D-Day #2 - The Secret War - Extra History // Historian Reaction

welcome back everybody to another reaction video and as we dive into part two of extra history's d-day series i just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has been subscribing and commenting and liking the videos joining us on discord it's just really been exciting i started doing these reaction videos just a little over two months ago and already we just hit 33 000 subscribers this morning which officially moves this channel past my gaming channel which i've had for the last four years so as a way of saying thank you to that we're opening up another giveaway uh this time we're going to be giving away three copies either on audible or a hard copy through amazon of the biography of your choice a biography about any person living or dead any historic figure of any kind and we're going to give those away when we hit 50 000 subscribers and at the current rate that we're at that shouldn't take long we've been averaging about 1200 subscribers over the last week each day uh so we could do that in less than two weeks maybe even faster if you who are watching right now who haven't already subscribed do that right now as soon as we hit 50 000 subscribers we're gonna close out that giveaway and we will draw three names all you need to do is log in in the link in the description below with your youtube account and that'll sign you up for the giveaway and i'll randomly draw three names don't forget as always to like and subscribe if you hit that little notification bell next to the subscribe button you'll get a notification every time i post any new content to the channel of any kind whether that's reaction videos historic site videos or whatever else i might decide to do let's dive into part two of d-day this time we're talking about the secret war the south of england had become a vast military camp jam packed with hundreds of 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 so you remember if you saw yesterday's video we talked a lot about how even though this was an invasion of normandy there was so much more to this than just the invasion force there was the deception part of this there was the counterintelligence there there was the bombing campaign ahead of time uh there was all of the planning and preparation there was the weather forecasting that needed to be done uh there was technology that needed to be invented that didn't even exist yet and operation fortitude which was the deception campaign which worked brilliantly and was incredibly complex is just one small part of that [Music] 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 diep 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 so you know often the best teachers in life are our mistakes hopefully we learn from other people's mistakes and not our own but this was a perfect example of learning from your mistakes they learned a lot about what not to do we also had some beach landings in places like africa uh in sicily on the invasion of sicily in 1943 and all of these things as well as what was happening in the pacific with the island hopping these things taught us a lot especially about what not to do so that gave us plenty of time to really prepare and get our ducks in a row for d-day 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 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 that 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 fourth army was stationed in scotland supposedly preparing to attack norway general george patton became the proud commander of the first u.s army group stationed on the english coast opposite the pa de calais and so what we have is i think it's called fortitude north and fortitude south fortitude north they were actually trying to trick the germans into thinking that we were gonna be launching an invasion of norway from scotland with the british armies there and of course uh a big part of uh counterintelligence and deception is understanding your enemy and what what we understood about the enemy was that as far as american commanders went the germans considered george patton to be the biggest threat they considered him to be our top general and patton never commanded an army group he commanded an army several times but an army group which actually in this case was omar bradley was the army group commander over patton once they got into france uh army group commander has to deal with a lot more than just what's going on on the ground at that given moment so patton was really best suited for commanding an army uh that he could lead in the field and not having to deal with the politics and the logistics and all of that kind of stuff the closest crossing to france the british fourth and the us first were somewhat unusual armies in that there were no actual people in them 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 a brilliant illusion an entire dummy army wooden aircraft inflatable tanks 250 fake landing craft two fake core headquarters were invented pouring out a constant stream of radio drivel i think the i want to say edinburgh castle was the fortitude north headquarters and yeah i mean they had you shouldn't say there were no people in these armies because they did have a ton of people to create all of the fake radio traffic uh i mean just think about the the complexities of this deception they were issuing orders over radio traffic stuff they knew would be intercepted they planted uh stuff on bodies that they allowed to wash ashore in mainland europe that had some of the uh the top secret plans for things they were allowing all of this to happen they were they had turned agents in england as double agents and had them sending back false reports that they knew the germans would be able to then confirm with spy planes and things of that nature at one point king george vi even made an official inspection visit solemnly inspecting row after row of blow up tanks and real troops who had been bussed in for the day all while the daily news reel 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 u.s army was presented not just as a threat but as the threat the primary invasion force to be launched at the pod 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's 20 committee so called for the xx roman numerals double cross doublecross 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 so yeah i mean that's one of the keys too it's gotta be believable so you notice the key there they gave them fake stuff that couldn't be disproved but they also gave them real stuff but real stuff that by the time it came into german hands it couldn't really hurt us uh so you've got to make it believable and they they sold this perfectly to the germans 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 20 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 an utterly convincing and utterly false picture the real attack they said would come in the pa de calais any other perceived invasions such as i don't know normandy whatever those were faints they went so far as to create an entire fake spy network they even had the germans convinced that they had spies they didn't really have i mean that is incredible and you know i'm not i don't know enough about what the germans had going on i'm sure they had some very effective espionage going on as well but i can't think of anything that's anywhere close to this level that they had working for them on the other side if you hear any guns or shouting over there just relax it's just the neighbors again go back to bed garbo was good at his job so good in fact that the germans awarded him with the iron cross for his invaluable services and i should back up for a second because something he said there was key he talked about you know even if you see fighting and stuff happening yeah it's just it's just a diversion and that came in really important because when the normandy invasion started when we dropped the uh pair troops behind enemy lines when we started bombing them in the days leading up to it uh hitler intentionally would uh held back the panzer they had these reserves they were kind of back behind the lines that could have been sent in as a counter-attack to push them back off the beach and i know part of it was that they didn't want to wake hitler up in the morning when it happened and things like that but so many of the german high command were convinced that even when the attack started that it was a fake attack that they wouldn't allow necessary necessary reinforcements to go forward and that probably goes back to this deception the danger though was that even if they fooled the germans before the invasion once the allies landed the deception would be over all german military strength in france would be concentrated on normandy and the allies 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 form for easy mobility the jigsaw map was 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 [Laughter] imagine having to be one of those hey at least we didn't kill him right i mean that's what other cultures would have done in in previous centuries would be just to kill somebody to keep them from really revealing that information but at least we let these guys live right um so yeah a big part of the intelligence that we needed for d-day was even things like they needed to know whether or not the sand on the beaches at normandy could support tanks or whether the tanks would get stuck you know we had to know the consistency of the sand at the beaches we had to know all kinds of things on the ground that you couldn't even get just from aerial photographs the british armed forces were obsessive 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's amazement and delight the commandos kept quiet nice 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 dia parade 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 talking about i never knew that then on the 22nd of may came the answer omaha another beach and then later mulberry and overlord and neptune all code words for various d-day operations finally mi5 descended in a fury upon leonard dawe the schoolmaster who wrote these crosswords turns out that it was all just an extraordinary series of coincidences but the big question remained had all of 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 159 million 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 to board and capture the most unimaginable treasure a completely intact code machine and code books so this is the story that's told fictionally in the movie u571 where they show it as an american crew um and this was the i think that the german uh naval enigma machine which was a little different and of course the story even the story that's told in the movie imitation game about bletchley park leaves out a key part of this which was that the most significant advances on breaking the enigma code initially came from the polish the polish had done this all the way back at the beginning of the war and the british built on a lot of the work that the poles had already done so it wasn't as if they were starting from scratch and it wasn't as if they did it completely on their own the polish had a big part to play in making this possible 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 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 material remained on the pod 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 juno 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 landings 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 stand guns took the battery nonetheless it's 7 25 am at sword beach mine clearing tanks thrash the sand sappers run beside them to disable mines and obstacles frequently falling 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 cargos 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 and you know this is important that they're covering this because uh and i don't know if it's like this in the rest of the world but at least as an american pretty much when we talk about d-day we talk about omaha beach uh and that was one of five beaches now you know for the americans omaha was by far the place of greatest death compared to utah but we forget there were three other beaches there were three other really important pieces of this operation and all five of them needed to be successful and we've got to give due not only to the british and the canadians but to all of the other nationalities who were landing on these beaches 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 pm many units were off the beaches and moving inland at juneau 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 coastlines had been rolled up and the allies had complete control of the air the luftwaffe was nowhere to be seen now was the time to strike hard and fast into the interior to exploit the german's shock and seize the vital objectives including the major town of khan 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 armor support was still fighting their way through that traffic to reach them and the germans continued to fight hard key strong points resisted and slowed the british and canadian infantry's advance at 6 pm a unit of the king's shropshire light infantry came under heavy fire three miles short of khan and oh yes that's the west midlands isn't it shropshire i think that's right not too far from birmingham it's over on the border with with whales i have uh family from there in shrewsbury that's very cool 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 awesome as always so i know that there's a lot i don't know about the british and canadian and others who landed at gold sword and juno beaches so if you've got something you can add to that some some insight some cool story some bit of information you think should be shared we're all here to learn and i hardly know everything so i want to learn so share your thoughts share what you know about this share what you would add what you would maybe observe from what we just talked about use the comment section below don't forget to subscribe and enter the giveaway in the link below if you want to be considered for one of those three biographies we're going to give away when we hit 50 000 subscribers thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 103,910

Keywords: extra history, extra credits, history, documentary, educational, world history, extra credits history, world war ii, world war 2, ww2, wwii, wargaming, d-day, normandy, normandy landings, normandy beach, normandy beaches, utah beach, omaha beach, american soldiers, american forces, normandy invasion, eisenhower, roosevelt, churchill, stalin, france, liberation of france, the d-day, d-day invasion, d-day normandy, beaches, historian reacts, extra history reaction, history reaction

Id: iWHGUuYaToU

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021