December 1943 Bombing of the Gneisenau, 26-27 Feb 1942 Battle of the Barents sea, 31 December 1942 Operation Halberd, September 1941 St Nazaire Raid, 28 March 1942 AKA, The Greatest Raid of All Battle of the Duisburg Convoy, November 8–9, 1941 Battle of Cape Bon, 13 December 1941 Operation Albumen, 7/8 June, 1942 and 4/5 July, 1943 Second Battle of Sirte, 22 March 1942 Operation Stone Age, 20 November 1942 Battle of Skerki Bank, 2 December 1942 Battle off Zuwarah, 19 - 20 January 1943 Battle of the Campobasso Convoy, 3/4 May 1943 Operation Tenement, 13–15 July 1944 Battle of the Ligurian Sea, 18 March 1945 First Naval Battle of Narvik, 10 April 1940 Second Naval Battle of Narvik,, 13 April 1940 East African Campaign, June 1940 – 27 November 1941 Battle of Gondar, 13–27 November 1941 First Battle of El Alamein, 1–27 July 1942 Battle of Longstop Hill, 2-23 April 1943 Second Battle of El Alamein, 23 October–11 November 1942 Battle of Madagascar, 5 May 1942 – 6 November 1942 Battle of Keren, 5 February – 1 April 1941 Battle of Damascus, 18–21 June 1941 Battle of Beirut, 12 July 1941 Battle for Caen, 6 June – 6 August 1944 Operation Compass, 9 December 1940 – 9 February 1941 Operation Colossus, 10 February 1941 Battle of Bardia, 3–5 January 1941 Battle of Derna, January 24–26 1941 Battle of Beda Fomm, 6–7 February 1941 Capture of Kufra, 31 January – 1 March 1941 Battle of El Agheila, 11–18 December 1942 Siege of Tobruk, 10 April – 27 November 1941 Second Battle of Bardia, April 12 1941 Battle of Sollum, April 12 1941 Siege of Giarabub, December 1940 – 21 March 1941 Operation Brevity, 15–16 May 1941 Battle of Halfaya Pass, 1941 Battle of Fort Capuzzo, May 15–16 1941 General Fedele de Giorgis surrenders Operation Crusader, 18 November – 30 December 1941 Battle of Bir el Gubi, November 19 – December 4 1941
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  21.  @jakublulek3261  Yes, i think it was the Air planners largely to blame for MG.
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  22. @GeneralJackRipper Technically they did. Look up B. H. Liddell Hart, J. F. C. Fuller and Operation Compass. For examples in WW1 there's also the Battle of Megiddo and Battle of Cambrai. General Edmund Allenby used infantry and cavalry to attack the strong Ottoman front line in co-operation with supporting artillery, air craft, augmented by the guns of two destroyers.
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  23. @davidrendall7195 " it would be an earlier version of the Hurtgen forest battles" But David, the Allied armies would be crossing the North German plains, which is flat terrain. Nothing like the forests and mountains to the south.
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  24.  @ArmiesAndBattles  I don't think the Brits were ever left behind anyway, as a comparison Third army took 2 weeks to advance 60 miles while the 21st army advanced 250 miles in just 6 days.
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  25. Richard O Connor had a similar story, twice captured and escaped both times 😂
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  26. @Blahdy Blah Except the commander of the AEF was General John Pershing...
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  27.  @ErikExeu  "(the stupid idea with a one tank front - compare Guderians books)," Although XXX Corps relied on a single road, it was not originally supposed to be quite so narrow. the original plan involved 1st(US) Army's left-hand Corps attacking north to draw off German reinforcements. In his second set of memoirs, Bradley claims he deliberately disobeyed his instructions and gave priority to 1st Army supporting Patton. Faced with 1st(US) Army's no-show, the Brits moved VIII Corps to attack on XXX Corps right in an attempt to achieve the same effect. But VIII Corps was attacking from essentially the same bridgehead, so it did not have the effect an attack some distance further to the South East would have done.
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  28.  @ErikExeu  Because to be 100 percent it would mean reaching Arnhem, but 6 major bridges were taken and the British and Americans advanced 60 miles into German held territory.
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  29. The best Allied tank commander a longside Creighton Abrams.
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  30.  @odycz  While the Axis lost 52,000 men compared to only 17,000 Eighth Army losses you call that a pyrrhic victory?
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  31.  @ErikExeu  Right because the Hurtgen Forest went so much better right, 33,000 casualties just to take some trees..... Market Garden was planned by two people Browning and Brereton, this is the non biased History of Steven Zaloga unlike Cornelius Ryan.
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  32.  @bigwoody4704  With regards to Falaise....the initial design of Cobra was to execute a deeper envelopment by attacking down the west bank of the Seine. Two divisions of XV Corps set out for Dreux on 15th August, and reached the Seine at Mantes on the 18th. .2 divisions ( 90, 2d Fr Arm) remained at Argentan, and reinforced by 80th division attacked north on 18th August. 5th armoured division turned left and attacked down the Seine on 20th August. XIX Corps came up on the left flank and attacked on the 21st, and neared Elbouf on the 24th, meeting the Canadians on the 26th. With Montgomery's approval, this attack had cut across the front of both the British and Canadian armies but was again unable to prevent many Germans from escaping across the Seine. There is another comment to be made about the number of Germans who escaped the partial encirclement which I don't think has been mentioned yet. Most of them were actually from support units rather than being fighting troops. According to Martin Blumenson in 'Breakout and Pursuit': "How many Germans escaped? No one knew. At the end of 20 August Army Group B reported that "approximately from 40 to 50 percent of the encircled units succeeded in breaking out and joining hands with the II SS Panzer Corps." This was an optimistic assessment. By the end of the following day, the strength of six of seven armored divisions that had escaped the pocket totalled, as reported at that time, no more than 2,000 men, 62 tanks, and 26 artillery pieces. Later estimates of the total number of Germans escaping varied between 20,000 and 40,000 men, but combat troops formed by far the smaller proportion of these troops. The average combat strength of divisions was no more than a few hundred men, even though the over-all strength of some divisions came close to 3,000. The explanation lay in the fact that a partial exodus had begun at least two or three days before the breakout attack--when shortages of ammunition, gasoline, and other supplies had already become acute.
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  33.  @davemac1197  Ryan is just as bad as the likes of Hastings, Beevor and Ambrose, it's almost like they had a chip on their shoulder. Yet historians like Steven Zaloga and Roger Cirillo are more objective and less about attacking the british and stroking their own ego's. They are humble enough to admit mistakes were made by their side.
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  34.  @ErikExeu  Erik, the rest of Thirty Corps was still involved in the fighting in the town, the idea that 3 British tanks on there own in the dark advancing the several miles to Arnhem could have altered the situation is far fetched to say the least. However, it was already too late. The German's from late afternoon of the same day were already advancing down the road from Arnhem with a couple of battalions of Panzer Grenadiers and several Tiger tanks.
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  35.  @ErikExeu  "British Army in WWII, did not impress." Here's what the Germans had to say about that. Siegfried Westphal was Chief of Staff to Rommel in North Africa, Kesselring in Italy and Von Rundstedt in France. In his book, “The German Army in the West”(Cassel 1952) he states the following : Quote “The hardest, toughest in attack, and most persistent in defence were the British divisions , and of these the 7th Armoured Division was undoubtedly the best. The uniformity of the British personnel was most striking. One saw not so much extaordinary audacity but the absence of failures. The 2nd New Zealand division was also outstanding in its fighting ability.”
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  36.  @johnlucas8479  What you have to remember also is that on day 1, Gavin decided to take an artillery regiment rather than another infantry unit. The logic behind this decision was that he wanted to guard his flank against the 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald, and bringing artillery to blindly pound the forest was the best way to protect that front. When he realised there wasn't anything of note in the Reichswald, he then decided to send a unit to Nijmegen. The reality is that he could have taken an extra infantry unit and sent it to Nijmegen on day 1. He didn't do that. Or, he could have sent a unit to Nijmegen anyway since nothing came out the Reichswald until day 2, and what did emerge was easily beaten back when the second lift came in, the 82nd counter-attacked the 406th Division and inflicted 1,000 losses on the Germans, for the casualties of just 11 American paratroopers. If the bridge had been secured, the 10th SS wouldn't have been able to dig in at Nijmegen and therefore Thirty Corps wouldn't have been engaged in house-to-house fighting in a city and could have advanced. Thirty Corps had advanced from Son to Nijmegen in two hours. They could have advanced from Nijmegen to Arnhem if the bridge at Nijmegen had been taken and the route clear. Assuming Nijmegen bridge was taken and held, on day 3 Horrocks would have had to battle the 10th SS north of Nijmegen. That's an easier battle than fighting in the streets of Nijmegen which the SS had 3 days to fortify. Instead, they had to battle 10th SS at Nijmegen, and then the 9th SS too because Frost was finally overwhelmed once they crossed Nijmegen.
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  37.  @bigwoody4704  The Germans invasion of Russia involved 2,500 air craft, the numbers deployed against Britain in 1940 were 3,358 aircraft. Source - Page 318 from - The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power, 1930-1949 by Derek Wood & Derek Dempster.
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  38. @scottduncan6654 That's a very twisted distortion of History by you. I wouldn't call an advance of 780 miles in 19 days pursuing Rommel all the way to Tunisia plodding 🤪 Moving slowly in Sicily? His Eighth army actually advanced 300 miles in 17 days across mountainous terrain, taking Syracuse, Catania and Augusta. Messina was a PR victory, the Germans and Italians STILL ESCAPED so it didn't matter whether Messina was captured or not. No he DID NOT say preinvasion that he would take the town on D+1 that is a complete lie. Even at St Paul's School in London in April 1944, 2 months before Operation Overlord had even started, the plan Monty unveiled was as follows. Quote " The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down Germans. Yet strategically it fitted into a logistical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded". Market Garden was far from a disaster either, the Allies seized up to 64 miles of territory from the Germans driving them out of most of Southern Holland whilst seizing multiple towns/cities like Eindhoven, Grave, and Nijmegen as well as liberating hundreds of thousands of Dutch civilians. Most of the failures of Market Garden can be attributed to the Air Borne generals like Browning and Brereton who were part of the First Allied Air Borne Army, which I should point out to you was subordinate to SHAEF , not to Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Montgomery is not responsible for the failures of Market Garden.
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  39.  @bigwoody4704  Yes but unlike Arnhem, Plunder and Varsity were successful, Within a week of the start of Plunder, the Allies had taken 30,000 German prisoners of war north of the Ruhr. General Eisenhower called it "the most successful airborne operation carried out to date", and an observer later wrote that the operation showed "the highest state of development attained by troop-carrier and airborne units".[54] In the official summary of the operation, Major General Ridgeway wrote that the operation had been flawless, and that the two airborne divisions involved had destroyed enemy defences that might otherwise have taken days to reduce, ensuring the operation was successful.[55] Several modern historians have also praised the operation and the improvements that were made for Varsity. G. G. Norton argued that the operation benefited from the lessons learned from previous operations,[56] and Brian Jewell agrees, arguing that the lessons of Market Garden had been learned as the airborne forces were concentrated and quickly dropped, giving the defenders little time to recover.[19] Norton also argues that improvements were made for supporting the airborne troops; he notes that a large number of artillery pieces were available to cover the landings and that observers were dropped with the airborne forces, thus augmenting the firepower and flexibility of the airborne troops. He also highlights the development of a technique that allowed entire brigades to be landed in tactical groups, giving them greater flexibility.[57] Dropping the airborne forces after the ground forces had breached the Rhine also ensured that the airborne troops would not have to fight for long before being relieved, a major improvement on the manner in which the previous large-scale airborne operation, Market Garden, had been conducted.[58] Historian Peter Allen states that while the airborne forces took heavy casualties, Varsity diverted German attention from the Rhine crossing onto themselves. Thus, the troops fighting to create a bridgehead, across the Rhine, suffered relatively few casualties, and were able to "break out from the Rhine in hours rather than days"
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  40. El Alamein was the turning point though, Operation Torch didnt even take place against the Germans but the Vichy French. The Germans had to be defeated and driven out of Egypt to show the world the British still had what it takes to win.
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  41. If they were out of their depth then why did Horrocks make the FASTEST allied advance of the war to Antwerp?
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  42.  @hdfoster5507  Marshall was already crying out for the 1st Allied Air Borne army to be used as it just sitting in England doing nothing, Eisenhower made the call for it to go ahead.
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  43.  @bigwoody4704  "Only in England can a child molester get away with that" Can you stop with the slander please?
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  44. If he was a hindrance then why did Eisenhower appoint him to take command of the 9th and 1st armies?
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  45. @paladinbob1236 To be fair the British did have some good tank commanders, but the problem is, one of them (Richard O Connor) had been captured on a recon patrol earlier, so was out of action and the other two ( Brian Horrocks and Richard McReery) hadn't yet arrived to support the Eighth army in the North Africa campaign until August.
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  46.  @commando4481  There's also a bit of finger pointing i hear a lot regarding the Falaise Battle
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  47.  @michaelmazowiecki9195  Not at all, we're talking about an advance of 40 divisions, thousands of tanks and air craft involved. The Germans on paper had only 13 weakened divisions to hold the front after over 400,000 of their men had been wiped out in France. it is obvious that their whole frontline would have been utterly smashed. Even the German commanders agreed that the narrow front was the best approach to defeat Germany.
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  48.  @michaelmazowiecki9195  "Putting a single attack front under his command failed at operation Market Garden. " He WAS NOT in command of Market Garden.
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  49.  @michaelmazowiecki9195  "If someone like Bradley or Patton had been put in charge then the chances of success would be greater but that still left the logistical problem." I disagree, because going south is irrelevant. It ignores strategic areas to the North like the Rhur industrial region. The Ruhr district to the North lies in flatter country at the edge of the almost featureless North European Plain, looking at the terrain on google, it seems ideal for an Allied mechanised advance. Much German armour had been destroyed in the Battle of Normandy, and given the Allies successes with armour, it seems only logical to have pressed very hard across Northern Germany where the remainder of the German army would be finished off in a mobile battle. It makes sense why Montgomery would want the Allies to advance there.
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  50.  @FlyMysticalDJ  He wasn't even involved it was his subordinates that did the planning.
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