Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "US vs. German Hedgerow Tactics – Stuck in Normandy" video.

  1. Close combat is good when you fight an enemy with superior firepower. The enemy can not call in artillery and much less air power if you are sitting so close to him that there is a high risk of friendly fire.
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  2. The allies focused their planning on D-day and very little was thought about the breakout. They had access to aerial photographs, to information about the terrain from the french resistance, and probably lots of British tourists, foreign workers and visitors and such could have told the allies about the terrain in forehand if the allies just had cared to ask for that information. I mean the allies had planned the D-day landings for years down to the damn little detail.. and still they missed to deal with this important topic. It would be an interesting topic for alternative history if the allies had failed with their breakout from Normandy. Would a over a million men and thousands of tanks and trucks just be lost to the Germans if the winter arrived and the allies fell short of supplies? I mean no one in the allied camp had planned for this operation to be this long failure, and the allies had not been succesful in capturing any real port except Cherbourg - which had been utterly destroyed by the Germans and would take weeks to bring back into service... and even so it would have been too little too late for the allies. The bad winter weather would have also prevented the allies from using air power. So they would basicly be stuck on a beach for months and having to rely on their mulberry harbours and hoping weather and wind didn't destroy them.
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  3. M1 was a weapon loved by the US army leadership for its ability to deliever a one-shot kill. It was a high precision weapon. But in close combat you don't get much chance for such a fight. The Americans used the M14 in Vietnam which was an assault rifle based on the same idea as the M1... which proved itself to be a terrible idea in Vietnam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mby4hOq-DpI&t=3s In close combat you don't get much chance to aim for a long time because the bullets are flying around you. And other things are more important. AK47 was superior to the M14 because of its rate of fire. And M16 when it finally came gave the solidier many advantages he previously lacked with the M14. He could now fire more ammo without recoil and thus not lose his aim on his sight. And the rate of fire was also good with the new weapon. And later versions of the M16 would come more to its own right later on as the videolink explains. Having a plastic instead of wood saves weight and it doesn't shrink when it gets wet. And having a smaller size ammo doesn't give you as much range with the smaller amount of gunpower, but on the other hand do you also get less of recoil and the weight of the ammo also gets reduced. And the long range firing duels of ww1 are not so common anymore so losing the slight advantage of better range with a bullet can be sacrificed.
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  4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diJpx90p2UE
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  5. Germany had an entire army standing at Pas-de Calais and being useless while the battle at Normandy was going on, so the Germans would not have to sacrifice the eastern front - On the contrary, if they could clear up the beach they would free up Divisions on the western front which it then could send to the east. Mongomery's failed offensives had made him start running low on manpower. And the logistical situation was not good for the allies. Having 1.5 million men and lots of machines on a small area without a real port sounds like suicide to me. Germany didn't even have to win on this front for the situation to become a disaster for the allies. It would simply had been bad enough if the tiny force of 400.000 men had managed to keep them trapped there for the entire war thanks to terrain and skillful defence. Hitlers stupid counter-offensive spoiled this oppurtunity. And the result became heavy losses and the offensive had to be stopped. And then the German defensive line had been weakened by all losses, so it soon fell apart. And the entire front got rolled up and 22 German divisions were soon destroyed and the entire western front had been rolled up and the situation in the west was forever changed. And Germany had lost her last great chance of creating a stalemate in the west. The allies now solved their supply situation by taking port after port. And Hitler would never again be able to secure his western front with a tiny force of only 400.000 men. And that meant less resources for the eastern front.
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  6.  @dpeasehead  The Russians were overextended and the started to run out of manpower. The Germans had also suffered losses in manpower, but in terms of firepower did their forces grow stronger for each year compared to the Russians. Had Germany not lost so many tanks in Arracourt, Falaise and the Ardennes then it would have a big force to send to the east and deal a heavy blow to the Russians. And then the war could have dragged on for another bunch of years before Germany lost. Hopefully would someone kill Hitler in a Stauffenberg like putch and then do like Dönitz and sign a peace with the allies. And if Germany still controlled much of Europe and did well on the battlefield, then the allies might have agreed to a peace deal where Germany would keep Prussia and the pre-sudetenland borders.
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