World At War: The Desert 3 of 5

[Zajuts149]

Speaking of dysentery, one of the British advantages in the desert was better sanitation: a simple toilet box with a cloth cover for the hole, made sure no flies got to the faeces, and from there to food stuffs to spread diseases. The Germans suffered much worse from dysentery.

[Eltorofull]

4:06 makes himself a joke for the rest of times

[spudnick3490]

There you go you yanks....We Brits started winning ground WAY before you Yanks sent us tanks...

[USMCM249gunner]

3:13, that is so true

in Iraq we couldnt drink the bottler water because it would get so hot

we could literally heat up soup and make tea with it.

if you tried washing yourself with it, you'd get burned

4:08 in this scene, they would be better off driving to the left of the actual "road"

because that ground up sand is gonna slow them down 20%

4:44 ah memories...

[andyllamanipl]

I am wasting my time watching this, and i am not catching up on my work, which needs to be submitted on Monday, BUT THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH FOR PUTTING THIS UP!!

[sirdard1]

wow, russia, europe and then desert too. Germans were great.

[sidDkid87]

Lord of the Flies

[capnfrankly]

Note the Brit General wanted to hold Aussie troops in the Middle East, shows that he thought that Australia (Far East" was simply disposable. He forgets that it was Aussie and allied troops that held Tobruk while the Poms fled in disarray.

[rangerbobcat]

@capnfrankly No. It just that any sane general wants to have as many Australian and New Zealand troops as possible under their command. And their concern can't be other theaters. That is the responsibility of higher commanders.

[capnfrankly]

rangerbobcat What you say is true and Churchill wanted to defeat Germany then go on to the Pacific. This is in concord with the principle of war, concentration of effort. Stalin was also at him to open a third front and his troops were in short supply, spread fairly thinly.

The Aussies naturally were concerned with the speed of the fall of British bastions in Burma, India and Singapore and wanted their troops back to protect Aussie.

[the82spartans]

Bloody good show, that.

[randy95023]

Rommel was a great strategist. His defeats were brought on by his total lacking of adequate supply and logistical support, and fought virtually always with numerical inferiority. The fear he brought to his enemies and the increase in moral he brought to his own troops prove his generalship. Rommel's defeats were virtually never his fault, rather they were the fault of circumstance. I put Rommel on a par with Patton for ability to aggresively lead troops. Just my opinion, of course...

[TheNightBadger]

I feel sorry for the Brits in North Africa. Every time they had something good going on something else forced them to move and lose the impetus (Greece, the Far East).

[Dresden100K]

Bully beef and dog biscuits.

[askjiir]

lol at 4:05

[USMCM249gunner]

@askjiir

you should see footage of a stormtrooper on a scooter during the france 1940 blitzkrieg

[Airsoftrisupetteri]

stormtroopers were german soldiers in first world war. >.>

[PeterMayer]

Jealousy among generals? Nooooo. Yes, I've heard of Manstein, Guedarian, etc

[sidensvans54]

Yes.. Thank you Sir!!

[squelter]

I've been watching since the first episode, just thought I should say "THANKS" to damoosebelly for putting this very excellent series up. So THANKS!!

[damoosebelly]

thank you for watching...and for your comment!

[CescoPisicoli]

@damoosebelly

+1 TY so much for sharing something so important to human kind

[sidensvans54]

No back up...

[Ticonio]

Rommel was a real Military Genius!!!

[rayscraggs]

........not really, he disobeyed orders and continually attacked. It made good newsreel and propaganda but he achieved nothing! He should have conserved his forces and held the line because that is what he was ordered to do and what his supply situation demanded! He lost because he disobeyed orders, he charged all the desert and lost!!

[Ticonio]

he was always in numerical inferiority in comparison with British and Colonial Armies, also since the victory of Royal Navy in the Mediterranean he lost aerial support and was in great danger of being cutoff, the only chance was to make a full attack before the 8th could receive more reinforcements, the problem was the Qattara depression, if he stayed enrtenched he would have been destroyed by the RAF and the 8th, at the end he had an organized retreat to the Mareth line...easy to say

[rayscraggs]

Good analysis, except what was the aim of his mission? In some ways this was unclear, but his orders were on arrival to stay put, to hold the line and not go on the offensive. This was because of Barbarossa. If he had conserved his forces and built them up from what he had received he would not have beaten the British but may have held the line or some line. The desert is an excellent arena for mobile defense. Instead he went for glory and lost. He achieved nothing of substance except headlines.

[PeterMayer]

Yeah, only every other expert (one of them being Patton) has called Rommel a genius. Except you...nice try...

[rayscraggs]

......there were many, including German generals, who thought Rommel was over rated. I am not the only person to also think so. Can you tell me what exactly did he achieve? Galloping round the desert and oh yes taking Tobruk. Wow that is really something. Where as almost universal agreement over the genius of Manstein. By the way have you heard of him?

[Kamphoer]

While von Manstein was certainly a strategic genius, do not discount Rommel so easily. He was agressive and bold, rash even. Had he gotten the proper support in Africa and not just the token force he was given and had the Germans regarded the African front as more than a sideshow, it is not inconceivable that he could have pushed on to Suez. This would have cut the British Empire in two and would have greatly hampered the british war effort.

[rayscraggs]

......the problem was he was rash, this is not good and he got caught out by his rashness. The reality is he did not have the resources to conduct the campaign he did. The result was he lost. Surely a good general fights the battle he can. OK history is littered with people who did otherwise eg Alexander the Great, but most who are rash fail!! He took the risk and it it did not work.

[scotter420wigb]

thanks for posting this, great program this is with interviews from people who were there, excellent.

[damoosebelly]

thanks for your comment(s). one of the things i love about this series is that it relies so heavily on personal accounts from all sides of the conflict. one of the more balanced presentations on the war, imho.

[damoosebelly]

Thank you for watching. I am always disappointed how little modern history pays attention to the war-front in northern Africa. This was such an important phase in the battles between England and the Nazis, and so far from the primary concerns of either nation. Sometimes I think people forget how far removed from Europe this war became.

[Clydevale]

Sorry dude, but England? More the Empire I think. Sure the commanders were English, but the Eigth Army was made up of Australians, Scots, New Zealanders, Indians, even free French. You are right though the Desert War is often forgotten in relation to the battles on the Easern front like Operation Barbarossa, Stalingrad,Leningrad and the Slomensk Pocket.

[damoosebelly]

first of all, don't call me dude...i'm definitely not one:) Secondly, the primary national interests were British and German. The Aussies, Scots, and New Zealanders were deployed to the region in that interest, not their own.

As far as the French...well, they allowed Hitler to walk into their country and declare it part of the Reich, so pardon me for not supplying them with kudos for their minor participation in these battles.

[TheBelovedButterfly]

@damoosebelly For someone who claims an interest in world history you are incredibly ignorant.First, Scotland is PART of Britain: not a conquered nation forced to fight, the UNITED KINGDOM is a political agreement of equal states, after which the Scottish King became King of England. Second, Aus/NZ declared war independently - they are independent nations.

[TheBelovedButterfly]

Third, 20 years previously the French had had the vilest war in history fought on their soil. (And it started in 1914, NOT 1917!) They had lost 3000 men per day, to the extent that by the end of it, half of all their males were dead or disabled. Their land, industries and towns were destroyed, and instead of supporting them in getting reparations, Americans financed the Nazi party.

[TheBelovedButterfly]

But the French still mobilised 100% in 1939 and held out for nearly a year, (while America pandered to US Nazi supporters,) and then they escaped to England in their thousands to continue the fight - which they did, on every continent. Contrast that with America which had a couple of buildings knocked down by planes, collectively pissed yourselves with fright, and had to go into mass therapy!

[TheBelovedButterfly]

How dare you, you pig-ignorant lard-arse, sit in a land which has NEVER suffered an invasion, and insult other nations? Just remember, the only reason that you, too, didn't go into battle under the Union Jack is because the French gave you so much help that it bankrupted them,

[TheBelovedButterfly]

and even then, even shipping every man and musket 4000 miles in wooden sailing boats, and fighting on your terrain, it took you eight years to get shot of us - without the French, you were a joke. You have NEVER, EVER won a war on your own - left to yourselves, you only ever achieve a painful, long-drawn-out, sickening, shameful stalemate.

[011258stooie]

@TheBelovedButterfly

I agree 100% with the BB on this .

[AmanitaPersicina]

@TheBelovedButterfly

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto - “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”

The US has been invaded 4 times that I can think of, go look it up. I am assuming you are talking about the US because of the other rude comments you have posted about the US. But anyways the US helped save many countries, so stop bitching about the small things and learn some facts. Also study up on politics.

[yamsid]

@AmanitaPersicina Well hello again. Still love your name. (Shrooms?) I'm a Canadian but I grow weary of this notion that Americans can't fight. Doesn't anybody read about Guadalcanal? Iwo Jima? The Hertegen Forest? Or Midway where the fate of the war in the Pacific was decided as decisively as Stalingrad in the east. The U.S. navy was badly outgunned there. I guess trying to keep casualties to a minimum, a U.S. policy, is supposed to indicate lack of valor. Bullshit.

[AmanitaPersicina]

@TheBelovedButterfly Again the US helped the allies with raw materials as they did in WWI, the only reason the French "held out" because the Germans did not attack right away but when the Germans did they destroyed the French. Also don't forget Vichy France, that is the French that were traitors and supported the Nazis. There more French that supported the Nazis than Americans.

[AmanitaPersicina]

@TheBelovedButterfly Oh and your comments about 9/11, all countries that have been through terrible things collectively piss themselves, but your smart you should already know that. Read some books about WWI, WWII, or any war and you will see this. War is hell, an attack like 9/11 is like war so is therefore hell, but I will say it again...your smart I am sure you know this. Have you been in war? Have you seen a friend die? Were allies now, chill out.

[AmanitaPersicina]

@TheBelovedButterfly Yes but the other allies of WWI traded with Germany, that is just part of war. Learn a bit about US history before you look like an idiot, learn about what the US had dealt with leading up to WWI, all the other battles/wars they had fought before them.The US was still helping the other allies in WWI two months before the war even started, learn the fact. Without the USA help early on the other allies would be drastically short on raw materials used in making shells, weapons

[TAR3K]

A lot to learn about my country Libya. Thank you