What did the Germans say about Soviet, British and American soldiers?
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- čas přidán 30. 05. 2022
- Hi everyone! You are on the Stories Matter channel, and today you will find out the opinion of German officers about Soviet, British and American soldiers. What qualities and abilities did the soldiers of the enemy armies have according to Germany? By what methods did the various armies win? We'll tell you all about it in this video! Happy viewing.
I believe Pattons' remark was; "Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country. You win a war by making the other poor bastard die for HIS country!"
I've always loved that quote
That was a great scene in the Movie, "Patton" with George C. Scott in his portrayal of General Patton.
@TonyTheBassPlayer1 one of the greatest
Our guys knew what they were doing. They also knew the tide had turned and it was just a matter of keeping the pressure on.
...poor dumb bastard die for his country...
Its Patton.
" I know we have virtually unlimited air and artillery assets, but that would be cheating". Said no General, ever.
Good one.lol
The Pentagon on the other hand...
"No, you cannot take out all of the Vietcong's air defense. You might hit a Russian."
and now , the Russians are doing the exact same thing. Out producing all of Nato 3 :1 in bombs and artillery.
sad but true.
A lot of second and third generation spaced anecdotes. No one from the actual soldiers that were there. Meanwhile, plenty of those opening never fought in a war but are now military historians and tactical experts. When your kids or grandkids find themselves in the real flap, combat will be even more high Tech and bear little resemblance to slicing out a Japanese grant's guts on Pelelieu.
Still fighting a war that ended 80 years ago! Amazing. Anyway, Russians fought stubbornly because they would get shot by the Political Commissars, and their family deported to Siberia. No POWs were save, Stalin coldly remarked:" I have no prisoners, only traitors." In the neck!
@@user-hq4zb6yp5b wtf are you talking about. The comment is very accurate.
No more for you.
Germans: The Americans didn't have enough stamina.
Also Germans: where's my meth?
😂😂
Exactly! Chemical courage is like liquid courage. Much more widespread among the Germans than previously known.
Hahahaha.
Lmfao 😂 yiu right though
Germans: When it comes to good tactics, let's do the math, I mean meth.
Whatever the German high command thought of their enemies is overshadowed by the end results.
If anything the results disprove their opinions too.
For real, slapped the nonsense out of them. Imagine starting a war and then complaining about how the enemy fought back. Germans with their ridiculous logic. Hahahaha.
What won the war is the British breaking the German Enigma code, knowing the plans and movements of the enemy and letting the Germans win or lose when they thought it was judicious to do so. The person who made this possible was hounded until he committed suicide. The Japanese lost because the Americans dropped 2 nuclear bombs.
Especially considering the cowards way out their leader took
This is logic my friends. Thanks for the critique from the side that signed the unconditional surrender of the German Third Reich.
My grandmother was a translator for the German Army and married my American grandfather after the war. She would always say that the Germans hated that the Americans "wouldn't fight" and would just use tons of artillery and Air power bombs to fight. My grandfather, who was in the Army, would always chuckle and say "Damn right."
Sounds like the Americans didn't forget the lessons of WW1.
As the Marines say, "if your not cheating, your not trying."
That’s total BS. The German’s bombed the shit out of Britain. And, the Americans fought their asses off , on 2 of the 4 fronts on D-Day, defeating the German’s defenses. And, that’s the real damn truth.
I'm sure the luftwaffe would of attacked American positions but by that point in the war the poor ol' luftwaffe.....wasn't in good shape.
It's like vietnam without their technical advantage tanks airpower us soldiers wouldn't last a day in man to man combat.
Us soldiers aren't trained for guerilla warfare or non artillery.
When you have unlimited firepower, you don't have to die for your country.
Or for someone else's.
I recall reading somewhere regarding American artillery, that if the Germans used 5 artillery pieces, the British would use 7 in the same situation, and the Americans would use 12.
@@theroller5673,You are right. Russia was about to be over run by Germans...damn right it appeared the Russians were fighting like cornered rats. My dad was awarded 2 bronze stars for valor after 2 major battles in Germany, and I never heard of it till about 10 years after he died...so I take anything a bunch of Nazis say with a grain of salt.
Americans didn’t fight prime of Nazi forces. 75% of Nazi forces were destroyed by Soviets.
“Never send a man where you can send a bullet or a bomb.”
Ironically, the narrator quoted that the Americans would not risk their lives, while the photo on screen was of U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima.
That’s because Europe doesn’t want to think about the fact that the US was, almost solely, fighting Japan and supplying the Allies with most of their needed provisions at the same time. Then the US decided to fight a two front war…and things ended quickly.
@@AJ-vm8ft I have to respectfully disagree. There are plenty of photos of U.S. soldiers available in public domain, so why use a photo of Marines risking their lives in one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific theater? That's why I used the word, "Ironically." Your statement was well written; I don't actually disagree with it, I just don't think I made my point clearly. Cheers!
@@JimBro317 respectfully, I was agreeing with you.
@@AJ-vm8ft Thank you, glad we're on the same page!
The narrator is a load of BS. He made up his script as he went along.
The Americans not only supplied the American Army, it supplied a lot of Russian Army and the Commonwealth, too. Hitler blundered when he declared war on the US. The truth is, wars are not won on patriotism. They are won on logistics.
The U.S. also supplied the Free French with everything from American-made uniforms and weapons to the half-tracks and tanks they were driving when they rolled into Paris.
Hardware, bean, bullets, and bandages, and supply-lines, but mostly, in WWII....it was all about who had the most toys and the most gasoline.
Hitler never declared war on the US, the US always funds all sides in a war, including Al Qaeda and ISIS, and also including Hitler, without the US there would have been no WW2, you are very deluded sir, i suggest you research Prescott Bush... America is the most devious but cowardly empire in all of history...
@@64MDW The US also gave Germany money and political support, so the US is responsible for WW1, 2 and now 3... get help you sicko...
My father did not talk about WWII. He lived with PTSD including bad nightmares, night sweats, insomnia, etc. He did say once that German soldiers were the best that he fought against. He was in North Africa and Sicily and Italy and all the way to Germany. He was in the Army when the war started and stayed in until VE DAY. 5 YEARS AND LIVED!!
Hats off to your father. Part of the greatest generation and a hero. Blessings to you and yours.
Many thanks to your father! If it weren’t for men like him we wouldn’t enjoy the freedoms we have today!
Neither did my Granda ever speak about his experience.. he too was in France, N.A., Sicily, Italy and the Normadie invasions through Holland and finally Germany. Fighting for the 51st Highland Batallion. Coincidently he became best friends with a German P.O.W. stationed in his home town and the friendship persisted until the day he passed away. He met yearly with the comrades he had during the war but it appears they never spoke of the horrors they went through. And he was adamant that his own sons shouldn't join the army.
My father was in N Africa Sicily and Anzio where he was wounded for the third time and knocked out of the war. He lost his left bicep and almost his arm.
Most of soldiers who fought never had an easy after the war. Those who didn't experience the war are the ones so eager for wars and full of confidence.
There's a record of a German officer saying he couldn't rate the US soldier's performance because there were always so many explosions !
A SAID FROM THE SECOND WAR
WHEN THE ENGLISH BOMB, THE GERMANS HIDE, WHEN THE GERMANS BOMB, THE ENGLISH HIDE, WHEN THE AMERICANS BOMB, THE ENTIRE WORLD HIDE,
THEY WERE VERY BAD AT PRESSURE
Such an american comment rofl
@@goathammer4297 Actually, it was a German comment and I'm not American.
@@jamesguitar7384 right, i meant its such an american way to describe americans lol.
My grandad was an infantryman in WWII. He told me one time about talking to a German officer that was taken POW. He said that if they saw an unknown patrol approaching they'd fire at it directly.
If the approaching troops scattered, and disappeared, they were French.
If they received an overwhelming amount of accurate and constant rifle fire, they're British.
If they heard no response at first but were soon receiving overwhelming amounts of mortar and artillery fire, backed up with airstrikes from every direction, Americans.
He never said this shit
If the approaching troops scattered and disappeared, the Germans heard no response at first and after a moment started dropping dead, without seeing or hearing where the fire came from, it was Simo, and the story was told by the widow of the German officer.
My dad was a tank gunner against Rommel in North Africa. Then he was a recon car commander in Italy. He came home with a cigar box full of medals and ribbons. He didn't have much to say about the Germans. And I'm quite sure he didn't give a damn what they thought of his fighting ability. He just killed them and came home. The only soldiers he respected were the Gurkha's. He said that 2 of them would go out at night, silently cross no mans land where they were fighting in Italy, cut the throats of the guards in front of the underground bunkers the Axis soldiers were sleeping in, then quietly slip back to the Allied side. He also said that once one of them, on a bet from the other, sneaked into the bunker itself, and slit the throat of a sleeping soldier in the middle of that room full of sleeping soldiers, then returned and sacked out for the night. I think the enemy soldiers had a hard time sleeping after that.
Grandfather was in Egypt as a simple trench soldier and mostly talked about how boring and hot it all was. The thing he worried most about was contracting Malaria and dying in a fever in some forsaken hospital in the desert. Never saw a enemy soldier in combat outside of surrendering prisoners, that war was all about tanks, artillery and aircraft blasting each other. Nobody would suicidally send troops over flat open desert.
Ill bet he served with my surrogate father.
Major George Armstrong Runkle III
Gurkhas are a special breed. It's more than a creed, it's a culture. Navy SEALs might have better support and equipment, but on a man-to-man basis, I'd put the Gurkhas as the only force on the planet nastier than they are. A SEAL trained Gurkha would be...terrifying.
@@jamesbuchanan4414
And an incredible asset not only because of their inherent skills, but their loyalty to the mission has no par.
@@Fyrpylit And from everything I've ever read, they're very polite when not on assignment. I've literally never read a negative word about them from anyone.
“Did their job and tried to survive the war”. The most rational of the bunch in my opinion.
Yea, that's kind of the goal of a grunt in war. Do your job, but try to make it home.
Unfortunately the Russians did not have that choice, Russia infringed the bulk of the German army.
In the beginning the Russians often surrendered or simply fled ordered by the officers to fight later, obviously Stalin and the elite did not like this, the serious defeat ensued.
Then they created a rule to punish officers if they disobeyed orders to stay and fight, but of course they could retreat in battle. But there is a stereotype that Russians shot their soldiers to fight, it was made for the convicted, but not an ordinary soldier.
The greatest resource they had was human, the Germans invaded them aggressively, they wanted to destroy them was kill or be killed
That's because the home they could go back to after the war was never in any danger.
@@TheChairmakerAmerican soldiers in the European Theater weren't fighting for their country so much as for Churchill. A song with a name that evades me said(not verbatim) "We're not really sure what we're fighting for, bit we didn't know the last time".
That's right. Very rational. That attitude probably explains why none of the ww2 veterans (all deceased now) that I've known ever talked about the war. It was a miserable ordeal when these men had been young, they survived, and they didn't want to think about it again.
When interviewing a German tank officer about the Tiger tanks an American officer said "Your Tigers were very good. You killed ten of our tanks for every one of yours we killed." The German replied, "Yes but you Yanks always brought eleven tanks to the fight."
For what it had to do, the Sherman was a better thank than the Tiger. The Sherman, remember, had to be shipped across the Atlantic and fight thousands of miles away from any factory producing replacement parts. It had to be small enough to fit on the ships in useful numbers, and reliable enough to keep running, while still being good enough to fight effectively once it got there. And it was, and it did. Could it have been better? Sure. Was the Sherman in 1942 vastly superior to a better-than-Sherman in 1944? Incontestably. If it wasn't the right tank, it was at least the right-now tank.
The Tiger needed to be produced in substantial numbers, so it could turn the course of a war Germany was losing. It was not. It can be credibly argued that *NOTHING* could have saved Germany, or at least not tank could have done it. But the Tiger, being big, expensive, and unreliable, was particularly unsuited to the job.
@@richardkenan2891The Tiger II/King Tiger actually _ruined_ the entire Battle of the Bulge for the Germans. Germany had been able to strike at France through the Belgian Ardennes hill country in 1940 when their tanks were little Panzer IIIs and IVs, but in 1944, those 67-ton super tanks were now too heavy to cross the modest bridges of the Ardennes. They ended up trapped while searching desperately for any moderately large bridge they could even use, and then got utterly butchered in Foy-Nôtre-Dame by the 2nd Armored Division's Shermans that they supposedly outmatched in every way.
@@ostiariusalpha my dad was A of the 612 Tank Destroyer battalion 2nd armored .
Logistics wins.
Debating expensively produced tight tolerance, finely machined German weapons and highly trained German troops vs the Red Army's lower quality, mass-produced weapons based on castings and stampings with few machined parts, and infantry with very little training, Stalin said, "Quantity has a quality of its own."
Mass production (USA) was Germany’s greatest threat and led to their defeat.
I interviewed my father-in-law with all his family present about his time in the army during WWII. He told us many horrifying and some funny stories that day. He had enlisted in 1936. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor he became a drill instructor for new recruits and then went with them to fight in North Africa. He fought through Sicily and from the Anzio beach head the length of Italy. From a troop train in France he was sent to a hospital for a tooth ache. His company went on without him to the Battle of the Bulge where his whole company was killed, all his friends. He broke down at that point and couldn’t speak any more. That evening he continued to tell how he was then sent to England and placed in a new company to prepared to invade Germany in a glider. He was shot in his foot as they landed in Germany and barely escaped with his life by crawling to a farm outbuilding. None of his children had heard many of the stories he told us that day.
I remember reading several articles quoting German generals saying that they wished they could have the logistical resources and quantities of ammunition, artillery and tanks to wage war like the Americans did, instead of treating their soldiers as expendable. The constant claim was that they could not compete with US industry, which outproduced Germany's industry several times over.
"Jeeps are cheap, people aren't". (Unknown Logistics officer, US Army).
The main body of the Germans was wasted in the east...80% of all military casualties of the German army was in the east
Excuses, excuses
I honestly think that both Hitler and the Japanese "leaders" were too stupid to look at a map of the world. The industrial capacity of the United States is a significant distance from the coasts. No bomber aircraft in the world at that time was capable of crossing the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean to bomb Detroit or Pittsburgh. That means that the U.S. could just outproduce the Axis with impunity, which means the the defeat of the Axis was inevitable. Idiotic leadership in Germany and Japan, and a culture in which anyone who understood reality would be afraid to speak up. Americans, for all of our faults, were not and are not afraid to (politely) tell their leaders that they're full of shit. If American officers in ww2 had acted like German and Japanese officers, then the fragging that occurred in Vietnam would have occurred in ww2.
That would be because factories in Berlin were constantly bombed but Chicago and Detroit were far beyond bomber range. Building Sherman tanks was easy.
Maybe another way to look at it would be this: If you don't want your cities burned to the ground, and half your country occupied for 40 years, don't try to take over the f*(ng world. The worlds largest ever example of FUFO was WW2.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." This quote and variations of it were attributed to US General George S. Patton. I believe it sums up quite a bit about our attitude towards war. The object is to survive.
Exactly!
“War means fighting, and fighting means killing.” -Bedford Forrest
Notice he didn’t say anything in there about dying😂
The Payton one is better.
Making your enemy die for his country is a perfectly honorable goal in war, and it is exactly what we did.
@@stepheningram6415 Forrest was fighting at the time, Dying was the furthest from his mind.
Victory was closest,
Also, the Americans were fighting on foreign soil for the entirety of the war. They were not defending their homeland nor their families directly. Why take undue risks in those circumstances?
“They did their job, and tried to survive the war.” I would call that remarkable intelligence! The Americans knew the Germans were going to lose, so they did their jobs, and kept going. Also, I don’t think many people interested in WWII study the war against the Japanese much; in fact, I _know_ they don’t. They were the most zealous fighters, and their captives-especially women-suffered horrific torture every day that put the SS tactics to shame. Besides, think of fighting on an island 12 miles long and 5.5 miles wide (Saipan) against 30,000 Japanese who were dug into hills, caves, and foxholes, and ordered to fight to the last man (only around 900 captives were taken bc there was no hope of resupply after the Battle of the Philippine Sea). THINK about that for a bit. My dad fought with the US Marines there, and was so traumatized he refused to say much about it, or any other of his experiences on the Solomons, the Marshall Islands, Tinian,, and Iwo Jima, but his experiences ruined his mental health. They had to use flame throwers at the end to roast the Japanese soldiers inside their hiding places bc they were out of ammunition and refused to come out….think of the _THOUSANDS_ of those holes! They also conducted a Banzai charge….I don’t think the Germans had anything like that in their books, and only the Allied soldiers who fought against that truly understood how horrible that was. That island battle was Hell itself, and there was nowhere to retreat, nowhere to hide. The victory won by the Americans forced the resignation of General Tojo as Prome Minister of Japan, bc the government knew it was the beginning of the end.
Not to mention when they surrendered they sometimes blew themselves up with grenades...so when a moment of human compassion would be given was stripped from the hearts of battle hardened soldiers because it means life or death.
the germans would have respected the individual american soldier more if they knew what they were up against in the pacific
but the statement still stands the americans werer eally only able to win those battles through overwelming firer power, logistics and material.. a much stronger oppenent fighting a weaker one. not to take anything away from the marines or your father but the japanese were often underfed under supplied and outnumbered by a huge margin. i think if the japanese had even half of what the americans had in terms of epuipment and supplies the war in the pacific would have gone much differently.. THINK about that
@Donna Gant Logistics win wars. The Americans went from having an Army the size of Portugal's in 1937 to the second largest Army in the world, the largest navy, and the largest air force by 1945. All while providing trucks, food, airplanes, and tanks to the Soviets, and tanks to the British. Plus, their artillery was better, much better, than this video presents.
@@scottjoseph9578I
Watching this video, remember the Germans were the losers, and, as such, are prone to want to make excuses for losing. This brought to mind an excerpt from the preface of the book: "Closing With the Enemy: How the GI's fought in Europe". In it a German General officer observed an armored assault on a village and commented it was as professional an execution of such an attack, as he had ever seen in the war. The catch here is it was an American assault on a German village. I am also reminded of a quote by Erwin Rommel: "The reason the American Army is so good is war is chaos, and the Americans operate in a perpetual state of chaos." Another German General [perhaps Rommel also] stated American soldiers saw no reason to fight in accordance with American manuals. One thing in which the American military outshines the rest of the world is the ability of the American soldier, sailor, airmen or Marine to ADAPT on the fly! Regardless as to what some German officers said, by the end of the war, the US military was recognized as the very best in the world. Semper Fidelis! CWO4 USMCR [Ret] 17 Feb 1969 - 1 August 2004.
As an Army veteran I can tell you that our doctrine was and is superior and suppressive fire power. You overwhelm the enemy with it. You concentrate your fire on specific targets to eliminate command and control, then crush the remaining soldiers who are in chaos. It obviously worked. We are not speaking German or Japanese in America. I had many relatives that fought in WW2. One was a Raider Marine. They fought to that last and gave their all. Many did not die because we had superior fire power.
The American's weren't fighting for their country, they were fighting for everyone else's.
And now they fight for the military industrial complex.
What country were they fighting for after Pearl Harbor?
@@natista4523The budding military industrial complex seeded by socialist FDR. We never should have involved ourselves in WW2 or WW1. FDR and the military knew the Japanese were going to attack, but they let it happen for the love of money.
@@natista4523arguably this quote only works for the war against Germany.
I think you nailed it.
I remember hearing about a german officer saying that they could predict what soldiers of british, french, and russian troops would do because they understood their procedures and manuals, but the Americans were utterly unpredictable as apAmericans would not even follow established U.S. army procedures.
Americans : Fight Smarter Not Harder!
@@jamesalexander5623 WHen the british Fire, Germans Duck, when the Germans Fire, British Duck. When Americans Fire EVERYONE Ducks. We dont engage targets, we engage Grid Squares. I like how the (robot) Narractor says, the Americans Artillary is week, But then that state it is effective. This is just a crappy copy of
EmersusTech better vid.
That's why we won!
@@elimtevir1*weak 😊
“The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis.”
― Karl Dönitz
the Soviets had two choices either get shot by the Germans or get shot by their own command
Yep. Talk about the devil and the deep blue sea!
Oh really, and what about the germans, americans and the other? 'Owww you do now want go to the attack, oh poor baby, dont worry, take that candy and pillow, it's alright....'
@@aisnice7421The Americans didn't really execute for desertion, and that was one case where the soldier repeatedly tried to maligner. The Germans are a great case especially towards the end of the war, when death squads would often execute civillians or military personnel for even the slightest hint of defeatism.
The comment, “lions led by donkeys” aimed at British military was from WW1. Not WW2.
But they won both times.
That's the kind of mistake that AI commonly makes. This whole narrative sounded like something written by an AI and AI almost never gets it right.
General Haig
The thing about the American fighting unit was our soldiers threw the manual into the water at Omaha and every other landing. Officers were given objectives and how they accomplished that was up to them. The Germans and the Japanese knew we were unpredictable and thus thought we were undisciplined, when it was the exact opposite.
1 up commanders intent. Still used today and very effective in manoeuvre warfare.
I've read similar things, and regarding various conflicts. The US military doesn't seem to have as much adherence to rigid rank structures as other militaries do. That allows a lot of individual freedom in how to accomplish goals. Another aspect is when officers are killed or wounded, it doesn't really stop anything. I've read comments about how other militaries would stop and wait for orders, even during combat, while the US would just gefind whoever was highest ranking or knew what was going on, and follow them. You might wind up with some corporal leading a unit for a while, until someone who knew more came along.
so you copied the Prussians
@@PaulGuy hence Field Promotions.
Authoritarian leadership is not flexible. Our military was.
Russian soldiers were willing to die for their country. German soldiers were ordered to die for their country. American soldiers understood that the best way to fight a war is to force the enemy to die for his country.
"If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting." Army Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay
It's Ironic then, that the Russians are the ones who killed most of the German army
80% of all German military casualties were inflicted by the Soviet army...similarly 90% of the German war effort went to the war against the Soviets', not the western allies
American soldiers were soft af😂
@@raritica8409maybe in Europe, but the American soldiers crushed the Japanese army, the Marines slaughtered them.
@@raritica8409not in the Pacific war
@@MH-kc1eu Oh wow. America crushing a tiny nation with low population. So brave!
Agreed. As a Brit i would point out the Russians were mostly fighting on their own land. The brits were fighting a country who were on their doorstep and had tried to invade. The Americans were sent way from home as a duty.
This is the correct answer folks. Plus, the Russians who retreated were often shot.
Thought about invading but did not try.
@@KevinOlson-io3dm ''The Battle of Britain'' you can google it ...
Brits also mostly fought within the territory of their empire as well
@@LoveBagpipes In the Pacific against the Japanese maybe. But Europe / North Africa against the Germans? What part of the British Empire were they fighting in ???
Why is it that once the Americans got past the beaches in whatever theatre the Germans contolled, they were steadily pushed back to Germany? If the Germans were so awesome, why was their homeland invaded, their army forcibly disarmed, and their country made a client state of America and Russia? And it only took three years!
Armies strategize around their strengths. Common sense. The Russians only strength was their massive numbers so they were forced to fight til the death. Of course their soldiers fought fiercely in that position. Americans had massive resources and of course used them, but somehow that’s a bad thing? This video is a joke.
The Germans declared war on the whole world. They had few sources of oil, had to buy iron from Sweden. Few resources, lots of enemies, some strategic blunders. For some reason, over quarter million German troops were on occupation duty in Norway. They never fired a shot during the climactic battles of '44,'45.
What? It took Britain, America, Russia and France to defeat them. The only insult you can aim at the Germans is that their balls were too big. That and the Jew stuff.
Because germany had been fighting a 3 front wars prior to America joining the war?
First and foremost, the lufftwaffe failed to establish air superiority over the British channel, which in turn severely harmed the ability of the kriegsmarine to blockade great Britain as the Raf would routinely hunt german u-boats from above. That allowed massive aids coming from the United States and Canada. The kriegsmarine at its peak was never on par with the royal navy, nor was it ever intended to be either. The Canadian navy became the third largest in the world, only surpassed by Britain and America. That right there, a relatively small navy having to go up against such a large and well equipped navy, was never going to end well, but the idea was not to destroy the British navy but rather to force Britain to capitulate and stay out of the war; something the brits would never do.
B: Greece, Yugoslavia, and North Africa.
So Italy prior to operation barbarossa was feeling left out and decided to invade Greece only to fail miserably and Italy failed to push the inferior in numbers brits in North Africa, let alone inflicting any hits on the British navy over there. Hitler smelled the dumpster fire mussolini started and feared that the blazes would spread ( which it did in Yugoslavia). So Hitler diverged a huge amount of resources and manpower to save mussolini's fiasco, and it worked for a time.
However, Germany was still busy with the British and was preparing for operation barbarossa, especially since Stalin was constantly pressured to attack Germany by his high command, who knew that a german invasion was imminent.
C: The eastern Front
Hitler launched operation barbarossa less prepared than he wanted to be ( although arguably it was the best of times since Stalin feared no invasion due to operation barbarossa being postponed time and again thus discrediting soviets intelligence )
The soviet union alone drained the vast majority of german ressources by the way albeit at a very high price.
America in the meantime was busy with Japan and failed to land in Italy twice with the British, against an already severely weakened Germany.
America also massively supported its allies in terms of war materials ( lend lease agreement ) which literally allowed Great Britain to keep on fighting and the soviet union to push back germany.
By the time America landed in normandy, the lufftwaffe was as good as extinct and so was the kriegsmarine. Most beaches in normandy were defended by mixed forces and wounded soldiers with a mixed arsenal of older weapons and captured ones because Hitler was sending all of his resources to the eastern front and some in the now collapsed Italy.
So there you have America, yet another powerhouse joining the battle against an already severely wounded animal and America claims all the credits when it did the least amount of work.
In my book, Great Britain, the soviet union and the Canadian army have been fighting germany far longer and defeated it on their own. America gets credits for the lend lease as far as the European theater is concerned and reaps most if not all for the pacific against Japan.
What you should be asking yourself is this: How did a country ravaged by ww1 managed to conquer most of Europe in such a short amount of time and posed a threat so significant that the entire world had to work together to defeat it?
Japan never worked with germany after all, they were just allies of circumstances and germany constantly had to save Italy.
Seems to me like the german army was nothing short of awesome in terms of fighting capabilities to have been able to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time and considering how it took the world to stop it.
@shrek9703 War was the German national sport. True warriors. We Brits have some warrior spirit but more tempered and calculated. Americans, for all their power and might, do not know how to fight wars as evidenced too many times now. But the Germans had it in their blood. Too much for their own good. Balls too big.
It strange that they criticized the Americans for winning battles win minimal losses.
What else would you expect? Losers whine, and the Germans lost in WWII.
Sounded more like cope given how they were facing shortages of everything while US can have ships dedicated to serving ice cream.
It is this channel's bullshit opinion.
I love how the Germans were the best but lost the war😂😅😊😊😊😊😊
exactly.@@kenneth7826
The Germans definitely had these opinions. Historically accurate. Call it their conventional wisdom, which grew into preconceptions that were hard to shake. I’ll just say, as an American amateur historian (w/ extensive military experience) these preconceptions continue. But they were wrong. Imagine any other country drafting nearly 16 million soldiers, while simultaneously running the most enormous military industrial and logistical complex ever created, and giving nearly 1/3 of their out put to their Allie’s, while fighting on two massive theaters that spanned tens of thousands of miles. Creating all of this from nearly scratch in 1942. Not all will be perfect. Not everyone will be a spartan. But holy shit, who would they rather not fight, all things considered? Ask Rommel. He was fairly skilled. After Torch landings, where the US uploaded an entire corps, crossed the Atlantic, and landed it in Africa. Rommel saw the writing on the walls and said, “we can’t win.” Hitler called him a defeatist. Maybe a prophet?
Sour grapes from some sour Krauts if you ask me. American GIs handed them a big fat "L" .
You'd have thought they would have learned their lesson from WW 1 .
The Brits would have lost the war without American help, both in equipment and in manpower.
ROMMEN and ALL THE G GENRALS Saw THE Writing On the WALL !!!Its LOGISTICS ????and THEY Had SPENT So MUCH LOGISTICS !!!ON THE EASTERN FRONT !!!THE German HAD TO BE BOMBED. DAY AND NIGHT ?????They Are Sorry Were UNBELIVABLE ????😳g
@@themrsluggo
Rommel called it right after his 2nd battle with II Corps in North Africa.
He noted the superior logistics and force projection and
"Never have I seen an army perform so poorly in its first battle, and never have I seen an army improve so much by its second." (That first battle being the German victory over the US Army at the Battle of Kesserine Pass, the 2nd being the Battle of El Guettar, in which U S. forces were able to get into the German 10 Panzer Division's rear areas (the vitally important "administrative" area where the headquarters and essential logistics and repair/maintenance combat support units are at. Without them, the entire division quickly loses strength and operational coordination.
You gotta agree if you over look Bastogne, Hurtgen forest, the Falaise (sic) pocket, colmar pocket, Remagen bridge and a dozen more. They were pissed because we seem so casual about it. They never understood that we didn’t want to be there..
My Dad sure didn't. He got drafted in October 1942 just six weeks after he and my Mom got married. After training in Virginia and Mississippi, he got shipped to Europe as a medic and never talked about it. He just wanted to get home in one piece.
I was at a flea market in suburban NJ years ago when I heard one of the vendors, a grizzled old man wearing a tattered German field gray overcoat, speaking a few words of Russian to one of his customers. I spoke Russian, too, so I asked him about it (since he didn’t look Russian). Turns out he had been a Wehrmacht private who’d been captured near the end of the war, taken to Russia, and retained there - as many were - for 10 years after the peace, being forced to rebuild Soviet buildings, railways, and factories destroyed in the fighting.
Define irony;
5:33; The narration states Americans were not willing to take mortal risks while showing a picture of a group of Americans who took mortal risks just to raise their flag.
Totally staged when there were no Japanese in the area!
@@derekambler Not entirely true. The entire island of Iwo Jima was still crawling with Japanese in all of their underground tunnels. It was not completely secured until a couple months after the flag raising. Not to mention the slaughter that took place just to get a few guys to the top of that mountain. The 'photo op' flag raising was staged for dramatic effect, but that isn't the original flag. The first group to raise the flag on Siribachi took sniper fire just a few minutes before. Saying there were 'no Japanese in the area' on an island that is 8 square miles and completely infested with tunnels that still had close to 15000 defenders left in them is a pretty big stretch.
The photo was not staged, they didn't even know about the photo till much later.
@@derekambler
@@derekambler
Not true.
I mean they had to storm Omaha beach. I wouldn't call that cowardice.
America went into both world wars with tiny armies that rapidly ramped up and prepared to fight a war an ocean away from home.
They were doing the best they could with a VERY short supply of career soldiers to bring the new men along.
Correction, they sent everything over TWO oceans. Otherwise, the gist sums it up perfectly.
@@kate2create738 Nope - they sent their material across one ocean - to fight in Europe & one ocean - to fight Japan.
@@Pax.Alotin No, it's TWO theaters, across TWO different oceans.
In either direction, it was one ocean away.
Bastogne was an exception. Germans found out that when push gets to shove, the American GI of THAT ERA can be tough and stubborn as nails.
The Germans also said that the Americans were the toughest to fight against because although they wrote every tactic down and published the manuals for all to read, the Americans felt no obligation whatsoever to follow their own doctrines. And that made them frighteningly unpredictable. They knew what the British and Soviets were going to do given a set of circumstances, but the Americans would just make up something on the fly and create havoc to the German war plans.
Finally a positive thing about the Americans!
There are quotes from Germans and Japanese calling the Americans “gangsters” and “criminals” and they greatly feared them.
No thats wrong and not true. I am German and i spoke with a Lot of old sodiers. Indeed the opinion of the US were Low. My father Said that there have no Disziplin and theire personal were often recructed from gangsters. The Soviets were good Fighters but not to smart. The British were Seen almost Qual. BUT- and that Said all Germans the US habe until today always the best equipment.
I heard the story of some captured German engineers who were taken to New York by boat. One of them talked about them being hungry all the time but when in American custody they were well fed and on the boat over a kitchen was even provided for them with one of their own men in charge of it and all of them had full bellies everyday for the first time in a long time. He said at that moment he knew Germany had no chance.
I heard a twist of this story. The Germans stumbled across a huge heap of boxes that they presumed was ammunition. They opened them only to discover that it was all fresh cream cakes, and at this point knew that they had no chance.
I've read articles in which German officers are quoted that the Americans were cowards who hid behind their artillery and unlimited armaments and ammunition. Yes. Why hang your own personal ass out into the wind every day when a couple of artillery barrages have the same effect and you can therefore reach behind yourself and notice that your own personal ass is still alive and well. We used to our advantage the things that were advantageous to ourselves to use. I'm glad we used our prodigious armaments to save our soldiers.
Recklessness is not bravery.
-Aristotle
I'm British, and I agree with you. If you have overwhelming firepower, hunker down and call it in. You survive AND you win the battle. Sounds like good common sense to me.
Ww2 joke I heard was, if you come across an unidentified force, fire a few shots and see how they respond. If they surrender en masse, they're Italian. If they respond with a shitstorm of machine gun fire, they're German. If they respond with a volley of precision rifle fire, they're British. And if nothing happens for 10 minutes and then the landscape around you explodes, they're American.
It is the American way. I got started on in a bar in the states, I went outside to fight him and once I got outside he shot a full clip at me.
“ Quantity has a quality all its own.” ... various people.
There is a moment in Otto Carius book where he talks about a Soviet Commissar standing and giving orders during a deadly fight. He said they didn't shoot him and were surprised by his bravery. He said that everytime "Ivan" did something brave, they called them stubborn, contrary to the german bravery.
I give all respect to the people who fought and the ones who died in the eastern front
As a guy who studies the Eastern Front, and the Chinese Front, those were BRUTAL...
No matter what the Germans thought about other soldiers during WW 2, they still got their assess handed to them.
"Lions led by Donkeys" wasn't a German quote at all.
The origin of the phrase was Plutarch, obviously not talking about British people, and given he was widely read, many different people used the quote over the years to describe contemporaries.
Later, a RUSSIAN General was recorded as having said it about the British at the Battle of Sevastopol in the Crimean War.
I think it's one of those apocryphal sayings that people attribute to different situations and periods, but are actually very old and of doubtful origin. Another being the empire on which the sun never sets, which is usually attributed to the British empire, but was already used by the Spanish two centuries earlier and I believe may even go back to the Romans.
In recent decades it's most commonly been used of the British Army in WW1.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions_led_by_donkeys
This actually kinda hits at an argument that Lazerpig made in one of his videos, that Americans had the least justification for fighting Germany of the major allied powers, Germany bombed London during the blitz, and massacred Russians during Barbarossa, but Germany only declared war on the US to back up Japan. Japan was Americas true enemy.
We could have been brothers perhaps sued for peace. Instead we once again tore down the German people and once again created a puppet government that rules to this day.
But German U-boats immediately began attacking and sinking American shipping and caused havoc off the east coast of the USA in early 1942. In fact they began attacking some American ships even before Pearl Harbor.
@@lyndoncmp5751Your point? If we weren’t supplying Britain before Pearl Harbor they likely would not have attacked us.
@@craigh.9810
I would have thought my point was obvious. Wakey wakey.
I have read quite a few books written by German officers and what they said about various allied troops does not necessarily square with this video. After the first year of war on the eastern front the Germans had tremendous respect for what the Russian soldier could do in defensive fighting, and were always in awe of just how much the Russians could suffer and still keep going. They also acknowledged that the Russians were very good at camouflage. With regards to the British, they had tremendous respect for the toughness of the average British Tommy, but never considered that the British army was ever particularly well led. They were rather amazed that after 5 years of fighting the German army (the Heer) the British still were unable to master all arms combat, in northwest Europe and that they never did learn how to coordinate armour and infantry into cohesive fighting units. With regards to the Americans, they were amazed at how fast the Americans learned from their mistakes. Whereas the American army was quite amateurish upon entering combat in North Africa, they admitted that they had never faced an army that learned from their own mistakes and improved as fast as the Americans did. Also every German officer who fought in the west in 1944 - 1945 praised American artillery as the most fearsome thing they faced on the battle field. British artillery was quite good, but they never faced anything as frightening as American artillery.
My wife's grandfather was one of those "battered bastards of Bastogne". He unsuccessfully tried to hide in a pile of the dead bodies of his buddies after an ambush, but was still taken prisoner. German soldiers did as much care for him as they could, given the amount of supplies they had. They did at least tourniquet his leg wound. A few days later, the German position was overrun and they left him behind because having a POW was a drain on their resources. He was repatriated and later given a Purple Heart. He suffered PTSD until his death about 12 years ago.
They still got their ass kicked. Who cares what the losers think?
Salty American?
@@LoveBagpipes maybe it's just you that is salty,
@@vexingrabbit1824 I'm not the one whinging about "who cares what they think" ...behind those copious tears
@@LoveBagpipesAs far as I remember the Allies won the war.
@@mrlime9526 USSR won the war, they caused over 80% of all German casualties and took the primary focus of the German militaries war efforts, and abuses
So sure, the allies won...little reflection on this topic though
Quite a few contradictions in this short narrative but the one salient issue to remember is the Soviets and Brits were fighting an existential war, a war of survival, and the Americans were not. Add to that the Germans/Nazis absolutely brutalized the people to the east, and bombed civilians in Great Britain, well, they (Soviets and Brits) had more incentive to die for their country than Americans. Compare how American soldiers and Marines fought in the Pacific versus in Europe. Much of the difference has been attributed to racism, and some of that is true, but Americans had every reason to hammer the Japanese. A parallel would be Canadian and Aussie soldiers who, though among the very, very best fighting men in WWII, did not have the same incentive that their fellow Anglo-Saxons from England had. And there was substantial grumbling amongst those who fought that they (Canadians and ANZACs) were fighting more for England than their own countries.
You cannot condense such a deep topic into either a six-minute video or a three-paragraph reply, but the North Americans and ANZACs placed a higher value on the individual than the English, Germans, and certainly the Japanese, and the Soviets/Russians ever have.
If there is any question as to the importance of incentive (and morale), just look at how poorly the Russian enlisted soldiers are performing in Ukraine, and the Americans in Vietnam half a century ago. It is, and was, a constant cacophony of "Why the f**k are we here?" The American soldiers marched toward Berlin as that was the only way home, and were not about to die needlessly to "make (part of) the world safe for democracy". I missed Vietnam by a couple of years but had older friends (non-college) who went. I sure as hell wasn't going to go over there and "die for my country", or to die to make South Vietnam safe for the rich French-educated and -speaking Catholic ruling elite who couldn't give two flying f**ks about democracy or their fellow Vietnamese citizens.
It's all about morale and incentive.
P.S. The German and Brits had three years of battle experience by the time the Americans arrived in North Africa. Big reason why the Americans had some problems relatively to both the Allies and the Germans.
Yeah, I've had way too much coffee this morning....
As a Brit and student of WW2 I completely agree with you.
Almost obligatory, it seems, for very many comments on CZcams to be off track.
The video describes how the Germans perceived the three nationalities of soldiers. And it sticks to that, without discussing anything else: not why, not the consequences, and no irrelevant comparisons with any other conflicts. CoronadoBruin's comment, intelligent and perceptive though it is, discusses something else, as do (predictably) almost all the comments.
As a Brit of 75 years of age I agree with you, how the Americans fought so well when they were fighting a war on another continent and their homeland was not really threatened.
Remarks perfectly on spot.
Morale and strong motivation is utterly indispensable.
This is how vietnamese protected vietnam from USA and China.
That is why Russia will lose in Ukraine.
Soldiers are people, not machines.
If you worry about just how good the Yanks were then study what the US Marines accomplished in the South Pacific. If the US troops were so-so in Europe, NOBODY could beat the US Marines in the Pacific Island hopping strategey and that's taking nothing away from the Brits, Australians, Gurkhas and Indian troops that also terrorized the japs and who won the jungle war hands down.
Germany when America starts spamming aircrafts amd artillery:
This is not how you are intended to play
My dad volunteered after Pearl Harbor for the Navy and participated until the end of the war returning home to North Louisiana. He also never spoke of the war. I don’t think throughout my childhood he ever spoke of it once.
Back in my board gaming days, the 80s, I remember reading about the interrogation of a Japanese officer. He was asked what he thought of Brits, Aussies and US Marines. He said the Brits and Aussies were great jungle fighters. When asked about the Marines he said they just removed the jungle. On US troops, there is a quote from Rommel about US troops. I read that he said that the US Army was the most ill prepared of all the armies but no one learned as fast.
The US was isolationist and it's involvement in wars before this point was minimal relative to the other powers. WW2 was the learning curve to some extent.
This is an exercise in bullshit. No one knows for sure about attitudes. You are simply amplifying old tropes
In his book, Colonel Hans Von Luck praised American equipment.
At first, their lack of battle experience was telling. But, he continues, NO ONE learned faster! He tells how they learned and adapted quickly. Faster than the Brits, and became deadly almost overnight.
His words go against what's presented in this video.
Likewise, Von Mantueffle (sp?) had high praise for American troops during the Battle of the Bulge. Particularly in the opening days of it. He spoke of the fierce defense of a crossroads, and they were convinced there had to be 500 plus men holding it. When the Germans finally took it, they were shocked to find it was defended by less than 50 men. Many of them wounded, and still fighting. They treated these men with utmost Respect, and took them into their hospitals before sending them to the rear, and POW camps. He even wrote letters, and gave to them; telling others to treat these men with Kindness and Respect.
I don't know who's books this guy read, but the two I mentioned here tell a very different story of what German Officers thought of American Soldiers.
I believe the exact quote is this (speaking of the Americans): “Never have I seen troops in the field start out so green and turn around and become so lethal so fast.”
Erwin Rommel
@@Mark-cd2wf
I don't remember exactly what Rommel said. It's been awhile since I read about him. Colonel Von Luck's book is relatively fresh in my mind. He had high praise for American troops and their equipment.
It was a pretty neat trick for the Americans to mobilize such a large military so quickly and get it across an Atlantic Ocean to fight the Germans.
and across the Pacific Ocean to fight the Japanese.
@RespectMyAuthoritaah, the Americans were fighting Japanese and Germans at the same time. They were also building the great Alaskan hwy through Canada so they could get trucks, weapons and resources to the Soviets faster than going across the ocean. In the meantime Japan was attacking Alaska. It took the Americans 8 months to build that 1,500 miles hwy through that rough Canadian terrain. Many soldiers died too.
Marshall was a mastermind of WW2…the Army went from an Army smaller than Brazils to 89 divisions by 1944.
Uh…they started manufacturing enormous amounts of arms in 1938.
THEY Were NOT Being BOMBED .??a Limey But God Bless them !g
And yet no matter what the German Officers thought about us we kicked butt.
When the Japanese surrendered in Pearl Harbor my Grandpa was there… he was a Lt Col in the engineers developing explosives….there were huge piles of samurai swords on the docks from McArthurs requirement that they turn them in to break their wills….he grabbed 2 and brought them home.
Years later I found them and asked what they were, he told me, and then told me what the hand written notes attached to the scabbards said.
“Please if you can ever see your way to returning these to us, our family name is XXX….and we will be forever in your debt”….etc etc.
I asked him if he’d ever thought of returning them.
He said two words, “fk em.”
If you’d lived through those days like he did, you kinda have to understand the hate. He had friends who’d died in the South Pacific.
Different era…… and WE were different then also……but, I get it.
RIP Grandpa John.
Sure would have been nice if the pictures of the soldiers actually matched the words. One photo of Soviets wasn't Soviets. Two photos of the Brits were really Americans.
Yeah, on one photo the helmets were odd. Rumunians? Hungarians?
@@barneydenstad2148 seems to be late WWII German helmets, in a trial version. Later these helmets were used a standard piece in the GDR
In one photo the ' British ' have the helmets ok but their uniforms and boots are US and they have US automatics not British revolvers . The photo is obviously a joke.
@@barneydenstad2148 Rumunians
@@jamesguitar7384 I think the US Army started their war with the same helmet pattern as the British, but quickly replaced them.
was this written by A.I. or a 12 year old kid?
A twelve year old wehraboo
My dad was in the Army for 27 years. He told me that once the fighting starts, when bullets and bombs coming your way, chaos ensures. Rules of war doesn't exists. It's a matter of survival. You start having second thoughts on life. Ask any soldiers who been to war. Their personality is different before and after their deployment. An old saying goes that soldiers don't start wars, the politicians do. The poor soldiers just get caught up in the shit.
I was raised by a badass who was a tank commander serving under Patton.
The warrior spirit is still alive in me☠️
The most pertinent fact about German military opinion is they still lost.
Yep. I would imagine that the strongest military force in the world in the 1700’s, would say the same about their colonial American adversaries, in spite of the end result. It’s war; there are few rules to follow, save these: Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.
Well, it's also important to add that they were fighting a dozen different countries at once. And successfully did so for several straight years. Militarily they were absolutely unstoppable for years and it wasn't until Hitler made strategic blunders against the advice of his staff that things began to turn around for the allies. Had he not made the stupidly ego fueled choices he did on the Russian front, the western front would've been nigh impenetrable even with America helping, as they barely managed to break the line at Normandy when it was understaffed and lacking reinforcements.
@@aeringothyk5445 yeah, while I do agree with most of what you said, to say the Allies “barely broke through the lines” is a bit of an uncharitable take on the events that transpired June 6, 1944. Were the lines REALLY understaffed? Not for what AH was expecting.
Whether his ego was to blame, military sense, successful Allied subterfuge, or a combination of them, he was convinced that Pas-de-Calais was the Allied entry point. “Barely” does a GREAT disservice to the brave men who stormed the beaches, and Utah, Gold, and Sword were taken relatively easily. Juno, and Omaha suffered the greatest losses, and only one beach was considered to be evacuated: Omaha.
The Germans had reinforcements close enough to stall the Allies, but Adolph believed Normandy was a feint, and still believed, once he could be awakened, Calais was still the target. As he was the only one who could move the troops, and he deferred for far too long, no help came in time.
Hubris probably was indeed his downfall, but the Allies didn’t “barely” succeed that day.
Edit: also, even if he hadn’t opened up the Western front, Stalin eventually would have. AH made that move a bit too early tactically, but guess he really needed that oil for his war machine.
I had the honor of speaking with many American veterans …… about the battles in the European front … fighting was pretty much a job but after the Malmedy massacre it became a crusade , the rules and attitude really changed .
U yupü uhh8
The eastern front was basically the same, except that the malmedy massacre was a daily occurence
@@alexg3911 That's because the Soviets were bad at war and simply threw lives into the meat grinder. Stalin himself admitted that American Lend-Lease saved them from collapsing in the war. It’s important to remember that the Soviet Union was actually an Axis power for a significant portion of the war.
On 1939 September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland (an Allied power) as an ally of Nazi Germany (an Axis power), forced the sudden and complete collapse of Poland’s entire defensive system when the Polish were previously maintaining a stable withdrawal into Romania, and massacred tens of thousands of innocent Polish in the Katyn Massacre (as well as hundreds of thousands more in other massacres) while deporting millions more.
On 1939 November 30, the Soviet Union invaded neutral Finland to start the Winter War and steal eastern Karelia, Petsamo, Salla, Kuusamo, and four islands in the Gulf of Finland.
On 1940 June 15, the Soviet Union invaded the three neutral Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, then colonized them and left significant Russian populations that remain loyal to Putin today.
Over the next few years, the Soviet Union consistently and purposely undermined Europe’s sovereign governments, many of whom represented Allied powers (most notably Poland), to justify its invasions of Europe’s Allied powers, marking its own behavior as that of an Axis power.
On 1944 November 7, the Soviet Union supported the Ili Rebellion against the Republic of China (one of the Big Four Allies, a founding member of the United Nations, and one of the five original veto-wielding permanent members of the United Nations Security Council), who were working with the Americans and British to defend India and liberate Burma while holding the lines against a Japanese invasion that started in 1937.
Contrast the Soviet Union’s Axis behavior with the behavior of America, Britain, China, Australia, etc. Aside from having an Axis Civil War with Nazi Germany, which happened while also continuously undermining, invading, subjugating, and oppressing Allied powers, what else makes the Soviet Union an Allied power?
The Soviet Union was actually an Axis power for a significant portion of the war and continued to act as one when it was nominally “allied” with the Allied powers.
My dad was in Germany when the war ended. He said out of all the peoples he met in his two year long time in war he admired the Germans the most.
45 years ago I asked a German soldier who fought in Monte Cassino against the allies, about his opponents: French foreign legion fought poorly, retreated early, whereas the polish exile army fought tenaciously, brave and were the most respected foes.
Essentially correct synopsis of American performance in WW2. But, there were good reasons:
1) The American public did not favor the Europe First strategy since it was Japan that attacked us. Like all people, you want revenge against the one who starts it. Great efforts were made in the way od propaganda to get the US population to accept the Europe First policy, which directed the majority of resources to the Army for a long war for Europe. The reasons for this are controversial to this day.
2) The seeming lack of tenacity in the American Infantry in Europe is not mirrored in the absolute resolve among Marines in the Pacific. They were the same generation of American men, but fought a different war in a completely different way.
a) The US infantry soldier in Europe just wanted to get back home in one piece. He knew he had no stake in taking European soil and he did not buy into the idea that America would be next on Hitlers agenda. Americans had little desire to die for France, Belgium, and certainly not for Germany.
b) The Marines didn't want to die for Iwo Jima or Okinawa either, but they fought for Pearl Harbor. The same is true for the US Army in the New Guinea and Phillipines campaigns. An argument can be made that the Marines were more tenacious in the island hopping battles because thay had no avenue of retreat once they landed. Surrender was not an option because of the barbaric treatment that would definitely occur if captured. So, the Marines most often did not give quarter. Dozens of interviews confirm this scenario, while interviews with European vets have a completely different view on facing the Germans. There was no sharing coffee and cigarettes with prisoners on Iwo.
3) America did indeed have the resources to fight two high intensity wars at the same time. The fact that the US could supply their allies as well made German post-war commentators bitter. Some of that is relected in the writings of officers in their after action reports as to whay they lost against an inferior army (US). But the use of resources and its abundance are the major factors in winning a modern mechanised war. There are no more 300 Spartans when 5,000 rounds of HE is in play. Using those resources wisely is what America did, becausae the public would NEVER have supported the losses otherwise.
Along with the negative views of American soldiers are numerous others that are less nuanced. These recognise the modern tactic employed by US commanders in obliterating German defenses before moving infantry into the kill zone.
If it were not so, why did almost all German post war accounts mention the barely concealed envy for the overwhelming materiel of the Americans?
Few American commanders wished to send men into a meatgrinder like the Soviets did (they were motivated by homeland defense), and with war reporrtes near the front lines in numbers not allowed by any other country, no commander wanted his name associated with an American slaughter. Perhaps the lone exception was the Battle of the Heurtegen Forest, which was deemed not even necessary and was poorly coordinated.
In the end, victory in western Europe was decided by Logistics - the American specialty. Same in the Pacific, but with higher troop casualties per division by percentage.
4) The Soviets - by far - did most of the fighting and dying. 4 out of every 5 German killed in battle in WW2 were killed by Russians. About 7,000,000 Russian soldiers were killed compared to 440,000 Americans in both Europe and the Pacific. Another 11,000,000 Russian civilians died vs almost no American civilians. I think the count is in the hundreds from Japanese imprisonment and the initial attack on Pearl.
Contrary to some stories, the Russian soldier was not fighting for Communism, but for his home, wife, and children. He didn't fight because there was a political officer pointing a gun at him. He fought because his farm and land had been destroyed and he wanted revenge.
Revenge is the greatest motivator of all. Thus, the Germans fought like demons to avoid capture by the Russian at all costs.
The American philosophy was, it's isn't the job of an American soldier to die for his country but to make the other bastard dies for his.
The Australians at El Alamein deserve a mention..their contribution I heard saved the battle when they sacrificed their battery stopping a flanking movement by a large German mechanised force with tanks...Basically they bought us three hours to redeploy. They where shattered....brave guys.
"No dumb, son of a bitch, ever won a war, by dying for his country. You let the other guy die for his!" - General George S. Patton
I worked with a guy who was a boy in Germany during WW2.
He said his parents absolutely hated Montgomery, because every time they heard his name on the radio it meant bad news.
Yes, ever since Alam el Halfa in summer 1942. Montgomery always won from that moment on.
A bridge too far
@@ae747sp5
Market Garden still took 100 km of German held ground. The Germans retreated and lost Eindhoven and Nijmegen etc.
Montgomery had next to no input in Arnhem itself. Arnhem was planned and executed completely by the air and airborne commanders and forces, not Montgomery.
@@lyndoncmp5751 u must be British.
@@ae747sp5
You must not be British and brought up on American Hollywood crap.
Some other little things, great and small:
- Soviet soldiers were not afraid to engage in hand to hand combat;
- German soldiers were very well trained, but for a more modern type of warfare, relying more on mobility and technology, they did not like hand to hand combat (especially against the Red Army);
- as the war progressed, US artillery became a much deadlier and precise weapon of war, the Time on Target tactics, which allowed multiple batteries to saturate given coordinates with artillery shells awed the later German soldiers, who were not as well trained or hardened because of attrition (especially during the Battle of the Bulge);
- I believe it's from the same battle that the Germans based their judgement of US soldiers upon: after flanking and surrounding large units of green US infantry, who rather surrendered than fight to the death, the Germans thought US soldiers didn't really have the heart to fight - that was before they met seasoned veteran troops of course (like the 82nd and 101st Airborne Division);
I'd also like to point out that the Russians would kill their own soldiers if they did anything but move forward. That might make people seem more tenacious than they really are.
The hand to hand combat thing can also be applied on a much larger scale. If you take the battle of Stalingrad as an example, the German style of fighting was not at all suited for urban warfare. They would have had a much greater chance of succeeding if they surrounded they city and sieged it down like they did with most other soviet cities rather than actually going in and fighting, since the USSR was WAY more capable of fighting a war of attrition than Germany was
@@alexg3911 You mean how they tried that at Leningrad, unsuccessfully for over 900 days
Not all fighting in Stalingrad was in a ruined street scape, i.e. the constant battling over Mamayaev Hill (forgive my spelling), the rural outskirts, etc...explain the failure outside Moscow, in a rural open terrain landscape.
Also worth noting that even during the battle of Stalingrad, the Soviets successfully held on to the city at the same time as making all of the necessary arrangements for the successful Operation Uranus that encircled the German army in the city
@@LoveBagpipes I'm in no way discredit the soviet army or saying that it would be a definitive success if they sieged it down. Generally on the eastern front the germans usually encircled most cities they reached, often avoiding urban warfare.
The failure outside Moscow was due to many factors. The winter and stretched logistics being one. Combined with the fact that the soviet army was gaining it's footing after the disaster that was summer/fall 1941 led to what happened.
Again, my original point was not to discredit anyone, just stating that the soviets in general were better at urban warfare than the germans, as they didn't have the resources for battles of attrition like Stalingrad 😁
I read a book written from the Normandy invasion from the German perspective. One overwhelming lasting impression was that you never follow a retreating US combat force as all it will do is lead you into a lot more Americans and fire power. In short American broke sooner then the English but always return with more fire power and troops. Also do not leave anything behind as the Americans will likely get it working and use it against you later.
The American art of war really hasn't changed much from then either, throw everything at the enemy including the kitchen sink and if they somehow survive send in the troops to make them regret taking another breath. Excessive use of force is really their forte and by the time you see an American soldier you're probably fighting from inside a crater.
That my friend is doctrine
A Confederate general once said: "Get there firstest, with the mostest!'
There is no such thing as an excessive force when lives of your people are on the line.
@@Grim_Reaper_from_Hell I think a better description would be "overwhelming" force rather than "excessive", but agree that when the lives of your people are at stake, you hit your enemy so hard up front that even if they survive they will be crawling around at the bottom of craters.
@@georgecooksey8216 overwhelming is definitely a more appropriate term. In my mind excessive means unnecessary. I am a peaceful person and I am against using unnecessary force but I am not against overwhelming force.
Maybe someone needed to take into account why the individual soldier was there in the first place . Considering the US soldier was not fighting for his country but instead fighting for the guys next to him WHY would he take risks that might cost him his life when his Country was NOT technically at "risk" ?
My understanding was the US was there to "help" not "carry the load" .
If the European soldier was so great, why was the American soldier needed to get involved in a war that he neither started or had any reason for which to give his life . I put more stock in what my allies say about me as a soldier than what my enemy says.
When the Japanese declared war on America the Germans also declared war.
Suddenly stopping Britain collapsing became the most important thing for America.
If Britain had of collapsed then America would of had to fight the Japanese in the Pacific and the Germans in the Atlantic all alone and completely unprepared.
And they would of taken it in turns to fuck America until Florida fell off.
Americans value killing for their country, not dying for it.
@@gus2600 because the British asked them to join as soon as the war started just like they did in ww1
You don't win a war by dying.
I believe the Germans were probably the best soldiers, you kind of have to be if you are fighting three nations at once, their biggest flaw is fighting without knowing they’ve already lost. They lost numbers war, the gasoline war, and the winter war. Per battle, great army but extremely shortsighted command.
Three major nations, everyone else helped too, Canada, Australia many others… except Sweden, thanks for trading with the Nazis and supplying all the steel for their war machine, your contribution will never be forgotten
@@MrWadewynn Henry Ford sold trucks to the Nazis in WW2 and financed Hitler's war effort. Coca-Cola invented the Fanta orange drink for the German soldiers.
Prescott Bush, father of former President George H.W. Bush, also had bank dealings with the Nazis. Same with IBM. Just business, I suppose.
The Germany side consisted Germany Austria Italy Finland Yugoslavia Romania Slovakia Bulgaria Croatia Hungary
@@natashajones3206 it doesn’t sound like a lot of countries with war economies or resources. Good fighters I’m sure, but the Soviet Union alone had waves of soldiers to throw at them, and that’s basically how the USSR won the war before USA came in for clean up. The Soviet Union eventually trampled the nazis with sheer number
maybe you forgot the pacific front
My father fought in the Pacific during WWII as a US Marine. He was only 18 - 20 years old at the time. He said that the Japanese soldiers wanted to die for their country but US Marines, soldiers only wanted to live for theirs.
worked with a ww2 vet that was in Germany during the war.was one person not ashamed to tell his fights.said had perfect teeth when started and a German knocked them out with his rifle butt,reflex training saved his life when he put his rifle butt in ground and the German walked into his bayonet.said you unclipped them cost to much time in battle to pull them out of someones ribs,always get another later.was on a train going to battle and it stopped.british running train stopped for tea.took charge and got train back moving british soldiers had to run to get back on.british thought was like going to your job, Americans wanted nothing more than getting the f out of there and back home alive.told how he fired an air cooled 50 till the barrel drooped took gloves and changed barrel and went back firing,when that one drooped the first had cooled and straightened.said Patton brought him whiskey when he was on battle field in foxhole.got him talking and he wouldn't quit.
“No soldier ever won a war by dying for his country! He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country!” - General Patton
It's also important to remember that the British and Soviet Soldiers were fighting a war of survival. The Russian population was brutalized by the Germans and if they gave up their country would end. The British population was subjected to endless bombings and would have been subjugated eventually if Russia fell and the US didn't enter the war... The US was never in danger of invasion from German or Japan and, at worst, would have suffered some sanctions or blockades from those countries but the US can survive without imports, especially then. Tough to expect the same level of determination when those are the stakes.
absolutely wright dear friend! But please do not talk only about the bombing from the Germans cause this is showing low level knowledge about he history of WWII. The most inhuman and brutal bombings were achieved from the allies! Another fact of the behaviour of the Americans are the written reports from Bradley to Eisenhower trying to solve the problem with the constantly rapes of the French women from the American soldiers ! About 3000 rapes per day !!
What do you know about the war criminals PATTON , BRADLEY AND EISENHOWER ???
CHECK THE BOOK : OTHER LOSSES....
And you are talking about the German brutality ?? Have ever heard about the first years of the Barbarosa operation where the Russian Villagers Wellcome the Wehrmacht and even cooperate with them ?? You see dear friend we must check as the great Historian Liddel. HART book Title also ..THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL !!! Stay healthy and protected !
After 1940 the British were no longer fighting for survival because the Germans were not capable of invading the UK.
Except the British held the Germans at bay and started beating them BEFORE either the USSR and USA were even in the war.
@@lyndoncmp5751 that’s a bit of a stretch. Britain held out valiantly and were still fighting in North Africa but they weren’t “beating” Germany. The tide really didn’t start turning against Germany until 1943 when they lost in Stalingrad and the COMBINED allied forces beat them in North Africa.
Without Germany turning their attention to the Soviets and the US joining Britain would have lost eventually. There was never a scenario where Japan or German attacked (in any sort of scale) mainland United States. And that was the main point of the original comment. American soldiers were fighting the war in other parts of the world “for” other people. Tough to expect them to fight with the same level of determination as someone fighting to stop the death and destruction of their own homes. Yet the US managed. Also beat Japan, practically, by themselves.
@@Christiand2821
Britain defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain in summer/autumn 1940 then defeated the German Kriegsmarine surface fleet in the Battle of the Atlantic in spring 1941. The Kriegsmarine were never able to challenge the Royal Navy after that.
WW2 was never just a land battle. The RAF was the equal of the Luftwaffe and the Royal Navy was superior to the Kriegsmarine.
Germany/European Axis never had a major war altering victory over Britain after the Battle of France in June 1940. Failed in the Battle of Britain. Failed in the Battle of the Atlantic. Failed in North Africa and Mediterranean.
The US did not practically defeat Japan by itself. The British Commonwealth and China were also fighting the Japanese. More Imperial Japanese Army forces were NOT fighting the Americans than were. Biggest Japanese land defeat up to mid 1944 was against British Commonwealth forces in Burma at Kohima/Imphal. The campaign in China also tied down much of the Japanese Army.
My Grandad, Fred Brown from Birmingham, was a gunner in north Africa. A bricklayer by trade. Nice to hear the Nazis feared his gunning. My other grandfather helped design the de Havilland Mosquito, of which, if I recall correctly, Göring said, if I had 1 Mosquito for every 10 of my bombers the war would be one next week. High praise indeed. God bless you, both my pops.
My dad fought in WW-2 in the pacific theater never would talk about it until just before he died. I remember him him screaming at night when I was young. He could not ware a mask for his sleep apnea he said he kept walking up thinking a Japanese soldier was trying to kill him he was in the 1st marine division 1943 to 1944 and served till 1947
This video is fantastically simplistic.
German POWs in American captivity were said to be especially bitter about the US artillery, calling it a rich man's way to fight. I've read, over the decades, that while the German soldiers were well trained and motivated, they didn't do all that well if their leaders were taken out. Whereas the Americans did well at improvisation and thinking on their feet in leaderless or chaotic situations. Imagine how bitter the Germans would have been had they gotten the B-29 treatment.
RAF Bomber Command obliterate German cities at night
The germans are cry babies. If they had the weapons and ammo, they would do the same AND did until the unprepared, but superior foes got it together and killed the swine using their own tactics.
The line about Americans having a lack of physical endurance made me think of Easy Company and all those runs up and down Currahee. Then again, Easy was the best of the best, which was why they were always in the front of the fighting.
“Excessive fire” LOL. Yup, that’s what we call firepower.
I'm surprised the Germans wouldn't have more respect for the American airmen who got up everyday, flew at great risk into downtown Germany in broad daylight, suffered unspeakable losses, never got turned around once by German defenses, and bombed every major city in Germany into a smoldering pile of rubble. That would have impressed me.
Bruh the Americans legit started fighting Germany in Europe around 44, took them and the British 3 years to create a front in the west. And when they did Germany was already 1/4th of it’s formal self. We were successful in ww2 due to being away in North America and having endless resources because no American factories could be bombed and such. Germany fought against a Communist, imperialist and capitalist empire for 6 years. The Soviets sacrifice 1/3 of their nation and the British withstood months of bombs on their homeland. You think they would respect the Americans compared to those other armies? LOLOL
@@luckymetigaming Are you illiterate? When did they say that the Germans should have greater respect for them over the the other armies like the Brits and Russian? Pretty sure they meant more, as in comparison to the amount of respect given in the video.(Even though I think this video is garbage) Also what’s with that shit ass essay you wrote having nothing to do with the original comment? LOLOL(see, if I type that, I too can seem intellectually superior)
@@luckymetigaming does it matter they lost
@@luckymetigaming "Bruh the Americans legit started fighting Germany in Europe around 44, took them and the British 3 years to create a front in the west. "
The Americans were fighting the Germans in Africa by 1942. They were fighting the Germans on the European mainland by September 1943.
@@luckymetigamingIgnorant. Probably never read a history book.
It could be said that, resources, such as cigarettes', medical care, bullets, jeeps, C-47s, fighter planes, clean water, liberty ships, artillery, warships, oil, resupply companies, industrial flexibility, all help win a war. But , leadership, taking care of your men, by far the Australians, New Zealanders and the Americans took better care of their troops. Cannon fodder is a European, Asian, old world practice. Still is in China, Russia.
Didn't work in vietnam, afghanistan or iraq though did it?
@@olivercromwell3575 They still took better care of their troops, leadership, wellll, that involved more of their political leadership plus the death merchants still made a killing. Plus they provided the other side with a lot of surplus, unfixable equipment to bog them down for the future. Oliver Cromwell was a religious *sshole, change your "I'm ashamed of my real name" tag.
@@kennethbolton951 They still lost and I don't see much political leadership on The War On Terror.
Leaving the enemy with guns is a bad thing- it is hardly bogging them down in the future.
Aghanis were shooting Americans with Lee Enfields from 100 years ago- it hardly bogged them down.
Oliver Cromwell won. He might have been a God Fearing Man but he started the creation of the greatest empire the world will ever see.
The US will always be 2nd in the history of greatest empires- the French won your independence for you and then you never won a war on your own.
I'm quite proud of my real name- my ancestor was a Captain in Cromwells first Troop of Horse. He helped create western democracy.
@@olivercromwell3575 Cromwell was butchering religious fanatic, cruel and stupid along with his followers, and in the end he lost, accomplishing nothing note worthy. Comparing Enfields to helicopters, vehicles and com systems and their reparability is a joke and if that was all they had to use they would still be running their country on dope, blackmail and corruption. Oh, that's Russia right now. Your "greatest" empire was run on the resources , slave labor, soldiers and greed properties of all the "uncommon" wealth of the people and countries they exploited along with the Great Britains Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish, that did most of the ugly fighting for you. Who, by the way, Cromwells protestants butchered and oppressed in droves. Two world wars trashed the "Greatest Empire" and the U.S, Australians, Canadians, Indians and New Zealanders saved what was left of your sorry asses and by happenstance you are lucky you aren't speaking German along with your Nazi abdicated x King who represents the "upper management" attitude to all the soldiers who were supposed to die rather than think. Even the Italians had brave soldiers, just rotten top rank leadership.
You argue like cannon fodder of the information war.
The view on Americans reminds me of the line from Hellboy.
"I'm not a very good shot, but the Samaritan here fires really big bullets."
I believe it was Max Hastings who commented that had the Wehrmacht faced the USMC the war would have ended a year earlier. The valor of the USMC in the Pacific had no equal - distance, terrain, isolation temperature - Churchill said it best 'The hun is either at your feet or at your neck.'
"Pride Goeth Before a Fall!' ..... The Germans underestimated 3 Powerful Military War Machines and in the end got Crushed!
As an older German, I can definitely say that all German veterans I know have never been impressed by the military performance of the US military. But the German soldiers were very impressed by the people that the USA sent into the war. When you are suddenly confronted with such easy-going, humane types who keep saying, we will defeat you Germans anyway? And to prove it they have it all in immeasurable numbers, what do you do when it sucks on your own side, the blood and soil side?
"Hey man c'mon over and be a farmer in Louisiana till this all blows over, you guys are gonna lose anyway!" good sales pitch!
I had an Army buddy who was a war historian, said german soldiers were clearly superior in every way during WW2
@@rob1399 Thank you. You Americans still have your hearts in the right place. No, Farmer isn't working. I could probably grow ball bearings or screws very well...
Es gibt viele Deutsche in den Great Plains. Meine Großeltern sprechen zu Hause noch Deutsch
My grandfather was a WWII vet as well, he said the main consensus among US troops was that the Japanese were far more fierce than facing Germans troops. The Japanese did not believe in surrender and had to be fought to the last man most of the time, at the end, when they realized they were losing, they started surrendering. By contrast, Germans surrendered to American troops four times as much as the other way around.
A USMC quote via the Fat Electrician...."If you aren't cheating, you're not trying."
I knew and talked to people who fought on allied side on both fronts. In the east massive wave after wave of men. On western front: "we sat in deckchairs sipping beer listening to cannons pounding the Germans for two or three days. Than advanced. If there was one machine gun nest left we withdrew and cannons pouded them for another day or two. Than we advanced through countryside where hardly a mouse survived. Whatever Germans thought of yanks, I know where I would prefere to be.
Interesting perspectives. Thanks for sharing.
Around 2:10 mark No soldiers were more adapt at night fighting than the Soviets! I'll bet the Marine Corps and the US Army and fellow Allies would give the Japanese a similar ranking!
Interesting assessment of the allied forces from the losers. To recap: in their opinion, the Germans had the best soldiers, officers, and battle tactics while the Russians were tenacious and patriotic, lacked resources and had poor tactics. The English had great soldiers but stupid leaders. They had the best artillery but very naive battle tactics, while the Americans had proficient, but uninspired soldiers. The American’s greatest asset was unlimited resources. So, the takeaway from this is you can have the best soldiers, the best officers, the best tactics, but you will still lose badly if your opponent has unlimited access to bombs, missles, ammunition, and equipment. So, in the final analysis, the Germans were dumbasses for fighting a war on multiple fronts against multiple opponents who had unlimited military resources. There is a lesson here.
My dad was a tech sargent at the battle of the bulge.Worked with Hopi Indians(wind talkers)Said they were the best basketball players hed ever seen.They all got bronze stars for running radio wires to the front.Wish i still had the picture.
There was a lot left out of this compilation. It was the first use by the western allies of combined arms attack. The German commenters left out British and American air power which was really the game changer. The Germans had no answer to the p-51 mustang and by the time they had a few jet planes it was too late. The German commenters talked about only tactical things and not strategic aspects of their enemies. From a strategic aspect the British and Americans was unbeatable. The deception of where the allies would land on d-day was brilliant. They may not have thought the Americans were brave, but the Americans often attacked where the Germans least expected. The British and Americans relied heavily on air power which had a lot to do with their relatively low casualty rate compared to the Russians. As for the Russians, their soldiers may have been more willing to die and fight til the last, this tactic worked but using this tactic in both WW1 and WW2 took huge melon scoops out of Russias population. In the current war in Ukraine their tactics of using meat waves of men into attacks and winning through attrition isn’t working quite as well because Russia doesn’t have the population they used to have. Treating their soldiers as expendable pawns may be Russias undoing this time around.
Well to begin with Overlord is a british operation, not US, to continue, there ends the grand strategy of the allies. The Yanks unbetable in strategy?? XD best joke this year so far. Germans were light years away from usa in strategy. You guys charged with artillery and planes in every battle. You crashed against the german defences in Itally over and over again, your airborne performed like crap in Sicilly and in market garden, you were defeated in Hurtgen forest cause you kept charging the german line of bunkers. You were played like a fiddle in Kasserine and you never saw what was comming in the Ardennes. Literally, literally only D Day came out perfectly, the rest was unlimited resources and pushing forward lol. Where the hell do you see the epic unbeatable strategy of the US army? XD you got like 2 exmples in the whole conflict. German strategist were light years away from Patton and that war criminal idiot was the only cpable yank lol.
You tried little one, keep trying. One day you may have something real to be proud of. For now, you only got Hollywood great stories 😂
The Russians had little choice but to attack when ordered, or they would have been shot by the NKVD "Security" battalions attached to all regular formations.
The FW-190 and later model BF-109s were more than capable of matching the P-51. Germany was just running out of experienced pilots and their industry was being suppressed.
You kind of passed the buck to the American side and its allies, as for Russia in relation to the war in Ukraine, you are kind of wrong.
You don't know the "concept of human wave", in this war both Ukraine and Russia use small groups in battles, even in more big offenses you see a not large number, you can see this clatically in videos.
Many are surprised by the Russians being killed, obviously the Western and Ukrainian media will show only the Ukrainian victories.
What they don't show is that many military convoys are not hit, as small groups of Russians manage to achieve their objectives. I've seen several videos of Russian tanks resisting attack, sometimes 2 or even 3 hits, and that's why they keep attacking.
When you see videos of Russians being attacked, it's because a drone sees them in real time and marks them to be attacked with all kinds of weapons possible, or they are attacked by drones at all.
Go on pro-Russian channels and you'll see the same thing happening with the Ukrainians, drones and new weapons have changed wars.
@@originalkk882 Don't fall for this invention, there are many stereotypes that many people want to say to this day, due to lack of knowledge or laziness in studying if it's true or not.
When Germany invaded Russia it was not supported by the superiority of the German army, either in tactics, weapons or military performance, in the beginning many officers ordered the retreat often unnecessary, and many Russians surrendered, of course it did not please Stalin and the military elite.
The measures they took were punishment of officers who caused these withdrawals, who could even be escaped, the only ones who were escaped for refusing to fight were those of the "penal battalion", it was practiced by many countries and before the 2nd world war.
But even soldiers who refused orders or any other transgression in the army were court-martialed, which happened to any army.
Obviously, many Russians died, but without that they would have been at the mercy of the Nazis, the French narrowly lost the war, the British only reason they narrowly lost the war was the same fate as the French because they retreated to their island, which they almost swam away.
“Never before have I seen such lions led by such lambs.” Is a quote that’s said about the British soldiers in WW1 who were led by upper class officers who were thought to be incompetent by the Germans.
Not really. The saying is much older. The origin of the phrase pre-dates the First World War. Plutarch (a Roman) wrote that "an army of deer commanded by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions commanded by a deer" and there's an ancient Arabian proverb "An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep".
The phrase "Lions commanded by donkeys" appears in Anna Stoddart's 1906 book The Life of Isabella Bird set during the Crimean War in a scene where Isabella, en route for America in 1854, passes a troopship taking soldiers out to Balaclava.
The phrase appeared in The Times when writing of French soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.
Attributed by historian Alan Clark to WWI German General Ludendorff there's no evidence he said it and he certainly wasn't the origin.
You ever wondered why National Trust has so many country houses? Because of the 'lambs' dying for their country, leaving a huge lack of heirs even though their ancestors had likely fought and died for this country since 1066.
Odd that, seeing as upper class officers literally lead from the front and died with their men.
Except that it was not. The phrase was used by a British historian with an agenda. He later admitted that he just made up the attribution (presumably having heard it at school).
British Officers were not that bad. In fact they were pretty good, especially toward the end of the WWi when they demonstrated that they had adapted better than anyone. There were a few stubborn cavalry types who were slow to adapt to the industrial nature of war but were soon sorted out.
they did not take into account that the American soldiers were not fighting on American soil and figured that they just wanted to go home. My cousin Vito Bertoldo earned a congressional metal of Honor in
France for defending 2 command posts from German troops and tanks with a machine gun and a M1 Garand .
Medal*
There is a scene and it is not to say there was only this particular scene there are and were many scenes from the motion picture"Patton" that are worthy of a special mention however in a pretty early scene whereby there is a German soldier who is addressing Field Marshal Rommel after Rommel shows up at a POW holding facility a short while after the battle at Kasserine Pass. The very question addressed in the "Stories Matter" question was addressed in this referred-to scene, perhaps it can be suggested that the reality was there was not enough information to judge as it was the efforts of American Forces at Kassereine. "War Correspondent" Ernie Pyle wrote a piece that was read, it may be useful to look it up. To Paraphrase General Omar Bradley's portrayal by Karl Malden, Gen.Bradley reportedly said, "For the Americans to take a licking like that the first time at bat against the Germans, "he paused, "what we need is the best tank commander we've got" the aide asked a probing inquiry of General Bradley "Patton"? General Bradley said "Maybe," The aide to General Bradley said "God Help Us"
Yeah, say that about Audie Murphy please
Having served in Afghanistan (u.s army) and having alot of exposure to other nations, it's kinda true that they are more professional on average. You don't see alot of NCOs or officers flipping shit and acting like a ass or over reacting like you do with our guys. Of course there are some really good units in the U.S and some bad European ones but on average our European counter parts tend to be more reserved and calculated.
Another thing is looking at grunts in general their guys seemed a little older and mature where as our guys where young highschool grads (I was myself at the time). At the end of the day our fighting force is still the greatest in the world but its primarily due to our incredible logistics and our manufacturing capabilities. When fielding such a massive army you can expect to have some units that are a little under motivated and dicked up. In those smaller nations they have to pay special attention to individual troop skill and maturity.
You see this same trend when comparing the Marines and Army, even though there are marine units that are dicked up on average they are going to be a little more prepared with typically better leadership. I was lucky to have served in the 10th mountain which I guess is one of the better army units although I don't know that for sure that's the only unit I was with.
We are kinda like the modern day Rome, they dominated their sphere through logistics and their ability to manufacture fortifications and equipment.
The British are known for being fierce,tough and extremely professional
Lol or maybe your not realizing that the us didn’t want to fight the war and unanimously voted against until congress decided the matter, even though Americans were dying by German u boats Americans thought why be on them… when Americai “they did it with rock and roll” entered Europe they were only imagining pushing through and exacting revenge on Japan and the European theater was a coalition force comprised of overwhelmingly engineers. The devils they never wanted to meet were in Japan. Even now America doesn’t fight wars for itself only for others… Arabia basically paid us to attack Iraq and subdue probably like a 20 year contract or something and Iraq knows it they’re not even mad at us, if someone want to really piss us off they can and all of our differences that we have in times of shock disappears, and with what you call logistics favoring literally a nation ego centric individualist with as many armalites we want to stockpile legally and other weapons systems American boys would love no other thing than to congregate in the millions arm and play cat and mouse with what punitive national government, that dared tread on us
There was a podcast with some special forces guys and I forget who they were, but they said the army guys were hit and miss. But Marines were always solid.
Great commentary.....Kuddos to you for your candor and service
@@shroud1390 I think you're talking about Jocko and Tim Kennedy.
"Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics"
My stepfather fought in Patton's army in WWII. He did not hate the Germans. He thought they were good soldiers. He said they sometimes shot prisoners, but only when circumstances demanded it. Usually German prisoners were treated very well. He once traded a half pint of whisky for a German wound badge with one of the prisoners. He said the Germans preferred to surrender to Americans, because they knew they would get better treatment. He said his outfit was one of the first to enter Frankfurt. He and his buddies looted a n abandoned mansion. He took a collection of old German gold and silver coins. A few days later, he was hit by a jeep and suffered a broken leg. When he got out of the hospital, someone had stolen the stuff he had stolen 🙂 C'est la vie!
Most germans knew the Americans treated their prisoners well. In the west they did not want to be captured by the French.