A Historian Reacts // THE FALKLANDS // Oversimplified

welcome back everyone to another reaction video and we are most definitely going to continue our uh look at kings and generals caesar and gaul in fact kings and generals is now subscribed to this channel so that's awesome thank you fantastic content kings and generals keep it up and we're going to push as many of our viewers in your direction as we possibly can because you deserve every subscriber and every view that you can possibly get so thank you for that but uh in the middle of doing that series i wanted to take some time to revisit over simplified so we're going to take a look at one of their mini war videos today which is only about seven minutes long and this is the one about the falklands this is the only one of uh the oversimplified videos i think that's about an event that i actually remember i was five years old when these events took place at least the ones about the war itself i vaguely remember a little bit about the falklands when they happened but by and large you know this wasn't something the united states was too involved in so i don't remember a whole lot being on tv about it but and i don't know a whole lot about it i know a little bit about these events but i mostly just want to react and kind of see what they have to say about it i think it'll be a lot of fun as always make sure you check out the original content creator we want to give them credit for it they will be getting the ad revenue from this video anyway but it's still important to support them as much as we can this just gives us an opportunity to talk about history and i'm always looking for those opportunities so let's dive into the falklands hi english mariner john strong hi anthony kerry fifth vice count of falkland i would very much like for you to go to chile and locate the wreck of a spanish treasure ship for me okay [Music] hey i found some islands [Music] the english were probably not the first to discover the falklands but they were the first to write it down they found it to be cold wet and miserable just like home i was just thinking that as soon as they said cold wet and miserable isn't that how people describe the uk so they're like yeah just like home uh here in northeast ohio it's cold wet and miserable too but we add snow to the mix most of the time but we are one of the least sunny places in america so everybody's cold wet and miserable here too they established a colony in 1765 unaware that the french had also discovered the islands and done the same a year earlier and for a while the two were unaware of each other's existence until presumably there was an awkward moment where they ran into each other and this is i mean 1765 we're talking right in the middle of the time where you're about to have the seven years war or you've already had the seven years war uh so these nations are already at war uh in large part over colonies in the western hemisphere so uh interesting to see how that connects to what's happening in north america then the spanish showed up and told the french that a couple hundred years earlier the pope drew a line on the line of democracy this belongs to portugal and all of this belongs to spain so the line of demarcation if you're not familiar with that was drawn by the pope and that's why uh brazil was primarily portuguese and pretty much everything else in south america ends up speaking spanish because of that line of demarcation brazil was the part that was east of that line and given to portugal and everything else was west and therefore given to spain and that the island was in spain's territory and they would like the french to hand over their settlement now since the two were good friends and spain was willing to pay in cash money the french obliged but since they were still a little bitter about the recent seven years war thing they made sure to warn the spanish not to let those dirty english on the other side of the island take over so spain went over to the english and explained pope line on map spain's island and the english said yeah right this is our island but the spanish had more guns so they kicked them off anyway but then england threatened to go to war so spain went to their friends in france and said hey it looks like stuff is about to go down you in on this and the french minister of war said yeah and we'll launch a full-scale invasion of england and party like it's 1066. but then king louis xv said one you're insane and two you're fired sorry spain we're not ready for a war right now one you're insane two you're fired partly like it's 1066 that was the year of the battle of hastings the norman invasion of england but man this is a such a consequential time in history this is when the american revolution is about to happen uh this is very soon before the french revolution which would be louis the 16th the next king yeah so spain had to give the english their settlement back saying it's still our island and the english said no it's our island then some colonists in north america got a bit rowdy so the english had to leave their settlement to go focus on that but they left behind a plaque that said this is totally still our island so the island was in spanish hands but then a french guy no not that one that one turned on the spanish oh yeah and captured king ferdinand vii and in response the spanish colonies in south america started vying for independence and if you uh are not familiar with all of that i did a series uh looking at uh the story of simon bolivar uh simone bolivar uh who is responsible for a lot of that so again very consequential time consequential time in history you've got the american revolution you've got what's happening with the falklands you've got the independence movements breaking out in northwest south america this is really a time when a lot of things are going down so spain had a little bit on its hands and also had to leave the islands and for a couple decades the islands were left uninhabited except for the penguins some fishermen and the gauchos which are basically like cowboys but cooler and spanisher a merchant from hamburg living in the now independent united provinces of the rio de la plata heard about the feral cattle roaming the falcons and thought it would be a good way to make some money so he got permission from both buenos aires and the british government to set up trade there as a private venture some american ships came down and began hunting whales and seals around the islands and vernae wasn't too happy about it so yeah so whale hunting's a big big deal at this time because this is before they've started drilling for oil in the ground you know that doesn't really happen until the later part of the 1800s in large part and so the primary source for oil for oil lamps for example is going to come from whale oil uh some so whale hunting is a big big part of the economy around the world at this time buenos aires for some military assistance in defending the islands but buenos aires said meh do it yourself gave him some weapons and appointed him governor of the islands so he seized the u.s ships and arrested their crews in response two things happened first america came down and said nice settlement you have there would be a shame if someone destroyed it and then they destroyed it so the united states under james monroe who's one of the earliest presidents of the united states he has what's come to be known as the monroe doctrine which is basically europe stay out of the western hemisphere stay out of the americas basically and so the united states foreign policy was we'll worry about what happens in north south america europe you worry about what happens in europe you have your place we have ours and so the us starts to get really involved in things like what's happening here second britain heard renee had been appointed governor meaning the united provinces actually now the argentine confederation were officially claiming the islands as theirs so britain showed up and said hey didn't you see our plaque and since they had more guns they kicked them off the island and the falklands remain firmly in british hands for the next century they officially became a crown colony in 1840 port stanley became the island's capital in 1845 the cattle hides from the island weren't worth much so they imported sheep from britain in 1851. two world wars came and went and all this time the argentinians never rescinded their claim over the islands now it's 1976 and after a couple civil wars a new brutal military dictatorship sponsored by the u.s fight against communism has taken control in argentina i like how glasses are sponsored by the us fight against communism uh you know often people that were pretty unsavory characters would get supported by the us government as long as they oppose the communists and if you had a country where communism is a threat to take over especially in the americas the us will support pretty much anybody who opposes that even if they're a horrible dictator themselves and by 1981 this guy was in power the economy had been struggling for a long time and gautieri had been unable to improve the situation now if you ever find yourself the brutal military leader of a struggling south american country and you start getting into hot water here's a bit of advice that has been tried and tested throughout the centuries start a war to distract everyone from their misery exactly uh anytime and it's not just fascist dictators who do this everybody does this you find something number one that'll distract the people from what's going on at home but also something that will unite the people against a foreign enemy and you can look at examples all throughout history of people doing just that uh it's it is it's a tried and true thing to do uh i just wouldn't recommend doing it against a major power in the world maybe pick on somebody a little smaller probably not the uk galtieri knew how popular he would be if he could finally take back argentina's last malvenus from the occupying british there had been proposals to cut british military spending and the ice patrol vessel hms endurance had been withdrawn from the area so the argentinians assumed the british may not even bother doing anything about the invasion after easily capturing the largely uninhabited south georgia island 600 argentine troops were sent to the falklands the small number of royal marines and other british forces stationed there put up a small amount of resistance but in the end had to surrender to the larger argentine force now depending on who's in charge in the uk you might be able to get away with this and you might even get the uk to say okay you know what fine the problem was that they decided to do this when the iron lady was in charge margaret thatcher and margaret thatcher and i don't know if it's because she was a woman and she really felt like she had to prove herself or this is just who she was but margaret thatcher was the wrong person to mess with in any situation especially when it came to combat crowds in argentina celebrated the news but they were wrong to assume the british would do nothing because the person in charge of the united kingdom at the time was this lady thatcher was a somewhat controversial prime minister but whether you loved her or hated her there was no denying that she was tough like metal iron for example she immediately declared an exclusion zone around the islands and organized for a task force of over 100 ships to set sail for the falklands the united nations expressed concern at the argentine invasion all south american nations apart from chile backed argentina and since the united states had propped up the argentine dictatorship reagan went to thatcher and said could you maybe just let them have the islands and thatcher said no okay okay here have some weapons fighting a war over 8 000 miles from home was a little okay here have some weapons and that was something reagan did in more than one occasion uh iran contra uh is a uh another example of that the contra rebels where again this is one of those situations down in central america i think it's nicaragua uh where you know you're fight giving you're supporting freedom fighters uh as long as they're opposing your natural enemies in communism logistical challenge for the british they requisitioned civilian cruise ships and containers and they used british owned ascension island as a forward base by the time they arrived at the falklands in may the argentine forces had had time to entrench themselves the first task for the british was to gain control of the seas which they did easily on the 2nd of may a british submarine sank an argentine cruiser the sinking was controversial as it occurred outside the british exclusion zone it was also the largest loss of life in a single incident during the war and i think i want to say they used exit set missiles to do this so this is one of the earliest examples you have of a submarine using a missile to sink a major surface vessel i'm pretty sure in fact i think we're going to look that up let's take a look real quick i was wrong it was actually the opposite it was the argentinians who were using exact missiles those are french missiles they used them on the hms sheffield so uh yeah it was a little off on that so good thing we looked it up let's continue and in response the argentine navy withdrew from the islands the next task for the british was to gain air superiority while the argentine air force controlled the skies they were able to inflict considerable damage on the royal navy below days after the sinking of the general belgrano two argentine super attendars carried out a raid on the hms sheffield and sync it with an exact missile for weeks the argentine air force would continue to carry out raids and inflict heavy casualties on the royal navy with british sea harriers doing their best to take out as many of the argentine aircraft as they could while the battle in the skies raged on san carlos was chosen as the best landing site for the british ground forces an sas raid took out argentine defenses on pebble island and the hms alacrity sailed through falkland sound to flush out any argentine supply ship the landings began on may 21st with argentine aircraft carrying out full-scale raids on the task force ships taking part in the landing damaging several and sinking a few but anti-aircraft cannons and sea harriers shot down many of the aircraft in what became a major turning point for air superiority and so this is really largely a air and naval war that's happening here not a lot of ground trip troops being used the beachhead was successfully formed then the ground troops began their movements out of san carlos across the north towards stanley and south toward the argentine stronghold at goose green in the following battles a clear trend emerged the argentine conscripts put up a good fight and with the rough muddy terrain the war was by no means easy for the british but with highly skilled royal marine commanders and parachute regiment troops the british would often find themselves taking on larger numbers of argentinian soldiers but would still come out victorious with minimal casualties the 14-hour long battle for goose green commenced on the night of may 28th the battle ended in a decisive british victory with over 900 argentinians surrendering then with 5000 reinforcements arriving from the 5th infantry brigade the british started preparing for their final assault on stanley in a series of hard-fought battles they took control of the hills and mountains surrounding the town as the argentine forces withdrew with british ships shelling their positions from offshore utterly surrounded on the 14th of june the argentinians surrendered and the war was over so yeah this was a pretty smart strategy by the british you establish naval and air superiority first you do that and you make sure that battle's won before you start putting the ground troops in and then you use highly skilled highly trained ground troops against what are essentially conscripts who don't have air superiority who don't have naval support and it's going to be a pretty easy win for you so i want to take a look real quick at what the casualties are like in this war and i don't know he may actually cover this but let's take a look at it uh you have 255 killed for the uk 775 wounded 649 killed and 1600 wounded on the argentine side so pretty low casualty counts i mean um you know that's what a half hour at the battle of gettysburg i mean but it wasn't low obviously for those families for every one of those 255 or 649 killed that's a family that's a family who's never the same and so for them the falklands war is the worst thing that ever happened or would happen so we can't look at those numbers and say ah no big deal wasn't that bad it was that bad to every one of those families the two-month-long war claimed hundreds of lives there we go and left the islands strewn with minefields that still pose a problem to this day argentina still claims the islands but in 2013 a referendum was held and the islanders voted 99.8 in favor of remaining british well then plus oil was just found near the islands so the british probably aren't going to give them up anytime soon so that was cool and a couple of times there i looked stuff up right before it was mentioned in the video but that's the first time i've ever seen that one so uh let's let's continue the conversation let me know your thoughts use the comment section below let's talk a little more about the falklands talk about what happened at any point in that history of what they just covered there a lot of fun we'll get to some of the other mini wars uh here in the near future and i've put a link in the description to all of my other reactions to oversimplified videos if you want to check those out some of them are longer some of them are shorter some of them are older videos some of them are newer thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 246,953

Keywords: oversimplified reaction, history reaction, reaction video, history guy gaming, historian reacts, oversimplified reaction mashup

Id: Ds6gOoQfbzc

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021