- 14 hours ago
Army historian Peter Knight joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about World War II. What is the timeline of World War II? Who, exactly, were the ‘Ghost Army’ in World War II? How effective were German U-Boats in WW2? What is the Blitzkrieg? And what was the ‘bat bomb’ project in WW2? Answers to these questions and many more await on WIRED Revolution Support.Credits:Director: Lisandro Perez-ReyDirector of Photography: Charlie JordanEditor: Paul Tael; Richard TrammellExpert: Dr. Peter KnightLine Producer: Jamie RasmussenAssociate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon WhiteProduction Manager: Peter BrunetteProduction Coordinator: Rhyan LarkCasting Producer: Nick SawyerCamera Operator: Paola Esquivel-OliverosSound Mixer: Sean PaulsenPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Stella ShortinoSupervising Editor: Eduardo AraujoAdditional Editor: Sam DiVitoAssistant Editor: Justin Symonds
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TechTranscript
00:00PPPooPooMan42 asks,
00:03How did the Allies in World War II decipher German enigma?
00:06As a former military intelligence officer myself,
00:09the story of breaking the enigma codes is fascinating to me.
00:13I'm Peter Knight from the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
00:16Let's answer your questions from the internet.
00:18This is World War II Support.
00:25AceofSpade629 asks,
00:26What is the best statistic that puts the scale of World War II into perspective?
00:31One statistic that really stands out is the death toll.
00:35Upwards of 85 million people, including military and civilians, perish.
00:40There were 100 million combatants from 50 nations.
00:44In terms of gross domestic product spending,
00:47the United States spent between 35 and 40 percent annually.
00:51Germany, 50 percent.
00:54Here is a question from Quora.
00:55What is the timeline of World War II?
00:58Most historians and scholars agree the proximate start of the Second World War
01:03is Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939.
01:07Because at that point, Hitler's invasion causes Great Britain and France
01:12to declare war on Germany because they have guaranteed the security of Poland.
01:17Our next point will come in 1941,
01:20when the Soviet Union is invaded by Hitler.
01:23Russia had initially signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler,
01:27and they agreed to divide Poland between them when Hitler invaded in September.
01:32However, Hitler turns the tables on Joseph Stalin and invades the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.
01:39This brings us to our third turning point, the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943.
01:44This is a battle for control of the Atlantic sea lanes that enable the United States to send war materiel across the Atlantic
01:53to the aid of Russia and Britain.
01:57Unless they can secure those sea lanes, that equipment will be taken out,
02:02and the German U-boats run roughshod, sinking millions of tons of Allied shipping.
02:07Our next point would be the D-Day landings on June 6th, 1944.
02:12The Allies establish a beachhead and a foothold on the continent of Europe
02:15and open up a crucial second front against Hitler's Nazi forces.
02:20Our next major point are the two atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945.
02:27Emperor Hirohito knows it's only a matter of time,
02:30and he gives a radio address.
02:32This is the first time that many of his subjects in Japan have ever heard his voice,
02:37and he asks them to endure the unendurable
02:39and submit to the unconditional surrender to the Allied powers.
02:43Which brings us to our final point, September 2nd, 1945.
02:47The Japanese sign the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay,
02:52and World War II is brought to an end.
02:55HHT Lucas asks,
02:56Y'all ever think about how the Nazis were on meth like all the time?
03:00Nazi soldiers did indeed get methamphetamines distributed to them.
03:06The idea was that these very powerful drugs would allow them to stay awake for longer periods of time,
03:12would enhance their mental alertness, their aggressiveness,
03:15essentially enable them to succeed and win in combat.
03:19But there were some significant side effects, extreme exhaustion and hallucinations.
03:25That being said, it wasn't just the troops that were getting drugs.
03:28Hitler received all kinds of opioid injections, oxycodone, cocaine,
03:34that were used to help him cope and get through his day.
03:38On the Allied side, GIs and other Allied troops got what were called GO pills,
03:44Bezedrine, which was an amphetamine, not a meth amphetamine.
03:48So these are less powerful and less potent than the pills the Germans were taking.
03:53And most of the time, Bezedrine was used by Allied pilots that were on these very long bombing run missions just to stay awake.
04:02Nobody Grotesque asks,
04:04What are some World War II movies that are the most historically accurate that one can learn from?
04:08The Steven Spielberg film, Saving Private Ryan,
04:11its opening sequence of the troop landings on Omaha Beach on D-Day,
04:16are some of the most realistic depictions I've ever seen.
04:19And they're based largely on soldier accounts.
04:22There's a moment where you'll see soldiers disembarking from the landing craft,
04:26and they'll immediately be submerged in the water.
04:28That's very true to life, because as the landing craft approached the beaches,
04:33some of the parts of the beach had received some early naval gunfire,
04:36and there were craters, and they're stepping off into water that is over their heads.
04:41So some of these soldiers who are immediately immersed in the water and sinking like a stone,
04:46they're panicking, and they're getting shot at at the same time.
04:49And some of these unfortunate soldiers will drown in the process.
04:53Another movie is The Longest Day, based on the book by Cornelius Ryan,
04:57that shows a lot of the D-Day activities.
05:00For example, the use of dummy paratroopers,
05:02these little straw men that they dressed up to look like soldiers,
05:06and they'd throw them out of the aircraft to confuse the German forces
05:09as to where the airborne divisions were going to land.
05:13The German term for the dummy was gumipooping,
05:16and you hear them talking about this over the radio,
05:18and they're just ranting about it.
05:20It's gumipooping!
05:21It's somewhat humorous in that context.
05:24Kyle Lindsay has a question.
05:26Ever heard of the Ghost Army in World War II?
05:29It's one of those wild true tales that sounds like a Hollywood script,
05:32but it actually happened.
05:33The name of the unit is the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops Unit.
05:37This unit's mission is to create the illusion of military forces in different places
05:44through the use of inflatable tanks, inflatable troop-carrying ships,
05:49fake weaponry, fake radio transmission traffic,
05:53all for the purpose of deceiving the Axis powers
05:57into thinking that certain troop formations might be larger than they actually were,
06:01or in the case of the preparation for Operation Overlord, D-Day,
06:06creating an entire fictional first U.S. Army group allegedly led by General George S. Patton
06:13that would make a landing at the Pas-de-Calais as opposed to Normandy
06:16and selling the Germans on that fake plan.
06:20Annie Lowson writes,
06:22I still don't understand, why would Japan bomb Pearl Harbor?
06:26One of the biggest reasons why Japan decides that they have to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet
06:32is because of an oil embargo President Franklin Roosevelt imposed upon Japan.
06:37Pearl Harbor is located on the island of Oahu.
06:41Admiral Isaruku Yamamoto, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy,
06:45believes that they must strike and cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet
06:49in order to allow Japan the freedom to embark on their military campaigns
06:54to conquer the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya over here
06:58to contain the natural resources, oil and rubber,
07:02that the Japanese absolutely need to sustain their war machine
07:05and their industrial economy.
07:07If we look at where Japan is,
07:10the Philippine Islands is between the Japanese home islands
07:13and those desired targets.
07:15The United States controls the Philippine Islands,
07:19and they will be attacked within nine hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
07:23The Japanese will attack Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.
07:29They will succeed in crippling several of the battleships,
07:31especially the USS Arizona,
07:33that will carry over 2,000 soldiers to their death.
07:36And it does do a lot to set back the U.S. Pacific Fleet,
07:40but it does not succeed in destroying it.
07:43Japan missed our oil and fuel refineries
07:46and our big dry dock facilities
07:48that will enable us to continue to fuel and supply our fleet
07:53and repair it and recover from the loss.
07:55At Matchless Mine asks,
07:58When did Hitler declare war on the U.S.?
08:00Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States on December 11, 1941,
08:05a mere four days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
08:09Sipwell asks,
08:10How effective were German U-boats in World War II?
08:13From the start in 1939 easily through most of 1942,
08:18German U-boats successfully sank over 6 million tons of Allied shipping.
08:23You're sinking Allied shipping faster than the Allies can build the ships.
08:29Some of those sinkings occur within sight of the U.S. coastline.
08:33The biggest single factor that turns the tables on the German U-boats
08:39is the cracking of the German Enigma Codes.
08:42The cracking of the Enigma Codes allows the Allies better success
08:46in locating the U-boats and destroying them.
08:49This is huge because with the German U-boat threat negated,
08:53this enables the Allied forces to move enough men and materiel,
08:59planes, vehicles, weapons over to England
09:02to be able to stage for the invasion of Western Europe.
09:07P.P. Poo-Poo Man 42 asks,
09:09How did the Allies in World War II decipher German Enigma
09:13if there were millions of possibilities for letters
09:16and it was being changed every day?
09:18I absolutely love this question.
09:20As a former military intelligence officer myself,
09:22the story of breaking the Enigma Codes is fascinating to me.
09:26The Allies are able to crack the German Enigma
09:29due to a number of different factors.
09:32Polish cryptanalysts and mathematicians were able to reconstruct the German Enigma machine
09:38and smuggle a version of it out of Poland just as the Germans were invading in September 1939.
09:45That copy of Enigma was given to the British.
09:48The British then take it and put it in the hands of their cryptanalysts working out of Bletchley Park.
09:54And those cryptanalysts partner with American mathematicians and cryptanalysts,
09:59and one in particular by the name of Alan Turing.
10:02He is able to invent an electromechanical machine that is able to compute the different combinations
10:10that the Enigma machine can generate.
10:13And then they're able to crack the Enigma Codes because of the human frailties of the system.
10:18Those who would be creating Enigma traffic would use certain phrases the same way each day.
10:25And looking for those same phrases or messages or plain text, which we refer to as CRIBS,
10:31helped the code breakers be able to determine what the Enigma machine settings would be.
10:37Most experts will estimate the cracking of Enigma alone
10:41shortened the war anywhere between two and four years.
10:44Here's a question from World War II subreddit.
10:47How far back does the chain of events go to lead to World War II?
10:51World War II has its roots in the First World War.
10:55In the Treaty of Versailles, Germany is forced to pay crippling reparations
10:59to demilitarize and accept full responsibility for the First World War.
11:04This, combined with the Great Depression, absolutely cripples the German economy.
11:08And the German people are looking for a hope, a way out of this.
11:12Adolf Hitler provides that by promising to remilitarize Germany,
11:17to revive the German economy and its war machine for the purposes of territorial expansion.
11:24In the meantime, Japan embarks upon imperial expansion, invading China in 1931.
11:30These are the chain of events that set things in motion.
11:34A question from the AskHistorians subreddit is,
11:37were there any nations totally unaffected by World War II?
11:40The short answer to that question is no,
11:42although there are 14 nations that maintained neutrality status
11:48throughout the entirety of the Second World War.
11:51Among those 14 were nations like Sweden, Switzerland, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ireland,
11:58small little states like Liechtenstein and the Vatican City.
12:03And they would help either side as it suited their purposes.
12:06This map, although it's in Russian, certainly shows you the battle lines and movements of large troop
12:13formations across the globe over the course of the Second World War.
12:17And as you can see, the war leaves basically no part of the planet unscathed.
12:21Here you can see a lot of the action in Europe.
12:24You look in the Pacific, it's a much more spread out wide area, different island chains.
12:29But then India, of course, is part of the British Empire.
12:32And so Britain is going to fight to protect that.
12:35And the China-Burma-India area is referred to as a China-Burma-India theater,
12:40where the American commander, Vinegar Joe Stilwell,
12:43works to advance allied interests and defeat Japanese forces in this area.
12:48So as you can see, between the European theater of operations and the Pacific theater of operations,
12:54this is truly a global conflict.
12:59Rippendank Bonks wants to know,
13:00what was the point of the invasion of Normandy from a tactical standpoint?
13:04The invasion of Normandy from a tactical standpoint probably doesn't make a lot of sense to the average viewer
13:10when you have to fight up over the beach against elevated German positions in concrete pillboxes.
13:17It seems like an impossible task.
13:18But you have to remember, you can't just airdrop armored divisions from planes onto the ground in Europe.
13:25There are German armored forces already on the continent.
13:28They have to create a beachhead.
13:30The Normandy beachhead is the ideal place for the Allies to strike
13:35because it is the weakest point of the Atlantic Wall defenses.
13:40And it has the best beachfront area to make their amphibious assault onto the continent of Europe.
13:46This picture is taken just after D-Day.
13:49Now they're going to begin to pump their logistics up onto the European continent.
13:54The balloons that you see are designed to be an impediment to enemy aircraft.
13:59They have cables there that would entangle the aircraft
14:02if they were to try to fly a bombing run or a strafing run along the beach.
14:07Doug Says Howdy03 asks,
14:10What is your favorite war tactic that was used or developed in World War II?
14:14One of my favorites is hedgerow busting.
14:17As Allied forces were bogged down in the hedgerow country in Normandy,
14:21the hedgerows are these large earthen embankments that mark the property boundaries of farmers' fields.
14:28The Germans used these earthen berms as defensive lines that they would hide behind
14:33and emplace their crew-served weapons and wreak havoc on any Allied troops that were coming across the fields.
14:40The Allies had to find a way to quickly get across the hedgerow country.
14:45They take some of these steel beams that were used to make the hedgehogs,
14:49the tetrahedron-shaped obstacles that you see on the landing beaches on D-Day.
14:54They cut some of those with acetylene torches and welded them to the front of their Sherman tanks.
15:00And then they used that protrusion to bust through the earthen berm of the hedgerow.
15:05And this was highly effective so they could spearhead with the tanks and then the infantry could follow on through.
15:12And that was what they used to help bust out of the hedgerow country,
15:15where they would launch Operation Cobra and Patton's Third Army would start to sweep across the European continent.
15:22Ironside asks,
15:24The name Axis Powers is actually coined by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini,
15:37who referred to his relationship to Nazi Germany as forming an axis around which the rest of the European nations would rally around.
15:46The term allies is actually a holdover from World War I because that is how the Triple Entente powers,
15:53Russia, Great Britain, France, referred to themselves.
15:56The allies are united out of necessity to keep one another in the war,
16:01to be able to sustain their ability to wage the war.
16:05For the Axis Powers, their shared interest is territorial expansion,
16:09but each of them are not necessarily so invested in helping one another unless it's really necessary.
16:18You're not going to find German troops fighting in the Pacific, for example.
16:21And the level of cooperation of the political leadership is much greater on the allied side than you will find on the Axis side.
16:30Mussolini often becomes more of a puppet of Hitler than anything else.
16:35NFT Crypto God asks,
16:37What is the Blitzkrieg?
16:39Blitzkrieg is a term that Western journalists like to apply to the German approach to offensive operations.
16:48The better term is Begungskrieg, or maneuver warfare.
16:52And the Germans use this tactic, which involves speed and the combination of infantry, artillery, armor,
17:01and close air support to attack the enemy in their weakest positions to allow them to bypass enemy strong points
17:09and then surround the enemy and destroy them.
17:12German forces could cover hundreds of miles of territory in a matter of a few hours.
17:17Opponents could not respond with a coherent defense in time.
17:21In a matter of weeks, they will overrun France and force the British forces to evacuate from the continent of Europe through Dunkirk.
17:29Denise Violaplay asks,
17:31Wow, I never knew about the World War II Bat Bomb Project.
17:35In the New Mexico desert, where the Manhattan Project is underway at Los Alamos trying to develop the atomic bomb,
17:41there was also the idea that we could use bats to deliver incendiary devices against Japanese villages
17:51whose buildings were made largely of paper and wood.
17:55You would freeze the bats and then place the incendiary napalm-containing devices to the chests of the bats
18:02and place them in canisters that could then be parachuted down onto enemy soil.
18:08And then the bats, once they were released from their canisters,
18:12would take refuge in the various Japanese building structures,
18:17and then the incendiary device would go off.
18:20They tested this in New Mexico, and they ended up burning down other structures rather unintentionally.
18:27And I think they thought better of the idea because once you release the bats, you can't get them to stop.
18:33After that, it's really out of your hands.
18:36Tripster asks,
18:37Iwo Jima is certainly more significant than that.
18:46In 1945, the Allied forces have captured the Marianas Islands.
18:51Those islands will allow B-29 long-range bombers to range the Japanese home islands.
18:57Iwo Jima lies halfway between the Marianas Islands and the Japanese home islands.
19:03And the Japanese had an early warning radar system deployed on Iwo Jima
19:07that needed to be knocked out to enable those bombing runs from the Marianas to be successful.
19:12One of the most famous pictures in all of history is an Associated Press photo
19:17that captures U.S. Marines raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi,
19:22the highest elevation on the island of Iwo Jima.
19:25What's interesting about this is this is the second flag raising.
19:29There was an earlier flag raising,
19:31but then they had to continue fighting against Japanese that were still resisting.
19:36And still, the island of Iwo Jima was not completely secured until a couple of weeks later
19:42after five weeks of brutal fighting.
19:46Southside Tilly asked,
19:47please tell me about the Night Witches.
19:49The Night Witches were the 588 night bombing regiment of the Soviet Red Air Force.
19:55This was an all-female unit and does as many as 23,000 missions.
20:02And they used these little wooden biplanes.
20:04The speeds of these planes were so slow,
20:07German fighter planes were too fast to even try to maneuver against these more primitive planes.
20:14And these planes would basically throttle down their engines
20:18when they were about to drop their ordnance.
20:20And when they did so, they made this whooshing sound.
20:23And that's what made the Germans name these all-female pilot squadron
20:28the Nachthexen or Night Witches.
20:31Their leader was one of the first, actually the first, to receive a state funeral,
20:36having earned the status of hero of the Soviet Union.
20:39Her plane crashed in the Battle of Stalingrad.
20:42Here's a question from the Explain Like I'm 5 subreddit.
20:45Why is it Germany, Italy, and Japan allied, despite all believing themselves to be the superior races?
20:52The real reason why these countries ally together is shared interest in territorial expansion.
21:00For Germany, it's Hitler's concept of Lebensraum, living space, for the German peoples.
21:06And trying to unite those parts of Europe that are predominantly German.
21:11For Italy, it's expanding into Africa, namely Ethiopia.
21:15For Japan, the invasion of China in 1931 and expanding in through Manchuria.
21:21With regard to their superiority of their respective races,
21:25I think they all held that to themselves.
21:27And perhaps that was a bit of division between them as well,
21:32because they're never as close of an alliance as the Allies will be.
21:36Our next question is from Quora.
21:38Before GPS, how did soldiers in combat accurately know their location on the battlefield
21:44when they called in close air support?
21:46For soldiers to understand their location and a target's location,
21:50they have to use the good old-fashioned map and magnetic lensatic compass.
21:55I have one here. This is standard U.S. GI-issued magnetic compass.
22:00Soldiers would have to take a known point on the terrain,
22:04shoot an azimuth to it, and then do the same with some other points,
22:08and then basically triangulate their positions and confirm their position on the ground.
22:13By the way, just an interesting side note,
22:15as we're talking about things like the compass that are a part of a standard GI's equipment kit,
22:21the American GIs would often wear identification bracelets.
22:24They didn't have dog tags necessarily at that time.
22:27This particular soldier, Raymond Toynbee, served in the 36th Infantry Division in Italy.
22:33Okay, next question.
22:35Inner Game of Den the Men asks,
22:37What did Churchill actually do in World War II?
22:40Sir Winston Churchill is the Prime Minister of Great Britain,
22:43and his relationship with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt
22:46is absolutely essential to cementing Allied war strategy to allow the Allies to prevail.
22:53He was a hard drinker, an incessant smoker.
22:56He actually had a penchant for liking to walk around naked in his household,
23:01and he even did so at the White House when he was visiting there one time.
23:05His favorite outlet was painting.
23:07He actually had his own painting studio at his home in Chartwell.
23:11Winston Churchill is an inspiration to the British people.
23:15His people were able to look to him,
23:17and he provided them a beacon of hope on which to focus.
23:21In late 1940 and 1941, as the Germans are bombing London,
23:26Churchill is a steady, calm voice to the British people,
23:30telling them that we will continue to resist
23:33and that we will never surrender to Nazi tyranny.
23:36Here's another one from the Ask Historians subreddit.
23:39In the famous scene from the movie Der Untergang,
23:42and here they're actually referring to the movie Downfall,
23:45Hitler orders all of his generals to leave the room
23:48except Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, and Bergdorf.
23:51Who were they, and why were they different or more important?
23:55So the movie Downfall depicts the final days for Adolf Hitler
23:59as he's hunkered down in der Führerbunker in Berlin
24:02as the Soviet Red Army closes in on the German capital,
24:05and Hitler is forced to face the reality
24:08that his last-ditch efforts to defend the German capital
24:11are amounting to nothing.
24:13He dismisses most of the officers in the room
24:16and sticks only with his very close inner circle.
24:19Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of staff of the German high command.
24:24Alfred Jodl is the chief operations officer of the German Wehrmacht.
24:28Hans Krebs is the chief of staff for the German high headquarters,
24:32and Bergdorf is Hitler's adjutant general.
24:36This is his inner circle along with his propaganda minister,
24:40Joseph Goebbels, and they're the ones that remain in the room.
24:43He goes into this long tirade berating his generals,
24:46calling them cowards, but it's really just a raging rant
24:50after which he admits that the war is lost.
24:53That fateful meeting takes place on the 22nd of April, 1945,
24:57as the Red Army is closing in on Berlin,
24:59and the deterioration is just accelerating.
25:02Hitler is thinking in his own mind that he's a dead man,
25:06and now he's trying to figure out,
25:07well, if I'm going to die, I think I want to die on my own terms.
25:11He looks at what happens to Benito Mussolini,
25:14who is hung and his body left on display in Milan on April 28, 1945,
25:19to be humiliated and desecrated by Italian partisans in his country.
25:25He decides that it's better for him to take his own life,
25:28which he does.
25:29He takes a pistol and shoots himself in the head.
25:32He leaves instructions to take his body and burn it.
25:35However, when the Soviets take Berlin,
25:37they go into the Führerbunker,
25:39they actually find some dental remains,
25:42and they're able to positively identify Hitler
25:45from his dental records and confirm that he's dead,
25:48though they don't make that fact known to the rest of the world.
25:51Here's another one.
25:53What do you think was the turning point of World War II?
25:55One of the big turning points is Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union.
26:02He's banking on his ability, having overrun Western Europe,
26:05that he can conquer the Soviet Union before the British, French,
26:10and the Americans amass a force against him.
26:13The turning point comes at the Battle of Stalingrad.
26:16The entire German 6th Army is surrounded in Stalingrad and forced to surrender.
26:21220,000 German troops, 91,000 will survive to surrender to Soviet forces.
26:30At that point, Germany's momentum on the Eastern Front is done.
26:34They will now go on the defensive and will remain on the defensive
26:38for the duration of the war.
26:40Neil Brownfan69 asks, and I quote,
26:44U.S. education is dog s**t.
26:46Why we never talk about how we hit North Africa first in World War II.
26:50This is a matter of strategy.
26:52In 1942, the Americans are all for going immediately
26:56for the cross-channel invasion into Northern Europe.
26:59In order to facilitate a cross-channel invasion into Northern Europe,
27:03you have to have enough water transport
27:05to put your troops and all of your materiel on the ground.
27:10They did not have enough landing craft to be able to accomplish that feat.
27:15What they decided was the American troops have to commit somewhere
27:19so that they can get some combat experience on the ground
27:22because they haven't really fought since World War I.
27:25That is why we do the torch landings in 1942
27:29to land in North Africa and trap Rommel's army
27:33between the British 8th Army under Montgomery coming out of Egypt
27:36and the American forces coming in through Morocco and Algiers.
27:41Mike Miller wants to know,
27:42Patton was a great general,
27:44but do you think he would be good as the top general of an army?
27:47He was a little crazy, laugh out loud,
27:49which is what made him interesting.
27:51George S. Patton was certainly one of the most talented generals
27:54that the Americans had.
27:56He was a fighting general,
27:57tailor-made to command an armored division,
28:01an armored corps, and an army in combat.
28:04And he does all of those things in World War II.
28:07He was not the diplomat that Dwight Eisenhower was.
28:10I don't know that he would have been a great supreme commander
28:13in terms of working with the allied partners.
28:16Patton was very outspoken,
28:18very passionate,
28:19and very pragmatic,
28:21and also a bit of a prima donna
28:23when it came to ensuring the success of his own campaigns
28:26and getting his name in the headlines a bit.
28:29He had a bit of an ego there,
28:30but he had a dogged determination in combat.
28:35His exploits with the 3rd U.S. Army
28:38during the Battle of the Bulge,
28:39where he comes to the liberation of Bastogne,
28:42covering many miles in just under 72 hours
28:46and attacking the Germans,
28:47rescuing the 101st that was encircled there.
28:50It's one of the most tremendous feats of armed combat
28:53in American and world history.
28:56Mad Season 1994 asks,
28:58How much did the German population know
29:00about the concentration camps during World War II?
29:03How much did the Americans and other allies know?
29:06German knowledge of the concentration camps varies
29:09depending on their proximity to the camps
29:11and their involvement in the operations of the camps.
29:15While folks who lived in or near the concentration camps
29:18probably knew of them
29:20and had some idea of what was going on in there,
29:22whether or not they were aware of the methods
29:25of mass murder is up for debate.
29:27When did senior leaders like President Franklin Roosevelt
29:30find out about the camps?
29:32They have knowledge of the camps as early as 1942,
29:35and then they have knowledge of the Zyklon B gas chambers
29:38and the extermination method there in 1944.
29:42Senior leaders like Eisenhower and Patton
29:45actually make it a point to take the local German citizenry
29:48and make them walk through the camps
29:51such that Germany can never deny what was taking place there.
29:56The evidence of the Holocaust
29:57and the treatment of the Jewish prisoners is irrefutable.
30:01There are photographs,
30:03there is documented film footage of liberating these camps,
30:08seeing the emaciated bodies of the deceased
30:11and the emaciated bodies of those still living,
30:14and seeing some of these prisoners
30:15in striped pajama-type outfits.
30:19You just look at them and you can see
30:20that they have been starving.
30:22So for the American soldiers that are rolling up
30:25on these camps and liberating them,
30:27the shock effect is palpable.
30:29The Allied leadership is very adamant
30:31that this be recorded such that future generations
30:35could never dispute the fact.
30:38Petite Acorn asks,
30:40why was Eisenhower chosen over other more experienced generals
30:44as supreme Allied commander in Europe?
30:46Dwight David Eisenhower never commanded a large combat formation.
30:52People wonder,
30:53well, why would we choose this man
30:55as opposed to others who are much more seasoned,
30:57have more battlefield experience,
30:59or leading larger size units?
31:02Dwight Eisenhower was selected for this position
31:05by General George C. Marshall,
31:07the U.S. Army's chief of staff.
31:10In the years just prior to the outbreak of war
31:12for the United States,
31:13Eisenhower is instrumental in helping to craft the war plans
31:17and war strategy of the United States
31:19in the event that it were to enter the war.
31:22He had the personality and the diplomatic skills
31:25to be able to work with both politicians
31:27and his fellow general officers of the Allied Coalition.
31:31He began as the commander of American forces
31:35in the European theater of operations.
31:37He is appointed such in 1942,
31:39just ahead of Operation Torch,
31:41the landings in North Africa.
31:43A year later,
31:44he is named the supreme commander
31:45of the Allied Expeditionary Force
31:48that will make the cross-channel invasion into Europe.
31:51A question from Quora,
31:53was America's mainland bombed or attacked in World War II?
31:56The answer is yes.
31:57There was a Japanese sub that lobbed some shells
32:00against a fort in Oregon
32:02and against an oil field in Santa Barbara, California.
32:06And there were some 900 Fuku-90 balloons
32:10that Japan launched armed with incendiary explosive devices
32:14that were meant to explode on North American U.S. soil.
32:17About 100 of those actually made it to U.S. soil.
32:21I believe that there were six Americans
32:23and there were some women and children in that six
32:26that were killed in the vicinity of Bly, Oregon
32:29as a result of those balloons.
32:31But that was the extent of the damage.
32:33John Blackbird in 75 asks,
32:35Did the atom bomb really force surrender of Japan
32:38or would it have happened anyway?
32:39How many lives, if any, did the bomb save
32:41on the U.S. side and the Japanese side?
32:44You have to remember that the Japanese home islands
32:46had been firebombed in the months preceding the two atomic bombs.
32:51And still, Japan had not yet surrendered.
32:53The firebombing campaign,
32:54and especially the Tokyo firebombing alone,
32:57killed over 100,000 Japanese
33:00because it created such a firestorm
33:02that sucked up all the ambient oxygen
33:04and boiled the rivers.
33:05It just absolutely obliterated everything.
33:08The death toll and the destruction toll
33:11exceeded even the two atomic bombs.
33:14But still, Japanese resolve held firm.
33:17And so I think it was the shock effect
33:19of the atomic bombs being such a terrible
33:22and powerful weapon, plus the knowledge
33:25that the Soviet Union was going to enter the war now.
33:29That's what's going to break their back.
33:31The planned invasion of the Japanese home islands
33:33was referred to as Operation Downfall.
33:37Estimated casualties for the Allies were over 1 million.
33:41Estimated casualties for the Japanese population
33:44would be over 10 million.
33:46And so it made the decision for Harry Truman
33:49very pragmatic in that he authorized
33:52the dropping of both atomic bombs
33:53to avoid the horrific casualties
33:56that would come with an invasion
33:57of the Japanese home islands.
33:59So those are all the questions for today,
34:02and they were good ones.
34:03Thanks for watching.
34:04World War II support.
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