A History Teacher Reacts | "D-Day (Part 2)" by Extra Credits

[Music] hey YouTube welcome back to another history teacher axe video with mr. Teri's I continued my search for historical knowledge here on the Internet alright today we are doing part two of d-day so we're gonna check this out see what we can learn about d-day here add new commentary here from history teachers perspective as I try to do and try to do with this channel in general so if you like the original video the extra history people are awesome in support of this channel go down below and click on the link that'll be in the description and give them a like in the follower alright let's go ahead and continue so we got d-day is part two title this chapter is the secret war so I'm really hoping to hear more about the deception that and another kind of like behind the scenes strategies that were part of d-day and that was a really fun part to learn and would be fun to teach as well just to get students to understand more about the preparation that goes into large-scale military activities such as d-day because the d-day invasion is the largest amphibious invasion in history and what it would require of course would be unprecedented in history so let's go and check this out thousands of soldiers all planning on a trip to the Normandy beaches in the early summer the job of the British security service mi5 was to make sure that on d-day the Germans were looking the other way if they failed tens of thousands of men would die and the fate of you know Western Front award definitely hang about this episode is sponsored by wargaming new players can download World of Tanks and use the code Neptune for free goodies link in the description in August 1942 desperate to score a success in the face of an unending string of military setbacks and defeats the Allies carried out a daring raid on the French port of dip but the Germans were ready for them fortified and prepared for the attack it was an unmitigated disaster leaving almost 4,000 canadians dead on the beaches this catastrophe convinced everybody that when the real invasion of France came the Germans must not be prepared for it or d-day would mean destruction this was of course going to be a little tricky by 90 days after d-day the US Army alone plans to have 1.2 million men with all of their equipment in France yeah they you know so much gets gets talked about with how devastating that first wave of the invasion was which it was thousands people died in that first day but the Allies were in the end incredibly successful as you saw it landing over a million troops there over the next about month which was critical so yeah I mean overall even with that death it was strategically aid a big success you can't just hide that under a bit of camouflage netting and so was born operation fortitude the most ambitious deception plan in military history the operation wouldn't pretend that there was to be no invasion to power would be impossible instead their goal would be to fool the Germans about how many were coming when they would land and where they would land army groups were positioned around Britain to confuse the Germans the British 4th army was stationed in Scotland supposedly preparing to attack Norway General George Patton became the proud commander of the 1st US Army Group stationed on the English coast opposite the pas de Calais the closest crossing to France the British 4th and the u.s. 1st were somewhat unusual armies in that there were no actual people in them hold on um interesting side note about Patton his patent was in front-line duty before this he got in trouble before this for this confrontation he had with this soldier that had PTSD and was trying to get this guy to fight and he ended up like smacking him up and and he got in trouble for it right for how they were he was treating his soldiers so they sidelined him and that was really something that upset him because it seemed like that originally he would not be a part of the d-day invasion something he was I think he felt he was born to be a part of it's in his legacy and his family heritage with Patton and but they do they although they keep sidelines they do use him as a diversion Hitler knows who he is and heard the headlines about him being sidelined and thought that there was no way that the Americans were gonna put potentially their biggest general out of commission on the eve potentially of a massive thing so wherever they stationed him the Germans are gonna fix their eye to that because again they don't believe they think it's it's a lie it's a diversion to get them the Germans did not take Patton seriously where he's stationed but it ended up being kind of brilliant for what they're gonna use Patton for which is as a decoy so let's let them tell the story though and see what they got they were completely fake made-up non-existent the Allies had no real soldiers to spare they were all needed in France for the actual invasion so to get the Germans to fall for this massive Bluff the film industry was called in they created illusion an entire dummy army wooden aircraft inflatable tanks 250 fake landing craft to fake Corps headquarters were invented pouring out a constant stream of radio drivel at one point King George the sixth even made an official inspection visit solemnly inspecting row after row of blow up tanks and real troops who had been bused in for the day so yeah they got these these prop companies whatever that worked for Hollywood work in the work in the industry a movie industry and got them to build fake stuff that looked super realistic go ahead and find the video of it it looks realistic from afar and especially from aerial footage and stuff like that from photography that the Germans would have used it looked very real plus they had this sport good word that patent is there so it looks like this massive armies is assembling there and especially they use it to think that the invasion will be a Calais which is also where Hitler thought it would be so it just it's set up a perfect diversion for sure all while the daily newsreel broadcast this inspection to the world George even managed to look thoroughly impressed and because you might as well go big or go home this inflatable first US Army was presented not just as a threat but as the threat the primary invasion force to be launched at the pas-de-calais the Germans already considered this to be the most likely destination for the Allied attack now the Allies just needed to make sure that the Germans continued to believe that and so was born mi5 20 committee so called for the XX Roman numerals double-cross double-cross fed the Germans a constant stream of highly credible Intel a combination of utter rubbish and brilliant information delivered just too late to be useful back in 1939 the British had turned a German agent into a double agent he was pretty useless but he had told mi5 everything they needed to know about how the German secret service communicated with their agents the 20 committee used this information to create an entire network of double agents by d-day Germany's entire network of spies in Britain was owned by the xx Committee one agent was a Catalan code named Garbo Garbo created a completely fictitious network of 27 agents who bombarded the German Embassy in Madrid with messages presenting and utterly convincing and utterly false picture the real attack they said would come in the pas-de-calais any other perceived invasions such as Normandy whatever those were faints if you guns are shouting over there just relax it's just the neighbors again go back to the SS turbot was good at his job so good in fact that the Germans awarded with the Iron Cross for his invaluable as well he's a you did such a good job there whoredom iron cross while he's a double agent was that even if they fooled the Germans before then heard of that guy once the Allies landed the deception would be over all German military strength in France would be concentrated on Normandy and the AU would then no doubt be driven back into the sea so a series of new operations were concocted to convince the Germans that other invasions would follow the first all along the coast of France secrecy was critical to help the invading forces a complete photographic map of all of the beaches was needed the RAF and usaaf ran hundreds of photographic missions but they needed more so the public were asked to send in all of their holiday Beach photos then the toymaker Chad Valley was commissioned to take this Intel and make a vast map of the operational area in jigsaw puzzle for easy mobility the jigsaw map delivered by two men in two pieces neither of them knew which was the real one and once the delivery was complete neither was allowed to leave headquarters until d-day was over forces were they talked about in the first video but they went on an information lockdown before d-day four weeks before because I mean they didn't know exactly when it would be but they you know didn't want anyone to give out any information about anything so troops weren't allowed to write letters home for a long time it was a total information lockdown even though the troops didn't know when d-day the d-day invasion would be either it was basically a day of kind of thing so they just didn't want any piece of information at all of any kind to get out assess of about security they arranged for 30 members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force to dress in civilian clothes and visit pubs close to where the British commandos were staying their job to flirt with the men and try to get them to spill some information about their mission to everybody is amazement and delight the commandos kept quiet mi5 still worried that the news was out though and that the Germans would be ready and waiting back in 1942 the crossword in the Daily Telegraph newspaper had included a clue answered by the word Dieppe just one day before the Dieppe raid had taken place worrisome and now on May 2nd in the same crossword section came the clue one of the US and the answer was Utah the code name for one of the beaches the Americans were to land on then on the 22nd of May came the answer Omaha another beach and then later mulberry and overlord and Neptune all words for various d-day operations finally mi5 descended in a fury upon Leonard Dawe the schoolmaster who wrote these cross words turns out that it was all just an extraordinary series of coincidences but the big question remained consol this deception and secrecy worked and how would the Allies know if it had they needed to be able to read German communications to be sure the Germans used an extraordinarily complex encoding system enigma the codes were changed daily and there were a hundred and fifty nine mil like that movie imitation game that goes it goes over the indict mo code check that out if you haven't be a million million possible permutations German messages should have been impossible to read but the British thought that they could crack the code they assembled a team of brilliant mathematicians like Alan Turing at Bletchley Park to do it then the Allies had a lucky break in May of 1941 a British ship forced a German u-boat to the surface the Germans abandoned their sinking craft but in the final moment the British sailors managed the board and capture the most unimaginable treasure a completely intact code machine and codebooks soon and for much of the rest of the war the British were routinely reading German messages one estimate has suggested that the intelligence gained from this find may have shortened the war by more than two years yeah heard of that too and and a lot of lives for sure it was an incredible breakthrough it was through that intelligence that the Allies learned that the 20 committee had been stunningly successful when the balloon finally went up every key German commander greeted the news of operations in Normandy as an invasion but not the invasion critical German focus men and materiel remained on the pas-de-calais even after d-day confusing slowing and weakening the German response it was little short of a miracle and so d-day began for the British and Canadian Forces the British beaches were called gold and sword and the Canadian beach Juneau Churchill had insisted on proper names rather than silly code names saying that no mother wanted to hear that her son had given his life at the bunny hug landing true the British parachute drop despite massive confusion achieved most objectives in the face of incredible odds 700 men and a complete glider train of artillery were supposed to be sent to capture a critical German battery but when all of the equipment and most of the men were lost in the landing the 150 remaining soldiers armed only with rifles and Sten guns took the battery nonetheless it's 7:25 a.m. at sword beach mine clearing tanks thrashed the sand sappers run beside them to disable mines and frequently [ __ ] don't want that job jeez a link to enemy fire along the way then come tanks and flamethrowers throwing themselves at the German defenses on the dunes and only then come the landing craft to release their cargoes of men in the chaos the schedule collapses in only half an hour the beach has become a tangle of men machinery twisted wreckage a chaos of dead dying and living the air is filled with the roar of gunfire every moment is a drama of comedies tragedies and moments of heroism but despite the cost the landing at sword was remarkably successful by 9:00 p.m. many units were off the beaches and moving inland at Juno Canadian losses were heavier but they soon broke through the coastal defenses as did the British at gold the landing plan had worked amazingly well considering almost everywhere the German coast lines had been rolled up and the Allies had complete control of the air I'm back today kind of thing I think I'd heard that per capita more Canadians actually died in this than America Americans I wasn't I'm not for sure on that but I remember hearing that I'll have to look more into that the Luftwaffe was nowhere to be seen now was the time to strike hard and fast into the interior to exploit the Germans shock and seize the vital objectives including the major town of come there was a period of calm as men brewed up to recover from the initial assault and then they moved inland to link up with the airborne units unfortunately the beach heads behind them were a massive traffic jam the roads were chaos and their armored support was still fighting their way through that traffic to reach them and the Germans continued to fight hard key strong points resisted and the British and Canadian Infantry's advanced at 6:00 p.m. a unit of the Kings Shropshire light infantry came under heavy fire three miles short of calm and dug in for the night with a little armored support pressing the attack and capturing the town was not an option that night men lay across a 60-mile stretch with their weapons peering into a darkness lit by flares tracer and shells d-day had been a remarkable success but as elite German divisions approached the fight for Normandy was about to begin and it would be harder than any could imagine this the d-day has to be successful it has to work but doesn't work and they're not able to land what they need it's they can't they can't get through to into mainland Europe they can't do it it has to be a success and until it makes sense but we go to every possible length that they could it has to work that but they weren't sure it would work I'm I said this in the first video some interesting you could look at is Dwight Eisenhower's letter he had prepared to the to the press and - for a speech or a speech prepared that he had ready and just to pull out if the invasion hadn't been successful right and and saying that it didn't work and but I mean and they wouldn't give up but it would have been a it really would have set things back and maybe second-guess them for trying it in general now one thing that's happening of course is the the fight in the east as well going on which was part of the deal that they were making with Stalin to get to get help Stalin said you know he wouldn't help unless and he couldn't help if if the Allies didn't make a Western invasion which is why they are trying this and trying to such an extent but again this idea of having to invade mainland Europe when Germany has seen so much success up to this point I was a very challenging task and but it is it is successful due to again a strategic just masterminds behind this I mean it surely is incredible they were able to accomplish so anyway I'm interested to see now more about what's gonna happen because yeah I mean you get the initial invasion there but there's still a lot more because you know the Germans are going to regroup and are gonna make their counter-attack so this is only a first phase right yeah you can land them but you still have to push and make a push so is that gonna be possible because that's a different set of challenges in itself all right well yeah I loved it I loved they put in the Patton's inflatable army that's one of my favorite stories out there look up some of the footage because there's some great video footage if you have this like line of Tanks and then obviously do you just see it like rise up and start moving because there's these soldiers underneath that are carrying it it's really just funny you know someone like picking up an inflatable tank and carrying it like themselves it's really entertaining to look at but it's it is impressive though that it not just that happen but it seems that the Germans did kind of take the bait on it which allowed them loud the Allies to not see the full defense that the Germans could have had because they thought it might be a Callay because of some of these things that weren't quite sure completely there all right if you like the original video again make sure you go down to the description give the folks over at extra credits here a like and subscribe because they're awesome over there thank you for supporting this channel if you have not subbed and enabled those notifications love to have you around in our community here also if you'd like to support the channel as well you may join the patreon group that we have which starts at just $1 a month which supports the channel also gives you some benefits like voting in polls for videos that get on this channel as well as discord benefits and again if you haven't shot and if you've not joined the discord make sure you go down below we got over 4100 people right now that are members of that that are ready and eager to talk about any historical topic that you have out there Thanks thanks to everybody - that has come to the live premiers and watched and given super chat donations those have been awesome and really really appreciate it but first and foremost I just love that you're here and sharing this experience with me all right with that we'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 45,056

Keywords: react, history

Id: al-NI6cdO9E

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 29 2019