179 - Time to Fire Rommel? - WW2 - January 29, 1943 

Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/WW2_179A_PI A few updates: You may have noticed shout-outs to new TimeGhost Army officers. Those mention everyone who recently became a Captain rank or higher, so join the TimeGhost Army as an officer to see your name up there! We recently passed 700k subscribers, as well as 7,000 TimeGhost Army members, and it is only thanks to all of your love and support that we are able to reach so many people with the historical content we make. On Monday we start another recording session, and in February the channels will become a lot more active as we put out The Troubles series. It's a really exciting time for all of us on the team, and we're excited to be on this journey together with you. Excelsior! Check community guidelines before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518

If you want to know what happened to the Army that captured Paris in 1940, it is dying now in Stalingrad, for it was the men of the 6th Army that dealt with the defenses of Paris in Fall Gelb.

Indy's narration of the Soviets surrounding and putting the squeeze on the Germans at Stalingrad was better than any war movie! Never Forget!

Ah man, The German march to Stalingrad felt like it was just yesterday, time flies by.

4:49 A rather interesting thing to note this week on January 23 1943 is that the Hollywood romantic drama movie, *Casablanca* , releases nationwide in the United States today after its previous premiere at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City on November 26 1942. In a somewhat ironic and strange coincidence, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt so happened to be in Casablanca at the time of the film's release to attend the Casablanca Conference being held there.

Fall Blau started with 4 german infantry armies, 2 panzer ones, 2 romanians, 1 italian and 1 Hungarian army. By now 1 german infantry army is almost destroyed, another one about to be surrounded, half a panzer army also destroyed, and of the allied armies only one Romanian army is left. So about 50% of those original axis armies are basically gone. What a colossal disaster. I'm starting to see where Manstein's "miracle battle" at Kharkov reputation comes from (other than army group's centre's divisions)

It is actually surprising, that the allies are so split on their priorities, and they still keep making a lot of progress. In 1942 they really turned the tide of this war, I do not see how the Axis has any chance of winning the war still.

"If we can destroy one German army, maybe we can destroy them all." [Laughs nervously in Army *Group* Center, Operation Bagration]

Stalingrad is exceptional in many regards; one of the more interesting aspects, to me, is how both armies took a crack at attacking it. Almost as if they changed at half time.

On January 25 1943, the first French troops coming from Chad - after a march of around 3,000 km - entered Tripoli, where General Leclerc arrived in the evening. The next day he met General Montgomery and asked him to join the 8th army to participate in the liberation of Tunisia. Montgomery will instruct him to take an active part in the attack on the Mareth line, which defended southern Tunisia. Two days later on 27 January, while Captain d'Abzac, one of Leclerc's second-in-command, was occupying the great Italian oasis of Ghadames (near the Algerian and Tunisian border), Leclerc paid a visit to Commander Bouillon, head of the Marine and Pacific Infantry Battalion (BIMP), which fought alongside the British forces since 1941 (Sidi Barrani, Halfaya, Tobruk, Eritrea, Syria, Bir Hakeim, El Alamein), at Tripoli airport: this is the first meeting between the Free French forces from Chad and those from the Middle East.

GIven Darlan's assassination it's easy at this point in history to overlook how much anger was clearly directed at the deal with Darlan.

Just an errata. The little black line denoting the "Burma Road" isn't the Burma road. The animation traces out the yet to be built Ledo or Stilwell road, while the old Burma road (1938) goes from wanding China to Lashio and then on to Rangoon

"Rommel, Rommel?" will be one of my favorite lines of this series. Keep up the great work. Thank you very much.

You know what would be truly revolutionary for military history on the internet. An interactive map that shows all the fronts with details and pictures of all formations (core to divisional) with a scaling time feature. This would help any enthusiast and help those interested in their family history track their unit movements over time.

Easily the GREATEST final speech at the end of an episode ever!

I believe Stalingrad was inevitable after the USSR failed to collapse in late fall 1941. They kicked in the door, but the whole edifice did not, in fact, collapse. At that point everything Paulus learned during the war gaming of Barbarossa, and everything Georg Thomas predicted, came to pass. There was no viable plan B if the USSR remained in the fight. When I was growing up everyone said, "They came so close." New research since 2016 shows that while the USSR did, in fact, come uncomfortably close to collapse in 1941, by late 1942 the 6th Army was only a fraction of its regulation size by the time it reached the city, and their logistics pitiful. The USSR's 62nd Army, under manned and under supplied, was never the less well lead and was able to resist. Something it could never have done against a 6th Panzer Army fully manned, equipped and supplied. Der Fahrter rolled the dice and it came up snake eyes. Karma is, in fact, a beastch.

I believe it would make sense to create a separate episode covering Stalingrad battle starting from Nov 19 1942 till full elimination of the pocket,

One of the problems the Axis definitely seems to be having is that sending a force into an area is a lot easier than keeping it supplied or getting it out again if things don't go their way relatively quickly. That's hurting all of their forces, from Africa to the USSR to Indonesia, and they really don't seem to have a plan for how to fix it. Games like Risk definitely don't factor that part of things in: As far as those rules go, it's perfectly fine to have a giant force somewhere without having any concerns about making sure that they have what they need to fight. I have to wonder whether that's also an issue with the classic giant table showing units and positions that's the popular image of how generalship works.

Before this series, I had never heard of the Pocket of Veliki Luki. Thanks for enlightening me. Still a lot to learn about the Second World war. Interesting that at least Mansteins assertion in his book "Verlorenen Siege" (english- Lost Victories - probably), that the continuing resistence of the 6 Army served a purpose, isnt wrong. I say it is intersting, because a lot of the rest of the book is in doubt today in Germany because the surving Generals tried to exonerate themselves after the war with their books. Just like Guderian did.

The way this is made with you not giving any information about what is too come really gives a feeling of how this war must have felt for people who lived through it. Not knowing what was to come our the out comes of battles. It hits me especially hard as someone who had recently hit military age of 18 (at lest the age in the US) I realized that I would soon end up fighting in some of these battles if I was alive at the time.

The Casablanca conference, as well as the rest that will follow, show the major advantage of the Allies over the Axis. They have the ability to coordinate their actions. They can argue and compromise. Weight their relative strength versus their partners and take decisions. Sometimes they may disagree, sometimes they may have to compromise. But they are going to do whatever is necessary to win this war. We have not seen any such conference on the Axis side. Perhaps, because the Axis governments were all fascist dictatorships, the mentality of negotiation, dialogue and compromise did not exist. The only Governance model they knew was someone to issue orders and some other to obey without questions.

-you got the 100 tons of supplies we sent you? -the what now!? clearly, a very big problem

The truly terrifying thing about Stalingrad is that they're *still* finding bodies nearly 80 years later

It’s pretty remarkable what the soviets were able to accomplish over the last few months. It went from almost losing Stalingrad and the caucus to destroying an entire German army, pushing the Southwest front back 100’s of kilometers and with it destroying half of the Hungary, Italian, and Romanian armies of the front, and is now is a great position to trap the axis in caucuses and Black Sea, and even possibly capture eastern Ukraine. Totally change the tide of the war

Its so impressive how germany IS STILL REELING from operation uranus, this isnt at all like 1941-1942, the front hasnt stabilized in the slightest things just keep getring worse and worse for the germans

Although I am well aware of the outcome of each and every encounter described in this series, I am still sitting on the edge of my seat, watching this fantastic video. Really well done, I love your work, and thanks a million on your valiant effort.

Steiner really needs to get on with that attack.

Damn, that section narrating the fight at Stalingrad got me on the edge of my seat.

great to see my name there at the end as a contributor, makes me feel less of a freeloader considering how much I enjoy this channel on a Saturday morning, well worth every penny well done you lot.

Love your commitment to the Freidrich "No Way" Jose Paulus bit.

Love this channel. It's more than your average, vague telling of history. It's in the details where we find history

Thank you, the way you present the events of the war is really outstanding!

Congratulations for 700.000 subscribers!!! 🥳🥳🥳

Admiral King gives something too the British Everyone:😮

This series just keeps getting better and better. With the amount of events taking place all at once and the amount of research that goes through with this. Hats off to you guys!

Love this, my history teacher recommended your channel.

Great video about a part of the North Africa Campaign, which most documentaries either gloss over or rarely mention! Well up to the usual standard. This blow by blow calendar presentation series is a boon for historians and modellers alike. More please!

This is the best and most detailed history of WWII ever. It cannot be topped. Best wishes and continued success.

Love your work that I recently fond out. Between Videos, I catch up with The Great War which I found surpsingly interesting of what I found, untill I found your videos, a dull conflict. You proved me wrong and you deserve to be better known.

Whew, this is an exciting episode (and week in history)!

Wow! I was breathless after watching this. Awesome narration.😀

The Tunisian campaign is still not over. It's going to be an interesting stalemate, not as interesting as Stalingrad but still interesting.

Have been binge watching Indie, picking the series up from the invasion of Poland. Now, I am up to date, so I will be waiting forever to find out who won. But, I will get my fix from all the offshoots. Great series, really well thought out and presented. I am highly impressed.

Not sure why operation Skachok(Скачок) is translated as Gallop(it appears that this is what it's called in other sources in English as well). Gallop would be Skachka(Скачка), while "skachok" is "jump", "leap" or "surge". Probably just a mistranslation, either due to the general similarity or someone taking the original word in genitive case.

Excellent video Sir 👍

Thank you for a wonderful lecture

Congratulations for 700.000 subscribers!!!🥳

Great video as always Indy! :) Hope you'll make a video on the day of 6th armys surrender in Stalingrad, would be cool.

Thx brother for thevideo

The maps and animations have gotten so so good 👍

Keep up the good work Monty

Wish you could make a special on the Axis armies, strength and weaknesses, manpower, arms, training, officers.

Great video

Excellent summary of the week, as always! At this point, remaining units of Hungarian 2nd Army were retreating - and breaking out of encirclements, trying to survive the cold, the hunger, and sometimes German brutality. III Corps was already cut off from the rest, German 2nd Army was using them as a shield while they themselves were trying to avoid encirclement. Smaller groups tried to make it through the Soviet lines, some of them were successful, but the majority did not make it. IV Corps was badly beaten, its remnants were retreating westwards, to the Oskol river and then to Belgorod-Kharkov. What was left of 1st Armored Division was covering their retreat, losing their last panzers in the process. VII Corps was also retreating westwards (along with German, Italian, and some Rumanian troops), they were last to abandon their original line at the Don. The original plan was to reorganize the army near Belgorod and use it to fill the gap, but 2nd Army HQ informed OKW that the army could no longer be counted on as a fighting unit, having lost roughly half of its manpower, all heavy guns and tanks, and most of its trucks and small arms. What was left had to be evacuated and sent home. In the coming months, Hungary would send more occupying forces to Ukraine, in return for having no frontline divisions in the East - some of them ended up fighting the Red Army anyway, suffering heavy losses due to a lack of heavy guns.

Bedankt

Operation Star & Operation Skachok are risky moves even though there's a massive gap in the lines. The Soviets have been advancing aggressively while also fighting hard. The troops can't be in very good shape by now and surely Soviet logistics are in as bad shape as German right now. There's a chance that this will end like Zhukov's counteroffensive last winter.

These wartime conferances show one this Allied side superiorty over Axis. Ability to acknowledge presence , weight , advantages and coordination of your own allies and acting in coordination. None of these statesmen , soldiers or staff officers etc were pretending that eventually all were not after their own national agenda but they recognised there was a common strategic goal for all to be involved and they had to overcome their differences and compromise. Roosevelt understood that Churchill would not give up Empire willingly and had to be subtly maneuvered to its dissolution in an anti climactic way after the war. Churchill had to recognise and accept US would have the big assets , capital and put its weight in decisions and strategy within next one year or eighteen months , UK exhausted after a long war , had to fall in line with US interests after that but till then it could put its diplomacy and own geopolitical assets to convince US to follow a more reasonable strategy for now instead of a poorly planned and prepared all out Second Front project that would most likely fail spectacularly or give up Germany First policy . French , still in throes of a undeclared civil war between various factions (Vichietes , Gaulists , Republicans , Royalists , Fascists etc) , realise that for outward appearance they should put up a show of unity and clean up their ranks to liberate Metropolitan France quicker with Allied resources and have a say in post war era geopolitical decisions. Churchill , Roosevelt , De Gaulle , Alan Brooke , Marshall , King , Charles Portal , Eisenhower etc all of them had a chance to weight , evaluate and consider their counterparts in Allied states with different uniforms and at least gained a geninue impression out of it with these conferances or talks. There is no such a way of coordination , cooperation nor any atmosphare of compromise or pooling resources for a common goal at Axis side. From a certain perspective for Axis , Japan might be operating at another alien planet with distances and mindset involved , Germans and Italians mostly if not disliking then actively began to despise each other on field or rear rather than Allies. Hitler's only idea of cooperation is browbeating Axis sattalites and their heads of states to submission and exploit their resources to continue the war he had started (and actually wanted but never wished to extend after a short duration and glorious victory according to script he had written in his own mind. Murphy's Law ?) And Mussolini , losing his grip and control not to mention popularity in Italy , almost began to be recognised as an ineffective puppet of Germany.

The blockade of Tripoli: There is a book written by a South African about his adventures in salvage operations during the war in East Africa and the Mediterranean. In it he described what they had to do to clean out the harbour to make it useful. The book is called "Ordeal by Water". It is an enjoyable read.

No mentions of the decision on the Casablanca conference on the french side ? Hope it's gonna be said next time because their is a LOT tot talk about (PoW in north africa, antisemite decree still in action, Communist and Gaullist still prisonner, still reference to Petain in Giraud's discourse and inside officiels building.. etc etc) and of course all of the political clash between De Gaulle's republicanism (supported by Churchill) and Giraud's legalism and reactionnary views (supported by the US for multiple reasons, with secret accords on building of force and official recognition as France) and the impossibility to have a fusion of Free France and the "Commandement en chef français civil et militaire".

I usually watch the episodes while eating. Indy cursing caught me off guard so much that I almost choked.

Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up

This is without a doubt, one of the best episodes of the entire series! & Indies skill as a narrator is first rate. there is not another WW2 history video on RU-vid better than this. these guys are great. anyway, we're at the point now, (January 29th), where 'jose' Paulus is about to surrender Stalingrad in a few days. Indie already mentioned 'Operation Star', which is an all out push by the red army to destroy the remnants of army group B, (soon to be renamed army group Don). the remnants of army group A was in a race against time. they were desperate to extricate themselves out of the caucuses, with their only escape being thru either rostov, or the taman/kuban peninsulas. Hoths fourth panzer army barely made it through in time, by the skin of their teeth, to join the rest of army group Don, (Fretter-Pico, Hollidt, 4th, & 1st panzer armies). Stalin put enormous pressure on his South Front to continue bearing down on the remnants of army group B & destroy it. but his troops were beginning to run out of gas, & they were exhausted. Meanwhile, while hitler grudgingly agreed to allow army group A to withdraw from the caucuses, he absolutely insisted that army group Don make a 'stand' behind the mius, & await the on rushing red army. but Field Marshall Von Manstein had other plans. the results of which you will see, in the upcoming battle, of Charkow....

This week Paulus really try to give another sense or rather another level to the words "to be doomed".

Great episode! Loved the close-up maps around the Stalingrad - are those old Soviet maps? A small note about translation. As a Russian speaker, I would translate "Skachok" as "leap" in this context, not gallop. Skakat' as a verb is to gallop, but a single "skachok" is a high, powerful jump (originally by a horse)

Having been watching since the first episode, you can just slightly understand how good it felt for the world to see the nazis get there asses KICKED.

Can you guys make a special episode about the different types of armies that show up on the maps? Like what's the difference between guards, shock, infantry, what are the German gruppens and SS divisions etc

Anyone know if uncontacted peoples on New Guinea had their first contact with anyone from off the island during the war? Trying to imagine the culture shock of having things exploding around you for no apparent reason.

First time i heard KH being pronounced as it's supposed to. Nice one

Dankeschön

Fantastic series. These need to be collected on a DVD and sold! They still make DVDs, right? >.>

it feels like yesterday I was watching the video where the Soviets launched Operation Uranus. This war is going almost too fast for me to keep up.

An interesting video. Nice job.

Thanks!

It is fascinating to see the 6th army suffer the fate Germans inflicted on do many allied armies before, encirclement and cascading failure to operate that's now almost sure to end in surrender... This titanic defeat will cost Germans more troops than entire war before Barbarossa!

12:38 according to the map, the soviets are litteraly 4-5 houses away from Paulus HQ.

Indi seems to have gone all out to get his prononuciation spot on this episode.

ro2 (and ro1) maps mentioned this week: gumrak, gumrak station (remake of basovka from ro1), red october factory, (barrikady), (tractorworks), univermag*, fallen fighters (and its ro1 version ro_fallenheroes) - oh yeah, it's all coming together fun RO2 fact: there was a morale system implemented in ro2** which among other things controlled the background music (composed by Sam Hulick, who did the mass effect 2 soundtrack) and voice responses. people will mostly remember it for the last-cap music - german players may remember the dundundundundun DUUUUUUNNNNNNN music when they were down to the last cap or ran out of tickets - which was carried forward into rising storm 1 and 2. However, you could also get voice lines where people would try and motivate themselves, or idle chatter where people would ask if anyone could speak russian/german. Once I even got a scream of "THIS IS SUICIDE, ZE RUSSIANS ARE EVERYWHERE!" when I was in a point that got captured by the russians, but this was extraordinarily rare as it would typically happen when the last point was flipped and the round ended * univermag was a custom map but most servers had at least one version of it ** tbh I would have liked to see it implemented more, but given life experiences of the intervening ten years I feel it was a victim of project management and fell more into the nice-to-have bucket, and then into the 'wait this is a thing' bucket as staff were reassigned

What developments!!!.. it's sure hitting the fan!..this week!!!

I need a lay down. Absolutely 💯 brilliant!

I’ve seen multiple times in your maps that you seem to include Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. However, these lands were under direct british rule at the time, after having been it’s own dominion for several decades. Newfoundland and Labrador won’t be part of Canada until 1949

Don't worry, I think that Göring is capable to supply Stalingrad by air from Guadalcanal or Tokyo. Yeah, that was the worst joke of the week.

It's good to see Conrad von Hotzendorf making a cameo appearance

Hi Indy Another thrilling week.. So 6th army almost elliminated.. Soviet really going to win the war against germany.. Thanks for the episode..

So hyped for next week and how Paulus gets out of this one...

The Soviets be like: "Hey Germany, that's a nice 6th Army you have there. It would be a shame if someone were to decimate it."

King’s decision isn’t that surprising as he saw the pacific as the top priority and was largely against sparing ships for the Atlantic. Though this slight change in attitude towards the British is a bit odd

3:31 hope Gen. Fredendal does better with the high ground and a tank ditch in a certain pass. Sun Tzu and Obi Wan Kenobi advises to always have the high ground.

Damn this episode was so good

Something to note on the battle maps (16:20) is a the misconception of the Japanese "army" (in this case 17th Army on Guadalcanal) is the equivalent of a corps (XXX). A Japanese "Area Army" is the equivalent of an army (XXXX). A simple mistake but a misconception among western histories.

What gets me is it's just like the German war games before the Russian invasion. Which went up to this point. The games implied Germany would have to have won by this point or it would go wrong. So the Germans did what they planned, it went how they planned, it went wrong as they predicted. It's very German.

Dear Indy and Cinematic Crew, Great episode! I conjecture (just a fancy word for 'guessing') that the 1945 episodes might be 1 hour each week. Also, in light of all the great weekly episodes and specials, could you folks do a one or two part special about the "Coast Watchers"? There were even many teams of coast watchers in the Solomons, etc. Many times they saved the Allies skins in the Pacific War, and are notably for their background, the methodology, and sacrifice. Thank you again! Jay Deister SSG USA ret.

Love the video, you guys are awesome! Are you going to discuss Lebanese independence in November? :p

loved the detail animated map of the stalingrad pocket. does anyone have a link to a high quality scan of that map (the original soviet map)? thank you

Timor to fire Rommel? Vader: NOOOOooooooooOoooOOOOOoooo

Indy is the best ive heard so far. awesome

At what point (if any) will mention of the weekly bombing campaigns begin? On a format where the focus is on larger battles and troop movement other forms of fighting could get lost in the shuffle. You've done a good job in covering things like the battle in the Atlantic so you may already have a plan.

woooowow. i am blown away

Tack!

Ever since the quarantine I've been talking to myself like Indy at the beginning of the episode.

The U.S. Army's 27th Infantry Regiment "Wolfhounds" mentioned at 16:18 earned their nickname in Siberia, 1918-1919, for being fast like Russian wolfhounds. At least one source said that in World War II the Wolfhounds put the lightning in the "Tropic Lightning," the 25th Infantry Division.