Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. @David All during MG, the Germans started shelling the highway with heavy artillery. (150mm guns) Any successful hits would cause pure chaos -- as the British not only had to attend the wounded, but they had to haul the crippled trucks away. Doing so was a first class bitch... with no tow trucks to hand, the Brits had to improvise with Tommies and tow cables. BTW, the film leads to the wrong impression: it shows British lorries. Whereas, Monty received 2,000 GMC trucks from Ike for this battle. This was a Big Deal. They were off the essence -- specifically demanded by Monty. The whole op was delayed by three-days just for these 2,000 trucks. It's a pretty good bet that Monty wanted them for their 4x4 capability in the polders. British lorries were dead meat should they leave the highway. They didn't have limited-slip differentials. So when the ground got soft, they totally lost traction. In 4x4 mode, GMC trucks would LOCK UP their differentials so that all wheels received power. ( This mode could not be used on a tarmac as it'd tear up the transmission, duh. ) Monty saw this problem coming a mile away, of course. The Germans did more than shell the highway. They penetrated it with ground assaults, too. Such interdictions cut the highway for as much as a day and a half at a stretch. (!!!) This is why I contend that Monty screwed up by not requesting jeeps. Jeeps would've permitted British grenadiers and infantry the luxury of establishing a distant defense of the highway. Jeeps had such a light foot-print that they could roll ANYWHERE. And, when it counted, there were no Germans to run into. All that was necessary was to drive on over and set up your machine gun positions, your OPs, etc. Even Universal Carriers ( aka Bren Carriers) could not compete with 4x4 jeeps. Jeeps were simply a faster, lighter machine. And the enemy could barely hear them until they were pretty close. Tracked machines put up an awesome racket: it's the track itself that does so.
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  2. @TIK "Barneki's and the other 12 Tiger's that had now reached Arnhem were attached to Kampfgruppe 'Knaust' and moved across the Arnhem Bridge on the 20th Sept to take up positions in a blocking line to stop the XXX Corps advance into Arnhem. " op cit Note also the fantastically high breakdown rate for these Tigers during a mere 30 mile road march... and the factory is very nearby. One has to wonder about their fuel supply status, too.
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  3. @Joe Bloggs Nice try at false equivalence. There were simply not that many PoWs to kill. Famously, the US Army had to intervene to stop a Jewish crew from poisoning thousands of SS men... successfully. They poisoned their bread, but then the USA Medical Corps detected the poison and had every SS man shipped off to every local hospital to have their stomach pumped. No-one died. The Jews were caught and brought up on charges. IIRC they got a slap on the wrist -- due to circumstances. ( The SS had killed their families, entire. ) It was the Red Army that liquidated the SS -- those that ran out of bullets in mid-May 1945 -- in Czechoslovakia. They did not lay down their arms on May 8th or May 9th. There were no known survivors from that SS army. The contention that the US Army liquidated German PoWs en masse has never been substantiated. Rather it comes off as absurd, the kind of BS that the KGB was famous for inventing.
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  4. @mPky1 Britain was broke no later than July 1940. Absolutely NO-ONE would trade with them. HMG had totally tapped the till. LendLease, from the very start, was a total give-away. On paper, Britain ran up a Fat Tab. Then the 'debt' was thrown away... rolled perpetually into the future -- eventually to be cancelled ENTIRELY... ie after the war was won. Until then, it looked great on paper that the USG was collecting quite an IOU from the UK and from the USSR. What a hoot. This way both British and American politicians could hide what was really going on. FDR could never have gotten away with saying," America is just going to give away billions of dollars in war aid on my say so to my pals in England." As for the UK, it was embarrassing to admit that she was BROKE. So, HMG didn't admit it. This made it MUCH easier to collect taxes from British citizens. Imagine trying to collect taxes in grand style -- at the same time admitting that HMG has totally blown everything ever collected. Yeah, it wouldn't work. You just NEVER hear of a government admitting they're broke. I give you Venezuela. Europe was so broke that America had to extend Marshall Plan aid to it. Britain was the number one taker, IIRC. Being able to speak English really helped with the Marshall Plan paperwork. Everyone else needed a team of translators roaming all over the place. Your proffered stats are total garbage, of course. The USA sent more than 3,000 Sherman tanks, alone. You must suspect that something's off when Britain's shipment comes remotely close to that of the USA. And the other joke is that Britain's own tank divisions were re-equipped with Shermans, en masse. She then sent her rejects ( rejected by the British Army ) off to Stalin. The Russians were pissed at Britain's crappy stuff. -- Stuff like USED fighter aircraft -- the retired models of Spits and Hurricanes. Yup. That's what Churchill sent off to Archangel. What a jolly joker. Britain even sent on used tanks, too. When the American Shermans arrived, out went the old crappy stuff -- off to the USSR. Well, beggars can't be choosers. Most modern Brits are totally unaware that used gear was being sent on to Moscow. The Americans never sent used crap. We didn't have any laying around, and no-one was sending US LendLease aid. During a crisis, the US took first rate gear out of USA hands and shipped it on to our Allies: Britain received Shermans that were originally supposed to go to Northwest Africa. They ended up at El Alamein. The Soviets received Western Electric land lines that were rolled up only days after they had been delivered to new American infantry divisions. This happened in secret -- without ANYTHING being committed to writing. We only know about this because of memoirs written fifty-years after the event by the very guys that had to execute this order. The Russian and British panic need for land lines was so great that it delayed the deployment of American infantry divisions. It took a whole year of panic production to supply the Russians, Brits -- and then finally have enough to roll out fresh sets to the US Army. It's been 75 years, and Brits and Russians STILL can't stand to learn of their economic and military dependencies during WWII. I still read of Russians and Brits that think they actually paid for all that LendLease stuff. No doubt this myth was generated by the KGB. It's the kind of lie that the KGB was famous for. It sits along side the KGB lie that the US invented AIDS as a biological weapon against Blacks, Africans, the Third World, etc.
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  5. @mPky1 But LendLease aid WAS free you knuckle-head. It was like a credit card that had no limit, and never required any payments. Then the 'tab' was simply torn up. It doesn't even show up on Britain's ledgers as a debt. That's what the rest of the planet calls FREE stuff. America didn't take any gold from Russia, either. Quite the reverse was true. America paid IN GOLD to Sweden so that Sweden would ship tungsten carbide tool bits to Russia. Stalin wouldn't buy his own tool bits even with the gold he DID have, not even to save his nation. The TC bits WERE the production miracle of wartime Soviet Union. THEY were the source of the astounding production increases. Tool bit speed had ALWAYS been the limiting production factor with High Speed Steel tool bits. HSS is fine for final beauty finishes in softer metals, but it is totally uncompetitive with TC and other cutting edges. This tool bit revolution is lost on most modern citizens. All that they've ever known is TC bits. They are totally unaware of the speed difference between what was before (HSS) and what was new. (TC) This explains why the general public -- and the propaganda media -- actually BOUGHT the Soviet production miracle BS -- both then and even now. BTW, when the Soviets removed their factories in a total panic, MOST of the stuff was tossed off of flat cars straight into the snow banks. When everything thawed the next summer, most of the stuff was RUINED. These were all scrapped out, to be replaced by LendLease, brand new, American motors, sheaves, wiring, -- everything. We know this to be true from personal testimony from Russians that were DIRECTLY involved in this panic action. When it counted, there were absolutely NO warehouses to receive the immense volume of factory equipment that had been unmounted and placed on flat cars -- with the occasional tarp to cover said equipment from the rain and snow -- if lucky. Everyone but you has figured that out -- over 75 years ago. As for Australia supplying the USN in the Pacific -- she didn't. All USN food supplies left the port of Alameda -- which lies next to Oakland, California. That supply depot was not shut down until the mid 1990s and the end of the Cold War. You can see a bit of the Alameda Air Station in the Ball-Fonda film: "Mine, Yours and Ours." America has a STERLING reputation with our Allies. Britain, Canada, Ausralia and New Zealand went on to be founding members of the Five Eyes -- or Echelon system. It still functions today. Good grief, you are literally ANTI-informed. You've got every specific detail ack bass wards. BTW, NZ and Australia, to the best of my knowledge, traded with UK regular way during the war. They didn't ship ANYTHING to Britain for free. They couldn't afford to do so. The flip side was that both were a part of Britain's trading network -- and so would import back from Britain manufactured goods in payment for food -- the primary export for both nations... plus wool. Sober up, buddy. Essentially EVERYTHING you think you know about LendLease is wrong... which stands to reason. Stalin lied to his nation about every aspect of LendLease. He was ashamed. His Capitalist enemy was bailing him out. Everything HE touched turned to chit, no exceptions.
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  6. @mPky1 Inventing facts is no defense. LendLease was a give-away program from the first. Check out its name. LEND.... One of its provisions was that any 'debts' incurred would be voided when the military equipment was returned, returned to be scrapped out, that is. And this actually happened. Ship loads of Soviet Shermans WERE sent back to the USA. We picked them up in identical Liberty Ships. (Vladivostok) This confused the locals. A myth arose that Sherman tanks were being loaded up one day, to be shipped out -- and DUMPED INTO THE PACIFIC OCEAN -- thence the same ship to return in a few days to pick up more Sherman tanks. Heh, heh, heh. The Russians had NEVER SEEN identical freighter ships. They assumed that it was the same ship coming back, and back, and back. Whereas, by that time, the US had hundreds of identical Liberty ships in the fleet. Go with me on this: the US never collected a thin dime from Moscow -- EVER... as if Stalin were a good credit. Heh. Moscow even turned down Marshall Plan aid -- free money. Britain took BILLIONS of Marshall Plan aid. This was ANOTHER one-way wealth flow from the USA to UK. No nation took down more Marshall Plan aid than Britain. Speaking English, they all knew how to fill out the paperwork, and they all knew the American commercial game... typically having American trading partners going back many, many years. Some Marshall Plan funding was a pure gift. Other Marshall Plan funding was extended as a loan -- at an artificially LOW interest rate. Because all currencies have been fulsomely debased since WWII, it became easy for such ancient debts to be 'repaid' by the great-grandchildren of WWII. IIRC, even Germany recently repaid some super old debts. In real terms, the Europeans paid off about $0.04 on the dollar. The rest had been inflated away to nothing. No European nation could possibly really pay back LendLease aid. The numbers were too astounding. The gear was sent based upon military urgency, not on the basis of whether an allied power was a good credit risk. ( the USSR was deemed a total zero from the start ) No other nation in the history of the planet EVER extended such largesse to allied powers... LendLease during the war, Marshall Plan after the war. One of the tragedies of the Marshall Plan was that Whitehall used it as general funding to carry on the business of Empire. Big mistake. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml " This is utter myth. Britain actually received more than a third more Marshall Aid than West Germany - $2.7 billion as against $1.7 billion. She in fact pocketed the largest share of any European nation. The truth is that the post-war Labour Government, advised by its resident economic pundits, freely chose not to make industrial modernisation the central theme in her use of Marshall Aid. " [Back then $1,000,000,000 was an ASTOUNDING amount of money.] "As he [Keynes] pointed out, the entire British war effort, including all her overseas military commitments, had only been made possible by American subsidies under the Lend-Lease programme. If the Americans stopped Lend-Lease, Britain would face a 'financial Dunkirk' - his words - unless Washington could be touched for a loan of $5 billion. Keynes wrote that such a 'Dunkirk' would have to be met by: ... "
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  7. The 25 pounder had to use 'roll-up' blocks to handle the recoil. This meant that it could not really fire to a flat trajectory. You can see this in no end of war film from the period. BTW, the 25 pounder actually had an 88mm barrel. Ironic, no? The roll-up also meant that you couldn't lay, fire and correct. The British had an anti-aircraft gun superior to the 88 -- theirs was 94mm. It performed magnificently against the V1 in 1944 -- and in protecting London from the Blitz onwards. It also had an armor piercing round even better than that of the 88. The Ordnance department could never get the field commands to accept this round. The WDF// 8th Army was so paranoid about its port that every last gun was tasked there. It had one other crippling weakness: it was about twice as heavy as the 88. Whipping it around the desert was deemed wholly impractical by every field officer. And the thought of losing such high cost weapons in the field was just too much. BTW, the defense of Alexandria and its port is worthy of a video. I especially like how a British magician moved the entire city. The Luftwaffe couldn't quite find the city at night. The Brits also blinded the Luftwaffe with super bright strobe lights. This entire affair was kept extremely classified for years. What's incredible is that Ordnance didn't whip out a HE round in the 2 pound size. That could've been done on pretty short notice.
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  8. The Italian infantry was more of an 'instant draft army' than a militia. A militia is supposed to be composed of citizen soldiers that have at least some training. El Duce simply drafted untrained, under-employed, southern farm boys and PROMPTLY committed them to battle. (!) That's why their performance resembled the early war 'instant divisions' that the Soviets used in the Autumn of '41. (Northern Italians were vital to the economy. They had to stay at their jobs.) Yeah, they scarcely had basic training, OJT would have to do. (Bullets and training bases are expensive.) This was an army bereft of (real) sergeants. El Duce thought that the campaign would be a walk-over. He also figured that southern Italians were pre-adapted to the climate, a perfect fit, then.
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  9. @Vlad Read Death Ride by John Mosier. By the end you'll come to realize that NOT ONE of the Soviet statistics is at all honest. They were fabricated to support Stalin's narrative. Period. Tungsten carbide tool bits are the REAL source of the production miracle. Talk to a machinist. Historians -- for them -- it's over their heads. They just can't grasp that a switch in tool tips makes a lathe punch out EIGHT TIMES as much production. Ditto for every other cutting tool. HSS is restricted to brass.
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  10. @TTT135 The USA pulled JAPAN off of Stalin -- December 1941. That was the First "Second Front." It released 500,000 Red soldiers -- the boys that bailed Stalin out in December 1941. Yeah, he made his move even before Pearl Harbor because he had advance knowledge that Japan was going to attack. Naturally, he did NOT inform UK or USA that Japan was on the warpath. What a pal ! The USA pulled one German army after another out of Russia LONG before Normandy. Sicily, alone triggered Hitler into removing an SS panzer corps, and a panzer army and an infantry army from Russia. Their departure was never acknowledged by Stalin -- then or ever.Their shift out of Russia ended ALL major offensive operations in the east. The USAAF pulled the Luftwaffe out of Russia. Only token formations were left. During Bagration June 22, 1944 the Luftwaffe was down to less than 200 planes within Army Group Center. (!) The missing planes were dedicated to just the 8th Air Force -- not even the RAF. Hitler did not prioritize stopping the night bombing campaign of Bomber Harris. It was only killing civilians. The USAAF was destroying Adolf's ability to make ware.
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  11. @TIK Stalin's post-war behavior supports the thesis, in a general sense. The problem is timing. Stalin wanted to move west only after Germany was so ripe it'd fall into his lap. THAT'S his style. In 1941 there is NO WAY that Stalin was intending or set to move against Germany. I figure that it'd be 1943 at the earliest before Stalin would get the itch. All of which is why I regard Hitler's push in '41 mighty insane. The hand you cannot bite, you must kiss. All during this period, Hitler was NOT short of fuel -- as Stalin was supplying Germany plenty. Forgotten by most, Hitler was stashing away Russian oil at a furious tempo -- limited only by his ability to build storage tanks -- all during the November 1939 - June 1941 period. That policy made for pretty expensive oil ... crude oil tanks don't come cheap. Once they were tapped, Germany was not able to re-fill them. Of course, Hitler was importing every manner of strategic materials during this period. He was absolutely crazy to attack the USSR when his strategic reserve was so pathetic. The smart play was to just kiss Stalin's azz... and build up his navy, his panzer force... etc. But Hitler, being Hitler, just couldn't do that. Suvorov's thesis -- was 'written from hunger.' That is, the boy needed to sell books, grab attention, get on the rubber chicken circuit. It doesn't pass the smell test.
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  12. @Battleship009 You're FIRED. That's not how an airborne operation can succeed. Period. It has to be 'all in.' It's the ONLY way airborne works. In the case at hand, it was a MAJOR goof to not have the follow-on drop on the exact same day. British weather is a known unknown. It changes from day-to-day something fierce, and every Brit knows that. The idea that the airborne army could count on tomorrow's weather... 'tis to laugh.
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  13.  @chuckschillingvideos  Take it further. Gavin was a ONE-STAR general -- and the youngest, to boot. ONLY an army commander had any voice in the re-deployment of the USAAF. And he'd have to beg for it. There is only one man who force it: Eisenhower. The USAAF was kicking and screaming WRT Ike's "Transportation Plan." Ike was totally alone on this grand-tactic. He was proven 100% right. Forever after, the USAF has obeyed Ike's dictum.
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  14. @ben The USAAF had two air forces, 12th and 15th that faced off. They ran into opposition only when north of Rome. For obvious cultural and military reasons, the Allies never bombed Rome. ( No industry, just a lot of Catholics. ) There is footage of USAAF P-47s having a field day over Italy, north of Rome from January onward on YouTube. They were the real reason that 5th Army finally broke out. The Krauts just couldn't get trains or trucks down to the battle. It's also the reason why Clark should've been canned. The retreating Germans were in absolutely dire straights -- very much in the same spot as later seen in Falaise, France. By this time, June, there were virtually no bridges leading north to the Poe river valley. The P-47s had systematically taken them all out. By goofing around in Rome -- yeah it turned into a big party -- a pre-peat of what happened in Paris -- Clark let the Krauts march their way out of the pocket... on foot. Once out of immediate danger, they found that the blown bridges stopped the Allies from racing ahead and pocketing them. There were no end of choke points to save them.
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  15. TIK -- it's a FACT that American oil drilling rigs brought in a duplicate to Baku during late 1942 into 1943. This field is STILL producing. It was discussed at length -- the FULL hour -- on the McNeil-Lehrer Report in 1979 -- the Fall. Their guest was one of three American technical salesmen who trained Russians how to "turn right" with a rotary drilling rig. They'd never seen one before. Such rigs punch holes 27 times as fast as a cable drill. ( See "There Will Be Blood" for that technology. ) Russia STILL has unexploited crude reserves in Siberia of immense scale. That's why Putin is still operating like a sheik.
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  16. @Mstislaw It's a composite history built up from survivor's accounts, German accounts, the staggering number of "Hiwi" that were gained this way, etc. This scheme was also used by the ChiComms in Korea 1950-53. What an AMAZING co-incidence! Obviously, they picked up this brainstorm from Stalin. ( For those unaware, ALL of the early (Korean) war pilots came from the USSR. It takes years to become a proficient jet pilot. No way did Mao or the Norks have ANYONE able to fly Migs. I've been told by USAF Korean fighter pilots that it was forbidden to admit that they were shooting down Russians. Even though they could be clearly seen -- the flying being so close. Now that the Cold War is over, they all 'fess up. The USAF and USN also fought Russians over Hanoi, too. Same story, of course. ) During the Korean War, ENTIRE DIVISIONS were marched into American guns for the express purpose of suiciding them. You see, these formations were SOUTHERN Chinese boys. The very formations that had just been defeated in the Chinese Civil War. (1949) Mao wanted them all dead. So, not only did the Bolsheviks use penal battalions, the ChiComs did them one better. They destroyed entire armies by the time it was all said and done. Americans could NOT comprehend what they were looking at... even though this went on for THREE-YEARS. [ Mao did NOT use his Northern boys. They stood behind the front, rather like those imperial guards of old.] [ Think Mandarin vs Cantonese. ] [ China is STILL split between the North and South -- and historically such splits can go on for centuries at a time -- with the North and South organized as separate nations. ] See "Pork Chop Hill" for Hollywood's take on this befuddlement. The Germans were just as corn fused at Stalingrad. It was only when the Heer realized that Stalin was suiciding these Russians that they learned to lift their fires. Naturally, the survivors promptly 'volunteered' to be Hiwis. Heh. These Hiwis were normally sent to the divisional artillery battalion. Most of the German artillery battalions soon became over-run with Hiwis. It was an astonishing sight, BTW. The Hiwis couldn't scarcely wait to load guns aimed at the Red army. (!!!) Later, Hiwis became so numerous that the Heer started to organize light infantry formations out of Russians. (!!!) Such formations would be a company by company affair. ( A pretty rare thing, but still it was done -- on the down low.) These had to be hidden from Hitler, as he was totally against what was going on here. ( Something about the glory and honor of the Heer.) Unit commanders determined that it takes a Russian to really fight a Russian. The fighting was that feral. Penal battalions could only be used in major offensives. (Kursk) Their existence REALLY stiffened the spines of every other Red trooper, let me tell you.
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  17. @The Blues Nope. Animals run all over the place once a mine goes off. This means that you have no lane to march through, just minced cow all over the countryside. Plus, cows were valuable. Traitors// cowards were ten-a-penny.
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  18. @Alex Since he was writing about his own life. He found out about the dirty details while in the Soviet prison system... from survivors.
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  19. @ Ultra... Foreign words get all kinds of treatment. I'm not going to perform a Web search in cryllic. The officer was directly attached to Moscow HQ, IIRC. Their historical division -- not some artillery officer at the front. This was a BIG news release during the Yeltsin era. It was not some fringe Web page. The revelations stunned Western historians. Until Moscow released the tale it was a complete secret. Afterwards, it fit with other weird facts from the era -- like why a female formation was leading the charge into Hitler's lair. For the longest time the West assumed that it was a propaganda stunt. Decades later we discover that the previous Russian formations had been shredded by Koniev's artillery -- in retaliation for Zhukov's fires. When Zhukov's stuff opened up Koniev's boys thought that they aimed in error. Soon they discovered that it was deliberate -- and ordered by Zhukov, himself. In truth, Stalin didn't want a Red Army with too much power. This Red Army fratricide is of a part of Stalin's games. He pitted the KGB against the GRU and vice versa -- repeatedly. In this manner he liquidated every early leader of both organizations. He also made both the GRU and KGB loathe each other -- institutionally.
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  20. @TIK... Stalin told Churchill that the Winter of 1943 was the nadir. Manstein's counter-offensive nearly did the Reds in. All reserves had been exhausted. No new ones could be created in the depths of Winter. (With Spring fresh troops solved everything.) Churchill almost swallowed his cigar. Remember that all during late 1942, the Volga link to the oil fields had been broken. Moscow was running out of oil ! Southern Lend Lease was coming out of Iran by way of the Caspian Sea... thence up the Volga until it reached an NKVD relabelling base. The Iranian terminus is still there. You can visit it as a rail road tourist. Video about it is up on YouTube. Search rail road tourism Iran. The video repeatedly emphasises that the rails you're riding supplied Stalin during WWII. Consequently, LendLease aid was piling up down south until the Volga melted. (!)
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  21. @Steve That's a tip-off isn't it? When you're using tanks as pill boxes -- you're losing your war -- big time.
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  22. @Denying History Tukhachevski was caught in a tryst with one of Goering's female sex-agents. ( Stalin was so impressed that he launched his own version: Yellow Swallows IIRC. ) Stalin used that as the trigger event. It turned out, at the end, that the Marshall never divulged ANYTHING to the spy. But that came out all too late. The Russians recently aired an hour-long expose of their sex-spies based entirely upon Stalin's initiative. The gals were all knock-outs, trained to murder at the drop of a hair pin and to screw like a porn queen. To graduate, they had to engage in an hours long orgy with top ranked NKVD officers -- engaging in every perversion known to prostitutes. ( Yes, they were cross-trained by pros. )
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  23. There were a few turning points for WWII. My pick is CRETE. It was an impromptu campaign -- that was sustained by robbing units from Army Group North. This detail is almost NEVER brought up in histories about Crete. These assets were typically burned up// ruined during the campaign. Crippling AGN led directly to the siege of Leningrad... whereas a romp through the city was in the cards. The 2nd Panzer was SUNK after the battle for Greece. (!!) Just the tanks and half-tracks were lost. How? They were in transit from Greece to southern Italy, thence to take the rails back to the Baltic coast. Hence TWO panzer divisions evaporated from the Barbarossa order of battle. Yes, 2nd Panzer had not been split yet. It was still at its 1940 TO&E. The men ended up sitting on their azzes for months. Rebuilding these two panzer divisions sucked down all of the new production. It finally showed up for Typhoon. Hitler abandoned airborne operations because of Crete. You can't over-state the importance of that error. If dropped upon the rail lines east of Leningrad, the city would fall. No supplies could ever reach her. Rail repair assets were also lost driving on Greece. No-one bleed to death, but the tools and supplies were burnt out. They were critically needed to repair the rails up to Leningrad. Instead, a half-azzed repair was employed. This crippled the tempo -- and burned up yet more fuel. Sloth in rail road repair = fuel wastage of the first water. And because of Greece, the 1SS was still in Romania, June 22, 1941... and much more. This concentration was a wasted army. It couldn't move until 6th Army and 1st Panzer came down from Poland. Red Army river defenses were just too strong. ( The Romanians took a pounding when they attempted to force the issue. )
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  24.  @Grimmtoof  Not quite true. Libyan crude only needed a distillery -- not a refinery. The former are referred to within the industry as 'tea-pots.' Distilling was how the oil refining industry started. True refining -- the manipulation of the feed stock -- didn't happen until the 1920s in the US. Even today, MANY European 'refineries' are actually distilleries. As a chemist for the difference. A distillery can be fully set up in MONTHS. To achieve market viability, such a unit needs SWEET, LIGHT crude. This is EXACTLY what Libya produces -- all that it produces. So, the Italians and Germans really dropped the ball. Shell Oil could've saved their bacon --but as a matter of corporate policy would NOT. Shell acted like Sgt. Schultz. "I know nothing."
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  25. You ought to know that the Germans stopped re-gauging their rail net at the Dnieper: right nearby Zaporozhye. That minor city was the base camp for the construction of the big hydro-electric power project, the Dnieper dam, which was blown to ruin by the retreating Soviets. https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=52940 This was also the spot that von Manstein met Hitler as it was the most eastern major HQ that the Heer ever used. During the Manstein counter-offensive and Stalingrad relief, this was his HQ. Further east, the rails were left with the traditional Russian gauge. At Zapo, the Germans used 100,000+ Soviet prisoners to hump supplies off of European gauge trains and onto trucks... thence to cross the river. ( the rail road atop the dam had been blown to bits ) To an astonishing degree, the German army DID NOT use rail road locomotives to shift supplies. They stayed with trucks -- way too long. Late in the campaign, the Germans FINALLY started to bring a rail line down towards Stalingrad. This spur was LONG. The Germans were able to capture some Russian locomotives, but for the most part, brand new German locomotives -- gauged to the Russian scheme had to be brought forth so that the eastern rail net could be used. There were plenty of captured Russian flat cars -- and they could be easily augmented with brand new German flat cars. This whole project deserves a video. The Germans repeatedly used flat cars for every purpose -- notably to include shipping Russian soldiers back to Germany in the dead of winter. Naturally the prisoners all froze to death as the wind chill put them down at 40C below zero. Any idea that the Germans were in a position to shift troops, prisoners, supplies by rail during the Stalingrad campaign must be dismissed. One would think that Rostov-on-Don and points south would've been well served by barging over locomotives and flat cars. But, AFAIK, the Germans never used the main line that ran from Bake to Rostov. What a goof.
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  26.  rant404  No... WWII was won in the air by the USAAF and the RAF. EVERY nation spent more on their air forces than they did their armies. (!!!) Every air force got the cream of the manpower, too. And they were what was sucking down all of the oil. Air craft decided the U-boat war, too. Blimps were lethal to U-boats. B-24 search planes with an acoustic homing torpedo were lethal to U-boats. The RAF operated many B-24s in this role. Like Napoleon, Hitler froze his armies to death. The immense loses of 41-42 were largely self-inflicted. Hitler had allowed OKH to march so far east that they could no longer be supplied. They needed to fall back to the rail roads supporting the troops before Winter really struck. But they didn't.
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  27.  @josephking6515  FORGET? !!! My Uncle is likely the ONLY survivor from DORA -- the hell factory that manufactured said wonder weapons. You'll see it named anything BUT Dora because it was so secret that the Allies didn't even know its name !!!! Typically it'll be termed Nordhausen, after the nearby smallish town. This is flatly wrong. It was 'Dora' because it was Camp D of the Buchenwald Camp. ALL of its paperwork was addressed to Buchenvald, Camp D, and then a motorcycle courier would bring the mail up the road to Dora. Dora had no lights at night, no outside lights at all. It had no phone connection to the outside, either. No-one in Dora was EVER in contact with Nordhausen. This is why the civilians there played totally dumb to the US Army interrogators. They really didn't know anything. (!) No guns were worn in Dora. All death was by TRUNCHEON. Yeah, real up-close-and-personal. Most of the time, there were no huts for the labor force. You slept on open ground -- under the trees. I could go on and on. I'd publish, but there's no market for a book that just makes you throw-up and then have nightmares -- forevere. My Uncle was in the USAAF and because he was hiding in civilian clothes waiting for the US 1st Army to advance, he was given a RED triangle and sent to die at Dora. Specifically, he was a compelled grave digger. No bodies were burned at Dora, lest the RAF spot the factory. )Yes, the RAF had largely figured out where Dora was, but not to the point of knowing enough for a bombing strike.) The RAF was Super-Motivated to stop the V-2. But, of course. His life was saved because of the bridge at Remagen. When it was captured, Goering and Himmler knew the Americans could not be stopped at the Rhine -- and would be in Berlin PDQ. So they mutually began negotiating to trade 100,000 camp victims for their own skins. Yup. At the end, Adolf found this out. He whacked his brother-in-law over Himmler's betrayal. He sentenced Goering to death -- by radio. He was only days from death, himself. So my Uncle was transferred out of the death detail -- over to Buchenwald. There he was rescued by the US Army Medical Corps under Patton. He was so weak that he could only whisp his name rank and serial number. He was the ONLY American in that - so-called - hospital. It took him half-a-year in England before he was well enough to even travel to the USA. (!!!!!) He did send one French traitor to the gallows -- with his testimony. She'd killed off all other witnesses to her Gestapo collaborations. (!!!!)
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  28. Browning dropped the 101st in the wrong place. It needed to be between the two key bridges. AMAZING that no-one was dropped there. Ike DID give his approval. MONTY dragged things out. Ike told Monty to speed things up. (!)
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  29. @John Burns Can't you get ANYTHING right?
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  30.  @PORRRIDGE_GUN  The process used corn products by the ton. And these were only available via the Corn Products Co. wet milling process. ( Today they're best remembered by their mayonnaise, corn oil and peanut butter lines. ) Previously, this stuff was used to feed hogs. (!) The manufacture of the drug used astounding amounts of stainless steel -- and imported Canadian nickel. It also proved necessary to fed these beasties pure oxygen. This really ramped up their growth tempo. The bean counters have gauged its manufacture as expensive as the atom bomb or the B-29 -- some 20% of America's entire war output! The growth machines, first generation, were re-dedicated ice cream making machines. The aeration action of ice creaming was just the ticket for the microbe. The power bill for all of these early machines was frightful. Even after the war, penicillin was still so hard to come by that films like "The Third Man" made perfect sense. As time has gone by, ever more effective strains have been discovered. This happened even during WWII. One strain of note came out of the Southwest Pacific. It was these later strains that really boosted drug production. The research boys were as hyper-active as the production teams. With today's genetic engineering, the sky's the limit.
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  31. @J man -- read Death Ride by John Mosier. ISBN 978-1-4165-7348-7 It will totally shatter your naive take on Bolsheviks vs Nazis. Mosier is a professional historian -- TIK is NOT. Death Ride is stuffed silly with citations -- and logic.
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  32. @Hansen NOW it is. Its significance evaporated in Soviet propaganda. The Cold War had to end before Mars became a hot topic even among experts in the West. For the average American, Mars is a planet, not an operation bigger than Overlord.
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  33. @John Burns You can't solve Arnhem bridge with the SS sitting on top of it from Day One. MG needed to go the WHOLE WAY. Nijmegen bridge was ultimately captured -- after tremendous loss of life. Arnhem bridge was NEVER in prospect of being captured. Deal with it. It's for this reason that it didn't matter what Horrocks, Gavin, or Frost or Urquhart or anyone else did. Failure was baked in by Browning by not dropping paras onto the island... the central position. This is the kind of stuff that's taught at West Point and Sandhurst -- to first year students.
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  34. Frost would've been a lot less optimistic if he new that an SS battalion was squatting -- out of his view -- across the southern end of Arnhem bridge. He had no idea that it was there -- until Grabner rolled north. Sadly, Grabner was hardly alone. Germans kept pouring onto the island by way of the ferry. That scuppers the whole operation.
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  35. @John Burns It STILL does not sink in. From the first hours the II SS Panzer Corps was in sole possession of the southern end of Arnhem bridge. That RUINS MG. It means that even if every other player executed perfectly, the SS would merely blow the Arnhem bridge -- from the south side -- and escape via the ferry. Browning's // Monty's plan did not have ANY provision to guarantee that the entire bridge would be captured. We now know -- for a certainty -- that the recon elements of British Airborne had absolutely NO CHANCE of getting past the pill box at the north end of Arnhem bridge. We now know -- for a certainty -- that the II SS Panzer Corps had access to the south side of that bridge -- and could NOT BE STOPPED as the Allies had NO TROOPS on the island. No-one to stand in the way -- and no provision for TAC air to sink the ferry. The Germans were going to get to the south side -- even if Captain Grabner had not rolled over the bridge before Frost got there, others would still do so. In the film, a PIV is shown advancing north across the bridge. Whether that actually happened in real life, it certainly could have happened -- as the PIV was light enough for the ferry. There would've been Krauts crawling all over the south end of Arnhem bridge if the Nijmegan bridge was lost on day one. So, the MG scheme was hopeless from the first. Half of a bridge would never get XXX Corps across the river. Indeed, if Nijmegen were lost Grabner would've spent all of his energies -- right from the start, pounding the daylights out of Frost. He still would've set up his 88s to frustrate XXX Corps. If he brought even two 88s with him, he could've blown Frost to heaven from the south side of the river, too. All of these things would've been 'automatics' for the SS. Browning HAD to drop paras on the island the first day. Failing to do so sunk the entire enterprise. When you think more on it, Browning can't even allow Grabner to cross the bridge in the first place... he can't even be allowed to get onto it... not even the north side. He actually blew it by not leaving a rear guard to frustrate Frost. That error made MG look like a closer run than it was.
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  36. The Primary Objective was going the WHOLE way. With the 2ss Panzer Corps sitting right on top of the southern Arnhem bridge, there was NO WAY that XXX Corps was going to cross it. It would be detonated long before that.
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  37. Tracked vehicles, even the Universal Carrier, tore up the mud that the Dutch call soil -- just because of the way that they steer. You raise an interesting point: why weren't Universal Carriers used to augment the Shermans by going off road? This battle begged for jeeps precisely because XXX Corp would face virtually no opposition on the island -- if they got there in time. Control of the twin bridges would mean that only the few ferries could make the transit. And they should've been captured and pulled to the island -- or -- failing that -- sunk by TAC air. &&& That British Airborne destroyed their proximate ferry -- instead of hauling it to their bank -- still boggles the mind. They no sooner destroyed it than they discovered that they HAD to have it. Whoops! That this particular ferry was totally over-looked is also remarkable. The Allies had Dutch advisors -- but such questions weren't put to them, obviously. The ferries discussed here used to be the only way to get to the farmland on the island. They were anything but a secret to the locals. I could just cry. BTW, late in the battle, the Germans found dominating ground well west of the Arnhem bridge. They were not driven off by XXX Corps artillery fire nor TAC air. It was this position of observation that made it Hell to close up to British Airborne. The SS was able to call down 150mm artillery fire all across the island, directed from this spot. (!!!) Google YouTube 60 years after MarketGarden for a four part Dutch retrospective. This location is shown about 82% of the way through the video.
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  38. The biggest problem with XXX Corps is that Monty didn't think to ask for a thousand jeeps. Jeeps would've permitted mounted infantry to roam all over the polders -- in a way that no other Allied vehicle could do. After the bridge was taken, jeeps could've raced all over the polder -- no need to stay on the elevated road -- and swept any and all German light infantry from the field. It's astounding that this was not thought of by either army. If you're not aware, one of the Big Things done prior to MG was the transfer of THOUSANDS of American trucks to the British forces. Monty begged Ike for them -- and got them. The US Army actually disbanded some truck regiments -- for a time -- to provide these trucks. Monty got priority for other stuff, too. These transfers were the primary reason for Monty's sloth. His own lorries were in such sad shape that he needed 2,000 GMC 2.5 ton trucks. Bradley mentions it in his autobiography.
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  39. @John Burns They were racing towards THEIR battle. The flank was repeatedly attacked even as XXX Corps was fighting its way to Arnhem. The 101st also had to defend the flank of XXX Corps. TIK goes into some detail about these actions.
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  40. @John Burns Ike prioritized the entire front. About the only Army Group he didn't favor was 6th Army Group. He had a grudge with Devers. Earlier in the war, Devers -- in England -- denied Ike's demand that additional B-17 squadrons be sent to him in Africa. Devers justified this denial because he'd received explicit orders from Marshall and Arnold. Left to his own devices, Ike would've delayed the 8th Air Force bomber offensive just about forever. Ike NEVER forgave Devers. Naturally, Bradley and Patton sucked up to Ike and froze out Devers, too. By the end, Patton laughed and giggled, he'd trapped two German armies and 6th Army Group. Ike, Bradley and Patton thought that was just a riot. The idea that Ike favored Monty -- and you believe that, too -- tells us all we need to know about how un-grounded you are. MG proved -- to Ike's satisfaction -- that Monty's scheme was lame, hopeless, in fact. 1) Hitler could ALWAYS vector elite troops against such a spearhead, whether it was British, Canadian or American. It didn't matter. 2) The German army was losing its azz when its infantry had to fight against Allied infantry. Battles with German panzers were never that lopsided. In fact, they were a bitch. ( Goodwood ) Ultimately, Patton was right. The traditional invasion route to Germany was the BEST invasion route. Everything further north proved to be brutally difficult to pull off. Bradley's fiasco in the Hurtgen was even worse than Monty's during MG. It ran MUCH longer and had a MUCH higher blood price. Think of it as the Somme in slow motion -- and in the forest -- the Allies' version of Stalingrad.
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  41.  @at6686  Nigeria is messed up -- Big Time -- because the locals actively destroy the pipelines -- to tap them for free fuel -- or to even hold the lines for ransom. Pipeline staffers are commonly held as hostages, too. This is so common, dog-bites-man, that it does not make the news, locally or otherwise. The Nigerian problem is local governance -- or non-governance, if you will. Similar pipeline destruction is simply not seen elsewhere -- unless a civil war has erupted.
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  42.  @michaelhart7569  You're entirely right -- but left out one trivial fact. After running the numbers, Big Oil finally realized that Green Energy compels society to use MORE oil and natural gas. Why? It's so unstable that every utility everywhere is compelled to spool up back-up power that can't, realistically, be provided by coal. In today's world, the solution being massively adopted all over, is natural gas fired (sometimes combined-cycle) (or single stage open Brayton-cycle) plants -- or if on an island -- good old heavy crude. For Big Oil -- Big Coal is the enemy. Heh. If only they could entirely get rid of Big Coal. That's something Big Oil has dreamt of for a century. PV is such an economic disaster that Siemens left the industry. You CAN'T scale up Green Power without disrupting the Infinite Bus of a nation. Germany and Poland found that out the hard way. ( Siemens wrote off $5,000,000,000 and left the business, Green Power bankrupted Spain and caused its government to fall. (!!!) Read about that fiasco in the NY Times. $0.56/ kWHr juice -- wholesale -- it was insane. )
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  43.  @effexon  The RAF, the RN.
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  44. Toprani is no chemist. The problem was that Germany's chemists fell in love with a HIGH PRESSURE process. This is where the money went. It, their process, required the most expensive steels and a LOT of compressor power. (electricity and super-scale motors) Stumping up the money was never the issue. Just building the plants was a killer. Germany could've gone with the ancient (British) process of straight distillation. That required 19th Century technology -- and ordinary steels. The char residue could then have been utilized as boiler feed all over the German economy. They simply BLEW IT.
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  45.  @kekistanimememan170  Alcohol injection was its own sub-system and did not cross over into the avgas. It was vented into the throttle body -- not through the injectors. in this way, it chilled the intake air increasing the density while adding even more fuel to the combustion chamber. Alcohols have octane ratings up over 100 -- so they did not induce knock thereby.
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  46.  @TheArklyte  The Nazis were not rebuilding Jumo engines to speak of. The pressure was on to crank out more engines -- not spares and replacements. The Luftwaffe was in absolutely no position to dedicate top of the line talent to tear into working engines. PM was not an option.  Jumo 004Bs were run until they broke. That's the real reason that the ME262 had twin engines. Flame outs were entirely expected.  The He 162 would've been falling out of the sky right and left. No nation had 'reliable' jet engines until WWII was long over.  This edict came directly from Adolf -- and covered EVERYTHING in the Nazi production scheme. Speer bitterly whined about this in his own autobio. (1967)
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  47. @PJL... you are fundamentally wrong. If you can't take your gear to the front it doesn't count. The Anglo-Allies ruined Germany with Ike's 'transport plan.' He made it impossible for the Nazis to get their stuff to the battle. He blew up their rail and road net. This was done against the protests of EVERYBODY. He had to use his rank to get it done. EVERYBODY thought he was nuts. After the war he was proved entirely correct, everybody else was totally wrong. Ever since the US has adopted Ike's thinking. It's dogma.
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  48. @Ben But they DIDN'T Hidden from public view, the US DoD covered for the RN right across the board. The USN ever replaced the RN in the North Atlantic --as a hole opened up when the RN sailed off to the Falklands. The RN was firing American Sidewinders to defend the fleet. The RN was running on fuel oil trans-shipped by the USN. When it was all over, the Argentinians commented that if they had EVER known that the RN was going to back stopped by the USN they never would've invaded in the first place.
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  49. @Ike I blame the Nazis, myself. They were always screwing up Allied planning.
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  50. It just hit me, the fleet required, the avgas it required, would certainly be so extreme that the Luftwaffe would've been tearing its hair out just shifting that much avgas that far to the east. That goes a LONG ways towards explaining why the airlift got off to such a sluggish start. The German military railroad was so sluggish that it took at least a week to get to the front from Berlin... starting with the fact that the rail net didn't reach all the way to the front. Strangely, OKH expected to achieve strategic logistical depth just on the basis of its clapped out (mostly French) truck fleet. This had consequences for Army Group A on the way to Baku. It was start-stop the whole way. Strangely, the march really got rolling only after Rostov-on-Don was captured. But, that's a port that can be accessed from the Black Sea. It was, quite obviously, not used. OKH pretty much just ignored it. Strange. Very Strange. That deserves a TIK video right there.
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