nazi superweapons

Tigers don't show up at Normandy in Saving Private Ryan. A King Tiger shows up in the fictional battle at the end. Americans aren't "convinced they fought against Tiger tanks in Normandy", the prevalent myth is how common Tigers were in Band of Brothers, which was a result of the book describing every enemy E company faced as a "Crack SS squad" and every tank as a Tiger. And as you can see that myth has been so thoroughly busted at this point that even busting the myth is cliche.

deathbysamurai

You know what you call a defense that is never used and circumvented instead? A failure

deathbysamurai

Sorry, guys, but the Maginot Line was a complete success. If you think it failed, it's because you don't understand its purpose. The French knew they would be inferior to the Germans in manpower in a future war and that they would not be able to field an army large enough to successfully cover the entire French frontier. That includes the border with Belgium because the French hadn't forgotten WW1. The idea of the Maginot Line was to economize on manpower over most of the frontier. With fortifications, lower quality troops - lower trainng standards and lower equipment standards - could hold most of the line leaving the higher quality mobile troops of the French army to deal with the Germans on a restricted front. It was essentially producing a Spartans at Thermopylae situation. Reckoning the Belgians would stick to being neutrals and, not cooperating with the French, get run over anyway, the French planned to fight the Germans on their soil instead of French soil. The Maginot Line was successful. The Germans never seriously considered attacking through the Maginot line and had to go around it. Unfortunately, like Thermopylae, there was a largely unprotected route around the ML, through the Belgian Ardennes. The Belgians wouldn't tell the French their plans, though, and the French had unwisely assumed the Belgians would at least fight a delaying action in the Ardennes where the poor terrain itself would probably rule out a major thrust there. Didn't work out that way, but that was not a fault that can be laid at the foot of the Maginot Line.

Mike Traynor

Great example of Allied soldiers being gullible and spreading rumours: Americans are convinced they fought against Tiger tanks in Normandy, as in Saving Private Ryan. The Germans never deployed Tigers against the Americans. They were sent to the east end of the Normandy front because that was the more critical area and where the Germans faced the British and Canadians. Part of it is the desire to explain away how tough things got on the basis of facing superweapons.

Mike Traynor

I think Drachninifel covers this quite well in his videos, but I would have been interested to hear about some of the naval contraptions, like the Bismarck, whose guns were so big that the concussion damaged equipment and who it was so big that it had trouble steering which would lead to its eventual sinking. Not even to mention that it was too big to fit into most German dry docks.

Louie-Jr

Oh no, a second Blimp has hit the World Trade Centers! *insert balloon pop*

Fun fact: a bunch of Polish nazis were documented by a journalist (who infiltrated them) celebrating hitler's birthday, and the cake they got had a swastika made of chocolate covered waffle sticks. They called them "wunderwaffle", and it became a national laughing stock... ... and then cathofascist came to power and nazis were elected to the parliament, so nobody's really laughing now.

Mariusz 'Kot' Butrykowski

I patron this now but cant find if there's a premium RSS feed. Anyone know where that would be?

tangent: this is why the death star had an exposed exhaust port, it was built by the same type of "bigger is better" chucklefucks that thought the maus was in any way viable. tangent over.

Arthropod_Queen

These projects were all successful in their primary purpose: keeping their design teams from being sent to the eastern front

You guys gotta do an episode on the history of Shamokin, PA

Ghordo

Excuse you, but it's historical fact that CIA deep operative The Boss fired it twice during Operation Snake Eater.

DosVanya

The concept of the wunderwaffen is made infinitely funnier when you consider that the Soviets won the war (in part) due to just printing T34s

Ben Yardley

One more allied super weapon: US built and tested 36-inch siege mortar "Little David", but it was not deployed.

great video podcast, one note; the mistel was piloted from the fighter, the bomber was the bomb

If you wanted to pad out the naval section you could throw in the Hunley. It fits in on all but a small technicality.

Brian Danger Hicks

Farterland,

Tore Nielsen