Historian Reacts // Oversimplified - WW2 (Part 2)

welcome back everybody to another reaction video we're gonna dive right into part two of oversimplified world war two as always please don't forget to check out the links in the description below uh where you can find out more about how to get involved with the channel uh things like patreon but also discord and also make sure you hit that like button if you like what you see and you want to see more of it let's dive right into part two so what else is happening well when i said britain was all alone that wasn't entirely true many commonwealth nations and other allied colonies had joined the war in britain's support they would play a key role throughout the war particularly in the african and italian campaigns on the axis side germany italy and japan signed a defensive tripartite pact bringing their military alliance even closer together the soviet union's war against finland should have been an easy victory but it became a humiliating struggle and their military ineptitude was put on full display in the end they did force the finns to sue for peace then they continued their honorable campaign of pushing around much smaller countries by annexing the baltic states and part of northern romania france's colonies in equatorial africa were like heck no we aren't going to join the germans and they all pledged their allegiance to free france except for gabon which had to be taken by military force the allies also tried to capture the strategic port of dakar but that ended in failure mussolini had seen hitler's successes and he thought now it was italy's time to shine so he tried to take british somaliland and that went pretty well then he tried to take egypt and that went less well then he tried to take greece and that went really badly churchill began referring to italy as europe's soft underbelly [Applause] [Laughter] he began favoring a military campaign from the south and started sending british troops to greece all of this had hitler pretty concerned and he moved to protect his southern flank he had been getting friendly with hungary and twisted their arm into signing the tripartite pact and joining so there's some um there's some similarities here between world war one and world war ii in that uh germany's kind of the big brother and has the ally uh to their south that's kind of a lesser brother uh in the first world war it was austria-hungary second world war it's italy and it ends up being that just like with austria-hungary where austria-hungary had a decent army but really didn't perform all that well with it now germany where they shouldn't have to worry so much about their southern flank because they've got to deal with the soviets on the eastern front and the other allies on the western front now they've got to send troops to go defend italy as well and that just kind of stretches them a little too thin the axis powers romania was also eager to join for protection against the soviet union the tripartite pact was designed to prevent any other countries from deciding to join the allies specifically britain's old ally the pesky united states of america when war first broke out american public opinion was strongly against joining in in 1940 there was an election the republican candidate said i will not send any young americans to die in europe and sitting president franklin d roosevelt said i will also not send any young americans to die in europe unless i have to so there's another big deal with this election here and if you're not as familiar with american history you might not be aware of this but up until the 1940 election no president of the united states had ever served more than two terms eight years max a four-year term for president nobody had ever served longer than eight years as president there was no rule that said they couldn't but it was a uh it was something that was started by george washington when he stepped down at the end of his second term so it was kind of an unwritten rule it was kind of a tradition that was started and and everybody up until that point had kind of said okay i'm not going to be the guy that you know does that ulysses s grant kind of flirted with the idea of a third term and actually kind of pursued it a little bit but didn't even get the nomination for his party along comes franklin roosevelt and he gets elected not to a third term but then again in 1944 to a fourth term then i might and roosevelt won churchill asked him to join the war roosevelt said no can do winston but you know what here have some weapons america began supplying the allies with food and munitions but there was one problem german u-boats were sinking thousands of valid supply ships in the atlantic including american ones if the germans could sever britain's supply line the uk would starve throughout the war the allies had to come up with better technology to fight the u-votes improved radar aircraft with longer range better weaponry and convoy tactics at one point a man even called a meeting and said pykrete you take some wood you take some ice you put them together you get pie creep and then he pulled out a gun and shot some wood and it shattered and then he shot some pike creek and the bullet ricocheted off it and hit someone else in the conference room i don't know if that last part's true but i do know that pycrete was really a thing that they explored but um i i don't know the exact numbers but i think anybody who reads how much shipping was sunk by german u-boats in the atlantic it will blow your mind i mean you have to imagine the massive amounts of stuff that was being shipped across the atlantic ocean from the united states to britain because just the amount that was sunk was a massive amount so i mean it was devastating what the u-boats were doing and yet it didn't really slow things down all that much they tried to make a pycreat aircraft carrier but that idea was scrapped because that's a really dumb idea in the end alan turing and his team of code breakers cracked germany's enigma code and the u-bots gradually became less and less of a threat so alan turing i highly recommend i mean it's it's not an exact historical account of what happened uh but the film the imitation game starring benedict cumberbatch is just so so good really one of my favorite movies i've seen in a long time brilliantly acted especially by benedict cumberbatch but i highly recommend that you watch it i give you a lot of the background into them breaking the enigma code back in africa britain decided to push italy out of egypt hey that was pretty easy so they kept going hitler realized he was going to have to finally step in and do something he went to bulgarian yugoslavia and said hey i'm going to move troops through you to get to greece so either join us or you know be invaded bulgaria opted to join them yugoslavia opted to be invaded then greece finally fell to the joint german italian invasion the british had moved troops from north africa to fight in greece which helped rommel and his tank divisions push the british back to egypt and they could have kept going but a small mostly australian force held out under siege for eight months into brook denying the germans as strategic port city and disrupting their supply line despite having some success in the middle east the british didn't seem like any real threat for now hey soviet union look out yeah with three million troops hitler launched a huge mistake invasion in history and stalin was far from ready and this was the moment that adolf hitler lost the war because i i don't know if the soviets would have eventually jumped in against germany or not but i do know that hitler had no reason whatsoever to open a second front uh in this war like he did unless he just really thought that the united states wasn't going to enter the war and that britain wasn't going to really do a whole lot uh and the other allies i don't know i really just i would love to know what adolf hitler was thinking i know what he wanted he wanted laban's room he wanted room for living but that's such a dumb idea that was such a that might be in the top 10 worst decisions in history right there both churchill and roosevelt had warned him of an impending attack but he dug his head in the sand and the soviets didn't stand a chance germany made staggering progress with huge encircling movements capturing mind-boggling numbers of russian troops the quarter million at bialystok minsk three hundred thousand at smolensk nearly seven hundred thousand at kiev and again at viasma and brains leningrad was put under a siege that would last an insufferable four years the invasion of russia had been hitler's main ideological goal from the beginning and his hatred for the ethnic peoples there was now unleashed in all its fury the eastern front of the second world war was brutal for all that endured it the germans were now inside of moscow and that's it it's all over but then it happened it got cold stupid cold hitler had hoped the soviets would give up before winter but they kept fighting his commanders came to him and said can we please dig in for the winter and wait until spring no keep going but oil is literally freezing inside our vehicles that's fine keep going we're having to leave the corpses of our frozen horses by the side of the road so we can still find a way in the snowdrift perfectly normal keep going hitler hadn't given his millions of men winter clothing and supplies because he thought he really should have won by now then stalin called in troops from the siberian front specially trained to fight in the extreme cold and the germans were no match they were now being pushed back they had no choice but to dig in and wait for winter to end germany's victories were staggering and japan was eager not to miss the victory bus their war in china had come to a standstill but they wanted to keep expanding their sphere of influence and getting those sweet sweet raw materials they began making plans to expand southward but there was a problem southeast asia was heavily colonized by america and great britain it was also full of ocean ocean meant naval combat and there was no way the japanese navy could stand up to the us and the uk so they thought wouldn't it be nice if we could destroy their navies before we begin our conquest and so it was on december 7 1941 the japanese launched a surprise air raid on the u.s pacific fleet at pearl harbor and inflicted a huge amount of damage they also attacked british colonies in southeast asia roosevelt had no choice but to declare war on japan so a couple things real quick about pearl harbor number one uh there was a bit of a timing issue there uh the uh japanese diplomats in washington dc had been given warnings that morning to start destroying their code machines destroying important papers things like that and that was actually something that got picked up on by american intelligence they knew that that message had been sent but they didn't know what it meant and where the attack was going to come but it was supposed to be followed by an ultimatum that was supposed to be delivered that let the united states know that japan was about to attack that was supposed to come before the attack on pearl harbor it didn't happen that way so then it was basically seen as kind of a dirty move to do a surprise attack without a declaration of war first um so and then the other part of course is that the japanese were hoping to find the carriers that was the key aspect of this they wanted to catch the american carriers in port because they knew the carriers were the real targets not the battleships but the carriers were actually like a day or two away out to sea and they also didn't attack the um the oil tanks which meant that we still had fuel and that allowed us to quickly fuel our carriers and get them out to sea so a couple big mistakes that they made it was the right idea if you're going to go to war with the u.s you've got to take take it out quick before they can come back because they knew they couldn't win a long-term war japan and so did churchill hitler then declared war on america even though he totally didn't have to the attack on pearl harbor seemed like a big japanese victory but they didn't attack any of the naval repair yards fuel storage tanks or the submarine base meaning the pacific fleet would be up and running again pretty soon in the meantime though the japanese were able to begin their conquest they took guam the gilbert islands wake island hong kong and the philippines they forced thailand to join them so they can march their troops through to malaya they swept through singapore north borneo the east indies new guinea the solomons and they were now threatening northern australia and the borders of india japan's victory had been as staggering as the germans and it reinforced the japanese idea that this was a divine war which they were destined to win but their victories have been based on speed not power and power would eventually catch up with them yep for now though in all occupied nations the people suffered persecution forced labor harsh punishments for any who spoke out against their occupiers in europe the nazis were rounding up ethnic minorities and other unwanted groups and individuals in particular millions of jewish people would suffer through the terrible events of the holocaust brave resistance movements rose up in defiance of their invaders while the people held out for hope and hope was coming winter was over and hitler could continue his push eastward but this time he switched off his strategy he wanted to focus on the south his plan was to cut off the russian armies in the caucuses an area full of oil and then invade the caucasus and take all the oil his forces moved across the north with ease and hitler got cocky he rerouted the 4th panzer army south early leaving the 6th army to complete the encircling movement alone to do so the 6th army had to reach and take the key soviet city of stalingrad the russians defended it fiercely and stalingrad saw some of the harshest fighting of the entire war the soviets held up the german advance for five months as they battled in the war-torn city which bought them valuable time when the germany and it seems kind of silly but not when you understand the people involved that for hitler and stalin both this was a a symbolic thing because this is the city that's named after joe stalin and so stalin was going to defend it to the last man and hitler wanted to take it just as badly and that's why it becomes one of the bloodiest battles in all of human history and why so much devastating fighting happened there uh it was absolutely a key place but there were a lot of key points in the in the fight in the soviet union this one had the added meaning of the name once it first launched their invasion a year earlier the soviets had moved their factories to the east those factories had been building a butt ton of types and aircraft and getting the soviet army up to scratch now it was ready stalin gathered his new and improved forces around the city and in an attack that resembled hitler's own encirclement tactics they began surrounding the sixth army hitler's commanders came to him and said hey maybe we should retreat but hitler said no no you stay the entire stick army was trapped and had to surrender with complete air superiority the soviets started pushing westward for stalin it was a resounding victory for hitler an absolute catastrophe so you can see over and over again there's a common theme here and that is that at least in the first half of the war most of the mistakes that were made were self-inflicted by the germans particularly by hitler uh the germans did so many things right but the places where things went against them it was because of their own mistakes it wasn't because of something great that the enemy did things also weren't looking too good for hitler elsewhere with america now in the war allied bombing over german cities reached devastating levels in africa the british had pushed rommel back again then they were pushed back again and finally after a decisive battle at el alamein and with american and british troops arriving in the west the germans and italians were squeezed out of africa japan was old now we kind of gloss over that a little bit but the first combat for ground troops in world war ii uh in in the european african area that theater uh did not go well for the americans kasserine pass was an absolute disaster this was their first encounter with the german army and it went really really poorly so much so that the commander i don't remember his name was replaced but he was replaced by george s patton and this is the first opportunity for pat and patton comes in in just a couple of weeks in st instills discipline kind of just completely changes their fighting spirit and and starts winning uh and it's because of that winning that then he gets chosen to be a part of the italian campaign he beats montgomery i'm getting ahead of myself we'll get to that also already seeing its rapid success being turned around they attempted to take the island of midway but the us navy was ready for the attack and they sank japan's carrier actually they sank a lot of them it was a battle from which the japanese navy would never recover and this that was the decisive battle uh in the pacific uh at that point everything else that happened was just a formality i shouldn't say a formality because there was tough tough fighting to have but at that point the the war was decided japan could not win after midway uh now if japan had had had survived midway with their carriers i still think japan loses the war in the pacific but it might drag on another year or two longer so huge huge victory at midway code breaking was a big part of that intelligence uh great strategy by the americans and then some incredible fighting by some dive bombers to take out those carriers including one guy who actually sank two of them himself it's one of only i think a couple of times in history where one person has successfully dropped bombs on two different carriers in one day british indian and chinese troops held the line in the harsh jungle terrain of burma and the japanese suffered losses in the solomon islands and new guinea they began to realize they were not invincible with the axis out of africa the allies had to decide their next move churchill still wanted to attack from the south while the americans preferred a full sea invasion in northern france alright said the americans will do it your way allied forces successfully landed in sicily and began moving north they also carried out bombing raids over rome the thing was many of the people in sicily had relatives living in america and they greeted the american jobs quite warmly with the war reaching home territory most italians just weren't that into it and mussolini was suddenly very unpopular he was voted out by his own fascist grand council and was toppled from power so let's talk about sicily for a second uh because when they land uh at sicily montgomery is given the job of leading the british troops right up the coast to messina which is kind of the main target of the invasion of sicily because it's the uh kind of the entry point then to the italian mainland patton is put in charge of the forces on his left flank and they're basically just their job is to just cover the british flank nobody thought that the americans could fight as well as the british could but patton had other ideas and patton and montgomery were way more alike than i think either one of them were willing to admit they were both incredible fighters in fact even though patton i don't think liked montgomery very much he understood how good he was in fact patton said that montgomery was one of the best commanders in the entire war i mean he thought very highly of montgomery as a general but patton goes up and he he actually attacks all the way up to the coast and comes down the coast and beats montgomery into messina and that was kind of a big deal because it showed that the americans could fight just as well as the british could italy immediately began negotiations for surrender hitler wasn't surprised and had already sent reinforcements southward in an operation he ironically called operation axis german troops quickly disarmed italian troops in the north the allies continued fighting the germans up through italy but then winter set in meaning mud and everything slowed to a halt alright said the americans let's do it our way as well germany had made itself a lot of enemies and millions of allied troops had been gathering in england as factories worked around the clock producing the war material needed for a super crazy massive the likes of which the world has never seen before invasion of europe the germans knew an allied invasion would come but they didn't know where it would land thanks to allied deception tactics they thought there was a pretty good chance it would come a coulee and speaking of that deception which worked brilliantly uh it was patton who was put in command of a fictitious army uh that was supposed to invade across the pas de calais which was by far the closest point i think it's like 20 miles or something i might even be less than that between england and france right there and because they knew that the germans thought that patton was was the allies best commander the germans assumed that whatever army patent was in command of was going to be the one that attacked but there was no army they were using like inflatable tanks and stuff a bunch of fictitious i think they had like 200 people issuing fake orders constantly for this army brilliant elaborate deception and it worked beautifully the allies were really going to land in normandy because it was less fortified and the beaches were nicer under the careful planning of general dwight the eisenhower the invasion that had been long in the making was just about ready to go just one thing was preventing the launch the british weather for a short while everyone sat around waiting for a decent day and then it came on the night of june 5th over a thousand bombers took off and raided coastline defenses while paratroopers were dropped inland in a bit of a chaotic operation tasked with sabotaging defenses and capturing key bridges to stop any german reinforcement from reaching the beaches early the next morning the barrage came as allied ships fired a huge number of shells at the german fortifications and then the landings the americans at utah and omaha the british had golden sword and the canadians at juno it was a tremendous struggle with a great loss of life particularly at omaha but the allied troops captured the beaches and the landings were a success then they began their movements inland they took the port of sherberg and the city of kong the americans so they had actually developed these portable ports that they could set up because you remember once you get on land you've got to be able to get all the materials and all the additional weapons and things like that that you're going to need to sustain uh the the expected counter-attack because you've got this you know all these german forces that could just push you right back onto the beach and out of there uh so they built these i think they called mulberry ports they strung uh pipelines uh underwater across the channel so that they could pump fuel and oil and things that they needed uh just brilliant logistical uh operation kim's moved south to capture brittany then in a massive disaster for the germans british and canadian troops from the north and americans from the south trapped the german seventh army in a near wipeout encircling movement in august allied troops landed in the south of france to little resistance on one beach all they found was a frenchman handing out champagne paris was liberated and the germans were pushed out of france as the allies entered belgium in the far east the allies started to push the japanese out of burma as the americans launched a two-prong defensive in the pacific in the south general macarthur led the push to liberate the philippines while general nimitz oversaw the brutal island hopping campaign and then okay admiral nimitz i mean it's kind of a minor thing but macarthur is the overall american army commander in the pacific nimitz is the is the naval commander and yeah it was the marines and the navy that had to do the island hopping and the idea was once you get close enough you can launch air raids on japan itself forces had to make hard-fought landing after a hard-fought landing on fiercely defended small islands as they moved steadily towards the japanese mainland the japanese believed that the greatest thing a person could do was to die in battle and the most dishonorable act was to surrender as a result they fought ferociously to the very end and the closer the americans got to the mainland the more ferocious the resistance became in february 1945 the americans captured the island of iwo jima and an intense firebombing campaign of japan's wooden cities began the allies suffered some setbacks trying to liberate the netherlands but they were making progress and were now threatening the industrial heartland of germany hitler's health both mentally and physically was rapidly deteriorating things were looking bad and he was desperate he said we need to turn this thing around and i have just the trick remember a few years back when we blitz screed through the ardenne and trapped the allied forces in belgium well i'm gonna do the exact same thing again he gathered his forces and tried to pound them through the ardennes he used up the remainder of germany's strength and resources and he managed to create quite a nice bulge he also trapped some american forces in the belgian town of bastogne the germans sent the trapped americans a message saying surrender or be annihilated to the commanding officer he said they want to surrender no sir they want us to surrender nuts so i i talked about this more on the uh reaction video i did to uh sabatons screaming eagles uh but just in case you didn't see that one um the commander of the 101st airborne at this point is their artillery commander his name is anthony mcauliffe he's a brigadier general he's not the commanding officer of the 101st airborne that was a man named max taylor but taylor was out of the country at the time because nobody expected there to be any fighting they were getting ready for christmas they didn't have winter clothes they didn't have enough weapons but they get rushed up there to defend bastogne as the american army is getting overrun and they go in there and so they don't even have all their people they don't have anything that they need but they held on anyway it was an incredible incredible act on their part what they sent off as their official reply general patton's third army then managed to break the siege from the southwest and the germans were pushed back hitler's last ditch attempt had failed and what followed was a total collapse of the german forces the allies pushed into germany from both sides the soviet union took warsaw and kept pushing to berlin in his bunker hitler realized all hope was lost berlin fell and with it hitler's dreams of a great german empire two of the axis nations had been knocked out one to go the americans began their assault on okinawa the last island before they would reach the japanese mainland the desperate japanese fought hard launching kamikaze attacks on the u.s ships the citizens of okinawa suffered through the terrible fighting and you know it's interesting but at least in my experience when we talk about american history and uh in our classes here in america uh iwo jima gets all the press you don't hear a lot about okinawa but okinawa was a significantly uh bloodier fight if i remember right and just fighting to the death and uh the highest ranking american to be killed during the war was killed on okinawa as lieutenant general simon buchner whose father simon buchner had been a confederate general during the civil war two months the island was captured the allies now had to make a choice either continue the devastating struggle up the japanese mainland or they could try to coerce the japanese into surrendering now in july the first successful atomic bomb test took place in new mexico and the destructive weapon was ready for use and also this time you had franklin roosevelt died in early 1945 so harry truman's now the american president and also i think in july 1945 is when winston churchill was voted out as prime minister and replaced america and the uk were also seeing the soviet union not so much liberating as occupying its captured territories and so they wanted to put on a show of force on august 6th the a-bomb fell on hiroshima then on the ninth nagasaki the cities were reduced to rubble and for the people living there it was a terrible fate but for the allies it achieved their main aim in september the emperor announced japan's surrender saying the war situation has developed not necessarily to japan's advantage and another uh movie that's definitely worth watching is called the emperor stars tommy lee jones as uh as macarthur really really well done and it kind of shows the political situation at the end of the war and how kind of precarious it was and how gently the allies had to handle that whole situation after six years war was finally over the allies occupied japan for eight years the emperor was allowed to keep his position but general macarthur made sure this picture was printed in the japanese press to display to the japanese people that their emperor was not the divine powerful being they had believed germany was divided between america the uk france and the soviet union in 1949 the allied sectors were united into west germany the second world war had been more terrible and destructive than the first in its aftermath two major superpowers with two very different ideologies had come out victorious and the tension between the two of them would create a new kind of war a very very cold one so that's for another time for another conversation but let me know your thoughts about all of that use the comment section below please subscribe if you haven't already and hit that like button we'll see you again soon thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 1,307,468

Keywords: world war 2, ww2 oversimplified reaction, oversimplified reaction, history reaction, ww2 reaction, oversimplified reaction ww2, ww2 oversimplified, oversimplified ww2 reaction, ww2 oversimplified part 1, reaction video, ww2 - oversimplified, ww2 oversimplified mr terry, english reaction, historian reacts, reaction channels, world war two, reaction channel

Id: nQI6XDUbPNE

Length: 26min 21sec (1581 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021