The Fatal Flaw With Hitler’s Wonder-Weapon Obsession | How The Nazis Lost The War | War Stories

[Applause] thank you for Hitler more often than not it was a case of style over substance Hitler's fantasies lead him into the realm of the gigantic but when it comes to arming yourself in major world conflict that might not be the way to go suddenly there was a sparkle in his eyes that seemed its potential it was also quite useless so when it comes to weapons of war it pays to Choose Wisely what the Germans needed was more of what they had rather than a few shiny new toys if you can be the aircraft manufacturer that wins the war for the future you know you're immortal [Applause] everyone makes mistakes but when you're running the biggest war in history against the formidable and Resolute enemy you better not make too many but that's exactly what Nazi Germany did one mistake after the other some small some Monumental but they all added up in the end to abject defeat at the hands of the allies in the first world war in which Hitler fought Germany made catastrophic mistakes sacrificing thousands of men and seeding territory due to inadequate machinery and supply lines so why didn't Hitler take hard learned lessons from Germany's decimation in World War one and apply them to the new war Hill recognized that Germany was a small state with limited resources so he needed short sharp War he needed what was to become known as Blitzkrieg he needed new weapons particularly fast-moving tanks aircraft Airborne forces these are weapons that could be packaged together to create a psychological shock to an enemy and hopefully win a campaign far more quickly than had ever been seen before Piccolo had been fatally seduced by the Brilliance of the technology he'd witnessed being developed by the allies during the Great War including the ever larger artillery guns and the Advent of tank warfare he wrongly assumed that it was this heavy armor above all else that had produced victory for the Western forces to Hitler size mattered giant tanks huge battleships and massive guns were his thing in his mind imposing and indestructible these mind-blowing machines with their devastating capabilities and Firepower were destined to carry Germany to a world-crushing victory a natural product of Aryan Ingenuity unmatched in history we see Hitler trying to take shortcut rather than growing the economy an industrial economy that could feed the war expanding his army with more tanks more aircraft that were easy to manufacture we see him putting a great deal of emphasis upon Wonder Weapons heavier tanks with new technology that took up huge raw resources and Industrial processes that were very complicated the V weapons great deal of intellectual a Firepower went into developing them as well as the jet engine for example but all of these weapons were no match for the mass and the Simplicity of the military machine of the United Kingdom the United States of America and the Soviet Union the one thing we have to remember here is technology doesn't make war simpler it makes it exponentially more complicated and therefore the technology are just objects the only way to Marshal this into something that's really going to constitute a war-winning Advantage is to be able to integrate that with Doctrine with training and with application that requires real skills at the human level everything from the people who operate those machines to the people who are commanding all of this together and that is extremely complicated reality for the Nazis it was all about appearances and so the idea of the Wonder or wonder weapon was born [Music] colorfully named by the Joseph Goebbels Nazi propaganda Ministry these Wonder Weapons where trumpeted as shock and all super weapons that would turn the tide of the war and save the Reich history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans by subscribing to history hits you can access hundreds of hours of military history documentaries On Demand following the footsteps of the Essex dogs with Dan Jones will discover the history of archery with Ramirez we've built up an extensive library of history programs hundreds of hours of documentaries exclusive original films interviews and ad-free podcasts made for proper history fans sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 of their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout but girls promises new Vengeance weapons to his people huge new rocket bomb to follow V2 their propaganda was so effective they even managed to convince themselves of their capacity to win Germany ultimate victory continuing faith that these super weapons were actual Magic Bullets was a sign of the deluded Nazi leadership especially Hitler himself and I think this is very important partly because they don't see another option so this becomes very much a clutching at straws but there is a degree of belief in this it is also extremely effective at the propaganda level I mean if there's one thing that Germans have seen time and again in the Third Reich is seemingly brilliant victories being won especially in the early periods when people didn't believe this was possible and this is what good this is what Goebbels is going to rely on in trying to sustain public support for the war effort some weapons were rushed into service before they were ready with lukewarm results but most were so Advanced or absurd that they never made it past the drawing board or prototype phase but the question we always have to remember when we're talking about new weaponry and new technology is not how good is the end product but rather how much does the r d cost how much is the unit production cost of any one of these weapons platforms and what is the ultimate utility on the battlefield that they're going to have to fight there was an increasing draw on these Wonder Weapons to provide a solution that couldn't be found in if you like more conventional and traditional weapons and that was a drain on Germany it was a misdirection the commanders at the front would just have liked more of the traditional tanks more of the traditional aircraft more ammunition they were perfect by any stretch but then nor were the Shermans or the t-34s but what the Germans needed was more of what they had rather than a few shiny new toys that were unreliable and took up a huge amount of industrial raw resources and manpower to develop and build [Music] before hubris incompetence and overreach eventually kicked in the Germans enjoyed a Flying Star to the war and it was largely thanks to the brilliant armored strategist Heinz guderian who had studied tank tactics and laid down strong blitzkright principles long before 1939 the idea was that highly mobile tanks would rush in with the Infantry while combined with sufficient air cover overwhelming the enemy with speed force and Advanced Communications and it worked light tanks such as the Panzer one and Panzer II helped to make short work of Poland and France as they forged ahead supported by infantry as well as Stuka dive bombers and bf-109 Fighters overhead Hitler and his gang were elated as these early successes and Superior Tactics surprised everyone and saw them overcome most of central and Western Europe in a devastatingly short time it seemed European domination for the wife was just over the next battle's Gone rise but soon Britain awoke from its Slumber and the Allies dug in and fought back [Music] increase it wasn't long before Hitler and his generals began drifting from guderian's core teachings bogged down on two fronts they were relying more and more on the promise of their beloved wonder often their obsession with flashy complicated and unreliable tanks would eventually lead them to being outnumbered hand out maneuvered the first of these tanks was the famous tiger and she came fully optioned but she was quickly followed by the King Tiger and then the Panther and then the elephant and once you have an elephant naturally you need a mouse the ultimate example of the filled wunderwaffe in terms of tanks for the Nazi military was a project called the mouse which was a gigantic tank that was supposed to be the largest most impressive armored weapon ever seen unfortunately it was also quite useless as the father of Blitzkrieg Heinz guderian wrote in his Memoirs Hitler's fantasy led him into the realm of the gigantic it was so big and heavy that it could not fit on any rail car it could not cross any bridge in Europe and was extremely vulnerable to Air Attack where its thinner armor would allow bombs to easily penetrate its massive Hull it was so heavy that in order to cross rivers it had to have a snorkel attached to it and it would drive across the bottom of the river and emerge on the other side as with most Weaponry spat out by an increasingly desperate Nazi war machine it was all way too rushed one would think that in a rational State you would streamline the production of vehicles and you would have one way of producing them but actually the truth is there were multiple different series within any one of these named tanks and the series are constantly being changed they're only producing a few hundred at a time before they say hey we could graft on new changes hold the production lines retool now will produce the new series and it's still called a panther it's still called a mark IV but it's a different slightly tank and if you thought the Germans had a problem with tanks what about trucks give you an example of how absurd that becomes the German Army is fighting with something like 150 different models of truck now truck seems to most people like well that's not the most important piece of technology but it absolutely is given how fundamental movement is and every time you have a truck that breaks down which spare part do you have the German Army has to have a list of something like a million spare parts just for its trucks because there are so many different varieties now part of that is the different number of German development programs that they have over the years part of that is the fact that they are accessing all of European truck resources so they've got Swiss trucks they've got French trucks but the problem remains Germany is dealing with a system that is in no way rationalized ends thereby so inefficient on the other side the Allies had turned mid-war development into getting serious numbers of tested weapons through their Munitions factories and into Service as a result of tough and bloody battle lessons the German trouble with tanks was never more exposed than at the Battle of Kursk in 1943 it was the last great Blitzkrieg offensive and the biggest tank battle of World War II Hitler even postponed the attack until he had all his new and improved Panther tanks available is that although the panther was a very good medium come heavy tank it was not worth Hitler postponing his offensive four because when it eventually got to the fighting front it was there in few numbers it was unreliable the troops were trained in its use in the way that it really required those troops to be trained and they couldn't get the Panthers where they needed in time for the beginning of the offensive in a sense therefore he was putting the cart before the horse he was putting the technology to the front of his campaign thinking when in fact there were many other priorities that should have driven him to an earlier attack phase [Music] the smaller Russian t-34s literally ran rings around the German behemoths engaged in Mass tank assaults and using their superior mobility the t-34s swarmed all over the cumbersome Panthers elephants and ferdinands knocking them off easily at close range wrote One German officer about 150 to 200 meters in front of me appeared 15 then 30 then 40 tanks finally there were too many to count the mount the mountain the the Development and Construction of the tiger one the tiger 2 the panther was out of all proportion to what Germany really needed its tank production to be processing it needed more tanks perhaps of the lighter grade that could actually do damage and take on the mass of the t-34s but Germany's economy just couldn't produce the number of tanks that were required when up against the industrial might of the Soviet Union defeat at the Battle of Kursk meant the end of Hitler's dream to control Russia while providing Stark proof that bigger was not necessarily better above all in World War II there was one indisputable fact when it came to the critical conflicts air cover was everything and because the Allies maintained air superiority throughout no vondavartha jet tank gun or ship no matter how Ultra high-tech was ever free from Relentless Air Assault as well as constant observation of their every move and it was driving Hitler crazy to try and appease the fuhrer the luftwaffe was developing and introducing a vast array of different groundbreaking flying weapons but this was the problem you need to have a rationalization not just in terms of how you organize spare parts but you need to have a rationalization in what production lines you pursue I mean ultimately if you're interested in efficiency you choose a select number of models that you want to produce and then invest everything in producing as many of these as possible and that's not necessarily the way Germany Works they are in competition so there are competing models and competing planes which means that even pilot schools are not necessarily transferable you learn on one plane and that means you only fly those planes and and how many other planes can you fly or have you got expertise in and the battle between the aircraft manufacturers to secure defense contracts was almost as intense and bloody as what was happening in the skies above Europe just like the various branches the military subscribed to the wonderful idea in order to gain political favor and Industrial allocation so did the various manufacturers of these weapons such as the aircraft manufacturers Master Schmidt and falke wolf were constantly fighting with each other in order to get allocation for their weapons and undoubtedly this competition between the different aircraft manufacturers to be Germany in order to secure the fuja's favor and his funding surely paved the way towards the vanderwaffen as well because they were needing to come up with these more Unique Designs with these radical designs and if you can be the aircraft manufacturer that wins the war for the future you know you're immortal this talented industrial Hot House worked feverishly to impress the fuhrer and head of the luftwaffe Hermann Goering they emerged with Incredible cutting-edge Concepts such as rocket propulsion and even gigantic high-tech gliders a sensible leadership would have concentrated on economical but conventional designs that could be mass produced with the resources at hand in fact due to a lack of fuel many of these shiny new flying Marvels never made it into the air they were destroyed while sitting at airfields waiting for fuel that never came in 1944 too late to make much difference an incredible little machine burst out of the clouds the measuresmit 163 Comet it was designed as a rocket-powered interceptor aimed at disrupting and destroying enemy bombing raids in reality it was a rocket with a pilot seat the idea was for the comet to sit on the tarmac like a spider in its web waiting for the Drone of an Allied bomber formation above it had this amazing capacity for Speed it was relatively agile but it came with an awful lot of bugs and a lot of dangers so it had the issue with the fact that it needed to land in its early prototype days on a skid which of course was incredibly precarious the fact that its fuel was so corrosive that it could burn through human flesh was of course a catastrophe and ultimately it sort of had potential that truly couldn't be realized because of the pressures that were mounting on the National Socialist regime it was so fast and so powerful that Nazi Pilots only had about one or two seconds of firing time as they approached the Allied bombers the tremendous speed of the Comet also came at a cost of fuel it could only stay in the air for about seven minutes afterwards it had to glide back to Bay and perform a belly landing as the comet did not have any undercarriage it lost its Wheels as soon as it took off in the air brilliant it may have been but despite all the engineering and Technical breakthroughs the comet finished up shooting down a mere 16 Allied bombers a massive failure for such a pioneering aircraft if it had come earlier another fantastic jet fighter that had the potential to change the course of the air war was the messersmith 262 swallow jet fighter how could such a cutting-edge aircraft possibly the best fighter to ever enter the war and one that ultimately shot down over 500 enemy aircraft still end up on the long list of wonderful blunders contrary to popular belief the jet engine was actually available before the outbreak of World War II the Germans had a working prototype in 1938 and 1939 however these engines are tremendously unreliable and at times provided not enough thrust to even get the airframe off the ground the initial BMW engines could only last about five to six hours before they had to be torn down despite these weaknesses this was a propulsion system that was deemed the future for fighter aircraft and hence the Germans developed the me-262 swallow the me262 was a little bit held back by the fact that Hitler didn't fully commit to its development until 1942 when it had seen it in its second uh demonstration in its second test flight and suddenly there was a sparkle in his eyes that seeing its potential but the problem is is that Hitler saw it differently to the luftwaffe he deemed that the me-262 should be a bomber as there was a need currently for a fast tactical bomber to support the Vermont forces in Europe unfortunately the design of the 262 up to that point was for a high performance high altitude fighter and it thus had to be completely redesigned in order to be a bomber aircraft or strike aircraft added to that it was also vulnerable on Landing as it had to slow right down on a very long approach if the Allied mosquito and typhoon Fighters didn't pick it off then they attacked it on the ground where most swallows were destroyed so the me262 could have changed the tide of the second world war but it was simply held back far too often by you know delays in its production in delivering engines in making all the necessary modifications in order to make it operational and it simply appeared far too late in the war in order to make the sizable impact that it could have been capable of making once again even though it was flawed so many things were right about this wonder weapon but there was never enough time to properly test and refine it and the swallow ultimately proved next to useless [Music] new technology needs time to develop to trial to bed in and then to have a Doctrine built around it for its use it needs to be bought into by the military Germans rushed through their technology a lot of their weapons that they eventually used were still developmental pieces had they started this process of developing their technology earlier then the scenario could have changed in 1943 a rather desperate hermann-going presented to the German aviation industry a novel challenge going envisioned this sort of three times a thousand goal so that his bombers would be able to carry a payload of a thousand kilograms that they would be able to travel a thousand kilometers and that they would be able to fly at a thousand kilometers per hour this was through traditional prop aircraft impossible and the only airframe that was able to do it was jet propelled this led to the development the lengthy development of the Horton 229 which was to be a high altitude strike aircraft that was able to fulfill this requirement of the three by one thousand the Horton 229 was revolutionary in the fact that it was a flying wing design it did not have any rudders was very very fast extremely maneuverable but it took forever to develop development was cut short when during flight one of the engines caught fire the test pilot was killed as the plane burst into flames and spiraled into the ground as ultimately did the entire project but the wunderwaffen that struck most fear into the British people where the infamous V1 and V2 Rockets these were quintessential Terror weapons or Revenge weapons as German propaganda like to call them can you say it's German fighting methods were always about having a psychological impact on the enemy so if one looks at Blitzkrieg the speed of of the tanks was very very important the same is true of the the V weapons not so much in their Precision but in their Randomness the doodle bug could fall pretty much anywhere um the V2 rocket was was quite unreliable they were great psychological weapons but probably at the wrong time by the time the Doodlebug and the V2 were being used we're seeing that the British people had made such a sacrifice that they were going to be Howard and demoralized fundamentally by these Wonder Weapons flying over South Southern Southern England they would see the war through and so in a sense these Wonder Weapons came too late to have the psychological impact that Hitler desired them to have the V1 was in essence an early cruise missile Hitler turned to these flying bombs as retaliation for the massive German losses inflicted by Allied bombing raids in cities such as Hamburg the V1 however was very unreliable and remained wildly inaccurate throughout his deployment it was powered by a Ramjet engine burning ordinary low-grade petrol across the engine air intake was an array of small flaps air was forced through these flaps by the forward speed of the machine the fuel was injected and the mixture ignited by a simple spark plug it sounded not unlike a car engine with a fractured silencer [Music] launch game capable the V1 Rockets had to be launched by catapults and wraps from the French Coast towards Targets in England and Belgium the rocket featured a rudimentary guidance system on board to carry its Warhead to the Target though these flying bombs were fast many of the Allied Fighters like the Mustangs updated Spitfires and tempests could just about keep up with them [Music] [Music] providing opportunities for it to be shot down or for it to be Wing tipped off course [Music] but despite so many missing the target the weapon caused fear and Mayhem in Britain with children evacuated from the cities to the countryside but there was no defense against the more advanced version the V2 an early ballistic missile it smashed into cities with a ton of explosives on board it was the most powerful weapon ever deployed until the atomic bomb there's absolutely no question that the V2 rocket probably among all of them is a remarkable scientific achievement but the real question is what does it cost to develop a V2 rocket and what is its real military utility the V2 uses over 12 000 pounds of liquid oxygen and alcohol though it has no explosive head the fuel renders it highly lethal these incredibly Advanced weapons that took immense resources and Manpower and scientific know-how to create where innocence ineffectual in any way in affecting the war they are perhaps the best example of the failed wonderwatha and how they did not save Germany from defeat the stock truth is that more forced laborers died building and testing Germany's secret weapon then be killed from its deployment and impacts in Britain post-war the United States Air Force does a study of these V weapons to try and work out wool how much was invested in them and the conclusion it comes to is that if the Germans hadn't pursued the V weapons and instead invested all of that financing and Industrial Resource into just producing Fighters they calculated Germany would have been able to produce another 25 000 Fighters and the disparity there is huge and it reflects the choices that are being made in the Third Reich and that grasping at straws that Wonder Weapons might in fact actually turn the war when in fact that wasn't going to happen apart from the famous V Rockets the Nazis wasted their time on a number of other futile wonder weapon missiles and projectiles even air-to-air missiles none of which ever reached combat ultimately girling's luftwaffe failed to own the Skies over Europe and without winning in the air the Nazis were always staring down the barrel of defeat a lack of decent Frontline Fighters bombers and attack aircraft to replace obsolete machines proved telling as historian Gerhart Weinberg put it the Germans would have been better off in World War II if they had not built a Navy at all and devoted those resources to the Army and luftwaffe from the beginning the kriegs Marine was no match for the British and United States navies both in strength and numbers at least as far as the surface Fleet went on February the 14th 1939 the 823-foot Bismarck was launched at Hamburg for Hitler this state-of-the-art Battleship heralded The Rebirth of the German surface Fleet in 1941 she was ordered to break out into the Atlantic where she began a brief raiding spree but her movement had been detected and almost the entire British fleet was hot on her tail she was intercepted near Iceland by two British battleships where after an intense battle the British HMS Hood one of the most advanced of the Royal Navy's battle Cruisers exploded and sank with over 2 000 crew lost it was a serious and bitter blow for the Royal Navy two days later the Bismarck was cited and attacked by British aircraft again and again until she was reduced to a smoking wreck the pride of the German Fleet sank with almost all hands after the sinking the Bismarck in 1941 Hitler was afraid to use the rest of his service Fleet he had powerful surface vessels such as the Bismarck sister ship the tirpitz or in battle Cruisers such as the scharnhorse and eisenhau but he did not readily commit them to Frontline battle the sinking of the Bismarck was a serious blow to his pride and he did not want to suffer that again so therefore the Sean horse and Niza now spent most of the war in birth in Port and dock or in secondary conflicts the interprets itself constantly was in dock being shuffled around despite the fact that he didn't commit them to Frontline battle Hitler lost all three of those vessels the scharnhurst was sunk by the HMS Howe and other Cruisers off the coast of Russia the knysanao was constantly a target for Allied vessels so much so that Hitler got fed up and sank it as a block vessel and took its cannons off to form a defensive Armament at the Atlantic Wall and the tirpitz was constantly bombed and being refitted until the end of the war as the War years went on Hitler became increasingly disillusioned with his surface Fleet there's no question that the German Navy should have been configured entirely differently than it was under Adolf Hitler but you know like his predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm II Adolf Hitler was a uh very weak and insecure and vain glorious figure who saw his status reflected in the size of Warships so he wanted big battleships you know big showy battleships like the tirpitz like the bismarcks to show no Nazi progress and Nazi might and Nazi power but these things were useless against you know better armed and better equipped navies and Air Forces like the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force which could strike these things from the air or from by submarines or Surface fleets and Destroy them it would have been far better off investing his money in submarines from 1943 the focus of the Creeks Marine was directed beneath the waves into the feared wolf packs patrolling the Atlantic and the seas around Britain the fact that Hitler viewed his attack submarines as shining lights on his Marine forces was made Crystal Clear when the head of the U-Boat Fleet Carl donets replaced Admiral Raider as commander of the Craig's Marine Donuts had previously said if he had 300 U-boats or want to see boot he could strangle Britain and win the war no wonder these were the weapons that could have proved decisive against the Allies the cruise Marine were constantly trying to perfect the designs of the U-boats the first type 7 was more of a kosa going U-Boat it had limited Armament and limited range the type 9 was a much larger ocean-going U-Boat that could actually reach the North American Shores and these designs were constantly being revised throughout the war U-boats were fitted with special tiles to mask a sub's acoustic signature snorkels were developed to allow the U-boats to recharge their batteries underwater without revealing their position on the surface but even though Hitler was a fan of the U-boats sneaky Subs went exactly the type of weapon that reflected the Glamorous show image of the Nazi machine the more exotic and high visibility aircraft gearing was pushing though far less effective what a much more glamorous propaganda proposition so that's where the funding went money that donets so desperately needed to keep his U-boats competitive another example of how the three arms of the German forces fought and undermined each other critically hollowing out the entire war effort they all produced more fanciful and exciting weapons to show Hitler in order to gain that favor new Jets new aircraft new tanks all these very exciting and technologically advanced weapons were produced mainly to gain his favor and gain military allocation but if you can't have massive and showy how about tiny the Germans even managed to waste time in mini subs not one but several varieties neither and Bieber some were inhuman death traps where the submariners needed to be administered drugs to even get them to go on board these mini submarines were manned by one or two Sailors they would go down in those mini subs and the plan which was executed was that they would spend five days to a week in those mini subs uh travel all the way to the Thames Estuary even to travel to United States and torpedo American ships or or launch bombs against Manhattan for example problem was that if you're alone in one of these mini submarines for a week you basically die as soon as you fall asleep because you cannot operate your vehicle anymore so they had to stay awake for extremely long periods of time are longer than even methamphetamine allows [Music] in 1937 Hitler met with industrialists Costa Crump he liked what he heard he was breaking the design of the 80 centimeter Railway gun known as the Gustav or heavy ego stuff named after Gustav Krupp himself it was to be the world's biggest gun it's not known how Gustav felt about the moniker but he shouldn't have worried because construction workers nicknamed The Monster gun Dora and it stuck predictably the construction deadline of 1940 was missed the Gustav or Dora as if it was affectionately called by the troops that used it was a gigantic 80 centimeter Railway gun this was an Antiquated idea for a modern problem to deliver High ordinance on an enemy Target it was used a few times on the Eastern Front until it warped its Barrel it was rebuilt and never deployed again accounts vary as to whether they were actually two guns built the Gustav and the Dora or was it just the one gun with two names as far as of ermacht was concerned one was probably enough more and more Google talks about these elusive Wonder Weapons more and more frames them in in the terms of nzek the idea of final Victory and while people don't really know what they are he can show small Snippets of rockets being launched and people think wow okay so these are a real thing we are going to get the Wonder Weapons and in spite of everything that they're seeing the reality of the war the closing in of the borders there's always this reservoir of Hope at some point we're going to get these magical weapons that are going to turn the tide and have we seen this before in the war we have in the end lavender did achieve a critical and Lasting Legacy but not the Glorious version Hitler had been counting on instead they became a byword for false hope unrealistic expectation and wasted money they were ridiculed by Western satirists and became a feature of the whispered Gallows humor among the defeated German populace so how did it all go so wrong for the Germans from a position of superior technology a subservient population a highly motivated Warrior ethos and early tactical brilliance a blind belief in technology has the ultimate savior of the Reich became a critical drag on the Nazi war effort the wonderful was by and large a massive marketing or propaganda Ploy if they were the weapons that were going to win the war for Germany when other weapons were seemed to be failing unfortunately this really was not the case what Germany needed was sufficient numbers of good enough weapons not the best but good enough in order to produce insufficient numbers and have them be effective and reliable on a large scale so they can fight their multiple opponents that they had this premise may seem obvious enough but the logic somehow eluded the Nazis at least it eluded Hitler they've made a fetish out of military technology that's why the Vulcan show when we see these propaganda films that Goebbels has been showing in the early part of the war it always emphasized technology the idea of the resurgent luftwaffe coming in and winning campaigns he has the idea to fit cameras onto the front of the plane so you get this magnificent footage of them conducting these these bombings and these uh these sugar raids and so on well they're doing the same thing again and when people are questioning at the most basic level where are we going with the war the two answers you get are well we still have Adolf Hitler and there is the potential for these Wonder Weapons who knows what they are the truth was that the Nazi war room was a spiraling Echo chamber of Illusion and vanity a place where Hitler and his crazed Visions were fed by sycophants and yes men the engineers and industrialists often found themselves in an impossible situation forced to Pander with positive reports and predictions just to keep a contract keep favor and even just to stay alive from a brilliant start to the war within a few years through courageous resistance at home and abroad the Allies had ground the Germans down by 1943 all Germany had left in their Arsenal was to stoke fears about becoming Wonder Weapons with wild claims of mass destruction Vengeance and ultimate victory for Germany when what they needed were designs that were simple and cost effective and advanced enough to be reliably deployed in combat in large enough numbers if they'd done this things might have turned out differently fortunately for us the Nazis failed to do any of it [Music]

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: Nazi advancements, Nazi weapons development, WW2, War Stories, World War II history, battle strategies, battlefield technology, combat tactics, historic warfare, historical documentaries, military campaigns, military failures, military lessons learned, military technology, military vehicles, tactical advancements, tactical errors, war theories, warfare history, wartime failures, wartime inventions

Id: -yIWKjdI5HQ

Length: 45min 53sec (2753 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 11 2023