Honest question here: Why is Operation "Merkur" always seen as such a failure? I know the paratroopers had heavy loses and couzldnt really be replaced but the fact remains they did in fact get the job done. The landing on crete remians (to my knowledge) the only time a island (or large geographic position in general) was taken only by air agaisnt a numerical and better armed defending force that knew a landing would be coming. The germans only had air spueriority during this entire operation and its was entirely carried out by air do to british naval superiority. And if we take into account all the trouble the paratroopers actually had during the fighting itself with the "natives" and defending forces or that, as said in this video, they only had a short time to prepare for the operation and only a short time window of air support its rather impressive they got the job done with such a high risk suicide attack like assault on a fortified island. I mean this entire operation perfectly shows how valuable highly trained elite forces could be against "average" soldiers in high risk operations. I mean considering the effort it would have taken to conquer crete by naval invasion this was a rather "cost effective" way in comparisson and without taking out crete the brtish would hvae bombed the romanian oil fields to dust sooner or later.....which would have been crippling the entire german war effort. The poaratroopers were a very expensive and valuable force, no questionbs asked, but in my opinion it seems rather worht it to take these loses to conquer crete. it was a failure because it didnt go as "good" as planned for the germans, but it still got the job done in the end (and the mountaineers then cleaned up the island later on).
Paratroopers are too risky. Potential of success is there, but later large-scale airborne operation by Allies was costly disappointment. As part of of larger force they seemed to be most effective.
Depends how you look at it. It was a tactical and operational victory, they got the island with incredible odds against them. However it is a strategic loss. The Fallschirmjagers were seen as too wasteful for their intended use and would only be used as elite front line units afterwards and the losses for one of the most elite units Germany had were massive together with a lot of loses in aircraft, which were already in short supply for Germany before operation Barbarossa, it was not sustainable. Were Commonwealth loses higher in terms of manpower? Yes, but they could be replaced and they were not the elite of the commonwealth forces
It's a matter of perspective. From the perspective of "the mission must be accomplished at any cost" it makes perfect sense. But among populations that tend to place a greater value on human life, accomplishing the objective at ruinous human cost will be considered a failure.
You can also make the argument that the Germans didn't win the battle for Crete as much as the British lost it. The island commander basically ignored the parachutist attacks because he was adamant another invasion was going to arrive, and so he let the NewZealanders to fend for themselves (and they did heroically so) to a point where they were slowly but inevitably overrun. Had the British responded in force to the paratroops, things could have gone very differently. Also, as you and many others stated, there's the questionable choice of taking your absolute best troops and place them in situations where they will suffer immense losses all the time. It might be acceptable for extremely important objectives, but most of the time you should ask yourself : could I use these excellent men in better situations where they would achieve goals at a much lower rate of attrition and therefore allow my armies to advance quicker everywhere ? At least, that's how I would see it.
This discussion is very interesting, because it raises the question of whether creating a large airborne unit like a corps or an army leads planners to search for a "suitable" use for it that actually leads to operations of questionable value and extremely high casualties among elite units. Here we see this with Student's Fliegerkorps, but I think the First Allied Airborne Army is another good example. It's true that the army never fought as a unit, but after it was created in August 1944 it was constantly searching for missions, and the result was Market Garden and Varsity, both are which are justly controversial, in my opinion. I've heard that Soviet Airborne units got mauled on several occasions in World War II, but I don't know how they were used and it what size the units were deployed as, so perhaps someone with more knowledge can comment on that.
From what I remember the Soviet paratroopers were often used as operational blocking units during big Soviet offensive operations, dropping on rear areas that were the intended targets of the Soviet tanks. Issue was usually that either the tanks did not advance as quickly as planned, leaving the paratroopers horribly exposed, or the coordination wasn't great, resulting in either the former or, in quite a few cases, dropping right onto the already ongoing quick German counterattack...
Another shortcoming was the lack of transport aircraft to the deploy the entire force in a timely manner. If there had been operations with only a divisional sized force, there would have been more force landed at the objective, and you'd have different airborne assets in reserve to use in other operations.
They're resource intensive and quite specialised, so there would be pressure to find any chance to reprise their massive successes in 1940. There is a joke which goes, "If a baby gets hold of a rubber hammer, they immediately find that everything needs pounding".
7:20 Rocky and rough terrain is not conducive to airborne operations. If you thought getting your parachute caught on a tree was bad, try having your legs broken by stones.
Especially if it’s also surrounded by a large body of water… look at Sicily. Of the 144 gliders that were to take part in FUSTIAN, 69 landed in the sea, 4 were totally unaccounted for, 1 landed at Malta and another one somehow landed at the Mareth Line in southern Tunisia… the others were totally scattered over the island and only THREE GLIDERS HIT THE LZ! That is mental
I imagine it would have cost them a lot of good men for not much gain. Dropping a few hundred soldiers at most behind enemy lines where theyre outnumbered 100,000 to 1 seems like a good way to not get them back.
Depends on the plan and circumstances. The Luftwaffe did manage to surprise Soviet airdefences, and the armoured spearheads did manage to cut throug the lines. So given that Luftwaffe would have managed to interrupt soviet counterattacks and given that the german panzer divisions would have relieved them in time things might have succeded. Remeber also that there was enormous amounts of confusion amongst the Soviet forces during the opening weeks of operation Barbarossa.
Lack of the right sort of targets as well. Eben Emael, in Belgium, had been a pretty unique opportunity for a surprise drop on what would otherwise have been a very hard nut to crack, while time was of the essence. Hard to think of any single points in the East that juicy, Brest Litovsk would have been a massacre.
@@EneTheGene i was exaggerating but still. Caught in the rear lines with the soviets doesnt sound like a fun time. Youd make yourself a high priority target very quickly.
I recommend the book "Hitler's Malta Option" by Stephen L. W. Kavanaugh. It explores in detail how the lessons of Crete had been learned, such as making sure paratroopers were better armed from the start, rather than having to find and open separately dropped weapons caches. The big problem was that, after the Battle of Cape Matapan, Hitler didn't trust the Italian Navy to provide cover and fend off the Royal Navy, or even stay in the fight rather than flee.
one of these days I saw one guy asking why they didn't dropped paratroopers to take Moscow because yeah, the most fortified city in the world gonna fall easily to light armed paratroopers who survived the AA fire and are deep into the enemy lines. still better than the guy asking why the germans didn't used their helicopters to cross cargo over the mud in barbarossa
The remarks about paratroops attacking Malta made me think .... if the only choices were paratroops or no invasion at all, that really says something about how impossible Sealion was. One problem I have always had with British fears of a German invasion is that British military leaders must have known the requirements and photo recon must have shown the Germans had nothing ready; was this a matter of bad military leadership, of political leadership wanting to keep the populace fearful, or what? The US worries about a Japanese invasion of Hawaii were even more ridiculous; they knew how much shipping the Japanese had and how impossible an invasion was. US worries about invading California were beyond ridiculous, yet politicians and the military stoked those fears.
From what I've read, the US leadership stoked those fears to maintain public support for the war and limit cries for an immediate counterattack until the Navy had had a chance to get some much-needed reinforcements on line and shift properly to a war footing.
If it weren't for the mutual air raids between Britain and Germany, the British public would've eventually soured against the war and demanded to sue for peace. It was already unpopular to begin with.
I believe the "diving glider" concept would mean that you land at a higher airspeed, thereby having less time with wings in ground-effect, and can more easily predict the landing spot. I believe the parachute would be a breaking parachute that would shorten the landing run once on the ground. This would bring the troops closer to their objective and ready to fight at once they are disembarked from the glider. The shock effect would be higher, and it would be harder for defenders to regain the initiative.
Now you did it. Now I am expecting videos about drop pods and other Warhammer 40k weaponry and gear. And of course analyses about the most important battles of the Horus Heresy. Also, making a connection between a german WW2 glider and a drop pod is... bold. I guess the Astartes would like it. :D
THANK YOU BERNARD!!! I have been wondering this at least since I started using paratroopers to spearhead my own operation Barbarossa in HOI4. THIS is why I love your channel!
@@501Mobius They had a pistol, a knife and maybe one or two egg grenades. As well as chocolate and a sausage. But other infantry weapons had to be recovered from capsules that were dropped with them. And those capsules quite often landed where it was impossible to get them or, even worse, landed in front of the enemy, who had no problem in using the German weapons against the ones who were supposed to use them.
@@ReisskIaue ayy.. btw I remember when I was a kid watching a documentary on TV, it said british paratroopers were better in recovering and marking their dropped weapons... is it true?
The DFS 230 was designed as a diving glider that was to make pin-point landings on Eben Emael. The British Horsa glider was designed with a similar glide path, which is why they were able to land it so close to the so-called Pegasus bridge. It just took practice, a lot of practice. I wonder if the defences of Crete were known the landing would not have been attempted - or assessed as similar to Malta, so they attack Malta instead, or send them to Russia? Paddy Griffith in "Wings over the Caucasus" (published in "Hitler Triumphant") suggests that the whole division should have landed at Maleme, and this would have reduced casualties enough for a further operation to be launched to take the Russian oil fields in a series of hops starting at or near the Crimea.
@@F2000-q2z but not all of that was a nice empty field suitable for glider landing. Attacks were also made using float planes on bridges and even the Fiesler Storch to land troops behind the enemy lines.
The best use of fallschrimjager is to get all the Northern VP in Northern France to capitulate them quickly in 1936. You only need single battalion divisions. :D
Bernard, you might work on your "Scholar's Cradle", see Lindybeige's videos for info. You and Dr. Magnus are quartered off to each other and look like you are in some "Street Fighter vs. Military History" videogame crossover. I keep waiting for the "Ready... Fight!" prompt. ;)
And imagine that the troops that usually guarded the island where fighting in Epirus. Also because Cretans are ammophile gun nuts, and trouble for totalitarian regimes, Metaxas took a good chunk of the arms of the island.
Almost every airlanding operation in WW2 went bad, exception being D-Day, which itself had problems. The lesson from WW2 therefore is that paratroopers are a highly specialized utility which require complete air superiority and a strong and guaranteed follow-up by armor to be worth using.
D-Day succedded with a healthy dose of luck considering the miscommunications and that the units manning the german lines weren't very well trained or equipped. Market Garden is interesting because it has a solid foundation for an attack that was badly executed and overly ambitious in its scope.
The airborne operations in Belgium in 1940 were successful as were parts of Market Garden (the first two bridges were taken successfully). Bits of D-day were a shitshow for the airborne forces especially behind Utah and Omaha. Had Germany employed its paratroops as proposed in Barbarossa to seize and hold key instillations like bridges ahead of but close to the line of advance it would probably have worked but after Crete the corps was hors de combat.
Indeed. The Allies used airborne troops in savage high-risk & high-reward situations, yet millions of Werhmacht soldiers were sacrificed to "hold at all costs" in untenable situations. The details are probably long lost, but something between AH &HG occurred after Crete.
Well, two bad drops with not that much time between them. Den Haag in May 1940 cost them a few thousand airborne and air landing troops and 200+ transports.
The airborne invasion of Crete was a success however as an experiment it proved that the losses involved were unacceptable. The British made a similar mistake at Arnhem. I think in Crete the problem was they concentrated the attack on the airfields instead of dropping inland thus drawing the troops away from the airfields before the main attack.
@@davethompson3326 I have been there and there is plenty. All the machine guns were around the airfields and out of all the airfields they used as drop zones they captured only 1. So therefor the first waves should have dropped to the south of the airfields to draw away the defenders.
Well, despite some successes in Belgian campaign, it's not only the Crete that influenced the decision.. First deployment in Norway, then battle unproven, they failed to capture a village against Norwegian Army and were anihilated... They also suffered heavy casualties when taking Dordrecht bridge in Netherlands, failed to capture some of the planned airfields, a lot of aircraft were shot down by dutch forces, some planes had to land on highways and got shot by ground artillery... Before the Crete in Greece, they also had a mixed success... They managed to force around 10 000 troops to surrender in a nearby town but the operation didnt go as planned aswell, gunfire met was stronger than expected and their explosives blew up by a mistake, damaged the bridge and killed some men.. Generally, in a lot of these actions, a lot of planes were lost to anti-aircraft fire.. They realised that in Crete, they could be totally annihilated if Brits reacted better. Later, they had to focus on Barbarossa and had no planes to continue drops so they couldn't spare transport aircraft to possibly lose even more of these valuable planes. Note that in the time of the decision, German military was generally succesful. I mean their traditional, classic warfare had mostly achieved successes and they didn't want to sink even more resources into an unit that ended up fighting in an chaotic way, often balancing between win and lose based on luck.. such a trained unit would be valuable for the german army and would boost the morale of overall campaign if "elite paratroopers" fought alongside normal soldiers - they were needed to assist in breaking important breakthroughs etc. in a classic german way of maneveurs and operational superiority. I think if Soviets were beaten, paratroopers idea would come back to light because Allies had outposts in very isolated areas that could be accessed only by sea and air.. Germany would rebuild their bomber fleet and we'd see more paratroopers action through various fronts.
Losses of 70% were common in airborne operations in WW2 and despite the losses suffered, the Crete operation encouraged other combatants to build their own parachute forces. I'm disappointed though that the question wasn't answered completely - why weren't the parachutists used on the Russian front at all? Surely there could have been a specific operation in which their use could have been crucial, such as taking the oil installations during operation Blue, or attacking behind the lines in Kursk (assuming air superiority could be gained if only briefly) or during the final drive on Moscow (assuming weather permitted it)? Attacking the Oranienburg fortifications would have helped a lot in taking Lenningrad, surely that was a crucial operation. Or doing the same in Sevastopol. Was it really just that Hitler was suddenly concerned about losses to his troops when he didn't care about losing many thousands more on the Russian front?
Beyond the first few weeks or months of Barbaraossa, Germans supply lines were so over-extended and stretched from their rapid advancement that the German Panzer spearhead had to frequently forced to stop for supply to catch up and so, suddenly adding a large chunk of paratroopers in front of the already undersupplied main forces seems to be an overkill for German logistics then, especially in Case Blue. For Leningrad, not only it is heavily fortified, it is a massive urban city, one reasons the Germans decided to siege the city instead is that even the fortifications were taken down, the stalingrad-like bloodshed from the subsequent urban combat is not worth it, especially when one consider Army group North is just a side-show from guard flank and should not be prioritize in reinforcement and replacement. For Kursk, in hindsight given how the whole things turned out, plus Aliied code-breaking invaliding any surprise, it is lucky they dont attempt it.
@@sthrich635 I didn't say Leningrad, I said Oranienburg, which was a salient outside and to the west of Leningrad that contained the naval gun turrets that helped prevent German entry to the city. Removing that salient would have made the siege much more deadly and allowed the capture of much of the naval base. If they can land on top of Eben Emael, they can land on top of the Russian forts. The Germans used aircraft to supply the forward columns in Barbarossa, so supplying Luftwaffe troops (paratroops) would have been similar - being light infantry, they require fewer supplies, too. They were able to supply the Demyansk pocket from the air, and that was much larger than a division or less of paratroops.
@@looinrims and pilot training, but it wasn't their only transport aircraft. During the invasion of France and the Low Countries the paratroopers were successfully used in small groups to take bridges and forts etc and Student was wrong to prevent their use that way in Barbarossa given how critical the time factor was to the success of the invasion of Russia.
That is because the battle area in France and Low Countries are much smaller than Eastern Front, so individual strategic points like bridge hold much more value, so it is more worthwhile to deploy paratroop there. And it is correct than time is a critical factor in Barbarossa, but again the main blockage the Germans were facing was their over-stretched logistics aggravated by Russian poor infrastructure and lack of trucks. In fact for the most part early Soviet defense and coordination were so poor the German Panzers were steamrolling the Soviet and taking much ground, it would have made paratrooper unnecessary. Why waste plane fuel to drop men in places when the tanks and men could get there just fine.
Welp, we are once again seeing what happens when paratroopers are not utilized properly, when SEAD is not properly conducted, and why paratroopers are simply too vulnerable in any situation where the rest of the force is too far away to link up with them within 24 hours. Even with modern anti-tank weapons, paratroopers are horribly vulnerable to modern indirect and counterattacks by armor and IFVs.
I think you should speak German and later add subtitles, at least in the case of these "conversation videos". It would be much smoother conversation and easier to listen to.
Unfortunately adding subtitles takes an awful lot of time and resources. I agree it might be beneficial in some cases but he's addressed this issue in a few of his other videos iirc, and as some one who has transcribed conversations before, I don't blame him.
@@blakehealey991 you have a point. But I've noticed that someone has subtitled his latest videos on the MHV channel (not that necessary but I apprecciate). Could it be this "Andrew"?
Does the museum have a list of fallen paratroopers? or do they know where such a list exists. I am looking for a great oncle Gunther Kapp who was a paratrooper and fell early in the war as far as I know.
In 1973, in the Yom Kippur war, the Israeli military was reluctant to throw in their elite paratroopers into the battle as they felt these men were too valuable to lose in open battle.
I'm pretty sure these diving gliders are not diving into the ground or landing vertically with a parachutes, they are making high G approaches on small short landings in tight spots by diving through the AA threat making a dive bomber style pullout and then pooping a drag chute to break air speed and over come ground effect. The main threat to really slow flying assault gliders is AA shooting them up, so making a high speed dive much like a stuka is the safest approach, issue is you also wanna put down in a tight specific spot near the rest of the landing so the troops can organize and form up after. With the high speed dive approach not only does your glider need to have strong wings like a stuka for the Gs but to then get into limited landing zone they need to bleed a lot of air speed built in the dive fast to over come the strong lift force of ground effect on gliders thus the parachutes or drag chute like you see in cold war jets used for landing. One of the Western allies biggest issues with their gliders in 44 was coming in too fast and over running landing fields and crashing into surrounding structures or trees with destructive and lethal results.
What annoys me about the campaign in Crete is how it is always touted as "the disaster of the Fallschirmjäger" or in similar terms on RU-vid. After all, all goals were achieved, the island completely controlled and 15.000 prisoners taken in the end, despite a 1:2 inferiority in numbers *and* the allies being forewarned by Ultra (at least in theory, debatable what Freyberg made of it) while taking
I don't really understand the "any other nation" part. It seems like a lot of Germany's military achievements in WWII are praised. What about this one operation makes you think people only clown on it because it's Germany? In comparison to the positive attention that Rommel, the invasion of France, etc are placed on. Not a history nerd or whatever. So this reads as completely out of the blue to me.
Probably because even the German High Command themselves at that time see the operation as "failure" or at least not worth the cost and subsequently avoid making another large scale airborne operation, so most people just take their words and brand it a disaster anyway, coz even Germans themselves said it was bad, who am I to judge? And given that Germany did not enjoy the massive supply of manpower, training time and volunteers like the Allies did, and German regular infantry division were facing shortage from mid-war so on, they would be more critical to the paratrooper losses and much prefer them to be used as regular infantry to supplement the Heer war effort.
One thing about Ultra was that it was Ultra-secret. If Germans even doubted that Enigma-ciphered messaged were understood by Allies they would have gone to some completely new method of encryption Allies knew nothing about. If I remember right Allied commander of Crete had explicit intelligence about German plans and equally explicit orders not to act upon it. Unternehmen Merkur showed what paratroops could achieve and how costly it would be. Allies were impressed by results and Germans mortified by it's cost.
Malta was too large to be captured by a coup de main and too small to land a large body of paratroopers out of the range or observation of allied heavy weapons Lindybeige has a detailed vid that touches on this: The Victoria Lines: Defending Malta on a tight budget
Wasn't very inefficient to keep the Fallschirmjäger units under Luftwaffe control rather than under the control of the German Army? I mean the Luftwaffe had to train and maintain personnel and equipment for both air offensive operations and ground based operations in a setup like this. I think keeping airborne units under the control of the army makes a lot more sense. Interestingly I read that Luftwaffe officers were put in command of ground troops in the Battle of the Bulge and the results were predictable in at least some cases. It was a Luftwaffe led unit that faced Lt. Bouck in the Ardennes and which took unnecessary heavy casualties in frontal assaults in his position.
>Wasn't very inefficient to keep the Fallschirmjäger units under Luftwaffe control rather than under the control of the German Army? I mean the Luftwaffe had to train and maintain personnel and equipment for both air offensive operations and ground based operations in a setup like this. I think keeping airborne units under the control of the army makes a lot more sense. Paratrooper operations have to be coordinated with the Air force, which is harder if you have split organizations. And then you completely have to ignore the political connotations, because Göring would never have given it away. >Interestingly I read that Luftwaffe officers were put in command of ground troops in the Battle of the Bulge and the results were predictable in at least some cases. This is untrue, the Luftwaffe had its own ground units, which were led by Luftwaffe officers and that was not only in the Ardennes, but as early as 1941. The Luftwaffe Officers had mixed results, but they were trained to lead ground units. >It was a Luftwaffe led unit that faced Lt. Bouck in the Ardennes and which took unnecessary heavy casualties in frontal assaults in his position. Not true, the only soldiers who were led by a Luftwaffe officer were the Fallschirmjäger who attacked the Lanzerath ridge. And this leader had more ground combat experience than most american generals at this point, since he already led ground troopers in russia. The problem here was not that the divisional commander was a bumbling retard, but that most of those "elite fallschirmjäger" were untrained conscripts, including many NCOs. A lot of american historians misunderstand this, but german forces were not micromanaged and it came down to the lower leadership.
We have seen what happens when paratroopers(and subsequently air force) aren't independent and answer to either the navy(Rikusentai) or the army(Teishin Shudan). More specific to IJN or IJA. To put it simply, they DIDN'T fare better. As person above me already noted, air force just employed transferred army officers or those, who had finished army officer school and had combat experience of leading troops. Wtf were you thinking, that they're lead by pilots?:D There's pros and cons to having all of those, be their independent, subdivision or integrated. P.S.: and independent paratrooper corps also aren't a panacea. Consult russian VDVs that drowned near Odessa.
Why not consider having your guest speak to the host in their native language, and insert the English translation as subtitles? Dr. Pahl certainly has the necessary knowledge, but looking up English words somewhat disrupts the pace of speech and affects the overall reception. Other than that, great topic
> Why not consider having your guest speak to the host in their native language, and insert the English translation > as subtitles? just write a transcript of one of my regular videos and see how it takes, I give you a hit, quite a while, then I translate it, takes more time and then I add the subtitles to the video, but you know nearly no-one watches videos with subtitles. Each one of those points alone would be enough NOT to do this, with all three together it is an absolute no brainer. Also, I heard this suggestion so many times.
I appreciate you getting interviews I really do, but the difference in presentation skill between you and them is clear as day and night. There's a heap of umming and ahhing and they struggle to project their voices. EDIT: I didn't mean for this to come across as so rude and unthinking. I was venting frustration at how difficult many of these interviews are to hear and understand clearly when I'm so very interested in the subject.
I gave my own rhetoric class in my last year at university and I am doing presenting on RU-vid for more than 6 years. It would be rather concerning if one would not notice the difference. Yet, you seem to forget that the majority of people can't even give a proper talk in front of 20 people in their own language, let alone in front of thousands in another language, so they are still in the top 1 % of the world. So, maybe adapt your expectations a bit.
I feel like some of that could be from him not being a native English speaker. I’m taking German in college and quite frequently I have to stop in the middle of my sentence and think about where my verbs are going to go lol. I’m sure it’s even harder coming from German --> English
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized yeah ok I hadn't thought of that. I just expected them to be better because they would have had to present their information before and a camera would be easier, but you are clearly far more practiced and the language barrier is likely a bigger issue then I'm realising.
I will say this chaps, I REALLY don’t mind reading subtitles if it’s easier to speak German. Plus: stop showing us up by picking up our language way easier than we pick up yours … Also, did you mention warhammer ;)
> I will say this chaps, I REALLY don’t mind reading subtitles if it’s easier to speak German. thanks, it is not, if one takes into account the big picture. I once interviewed two French Panther crew members, it was rather short (2-3 mins). Phil did the transcript and then translated everything, it took him at least 1 hour. And I must add, transcribing and translating is not fun at all, at least for me.
Here is a little advice for all Germans struggling with the pronunciation of "th" in English: Die gute Nachricht ist: eigentlich könnt ihr es schon, denn die meisten von uns können nachahmen, wie es klingt, wenn jemand lispelt; und genau das ist das "th", ein gelispeltes s. (In den Scheibenweltromanen von Terry Pratchet gibt es einen immer wiederkehrenden Charakter, Igor, der lispelt und dementsprechend steht da dann nicht "yes sir" sondern "yeth thir". Pratchet benutzt also das "th" statt s um ein Lispeln darzustellen.) Um dieses gelispelte s richtig auszusprechen muss die Zungenspitze, ganz kurz, zwischen die Zähne! Glaubste nicht? Hier der Bewies: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0-EF60neguk.html "NoTHing compares to you" von Sinéad O'Connor. Schau ihr genau auf den Mund, während sie inbrünstig "noTHing" singt, z.B. bei Minute 1.13 und drück genau an der richtigen Stelle die Pausetaste. Da ist die Zunge (sehr kurz) deutlich sichtbar und sieht fast aus wie eine zweite Unterlippe. Probiert es aus! Sagt laut ein normales stimmloses s, schiebt dann die Zunge zwischen die Zähne, übt mit den Zähnen leichten Druck aus, und versucht nochmal s wie in "engl. Sir" zu sagen. Geht nicht! Ihr sagt jetzt "th" wie Igor in "Thir". Als Feinheit kommt dann noch die Unterscheidung zwischen stimmlosem und stimmhaftem "th", aber das ist kein Problem, denn das kennen wir im Deutschen vom stimmhaften S wie in dem Wort "Sechs" und dem stimmlosen S in "Sex". (Sorry für das Beispiel, aber es ist eines der ganz wenigen Beispiele für ein "deutsches" S, das am Wortanfang stimmlos gesprochen wird.)
The biggest mistake the German forces made in WW2 was not securing Gibraltar before Barbarossa. If they had, then Malta would easily starve into surrender and Egypt would be lost. The Germans were short of Oil and Libya had all the oil they needed to grow very strong. Then all Rommel needed to do was slowly push the British out of the oil fields. Barbarossa was a disaster from the start. The Germans would have been better off digging in in Poland. Buying oil from their THEN Russian allies and sweeping into France as they did. But following the French surrender and lots of drinking in Paris pull the whole German army back out of France back to the new German Border with assurances from the French not to assist the British in any way.
Was oil discovered in Lybia at that time? Turns out the Netherlands and Germany itself had all the oil the Germans needed, except these oil fields weren't discovered at the time.
The only oil in Libya at that time was the seepage into water wells, so that each side constantly thought the enemy was polluting water supplies. No oil would be extracted there for over ten years.
Mach du dir lieber mal Gedanken darüber, dass deine Aussage einfach sowas von unqualifiziert ist. Nur weil du ein Problem mit unserem Englisch hast, heißt das nicht, dass das andere auch damit ein Problem haben. Dieser Kanal hat 20 Millionen Views der Hauptkanal 100 Millionen Views, aber wenn es nach ein paar "deutschsprachigen Oberlehrern" geht, müsste ich 50 Views haben. Wenn du nicht die Fähigkeit an den Tag legst öffentlich vorhandene Zahlen in einen Kontext zu setzen, die noch dazu mit Kommentaren vom englischsprachigen Publikum unterstrichen werden, dann bezweifle ich stark, dass du die Inhalte auf meinen Kanälen verstehen kannst unabhänig von der Sprache.
By the gods I though germans saying "ze" instead of "de" or "the" was just a myth but doctor Magnus clearly is saying "ze". Eddit: also "zose" instead of "thos" or "dos"
@@Damo2690 Its not de lack of "þ" dat is surpiseing me, most people dont say "þe þing" rather saying "de fing". What surprises me is dat doctor Magnus is saying "ze sing", which is alegedly de steryotypical german accent but I had never heard it before despite plenty of contact with english speaking germans. How would you read this - "The thing is that the english no longer use the letter thorn." -? Most correctly it should be; "Þe þing is þat þe english no longer use þe letter þorn." I would normally read; "De fing is dat de english no longer use de letter forn." Magnus would propably read; "Ze sing is zat ze english no longer use ze letter sorn." Also þ isnt hard to say once you realize what your supposed to be doing which is saying something in betwee t and f while the tip if your tongue is taching de tip if your top teef.
The main reason because Stalin abandoned Moscow in the first day of war and went to his hidden house was because he feared a Fallschirmjäger attack of the Kremlin to capture him and his subordinates.
the story of Stalin retreating to his Dacha is mentioned only by a single primary source and thats old Chrushchev though, it is debatable whether it really happened 🤔
First, most rationalization according to psychological research are hogwash, so everything I state could be terribly wrong, also one of the reason why I generally don't like "why question" directed at what I do or don't do. Also I am highly aware of memory errors and ran into a few myself over the years, at least one of which made rather obvious that my "origin story" for a minor hobby of myself was actually wrong and that hobby at that point was less than 10 years old. Not to mention that usually there are a lot of factors involved one does not consider, as outlined in this video where I delved into the reason why I switched from white to brown rice: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DZomUAz9d5g.html Second, in Germany and Austria such an interest is generally "not really welcome", at the same time I am "pretty good" in doing things differently and/or going "against the grain", e.g., I have both a Master in Computer Science and one in History, nearly everyone told me in 2001 when I started out either a) don't do that or b) what the heck do you want to do with that? Third, specifically about the German Forces that was always the case, but in recent years reached a new level for several reasons: a) when I started the main channel (Military History Visualized) in January 2016 I assumed that the German Forces in WW2 were pretty much well researched, turns out we actually know very little about them, e.g., about the Battle of the Bulge, I could find one German academic work on it and it is a few decades old... see also this video recorded with another historian: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3joQMHS2xfA.html b) I speak and read German, most other people that talk about the German forces in WW2 don't and c) competition, when I started out I wanted to cover everything, back then there were very few channels nowadays there are likely hundreds and finally d) research, since I go into the archives and acquired a basic understanding of the German forces particularly the army and also the basic level of research, I can actually contribute some "new bits" of my own. Here are two reference videos one from 2016 about the goal and aims for channel and one I made in 2020 that also outlined why the change in direction happened. 1) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0gOZy5xgy18.html 2) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0gOZy5xgy18.html In short it is complicated.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Thank you for the answer! I try to understand you from your point of view, it's your history. Likewise, I've my history as well. I've a Master of degree as a mechanical engineer, but reading history as some kind of hobby, among other things. The generations after ww2 can't be blamed for the war crimes during the Nazi regime. But how we handle the legacy from our ancestors is very important. I've read about all the former SS people, how they were treated after the war. Many were in fact a part of the ruling party in Germany after the war. I think it's essential to see the quilt of a whole population, there were exceptions of course, but how the German society handle the situation with all the potential war criminals after the war is quite shocking. Many were free to live, as unpunished war criminals, in the society. I've talked to many Holocausts survives and in fact the German civilian population help the Nazi regime. You risked your own life if you helped a Jude. It was a terrible time with a total control of the society. The younger generation of today can't be blamed. I think it was a huge trauma for Germany to handle after the war. But I DON'T fell sorry for them!! My relatives, ancestors and I are facing a growing antisemitism today. The trauma of the Jewish people is still very real for us.
It is extremely complicated in many ways you have German society, but you also have Germany in the Cold War. You have the official positions and how they changed over the years/decades and then you have the unofficial acts. About the Wehrmacht, Prof. Neitzel and I discussed some of these problems: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t1IVENFSRi0.html (Then there is of course the cheap Austrian way of claiming that we - I am Austrian - were the first victims, which is utter hogwash and disgusting.) I have seen some antisemitism as "an observer", I can only talk from my perspective, on my channels there was one video that stood out. It was the video about the Israeli Merkava tank and my impression is that these comments did not come from Germans/Austrians and in most cases I don't even think those people were particularly interested in WW2 either.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized I appreciate your honesty and your kindness. Thank you for the invitation, I take your word for it. 👍 I've been a subscriber to your channel quite a long time now. I've never felt or experience any kind of antisemitism from you. Contrary, you have a relaxed attitude to what you are doing. And you are extremely meticulous regarding facts, sources, etc. like most of the Germans I know. I've been working in Augsburg for quite some time, but never been able to learn German. I travelled back and forth between Germany and Sweden all the time. Once again, thank you for the answers. Cheers and have a good one 👍🙂
