Like his books, wonderful, insightful lecture. Something needs to be pointed out. Rick is absolutely correct that it was the Soviet Red Army that tore the heart out of the Wehrmacht. Notice that he speaks in terms of MANPOWER. Manpower however important is not the only element of military combat power, if it was, China would have won the War. 1. An important factor in the Soviet victory was the fact that the War in the West diverted more than half of German INDUSTRIAL war output from the Ostheer. 2. It was the war in the West that impeded and eventually destroyed the German ability to make war. 3. Also important to note is that the reason that the Red Army had to face the Germans alone on the Ostkrieg was that they were a NAZI ally (1939-41), playing an important role in the destruction of the French Army.
Wow! I've read and watched a lot about WW2 But that lecture by Rick was one of the best I have ever heard. They way he descirves the size of the US ARmy amd the dead and the wounded coming back was very moving.
Britain's survival crisis was in 1940. By December 1941 it had survived, albeit with the help of American aid. Whether it would have thrived and been victorious without American entry is another matter altogether, and of course eventual American entry into the war was monumental and decisive, and anyone with any sense knows that and any gratitude is of course justified by that.
I've read & admired Rick Atkinson's WWII trilogy and have started on his American Revolution series. I greatly enjoy his lecture -- they humanize and personalize the titanic struggle that was WWII.
My father came back whole from WWII. His brother in law died on the Franklin, consumed by the fires. Two of my uncles returned shot by German machine guns, one with unending spinal pain became an alcoholic. A third uncle, a survivor from a ship sunk in the Pacific, suffered from PSD for the rest of his life, never able to hold a job or have a family. My father’s brother survived being shot down over France in two occasions. He never spoke of that, we learned of it during his funeral eulogy forty years later. Every family has stories like that.
That Brain transplant joke has been told around since Jesus was a boy. In the version My Dad told the most expensive brain was that of a truck driver. When asked why so much the reply was that it had never been used.
The USA putting 16 million people in to uniform out of a population of 131 million. Britain put 7 million people in to uniform out of a population of 46 million - a noticeably higher percentage of mobilization. Further, the USA endured all but zero attacks on its homeland, wherea Britain was under attack from the start toalmost the end onf the war.
@@Petal4822 How were the Germans going to defeat Britain?.. 'Britain will always be grateful and thankful to America.' I have lived in Britain for over 62 years. On what basis do you claim to speak for Britain?.. God bless Great Britain.
On that same note, villa how exactly would Britain alone (also, let’s remove the massive material support from the US before even entering the war) defeat Germany? Or even pressure them substantially? Do you actually think Britain could have won the war without the help of the US? This isn’t complicated stuff dude. It’s not about “muh Great Britain is superior” or “muh US is superior”. These are just simple facts.
@@johnnyrocketfingers4926 OK dude... lets run through things... The 'massive material support from the US before even entering the war' amounted to 1% of Britai's war needs in 1941. Anything else was bought and paid for. 'Do you actually think Britain could have won the war without the help of the US? ' Yep, I think so. If Britain had kept out of the war on the continent and kept Germany from breaking Britain's stranglehold on German imports from outside of mainland Europe. Russia would have been in Germany by about 1946, at which point Hitler would have been dead due to ill health. His successors would have sued for peace, as did happen in 1945. 'This isn’t complicated stuff dude. It’s not about “muh Great Britain is superior” or “muh US is superior”. These are just simple facts.' Perhaps you should point this out to people speaking at this Second World war museum.
