epa - We see a lot about the Nazi machines, Stuka dive bombers, Tiger tanks, MG42 machine guns, V1 and V2 rockets that were amazing but behind that were mostly horse carts.
Some others have commented on Guarnere's calling Winters a Quaker. I'll add one more thing behind that. Quakers were pacifists and therefore suggested that they couldn't be trusted to fight in a war setting. It was a great moment in the series to show how bonds would develop within the company by working through different walks of life and their assumptions about each other. Winters was a man of religious conviction (Christian, but not a Quaker) but as the viewer (and Guarnere) learned quickly was that he was also an exceptional soldier and leader.
The Beasleys only live about 3 hours from Omaha beach, Whats cool and would be a privilege is to live that close as to be able to tour it and pay respect to the fallen American Heros. 🇺🇲🙏🏼
Yet they know very little about why they even have freedom today. I wouldn't expect that from Brits. How could they not know every detail of WW2, especially D-Day?
These men of that Greatest Generation, I hold in the highest regard, with the upmost respect & admiration. I grew up listening to my grandfather & great uncles tell bits & pieces about their service. I’m sure that’s the biggest reason for my decision to serve 24 years myself.
Well, this is when the sh*t gets real. "We're not lost Private...we're in Normandy." This one line displays Winter's ability to instill confidence in his men, even unarmed in the face of all adversity. And this soldier wasn't even a member of Easy Company. Currahee ♠
There is always one thing missing from every war movie ever made, the smell . It is indescribable and once you have it in your nostrils and on your palate, you will never forget it. Am I speaking from personal experience? I only wish I weren't😢
The " Leg-bags " worked well for the British, as they'd been trained on how to fit them properly, and told not to overload them. The Americans got them within 10 days of D-Day & had no time to practice with or be trained on their use. Many of the Americans overloaded them and also were dropped at a higher speed than the British by inexperienced pilots, thus causing the propeller blast to rip them off ... In addition, War films tend to show the highly mechanised spearhead of the German Army, but in fact nearly 80% of the regular German Army was still " horse-drawn " at the time ..
You will be seeing a lot of combat throughout the series, so be prepared. But this program is so well done and so necessary, both to honor the service of those soldiers and to realize the brutality of war for those of us who don’t have to make that particular sacrifice. It’s eye-opening, to say the least. And the interviews from the real men who are being portrayed just drives that home. So many of them, some 60 years later, still tear up and grapple with what happened during their service. I’m glad you’re watching this. Peace …
The capital ships shelling the coast were both British and American. The Battleships were: USS Arkansas (BB-33), USS Nevada (BB-36) ( heavily damaged at Pearl Harbor, back in service), USS Texas (BB-35), HMS Warspite, HMS Rodney, and HMS Ramillies. Along with Heavy Cruisers: USS Augusta (CA-31), USS Quincy (CA-71), USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37), HMS Frobisher, and HMS Hawkins. Seventeen Light Cruisers: All Royal Navy, and 127 Destroyers, Frigates, and Corvettes: 85 Royal Navy and Canadian, 25 US, 10 Free French, 3 Polish, 2 Norwegian, and 2 Greek. Various smaller Allied vessels with a few Dutch Patrol boats. The US Coast Guard ran all of the Higgins landing craft (LCVP).
I was in Normandy for the Anniversary. We had a great historian. He worked with Spielberg and Hanks. The destruction of the battery at Brecourt Manor took several assaults over about 6 hours.
The thing is, Easy company did benefit in a couple ways from Sobel’s training methods. They pretty universally credit the rough physical conditioning with making them tough enough to survive, but in addition to that, he had them doing a LOT of nighttime maneuvering and drilling. Easy were much, much more comfortable with nighttime operations than any other unit. That also explains some of the issues during the next episode, “Carentan,” with other units that had a harder time navigating at night than Easy.
Sgt Guarniere referred to Capt Winters as a Quaker, because he thought Winters was not particularly warlike, Quakers are pacifists, and they dont drink alcohol either, so it was sort of a term of mild insult to call Winters a Quaker.......however, Capt Winters must have overheard Guarniere refer to him as a quaker, so, at just the right moment, he told him that he wasn't, and also made him aware that he did actually know what his men called him, although not to his face..... The guy who was trying to get a Luger for his brother, was actually trying to get him a German pistol as a souvenir. Lugers were very iconic weapons, and were very highly prized as souvenirs......if you can get hold of a real one today they're worth a couple of thousand pounds....
During the attack on the German guns, Winters took 17 men and faced off on over 60 Germans and despite the odds succeeded in his mission. I can confirm that last note. We studied that battle while I was learning to become a young army officer back in the 1980s.
It's amazing how certain people are just natural, competent leaders like Winters. Funny story, during OCS, Winters actually had to correct an instructor who was giving a lecture on the wrong rifle. Winters felt slightly embarrassed to bring it up, as he didn't want to embarrass the instructor, but he also felt that giving instructions on the wrong rifle was worse overall.
What the series doesn't show is that Winters took out 2 guns with that initial force then went and got a couple of Sherman tanks to take out the other 2. The series shows Winters hooking up with Nixon and the tanks after all the guns were destroyed but that actually happened halfway through the battle.
@jacquesstrapp3219 Also, there were no American tanks at the Battle of Carentan. The real story is that Winters dropped artillery on the German tanks with pinpoint accuracy to the point that it actually made them flee in spite of having fire superiority. The Sherman tanks were written in because even the writers and director thought that no one would believe that one man and his expert instincts would send the Germans packing. It would make Winters look OP. Even though Winters and Easy Company really were OP.
@@r.b.ratieta6111 Tanks of the 2nd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment and mechanized infantry of the 3rd Battalion, 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, were available as an armored force reserve for the 101st Airborne. They were held in reserve during the battles for Carentan 0n the 9-12 of June. At 06:00 on 13 June the Germans attacked with the 17th SS Panzer Battalion, 2 battalions of the 37th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment and a battalion from the 6th Fallschirmjäger regiment. At 14:00 of that day, the 2nd Armored Division was committed to battle. This came to be known as the Battle of Bloody Gulch and is what is depicted in episode 3 fairly accurately.
"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops," Eisenhower wrote. "My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." Dwight D. Eisenhower Supreme Allied Commander. This was his other speech. D-Day was never a guarantee..
The looting of dead comrades bodies may seem ghoulish , but as a veteran I can say, anything on my body that can help you survive, take. Even later when in barracks , a slain soldiers personal effects were inventoried and his squad mates had first dibs to certain things deemed not necessary to send home.
In the book 9 roads to hell this is mentioned, and how afterwards they had felt so ashamed of having had to do it that some of them only ever took German weapons and ammo instead of taking them from a fallen comrads after that.
The Distinguished Service Cross is the US Army's version of the second highest award the military awards. Followed by the Silver Star ( 3rd highest ) and Bronze ( 4th ). Purple Heart medals are awarded to those wounded by the enemy in action.
To pronounce the 1st episode its Co(as in go,)-Áz (Aye)- Hee Bill Grenier got his nickname(wild bill) from his desire to kill every German who could in revenge for his brother. At the this time of the invasion. They were under orders to not take prisoners. The beaches were not secured there was a great possibility of a counter offensive.
It was hard enough finding their way at night, but for most of the pilots this was their first time being under fire, so instead of staying in their neat formations they sped up and banked around, and the drop got scattered over a much wider area than intended. This actually ended up kind of working in their favor, since they were so spread out the Germans couldn't tell what their objectives were so didn't know where to concentrate their own forces to counterattack.
Those incoming rounds were not exclusively from the British navy. Utah Beach was supported by the USS Nevada, a battleship, the new heavy cruiser USS Quincy, the British monitor HMS Erebus, the British heavy cruiser HMS Hawkins, British light cruisers HMS Enterprise and HMS Black Prince, eight U.S. destroyers, two U.S. destroyer escorts, and a Royal Netherlands navy gunboat.
The USS Texas and the USS Arkansas were also bombarding inland, at Normandy. In fact, the "Fat Electrician" (RU-vid) has a great video short, showing what the USS Texas did to be able to shoot farther inland than it normally would be able to.
The battleship USS Texas was also there. At one point she had to flood void tanks on one side in order for her guns fire at targets. By flooding one side it raised the other side thus giving guns a longer range
@@nathanmeece9794 I had been on the USS Texas many times. She is currently undergoing much needed maintenance in Galveston, TX. I was lucky enough to be on a dry dock tour in February (she was put back on the water in March) and got to take photos walking underneath the battleship.
2:32 over the course of the show, you wont have to. Youre going to see it. One of the reasons this show is so well lauded, much like the opening for Saving Private Ryan, is just how accurately it depicts what happened. Episode 9 is going to be a hard one.
Incredible series. Can't wait for your further episodes. If you've got the stomach, The Pacific is also a brilliant companion series. Masters of the Air is a third installment that came out recently. It's a little different, but still really good.
They were paratroopers behind enemy lines they didn't have the soldiers or place for prisoners. My dad served in the 10th Armor later in the war and told me he never took a SS soldier prisoner.
@@RobC-jp6jn Only in this show. In real life, Winters landed near a supply Sergeant from F company that he knew, and recognized right away. In real life, Hall only briefly showed up more than halfway through the Brecourt Manor assault (which lasted about three hours). Winters did know him from the basketball team, but Hall had not been with Winters or any of the other Easy company guys up until that point where he was quickly killed. I think they depicted it this way because there was really no other way to establish Winter's and Hall's relationship prior to D-Day without getting too far off the rails. The show will do things like this throughout the series. Throughout all of the episodes, they present the story with various degrees of accuracy & inaccuracy simultaneously to help tell the story in a way that the viewer can follow better.
The scene where Speirs shooting the German prisoners is pretty accurate for D-Day in general. The allied commanders gave orders not to take prisoners because the allies didn't have the means to house prisoners and if any escaped the German troops could give away the allied soldiers general location.
On that day one of the battleships guns couldn't reach over the cliffs so the captain flooded half the ship to tilt the guns higher and completed his mission !
The map Winters found was useful but the Germans also found a map that should how the army would advance inland. That is why they would meet stiff resistance in the days to come.
Spiers act of shooting those prisoners, which was confirmed to have happened by Spiers himself, was an act of military neccessity. Prisoners require food, water, medical supplies, and, guards. ALL things the 101st were drastically short of at the time. The landings were still very much in doubt, so, they had no idea when, or, even IF they would be resupplied, or, reinforced. So, it was either release them, in which case they'd simply return to the fight, or, kill them. For those reasons, the paratroopers were under specific orders NOT to accept surrenders.
The Americans landed on Omaha and Utah beaches, as well climbed the walls of Ponte du Hoc. The British and Canadians were to land at Gold, Sword and Juno. The French army was attached to the British (as the French resistance had no homeland at the time).
The style of staying with the same unit and same people all the way thru is nice. The Pacific style is a bit different. Masters of the Air is yet more different. All three are dramatic and educational.
NO, not the French Navy, it was the U.S. and British Navy's, about an hour before the landings on the beaches, British and American destroyers were covering the minesweeping ships, while the cruisers and battleships were shelling the German positions above the landing sites to soften them up and limit allied casualties as much as possible.
Quaker(s) is referring to pacifist protestant religion. It was one of the early religions escaping England to the US Colonies. It was fairly present in Pennsylvania, where both Winters and Garnier are from, and Garnier even pivots to Mennonite, a more progressive sect of the Amish, that is also prevalent in Pennsylvania. That whole theme is actually a nice Easter egg of the times in that region.
them walking down the road is probably accurate. one thing europe, and england and france especially, has that America does not, is hedgerows. surveillance photos taken from directly above do not show the height of hedges, and American troops were completely unable to navigate through them, as they were too tall to be able to make out the landmarks they had all memorized. It just never occurred to our intelligence guys in the Army that hedgerows were a thing, having never seen them before. it isn't something one thinks about when planning a massive invasion, but turned out to be pretty damn significant.
Had they landed at the assigned zone, they would have been covered by lots of German machine guns. The inaccurate, scattered drop areas confused the Germans.
22:54 A Quaker is a Christian religious sect. They're pacifists. Guarnere thought that Winters was a Quaker because he comes from the same part of Pennsylvania where there are many Quakers. So Guarnere thought that Winters would not be a fighter. He discovered he was wrong.
When you two have the time, please watch The Longest Day. It is a telling of the DDay landings from both the Allied and Axis (German) perspectives. This movie has top actors portraying real life soldiers, from the men in the boats, those landing on the 5 different beach heads, those parachuting behind axis lines, etc. And those Germans defending the beaches from the invasion. It covers the American, British, Canadian and French attachments as they prepared for and invaded Normandy.
The Navy fire support was from both British and American ships. Most likely the British were supporting the British and Canadian (and other commonwealth and attached allied troops) on the three "British sector" beaches. Oh, and a Quaker is a member of a pacifist Christian religious denomination.
Quakers is just another Christian based religious sect like Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, etc. He also mentioned Mennonites which is another US based Christian based religious group.
Did not expect it to be that intense huh, well buckle up your seat belts guys, this was just D-Day, Easy company was at the front edge of the allied advances all throughout the European campaign, and have a box of tissues with you BEFORE you start watching episode 9, you will need them, it will be the hardest and roughest episode to watch, but it is important that you do not skip it
Quaker is a Christian religious group among those who were forced out of Great Britain for religious freedom. They settled in The American colonies before the Revolutionary War. A Lugar was a German sidearm (pistol).
The Quakers weren't forced out of Britain at all. Their religious views were respected in Britain. However, during the Revolutionary War which you mention, some Quakers were, unfortunately, hanged because they refused to join the army and fight. However, it wasn't the British army they refused to join, and it wasn't the British who hanged them.
Airborn could not taken prisoners as it would jeopardize the mission and were told to kill prisoners if they needed to the first day until the landing grabber up with them
Even if they weren't being shot at, it would have been nearly impossible for all those pilots to drop their paratroopers in the correct locations at night. The navigation technology we take for granted did not then exist. Horrifically, at least one planeload of men jumped over the ocean. You can guess what happened under all the weight they were carrying. I noticed that James converted kilometers to miles, just like we Americans do. I find it curious that the UK, like the U.S., has only partially switched to metric, although more than the U.S. has. Supposedly, British troops were impressed with how accurately Americans were with hand grenades, the reason being a childhood spent throwing a baseball. As an American whose ancestry is half Italian and half Irish, I am amused, not offended, by the men insulting each other as a "mick" (Irish slur) and a "guinea" (Italian slur).
Always a bit amused at how many reactors to this episode think they are flying into a thunderstorm instead of A.A. fire. An airborne assault would never happen in a thunderstorm - the worst possible weather conditions for this type of attack.
S. Ambrose later wrote a book about B-24 Bomber squadrons flying out of Cerignola, Italy. In it he reported that during one bombing mission, a war correspondent was in one of the planes. The correspondent seeing huge black thunderclouds ahead ask the pilot why he was not flying around the bad weather. The pilot explained that that was the target zone and that wasn't a mass of huge clouds. It was A.A. flack.
Guarnere calling Winters a "Quaker" was because Winters didn't drink. In the beginning days of America there was a religious sect known as Quakers, who strove to live the Puritan life ..... No drinking, no gambling, no swearing, generally they had no vices.
Major warships that participated in the Normandy landings: Seven battleships (main armament of 14", 15", and 16" guns, range of 16-20 miles): four British and three US Five heavy cruisers (main guns of 8", range of 14-18 miles): three from the United States and two from Britain Seventeen British light cruisers (main guns of 6" and 5.5", range 10-14 miles) One hundred thirty nine destroyers and escorts (5" and 4.5" guns, range 5-9 miles): eighty-five British, 40 US, 10 Free French and 7 other Allied Detailed list at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Allied_warships_in_the_Normandy_landings
Quakers were a religious group. Maybe they are still around? They were called Quakers because of the weird jerky way they danced. I don't think they called themselves Quakers.
James a Luger is a famous 9mm handgun commonly used by the Germans & Nazis then, & they are EXTREMELY highly collectable now!!!!!!! My grandfather has 2!!!
Some notes: there is no evidence Guarnere was at the front of that ambush (crossroads) but it IS accepted that he “killed a lot of Germans that day.” Also, evidence appears that Winters WAS at this ambush but was at the rear of the column coming up the road. Don’t mistake me: Winters was a BOSS! But also keep in mind they’ll write these episodes from the perspective of “saving screen time” and “telling a compelling story.” I don’t think it’s MORALLY wrong, but one has to take these episodes with a SLIGHT grain of salt.
These occurrences are also based on the book - which in turn is based directly on the recollections and opinions of the men who were there. If they remembered person X as being in a place or doing something, that's not necessarily accurate, but may be how they recalled it. And THEN it gets intentionally fictionalized to a degree so that the viewer isn't overwhelmed by too many characters they don't know, and complicated incidents simplified for better understanding and dramatic pacing. (This is why there are separate awards for screenplays that ADAPT other material versus screenplays written from scratch.) For that reason also, some people, certain commanding officers in particular, were NOT remembered fondly by the men, despite ample evidence of actually being capable officers. They just had failed (at least) to gain the support and confidence of the troops in their command, and the opinions and memories of the troops reflect that very harshly.
Just an FYI Mils, they shot that horse because he was mortally wounded and suffering. You'll see plenty of animals killed in war. (And it was the Americans who landed at the beaches, not the Royal Navy). Your reactions suggests you may benefit from reading up a little about WWII, to avoid all these reactions to your misreactions.
I'm getting so sick-and-tired of EweTube UN-SUBSCRIBING me from people's Channels! (I can't help but wonder how this impacts you and hurts all the hard work/long hours YOU invest to make these videos?) Like the opening of 'Saving Private Ryan,' this from "Band of Brothers," with the actual 'D-Day/Airborne' is so brutal and visceral, it's difficult to imagine how anyone could have done it, much less survived it! AMAZING Series, and you two are in for such an experience!
19:05 "What's a Luger?" JFC. Maybe if you pair didn't talk over important dialogue so much, the Miniseries would have provided you that information, like it did everyone else in the world!
Also 21:10 "I think they *deserve backup there*." Are you fucking joking, James? I don't know what kind of life you've had, but do you actually know the difference between playground fighting and Warfighting? It's embarrassing, guys!