No second hand description can do justice to the horror that was the slave camp Mittelbau Dora in the short time we have here. That’s why we let one of the victims speak for themselves. Reading these testimonies it is striking how mundane, even pedestrian the terror that they lived under was. There was a job to be done for the SS, and they simply carried it out by following the simple rules set out for them. Seize, deliver, torture, control, seize more people, and repeat. And just like that you have a machine for deadly oppression, which only needs the willingness to follow directives to run. Could it happen again? Is it still happening?
Albert Speer managed to con many into thinking he wasn’t really a war criminal yet he was the man who organized this program. Not to mention Werner von Braun who oversaw the development of the weapons these people were forced to build.
Von Braun was little better than the Nazis running the place. His view as a hero has diminished and his role in slave labor and the death and destruction he helped to rain onto England and elsewhere should never be forgotten.
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 the really disturbing thing about the Nazi death camps was how industrial it all was. The Soviets and Japanese were brutal no doubt about that though
It’s no different than the slave factories and gulags in the Soviet Union. The Bengal famine. It’s the time… I just can’t understand why people were this way at that time.
I'm very glad that the 'Speer myth' is finally being debunked more often. The man was brilliant, that can't be denied - unfortunately, the pinnacle of said brilliance was conning the world into thinking that he wasn't really a war criminal or Nazi ideologue.
He certainly wasn't a genius about architecture. Speer's plans were tacky modernizations of Greco-Roman styling, and Hitler's love for them shows that the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts was right in rejecting that sociopath admission back in his youth.
🤔 Indeed. But there is a serious risk of them becoming more of a personal statement, and not a dispassionate summary of the material in these videos. It is not the role of an historian to act as judge and jury on historical events, but to present them as fully as possible with evidence, so that others can learn from them.
😖 He was involved in the assassination of Ernst Rohm, the leader of the SA, in 1934. Thank goodness we were spared hearing him rant if put on trial at Nuremberg due to his death by suicide. A truly monstrous caricature of a human being 😡!
In my eyes Albert Speer was a snake in a gentleman's suit. His slave efforts and underground slave factories prolonged the suffering and war Do not be deceived by Albert Speer's charisma. He is a monster in sheep's clothing
He did what he did because he felt that the ends (victory) justified the means (inhumane treatment of labourers). He was just an average middle class, professional guy - which is all the more frightening because it means that anyone like him can become a monster.
His slave methods are no longer being used but his construction methods are being used all around the world fortified and prestressed concrete slabs happen every day in almost every country what a piece of human waste that man was and not be convicted of any crimes is ridiculous
@@tancreddehauteville764 yeah most people think nazi ware unique monster and everyone think they would fight evil if they were at those time. Yet (almost)everyone have recommand force vaccination and medical procedure against will on many sphere lately lol Jordan peterson have make some good talk about it. Most nazi were plain normal people who live under certain condition that make them do what they do. Peer pressure and conformism is one kind of evil.
@@WorldWarTwo generals Gustave Bertrand, charles Delestraint in 1940-1945 were against fascism and colllabration? Delestraint, Bertrand were communists or weren't?
@@WorldWarTwo add to videos ww2 1943-1945 Nicolae Dăscălescu, françois ingold, robert De Roux, jacques arthuys, Lorenzo Vivalda, Georg alexander hansen, henry louis gabriel michaud, Marcel haegelen, władysław Langner, františek masařík, tomaš byček, josef šandera, josef žižka , alain de boissieu, mieczyslaw nordwid neugebauer, marian kukieł, Jan kruszewsky, zdislaw Wincenty przyjalkowsky, Czech paratrooper františek pospíšil, Tadeusz stefan Münnich, ludvik cupal, libor zapletal, jean Édouard verneau ,paul colette ,jozef werobej please add them in videos these famous people of ww2 for me and all
What I've never understood is war machines require incredibly precise engineering, consistency and quality control, yet there are tired, starving slaves building these incredibly complex machines.
The high valuable skills people probably were at either end of the sequence - at the design rooms of the plants that machined the dies, and then at the end of the production line doing final inspection/testing.
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 right, which is why I said one reason. Much of what the Germans needed to fight the war was built by starved and brutalized slaves who were naturally less productive. They may have needed foreign labor but they didn’t have to mistreat them. And it wasn’t just Jews who suffered. An employee of mine now deceased was a Polish Catholic brought to Germany as a slave. The stories he told.
Such a powerful testimony from someone who suffered this first hand. I didn’t have any idea these places existed. I knew of death camps obviously and of work camps but to experience underground work camps had to be a fresh hell all their own. We must never forget and must stand united against this ever occurring again in Europe. It still goes on daily in places like China and Africa with blood diamonds there. We have to root this out and get rid of it. Make the world safe for people
@@dougrohr2804 who has an agenda? The WW2 channel? They do have an agenda: making people understand the absolute hell that victims of the Nazis went through during this time. And I love this channel for it. We can never forget what happened and if we must, lay down our own lives to ensure that it never happens again. But look at the Uyghurs of China. It’s being perpetrated by the Chinese communists right now. It’s potentially looking like genocide and I wish our leaders would do a better job confronting China about it.
@Anthony Ellis We know the content can be tough, many people have to watch episodes in sections and/or wait to be in the right emotional space before watching. But, as you say, if the episodes did not hit hard then we would not be portraying the subject properly. Thanks for watching with us and Never Forget
Nietzsche, whose work ironically was perverted by the Nazis, said, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
It was his sister who canoodled with the NAZIs and apppeared to give legitimacy to them vis a vis Nietzsche's thoughts. In truth, Nietzsche would have been horrified by the NAZIs who personify the slave mentality.
And Speer manged to charm the Nuremberg Trials as being a "good German." "I'm just an industrialist." and only got a 20 year sentence which was reduced.
@@brithgob1620 True. But he was as guilty of exploiting slave labour as Sauckel, who was hanged. The main reason he served his full sentence was that he remained healthy - some of the others who were imprisoned were released early due to their health breaking down. Although he only scored in the middle range among the defendants in the IQ tests that were administered at Nuremberg (he scored 10 points less than Goering and Doenitz), his trial strategy, aimed at avoiding the death penalty, was unprincipled but also brilliant. (His lawyer also seems to have been above average in terms of the German defence lawyers present.)
Hello ladies and gentlemen of the TG team. I am back once again,with my usual regards and congratulations. I watch these episodes with great delight,because no matter how disturbing it may be,it is human history and it must be recognized with no petty biases. So thank you very much.
I never understood how Albert Speer escaped justice at the Nuremberg trials. I watched many interviews with him after his release from prison. He was anything but an innocent technocrat. He always gave me the creeps, watching him on TV.
Mittelbau-Dora. 9th Grade in School and our teacher organised a school trip there. its just about 60km from my home. Germany remembers. Everything is a museum now. Some of the Baracks still stand/are rebuild and you can even enter the mineshaft and see the underground facility, though its mostly rubble now. but here and there you find metalic parts in the rubble. the crematorium is also still there. around it, there is a blossom of flowers. its the last reminder of the dead, for when the bodies got cremented, the ashes was tossed around the crematorium giving new life to the flowers. in a metaphor, the victims gave a tiny bit of new life.
I’m only catching up now after 7 months, but WAH never fails to deliver a sobering, chilling, reminder. Spartacus’ lines during the conclusion accompanied with the sinister organ in the background were absolutely brilliant.
N.B. Back in 1975, an older co-worker of mine had once worked in Speer's underground aircraft factories. He said that a large supply of aluminium came from downed Allied aircraft. There were many. And most of them missed what they were sent to destroy, bombing residential areas and killing civilians instead.... as reported here.
🤔 You must understand that navigation technology during the Second World War was not GPS standard. Add that the RAF flew night missions which made navigation even more difficult. Then they faced attacks from the ground and in the air. Is it any surprise that targets were missed, or only partially damaged in such circumstances? Take note of the losses of aircraft and aircrew on these missions, which come to c.50,000 aircrew fatalities. That is more than the entire population of a modest sized town in England of the period. Never Forget 💐!
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat However it should also be noted that there was a deliberate policy of " dehousing" and area bombing - Arthur Harris even states in a letter that targeting workers is not an accidental byproduct but intentional. He is absolutely convinced that this strategy will win the war and resists any effort to change strategy or to send his bombers to attack other targets. While I have every sympathy for the aircrew lost in this campaign - they after all were required to follow orders not implement policy - I am also appalled by the hundreds of thousands of civillians killed in pursuit of a flawed strategy which appears to have been the pinnacle of "vengeful pragmatism". Had Bomber Command enacted the Transportation and Oil campaigns earlier and with the same zeal, I believe Germany could have been brought to its knees far more quickly and effectively.
@@bobdollaz3391 That is an idiotic statement. Why wish anyone's death? Unless they were the worst of people. Usually bomber crew were pretty much unaware of the strategies of their high command. Do you wish the Axis had won? WW2 was an enormous waste of life that few people had any control over. The Axis should not have started a war that would lead to the deaths of so many people, whether by air bombardment or other means.
@@Rendell001 🤔 How would you describe the blitz bombings of London, Rotterdam and other cities? The use of the V1 and V2 weapons on those cities? Acceptable in a war, because they were aimed at Allied countries and civilian populations? I am beyond accepting this continuing denigration of the RAF, and Bomber Command in particular. Criticising actions against the most appalling military dictatorship in history without recognising the limited resources the RAF and the USAAF is a failing in your part. I remind you that the Nazi dictatorship had enormous public support right up to the fall of Berlin in 1945. Those who kept the Nazis in power had to take the consequences of their choices. Even after 1945 many German citizens held firm to their appalling ideology. If you think their suffering from Allied bombing is deplorable, but that of my parents in England is not, you need to think again.
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat This was preciesly the response I'd expected when I read your intial post. What I'm most interested in is: you must be a regular viewer of this channel right? In which case I'm sure you'll have listened to Spartacus' closing monologues in recent episodes of War on Humanity including this one. He knows exactly the problem with the arguement you're making because it lacks both nuance and crucially, lacks empathy. That last part is vitally important, it does not in anyway diminish the crimes of the Nazi's but it warns against using vengence without empathy - that way leads to darkness. Finally, dismissing nuanced analysis in favor of a simplistic nationalist bias is not helpful.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." Friedrich Nietzsche
Never thought I'd hear whack a mole used as an analogy for something in WW2. Also, that photo at 1:23 is easily one of the most haunting I've ever seen. Not because of any depiction of the suffering of innocent people or their remains after being murdered but solely because of the smile on the face of that German right in the center. He was enjoying this. And that scares me more than anything.
I'd never heard of these before now. Y'all are doing a good service, these things should never be forgotten. Even if they are horrifying to find out about.
The transportation system was particularly essential to keeping these underground factories running and was to become ever more vulnerable as the war continued. Not a longsighted solution to the huge overcast of enemy bombers growing larger every month.
Thank you for watching. It's important to be explicit in condemning such horrors, and that means to also dispel myths regarding how their work was achieved.
I went to the Dora/Mittelbau camp last summer, in part to show my son how true evil does manifest itself. Of the few parts of the camp that still exists, is the ovens in the crematorium. Knowing it was the last stop for 20.000 humans, it is a heartbreaking place to visit!
A small question because I'm unsure if its been talked about in a while. What is the food production situation within the Reich? Have the allied bombings largely ignored it, has the labor conscription caused harvest issues. things along this train of thought are what I'm curious about. Thanks to anyone in advance who replies. and of course a special thank you to the Timeghost team, and army for your continued efforts. Never Forget.
Many Polish and French POWS were sent to farm areas to help work the land when the male farmers were drafted. And what food they could not supply from farms they stole from occupied countries.
TH-cam didn't notify me on this one or the other to I went to look why you hadn't put one out. So now I'm watching all 3 Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
@@penultimateh766 yes that is true but in the movie version of the story of Spartacus they all stood up and said they were Spartacus so perhaps all slaves deserve respect regardless of how they were sold into that by family friends or simply being on the wrong side of a conflict slaves built the world and he still continues to do so today it is sad but corporations still put profits above people so everybody that works for a living is truly a Slave unless you're working a farm for a subsistence living don't have any technology but you're able to provide everything your family needs to survive you are a slave a rat on a wheel shameful isn't it that this is what Humanity has become
Another magnificent episode, Sparty. As you were reading the man's testimony at the end, I could only wonder how anyone could survive such an ordeal. And just through stubborn force of will too. I think I would want to "do something" as a way to keep my spirit up and mind occupied, but "doing something" is just as likely to get you killed, if not more likely.
2:54 -- My father (a US veteran of WW2) said that the air force's navigation was so bad that they were lucky if they hit the ground. Sometimes they bombed the wrong country.
My uncle was in the army air corp. He was born in 1915, and he would talk of the attrocities and disasters of the war. But he also reminded us that the Wright brothers had only invented manned flight in 1903, a mere 40 years earlier. that, compared to the present time would be like 1982, not so long ago?
That epic quote at the end... Very interesting episode tho ! I've known a bit about the underground camps and factories, but a very interested subject.
God Sparty, every time I can gain the courage and bring myself to watch one of your videos it brings bile to my gorge. The cruelty and depravity that one group of humans can inflict upon another is terrifying and heartbreaking. For those who think it cannot happen here or this stuff does not happen today, do not fool yourselves, it is all to easy to fall into this chasm of darkness, just look at China's treatment of the Uighur people or Russia's invasion of Ukraine or the rise of right wing neo-facists in the western democracies. Never forget indeed!
Russias invasion of Ukraine is no worse than the wests invasions of Iraq and Iran. In Ukraine its just white people being killed so the west cares. Comparing Putin to Hitler is patently ridiculous.
I agree with your point and there are the muslims in Nigeria, conflict in Burma, and much more. But you lost me with right wing neo-facists. The President left it up to the States (as he should) to deal with covid. But left wing democrats lock down whole states and cities for years? Didn't left wing democrats mask children to establish control over them for years? Didn't left wing democrats mix sick patients with well patients in old folks home and then lie and cover up the deaths that occurred? The right wing Red states restored freedom to the individual as soon as the impact of Covid was understood. Allowed business to reopen. Allowed kids to go back to school. Allowed freedom. That is the right wing message which the left is so terrified...freedom. To prove my point: The CDC has finally changed their guidance to recognize freedom over a repressive control regime. This is the opposite of the left wing control imposed in most/all left wing Democratic controlled environs. quote August 11, 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its COVID-19 guidelines, thereby vindicating every “misinformation spreader” out there The CDC is now advocating for taking personal responsibility and for everyone to decide for themselves “which prevention behaviors to use and when (at all times or at specific times), based on their own risk for severe illness and that of members of their household, their risk tolerance, and setting-specific factors” The CDC is also giving up on discrimination based on COVID jab status, stating, its “COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur.” They also admit natural immunity exists and works. unquote
I have to force myself to watch his videos. Its too easy to romanticize the war with the other series on this channel, but the WAH one always brings back into focus just how utterly barbaric it really was.
As someone who studied mining engineering, I'm somewhat amazed that they were able to build such large caverns without having so many cave-ins that the whole strategy was made untenable. Modern mine works are kept small and held together with a combination of rock bolts and mesh to prevent caving and we still have occasional incidents where the rock shifts in ways we fail to predict. Back in WWII they were still largely reliant on wood support beams, which are no longer used because they're not very good at their job. And many of these workings are only really engineered to stand up to a few years, by which point miners will have exhausted that area and moved on. Or perhaps they did have so many cave-ins that someone with my standards would indeed have considered the strategy untenable. After all, modern mining engineering doesn't consider the life of even a single miner to be expendable. This is not to say operating mines get the level of stability implemented in places like the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (a permanent science facility built off of a mine I worked at for a few months), but if you keep your wits about you, you should be able to walk anywhere in the mine (that isn't marked off as being unsafe) and not get randomly hurt or killed by falling debris. (And entering an area that was marked as unsafe at the mine I mentioned would get you fired instantly even if you came back unscathed.
These were not built for long term. The Germans did these as emergency factories since the surface factories were being bombed. I doubt they thought about would this last 10 years. They were trying to keep their armaments going day by day in a frantic attempt to ward off defeat. Long term planning was not in their thinking.
Hi Sparty This very inhuman. So much people had to die. Never had idea that industry worked underground. All these sould died should n't be wasted. Only things we should do is remember their sacrifice and create awarness. Never forget.
@The World War II Old Time Radio Channel glad we could touch on something with a familial connection to you. I'm sorry she had to go through such an ordeal
In the 60’s I had a girl friend who studied architecture at The Technological University of Delft, the Netherlands. With a group they visited Speer in Germany, who was then no longer in prison, lived in a nice house. I understand they only talked about architecture in the 3rd Reich, nothing about the slave labor. At that time I was not fully aware who he was, now I am.
In a different comment thread, I brought up the novel "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis, describing an America being taken over by a fascist group in the same way Hitler came to power in Germany. What many Americans don't know is how many Nazi sympathizers (aka "Silver Shirts") there were in America, especially in Southern California In fact, there is a now-decaying fifty-acre former Nazi compound, set up to be self-sustaining and to house, train, and feed several hundred Nazi recruits, that had been built in the 1930's: Murphy Ranch in Rustic Canyon, Los Angeles. This was able to be built because of the large number of anti-Semitic/pro-Nazi groups in Southern California. The feds had no interest in monitoring Nazis (they were focusing on Communists), so a lawyer named Leon Lewis created his own spy rings to infiltrate these groups. Thanks to his efforts, on the day after Pearl Harbor, the FBI was able to find and arrest several thousand Nazi sympathizers who had been spying for Germany. His group also broke up several plots to kidnap prominent Jewish leaders and execute them. He uncovered so many such plots that one historian believes that at least one of those plots could have been carried out, if Lewis had not interfered in some way. Do a Google search with the phrase "FBI raid Nazi compound Los Angeles" to find dozens of articles about the Nazi movements in Los Angeles.
Something interesting I learned when I visited some of these sites in Germany is that the poor conditions the slaves and prisoners were kept in was also detrimental to the nearby German populations. The poor conditions were perfect for disease to spread, and eventually it got to the German population, causing large disease outbreaks. Essentially, a lot of German civilians died because the Nazis wouldn't give their slaves and prisoners decent conditions
On the whole they avoided major epidemics, in part because of their ruthlessness. Sick prisoners were often sequestered and left to die. Then their bodies and even the barracks they were in might be destroyed by fire. Typhus was a particular fear but it was worked into their ideology - posters distributed in Poland would associate Jews with lice and typhus. A German doctor who testified at Nuremberg recalled being brought in to treat Russian female slave labourers in a bombed-out factory. They were dressed only in potato sacks that had holes cut in them. The doctor described large boils developing on his own body later because they and the factory they were housed in were so flea-infested. At war's end a German nurse was brought in to treat concentration camp survivors. Her response - "Why should I have to nurse tubercular criminals?"
Thank you for taking it seriously and helping us remember what is at stake, Sean. Our whole crew is thankful to have such a keen audience of history enthusiasts, so thank you for being here & thanks for your humbling words. Never forget
The war has been over almost 80 years. It ended almost 20 years before I was even born. Yet it still brings tears to my eyes. And I don't know if it's the history of the madness of WWII, or the insanity of our leaders today that breaks my heart more
Thank you for watching and helping us remember what is at stake. Human dignity must be respected and preserved, and the disastrous worship of nationalism and war must be eroded.
@@WorldWarTwo I couldn't agree with you more. Wars are never started by the common man or woman, or even the foot soldier. They have always been started by kings, presidents, PM, dictators. Until we stop following our leaders like blind we're blind sheep we will never have world peace.
RIESE In Poland for people who are interested in history of WWII is quite known. Huge underground complex. Under supervision of Organisation Todt and SS (especially end 1944 and 1945 totally controlled by general SS Hans Kammler) with commands from Minister Speer.
Mittelwerk is currently a museum of what Nazi war machine created sacrificing human lives. There are also several construction sites around Silesia (Riese complex) which were cleared out of rubble after being blown up, when Nazis were retreating from Poland, and are open for visitors. Owl mountains have many buildings, which purpose we can only guess.
While the Nazis certainly had amazing underground factories -- most slaves labored under the trees. (!) My Uncle was a condemned slave at Dora -- and for all of the early months -- sleeping directly under the trees was it. They didn't even rate huts... anything ! ( No fires/ heat, either. ) BTW, Mittelbrau Dora is a post-war term. Absolutely no-one called it anything but "Dora" while it was operational. The very term 'Dora' is a reference to Buchenwald -- as it was -- on paper -- Camp 'D' [ hence Dora] of Buchenwald -- even though it was miles away. The Nazis were so paranoid -- knowing that the RAF was going crazy with photo-recon -- that no fires/ lights could be lit. No guns were used by the SS... just truncheons. Murder was by way of brutal blows to the head... ( No gas, no bullets, ... nothing but head cracking until brains flowed.) Every Tuesday, half of the labor force was culled -- the hard way... this was the grave digging detail... they were digging their own.) The Nazis even routed ALL of Dora's mail through Buchenwald -- by way of a motorcycle courier. It had not a single telephone. (!) [ The SS didn't trust their own phone company to run wires. ] Even the locals in Nordhausen (pigpen) didn't know it was there. Honestly! When the US Army showed up, none believed what they were hearing. The site had long been off limits -- some sort of nature preserve, IIRC. When the SS began operations -- they stayed away from the local towns. Even with all of the Nazi production, the folks in Nordhausen remained clueless -- not as if anyone dared ask questions. At war's end, the Allies found amazing numbers of Nazi planes in partial assembly across southern Germany -- in one wood after another. Essentially the entire work force was forced labor -- with no huts near to hand, either. As for left over underground factories -- there's one that terminates at Tempelhof airport. (!!!) It's still there. Yup. ( It's a tunnel that is just big enough for the plane. You have to crawl under to get past. The final step was elevation of the fighter up to the airport. ) The Nazis used it to assemble FW-190 radial engine fighters... some are still there -- almost complete. (!!!!!) This tidbit comes by way of a German teenager who just couldn't obey the warning signs to stay out. Poke around, you might still find his photos on the Internet.
I do hope that at some point this series will touch on the GI's of Berga (sp) I was shocked when I met the son of one of the US P.O.W's who were held at and died at Berga. A story I have been seeking more information about ever since. What I do know is approximately 300 US P.O.W.s of Jewish faith were taken from a Stalag and transported to Berga and sent into the tunnels to work and die. I believe though am not certain they were building V2's at this site.
For those who think the German Peoples, were not aware of the magnitude of horror inflicted on innocent Peoples, in systematic industries of destruction and death, in factories and Concentration Camps, Pits and massive Funeral Pyres, Himmler summoned all Gau leaders, high ranking SS and SD, Foreign Service and Gestapo, and it was compulsory, in October 1943, Posen. Speer till the day he died denied being there. ( believe it or not, but a helicopter may have been used to get him there ), said he arrived late. Himmler laid it out in detail, the numbers Murdered and where, and much much else, lest some thought it impossible this could have happened in their Gau. Speer gave the Weapon and Food Production address, laid it all out, and what was needed to continue in raw materials. All Gaultier and staff's, all knew what had happened in there districts.
I always find it incredible(yes not in a good way) how they manage to put high technology rocket at such early times with slave badly treat. I wonder what was the malfunction rate I imagine they had better treated slave at the end of production line who make sure everything was ok
I have heard London unexploded ordnance squads often have found bombs with small piece of paper inside in various languages, all stating same sentence: this bomb will not explode. So there must have been some intentional sabotage effort within those "death factories".
An argument could be made that people on all levels were horrified by the methods, and this slowed down both the rockets and the nuclear fission research.
😖 Do not believe what the British government claimed as a success in this regard. Prime Minister Churchill was informed that in 1944 the morale of the British civilians was under severe stress, with consequences for all aspects of the war. Particularly so with the second V2 version of the blitz, as there was no defence against rockets once they had been launched. Unlike the V1 which could be intercepted by the RAF before causing death and destruction. Morale is a delicate concept, easily broken when under years of pressure. The difference here is between the Allies doing ‘good’ and the enemies doing ‘bad’. Being part of the former was a strong means of maintaining morale.
😡 Well, whoopsy doo! That excuses the use of such weapons by the Nazis absolutely. NO IT DOES NOT! The V2 was intended to carry a NUCLEAR WARHEAD, which the Nazis were close to developing using Norwegian heavy water in the process. Your entirely simplistic counting of numbers is a calumny against the many victims of those weapons in London, Rotterdam and Antwerp.
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat Would you please explain me how a simple statement on two numbers can be interpreted as a moral justification of any kind? I was just trying to add some knowledge. Relax.
@@markotrieste 😖 If there was no intention of comparing those deaths one with another, please explain why the comment was posted at all? And try not to be so patronising when responding to someone you know very little about. Relax, indeed!
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat I am not patronizing, just asking you a simple question. Where did I state any moral comparison? I am responsible for what I write, not fir what you understand or imply. Are you some kind of TH-cam inspector to whom I have to justify what I post?
It seems to me like strategic bombing of industries does have quite an effect. If you're forced to move whole factories underground that can't be cheap. It probably takes a lot more effort and manpower and materials to build/excavate. Nor can you achieve the same efficiency as a normal factory would. So while the nazi war machine is still increasing production each month, one must wonder just how much more production they'd have by now if left unhindered.
@@WorldWarTwo No need to get sarcastic, while ignoring the rest of my comment. While slaves are "free", they're not infinite and neither are the transports, resources and other things you need to (re)build factories and then produce weapons. With the same amount of resources and time you can produce more weapons more efficiently above ground than beneath. Edit: just to avoid any unnecessary escalation: I do not condone slavery in any way, I am against bombing of civilian buildings and find firebombing of cities barbaric. And I also find this episode very striking. But that first hand account also made me think just how more difficult having factories underground must be - not just for the workers/slaves who suffer those conditions - but also for the ones organizing all the logistics and all that goes with it, which must impact production in a negative way.
No matter how you feel about it, facts universally contradict that feeling. Bombing civilians and infrastructure did not have any negative effect upon German war production or capacity, and in fact has exactly the opposite effect in terms of steeling resolve as well as killing skilled allied pilots. And this is why a sober study of history is necessary, so that your own sentiment does not interfere with the statement of these facts.
I remember the story of one Jewish slave forced to build tanks in an underground factory. He said that when the Nazis were not looking, he and the others would pee into the wiring of the tanks which would cause it to short out at some point in the future. Revenge in any way possible I suppose.
Indeed: if we are going to be the ones who fight evil, we have to remember, there is *no* low they will not sink to, and they are just looking for the excuse. Sure, we must not fight with a hand tied behind our backs but must always be conscious of what is it we're doing, and *own* it -- not bury and hide it and try to burn it away to pretend it did not happen.
If anyone wants to see these underground places, check out Tino Struckman's Lost battlefields channel on TH-cam. The scope of these tunnels and complexes are unimaginable.
At this point the Nazi leaders understood they were about to lose the war, and the whole Mittelwerk system was set up more to follow orders and do at least something, than to reach the production numbers necessary to turn the war around.
If you consider them inferior and worthless except for their labor the attitude you can always get more if they die effects the whole enterprise and can work against your best interest which would be keeping the slaves healthy and productive. Instead there was a never ending search for more slaves.
I have always wondered if the US knew about the camps. They sent recon aircraft out all the time and we never found a camp? Kinda suspicious. But I may not know the whole story 🤷♂️ Thanks Sparty and Jamie and gang! Much appreciated!! Excelsior!!
They certainly knew about camps. Concentration camps were well known fron 1933 on. Death camps and work camps were certainly known from a number of sources recon, spies ,personal testimonies, radio intercepts etc.
@@caryblack5985 my point being all the guys on the ground seemed to know nothing about there being camps there from their testimonies. I suppose it was only known by higher command. No Twitter back then to alert the whole world I guess. Russians too. Their accounts state they didn’t know about the camps and when they found the first one they started really torturing Nazis. Ok. So it was known, but not by many it seems. Trying to clear that up.
@@5777Whatup I would say many knew it intellectually. They knew about camps and were told in orientation lectures and probably some forgot or it made little impression. When they actually liberated the camps and saw bodies stacked like cordwood. and hundred if not thousands in rags and starving, just skeletons they were horrified and enraged. So was Eisenhower and Patton and you know they would have all the information. The emotional impact seeing in real life what you were told about in the abstract was overwhelming. Many said I didn't know but they said that because they could not image the reality when they confronted it face to face.
@@caryblack5985 I think you’re a bit confused. The 1933 prisons all the way to 39 were political prisoners like stalins. Anyone who read mein kampf would have realized what was coming. That’s why Einstein left. They were not briefed in training about these camps. Although all my grandfathers are family were Air Force. They weren’t briefed. I know the army wasn’t. I don’t think anyone knew they were killing them until the Soviets liberated the first camps. It was ww2 no one had all the information. If you’re 30 under you won’t understand life without technology telling you things. Except for codes and code reading. Patton did not know. When he found his first camp he grabbed the whole town and made them tour it. In his diary, he didn’t know they were doing it either.
@@5777Whatup When I said that people knew about concentration camps from 1933 on was because there were news stories and published in newspapers and other places that were available especially the New York Times. There were news stories about the mass murder of Jews in the New York Times. That people paid no attention or were unconcerned did not mean the information was not there. I don't believe Eisenhower or Patton did not know there were concentration camps. There are books documenting what was published.
How Albert Sperr managed to escape the hangman at Nurenberg will never cease to amaze me ... You'd think Israel's Mosad would dona hit on him or something. Shame he wasn't taken out.
Mossad focused their efforts and limited resources on the Nazis who escaped justice entirely, like Eichmann and Mengele... for better or worse, Speer served his time.
@@TheTrickster923yup its not like he didn't got punished he was convicted but the main problem was more that people think he was innocent of any crimes well he was he just got 20 Years which is still a Life Sentence and not the Death Penalty.
No second hand description can do justice to the horror that was the slave camp Mittelbau Dora in the short time we have here. That’s why we let one of the victims speak for themselves. Reading these testimonies it is striking how mundane, even pedestrian the terror that they lived under was. There was a job to be done for the SS, and they simply carried it out by following the simple rules set out for them. Seize, deliver, torture, control, seize more people, and repeat. And just like that you have a machine for deadly oppression, which only needs the willingness to follow directives to run. Could it happen again? Is it still happening?
Sparky your monologue was awesome man well done
... I want to be optimistic, but probably somewhere there is such a terrible place right now.
@@guillaumedeschamps1087 North Korea.
@@wizzyno1566 ... *despondent sigh* True, true.
@@guillaumedeschamps1087 😢 China, and the Uighur people 💐.
Albert Speer managed to con many into thinking he wasn’t really a war criminal yet he was the man who organized this program. Not to mention Werner von Braun who oversaw the development of the weapons these people were forced to build.
A true american hero
There are accounts of Werner’s brother Magnus showing brutality toward the slave workers.
Speer in his memories pretended he didn't know about human conditions in camps. I don't believe him.
Did Von Braun have a choice? His family was under S.S. "Protection". He signed off on things put in front of him under duress so i've heard.
Von Braun was little better than the Nazis running the place. His view as a hero has diminished and his role in slave labor and the death and destruction he helped to rain onto England and elsewhere should never be forgotten.
The Nazis never stop creasing to amaze me with how cruel and sadistic they were. Thank you for keeping this history alive Sparty
Thanks for watching with us @Alex Amerling
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 The death camps come to mind
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 the really disturbing thing about the Nazi death camps was how industrial it all was. The Soviets and Japanese were brutal no doubt about that though
It’s no different than the slave factories and gulags in the Soviet Union. The Bengal famine. It’s the time… I just can’t understand why people were this way at that time.
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 The Killing Fields of Cambodia as well under Pol Pot decades later
Thank you for helping to keep the testimonies of the victims of the slave camps alive, no matter how difficult it is to read at times. Never forget.
Thank you for your always kind, gracious words and your unending support. Glad to have you with us every week
I'm very glad that the 'Speer myth' is finally being debunked more often. The man was brilliant, that can't be denied - unfortunately, the pinnacle of said brilliance was conning the world into thinking that he wasn't really a war criminal or Nazi ideologue.
He certainly wasn't a genius about architecture. Speer's plans were tacky modernizations of Greco-Roman styling, and Hitler's love for them shows that the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts was right in rejecting that sociopath admission back in his youth.
@@fredaaron762 The beauty of art is subjective... but you're right, trying to build these giant and simple buildings in German cities was crazy
Damn. Sparty’s ending monologues keep getting more powerful and moving with every video.
🤔 Indeed. But there is a serious risk of them becoming more of a personal statement, and not a dispassionate summary of the material in these videos. It is not the role of an historian to act as judge and jury on historical events, but to present them as fully as possible with evidence, so that others can learn from them.
He is preaching a sermon from the pulpit of Humanity.
"Never forget" is the amen.
This is the first time I've ever heard that Himmler was even remotely aware of any assassination plotting. Absolutely astonishing.
😖 He was involved in the assassination of Ernst Rohm, the leader of the SA, in 1934. Thank goodness we were spared hearing him rant if put on trial at Nuremberg due to his death by suicide. A truly monstrous caricature of a human being 😡!
In my eyes Albert Speer was a snake in a gentleman's suit. His slave efforts and underground slave factories prolonged the suffering and war
Do not be deceived by Albert Speer's charisma. He is a monster in sheep's clothing
He did what he did because he felt that the ends (victory) justified the means (inhumane treatment of labourers). He was just an average middle class, professional guy - which is all the more frightening because it means that anyone like him can become a monster.
His slave methods are no longer being used but his construction methods are being used all around the world fortified and prestressed concrete slabs happen every day in almost every country what a piece of human waste that man was and not be convicted of any crimes is ridiculous
@@tancreddehauteville764 yeah most people think nazi ware unique monster and everyone think they would fight evil if they were at those time. Yet (almost)everyone have recommand force vaccination and medical procedure against will on many sphere lately lol
Jordan peterson have make some good talk about it. Most nazi were plain normal people who live under certain condition that make them do what they do. Peer pressure and conformism is one kind of evil.
Don’t forget Werner von Braun who knew full well how the weapons he designed were actually built.
He got away with it, which means there is no justice in the world.
Even after years of inhumain sufferings, this is hard to watch. But what a powerful first hand account about MIttelbau Dora.
This was an incredibly well-done, informative and moving episode.
Thankyou for the kinds words @parallelworldsguy. Never Forget
@@WorldWarTwo generals Gustave Bertrand, charles Delestraint in 1940-1945 were against fascism and colllabration? Delestraint, Bertrand were communists or weren't?
@@WorldWarTwo add to videos ww2 1943-1945 Nicolae Dăscălescu, françois ingold, robert De Roux, jacques arthuys, Lorenzo Vivalda, Georg alexander hansen, henry louis gabriel michaud, Marcel haegelen, władysław Langner, františek masařík, tomaš byček, josef šandera, josef žižka , alain de boissieu, mieczyslaw nordwid neugebauer, marian kukieł, Jan kruszewsky, zdislaw Wincenty przyjalkowsky, Czech paratrooper františek pospíšil, Tadeusz stefan Münnich, ludvik cupal, libor zapletal, jean Édouard verneau ,paul colette ,jozef werobej please add them in videos these famous people of ww2 for me and all
@@WorldWarTwo general alain de boissieu was communist?
What I've never understood is war machines require incredibly precise engineering, consistency and quality control, yet there are tired, starving slaves building these incredibly complex machines.
It’s one reason the Axis lost the production war despite having the entire resources of continental Europe at their disposal.
The high valuable skills people probably were at either end of the sequence - at the design rooms of the plants that machined the dies, and then at the end of the production line doing final inspection/testing.
I always wondered that too. How are skilled are these slaves and how were the thought how to do all this.
@@golagiswatchingyou2966 right, which is why I said one reason. Much of what the Germans needed to fight the war was built by starved and brutalized slaves who were naturally less productive. They may have needed foreign labor but they didn’t have to mistreat them. And it wasn’t just Jews who suffered. An employee of mine now deceased was a Polish Catholic brought to Germany as a slave. The stories he told.
And many of them fought back the only way they could - working slow and intentionally messing up their work.
Always difficult to watch, but so important to remember. Thanks again
Thank you Gianni
We must never forget thank you for bringing these to light
Such a powerful testimony from someone who suffered this first hand. I didn’t have any idea these places existed. I knew of death camps obviously and of work camps but to experience underground work camps had to be a fresh hell all their own. We must never forget and must stand united against this ever occurring again in Europe. It still goes on daily in places like China and Africa with blood diamonds there. We have to root this out and get rid of it. Make the world safe for people
@@dougrohr2804 who has an agenda? The WW2 channel? They do have an agenda: making people understand the absolute hell that victims of the Nazis went through during this time. And I love this channel for it. We can never forget what happened and if we must, lay down our own lives to ensure that it never happens again.
But look at the Uyghurs of China. It’s being perpetrated by the Chinese communists right now. It’s potentially looking like genocide and I wish our leaders would do a better job confronting China about it.
The first hand descriptions are always what gets to me the most. Very powerful. Good job on the episode!
Thank you for watching, very glad you enjoyed it.
I never learned about these underground mines. Thanks for bringing this to light.
it's never too late to learn
There was an episode on this topic…on A&E or History.
Lost Battlefields w Tino Struckmann has hours of touring videos of these.
I can't get through an episode without crying. Y'all are doing something right. Thank you so much
@Anthony Ellis We know the content can be tough, many people have to watch episodes in sections and/or wait to be in the right emotional space before watching. But, as you say, if the episodes did not hit hard then we would not be portraying the subject properly. Thanks for watching with us and Never Forget
Nietzsche, whose work ironically was perverted by the Nazis, said, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
when does it end
Excellent Timothy. Thank you.
It was his sister who canoodled with the NAZIs and apppeared to give legitimacy to them vis a vis Nietzsche's thoughts. In truth, Nietzsche would have been horrified by the NAZIs who personify the slave mentality.
Nietzsche himself considered to be a Polish nobleman lol
Thanks Spartacus, another informative show about the horror of war
Thanks for watching with us @Kevin Conrad
I always appreciate the level of gravitas and seriousness you bring to the subject
Thank you, very glad you enjoy it.
And Speer manged to charm the Nuremberg Trials as being a "good German." "I'm just an industrialist." and only got a 20 year sentence which was reduced.
Not true. He served his full sentence.
@@brithgob1620 True. But he was as guilty of exploiting slave labour as Sauckel, who was hanged. The main reason he served his full sentence was that he remained healthy - some of the others who were imprisoned were released early due to their health breaking down. Although he only scored in the middle range among the defendants in the IQ tests that were administered at Nuremberg (he scored 10 points less than Goering and Doenitz), his trial strategy, aimed at avoiding the death penalty, was unprincipled but also brilliant. (His lawyer also seems to have been above average in terms of the German defence lawyers present.)
Hello ladies and gentlemen of the TG team. I am back once again,with my usual regards and congratulations. I watch these episodes with great delight,because no matter how disturbing it may be,it is human history and it must be recognized with no petty biases. So thank you very much.
Thank you!
I never understood how Albert Speer escaped justice at the Nuremberg trials. I watched many interviews with him after his release from prison. He was anything but an innocent technocrat. He always gave me the creeps, watching him on TV.
Mittelbau-Dora. 9th Grade in School and our teacher organised a school trip there. its just about 60km from my home. Germany remembers. Everything is a museum now. Some of the Baracks still stand/are rebuild and you can even enter the mineshaft and see the underground facility, though its mostly rubble now. but here and there you find metalic parts in the rubble. the crematorium is also still there. around it, there is a blossom of flowers. its the last reminder of the dead, for when the bodies got cremented, the ashes was tossed around the crematorium giving new life to the flowers. in a metaphor, the victims gave a tiny bit of new life.
Thank you for sharing that somber and tragic history.
I’m only catching up now after 7 months, but WAH never fails to deliver a sobering, chilling, reminder.
Spartacus’ lines during the conclusion accompanied with the sinister organ in the background were absolutely brilliant.
the last lines were so powerful, and delivered with such passion. thank you so much. never forget
A comment to show my support for the channel, and to help with it's algorithm
Thank-you Sparty & team. This is important work.
Primary sources really do bring the misery & cruelty of these events into sharp focus.
😢 Indeed. They are an essential part of any history syllabus, bringing the past up to the present and onto the future. Never Forget 💐!
N.B. Back in 1975, an older co-worker of mine had once worked in Speer's underground aircraft factories. He said that a large supply of aluminium came from downed Allied aircraft. There were many. And most of them missed what they were sent to destroy, bombing residential areas and killing civilians instead.... as reported here.
🤔 You must understand that navigation technology during the Second World War was not GPS standard. Add that the RAF flew night missions which made navigation even more difficult. Then they faced attacks from the ground and in the air. Is it any surprise that targets were missed, or only partially damaged in such circumstances? Take note of the losses of aircraft and aircrew on these missions, which come to c.50,000 aircrew fatalities. That is more than the entire population of a modest sized town in England of the period. Never Forget 💐!
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat However it should also be noted that there was a deliberate policy of " dehousing" and area bombing - Arthur Harris even states in a letter that targeting workers is not an accidental byproduct but intentional. He is absolutely convinced that this strategy will win the war and resists any effort to change strategy or to send his bombers to attack other targets. While I have every sympathy for the aircrew lost in this campaign - they after all were required to follow orders not implement policy - I am also appalled by the hundreds of thousands of civillians killed in pursuit of a flawed strategy which appears to have been the pinnacle of "vengeful pragmatism". Had Bomber Command enacted the Transportation and Oil campaigns earlier and with the same zeal, I believe Germany could have been brought to its knees far more quickly and effectively.
@@bobdollaz3391 That is an idiotic statement. Why wish anyone's death? Unless they were the worst of people. Usually bomber crew were pretty much unaware of the strategies of their high command. Do you wish the Axis had won? WW2 was an enormous waste of life that few people had any control over. The Axis should not have started a war that would lead to the deaths of so many people, whether by air bombardment or other means.
@@Rendell001 🤔 How would you describe the blitz bombings of London, Rotterdam and other cities? The use of the V1 and V2 weapons on those cities? Acceptable in a war, because they were aimed at Allied countries and civilian populations? I am beyond accepting this continuing denigration of the RAF, and Bomber Command in particular. Criticising actions against the most appalling military dictatorship in history without recognising the limited resources the RAF and the USAAF is a failing in your part. I remind you that the Nazi dictatorship had enormous public support right up to the fall of Berlin in 1945. Those who kept the Nazis in power had to take the consequences of their choices. Even after 1945 many German citizens held firm to their appalling ideology. If you think their suffering from Allied bombing is deplorable, but that of my parents in England is not, you need to think again.
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat This was preciesly the response I'd expected when I read your intial post. What I'm most interested in is: you must be a regular viewer of this channel right? In which case I'm sure you'll have listened to Spartacus' closing monologues in recent episodes of War on Humanity including this one. He knows exactly the problem with the arguement you're making because it lacks both nuance and crucially, lacks empathy. That last part is vitally important, it does not in anyway diminish the crimes of the Nazi's but it warns against using vengence without empathy - that way leads to darkness.
Finally, dismissing nuanced analysis in favor of a simplistic nationalist bias is not helpful.
Great Episode ! It is still astonishing today that Speer somehow got away with only imprisonment after Nuremberg.
We should've pulled an Eichmann.
@@deshaun9473 The Israelis don't mess about
@@bloodrave9578 we sure don't
Would have been interesting to see something on Wernher von Braun’s reported visits to the factories.
We'll hear from him sometime in the next two years.
Thank you for the lesson.
Do not stoop to fight an enemy of their level lest you become them.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Never thought I'd hear whack a mole used as an analogy for something in WW2.
Also, that photo at 1:23 is easily one of the most haunting I've ever seen. Not because of any depiction of the suffering of innocent people or their remains after being murdered but solely because of the smile on the face of that German right in the center.
He was enjoying this.
And that scares me more than anything.
I'd never heard of these before now. Y'all are doing a good service, these things should never be forgotten. Even if they are horrifying to find out about.
Thank you for watching & helping us remember these horrible times
Another fine report Sparty. Keep up the great work TGA!!
Thank you David!
Superb writing as always! Such an important series to produce. Thank you for all you do TG!
Thank you for your very kind words! Please stay tuned and keep writing nice things about us, they really mean a lot!
The transportation system was particularly essential to keeping these underground factories running and was to become ever more vulnerable as the war continued. Not a longsighted solution to the huge overcast of enemy bombers growing larger every month.
Has Göring changed his name to Meyer yet?
Shame is one word he never learned.
Thank you for showing how Speer's 'economic miracle' had been achieved.
Thank you for watching. It's important to be explicit in condemning such horrors, and that means to also dispel myths regarding how their work was achieved.
Your conclusions are always the best part. Always well thought.
Thank you Jérémie
I went to the Dora/Mittelbau camp last summer, in part to show my son how true evil does manifest itself. Of the few parts of the camp that still exists, is the ovens in the crematorium. Knowing it was the last stop for 20.000 humans, it is a heartbreaking place to visit!
Amazing speech as always, thank you Spartacus
A small question because I'm unsure if its been talked about in a while. What is the food production situation within the Reich? Have the allied bombings largely ignored it, has the labor conscription caused harvest issues. things along this train of thought are what I'm curious about. Thanks to anyone in advance who replies.
and of course a special thank you to the Timeghost team, and army for your continued efforts. Never Forget.
Many Polish and French POWS were sent to farm areas to help work the land when the male farmers were drafted. And what food they could not supply from farms they stole from occupied countries.
Thank you for watching, my Sloth friend
Your final words left me chills.
All we have is our soul.
@American meteorite fan. Never Forget
1:25 seeing the smile on that soldiers face makes me sick to my stomach
TH-cam didn't notify me on this one or the other to I went to look why you hadn't put one out. So now I'm watching all 3
Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
These poor people must never be forgotten.
Thank you for remembering with us, Eleanor
@@penultimateh766 yes that is true but in the movie version of the story of Spartacus they all stood up and said they were Spartacus so perhaps all slaves deserve respect regardless of how they were sold into that by family friends or simply being on the wrong side of a conflict slaves built the world and he still continues to do so today it is sad but corporations still put profits above people so everybody that works for a living is truly a Slave unless you're working a farm for a subsistence living don't have any technology but you're able to provide everything your family needs to survive you are a slave a rat on a wheel shameful isn't it that this is what Humanity has become
@@davidboysel4509 Punctuation woukd make your posts easier to read. I gave up.
Excellent closing statement, with appropriate music.
Thank you again.
Thank you for watching
Another magnificent episode, Sparty. As you were reading the man's testimony at the end, I could only wonder how anyone could survive such an ordeal. And just through stubborn force of will too. I think I would want to "do something" as a way to keep my spirit up and mind occupied, but "doing something" is just as likely to get you killed, if not more likely.
Thank you Hannah. It is a wonder anyone survived with their humanity in tact
2:54 -- My father (a US veteran of WW2) said that the air force's navigation was so bad that they were lucky if they hit the ground. Sometimes they bombed the wrong country.
My uncle was in the army air corp. He was born in 1915, and he would talk of the attrocities and disasters of the war. But he also reminded us that the Wright brothers had only invented manned flight in 1903, a mere 40 years earlier. that, compared to the present time would be like 1982, not so long ago?
@@jerryw6699 -- More than once the US army air corps bombed US troops (e.g., "Operation Cobra" (24 July 1944)).
@@kevinbyrne4538 That still happens although somewhat less frequently.
@@kevinbyrne4538 You seem to have missed my point, like your dad said, they couldn't even hit the ground.
How Slavemaster Speer avoided the gallows, I'll never understand.
He was smooth talking and charismatic in contrast to his thuggish co-defendants . He fooled a lot of people for a long time.
Speer HE KNEW all in my humble opinion just he had smart defense at the trials.
Same way von Braun did. Giving his technical knowledge to the Americans so they could use it against Russia.
Thank you for the video.
That epic quote at the end... Very interesting episode tho ! I've known a bit about the underground camps and factories, but a very interested subject.
Thank you Arthur. Stay tuned for more every week
God Sparty, every time I can gain the courage and bring myself to watch one of your videos it brings bile to my gorge. The cruelty and depravity that one group of humans can inflict upon another is terrifying and heartbreaking. For those who think it cannot happen here or this stuff does not happen today, do not fool yourselves, it is all to easy to fall into this chasm of darkness, just look at China's treatment of the Uighur people or Russia's invasion of Ukraine or the rise of right wing neo-facists in the western democracies. Never forget indeed!
Russias invasion of Ukraine is no worse than the wests invasions of Iraq and Iran. In Ukraine its just white people being killed so the west cares.
Comparing Putin to Hitler is patently ridiculous.
I agree with your point and there are the muslims in Nigeria, conflict in Burma, and much more. But you lost me with right wing neo-facists. The President left it up to the States (as he should) to deal with covid. But left wing democrats lock down whole states and cities for years? Didn't left wing democrats mask children to establish control over them for years? Didn't left wing democrats mix sick patients with well patients in old folks home and then lie and cover up the deaths that occurred? The right wing Red states restored freedom to the individual as soon as the impact of Covid was understood. Allowed business to reopen. Allowed kids to go back to school. Allowed freedom. That is the right wing message which the left is so terrified...freedom.
To prove my point: The CDC has finally changed their guidance to recognize freedom over a repressive control regime. This is the opposite of the left wing control imposed in most/all left wing Democratic controlled environs. quote
August 11, 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its COVID-19 guidelines, thereby vindicating every “misinformation spreader” out there
The CDC is now advocating for taking personal responsibility and for everyone to decide for themselves “which prevention behaviors to use and when (at all times or at specific times), based on their own risk for severe illness and that of members of their household, their risk tolerance, and setting-specific factors”
The CDC is also giving up on discrimination based on COVID jab status, stating, its “COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur.” They also admit natural immunity exists and works. unquote
I have to force myself to watch his videos. Its too easy to romanticize the war with the other series on this channel, but the WAH one always brings back into focus just how utterly barbaric it really was.
Thank you guys
Thank you Evan
The sight of those poor, emaciated men assembling a rocket…that will never leave me. Our first step to the stars was taken in the bowels of hell.
As someone who studied mining engineering, I'm somewhat amazed that they were able to build such large caverns without having so many cave-ins that the whole strategy was made untenable. Modern mine works are kept small and held together with a combination of rock bolts and mesh to prevent caving and we still have occasional incidents where the rock shifts in ways we fail to predict. Back in WWII they were still largely reliant on wood support beams, which are no longer used because they're not very good at their job. And many of these workings are only really engineered to stand up to a few years, by which point miners will have exhausted that area and moved on.
Or perhaps they did have so many cave-ins that someone with my standards would indeed have considered the strategy untenable. After all, modern mining engineering doesn't consider the life of even a single miner to be expendable. This is not to say operating mines get the level of stability implemented in places like the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (a permanent science facility built off of a mine I worked at for a few months), but if you keep your wits about you, you should be able to walk anywhere in the mine (that isn't marked off as being unsafe) and not get randomly hurt or killed by falling debris. (And entering an area that was marked as unsafe at the mine I mentioned would get you fired instantly even if you came back unscathed.
These were not built for long term. The Germans did these as emergency factories since the surface factories were being bombed. I doubt they thought about would this last 10 years. They were trying to keep their armaments going day by day in a frantic attempt to ward off defeat. Long term planning was not in their thinking.
They did indeed have numerous cave ins… but the workers lives were considered expendable, so they didn’t care.
Thank you for keeping the victims memory alive
Thank you for helping us remember them
Another great video
Thanks @Elveheim
The Nazis hit rock bottom before they were ever in power. Now we're about 15 shovel's deep and they're breaking out the industrial diamond drill
Hi Sparty
This very inhuman.
So much people had to die.
Never had idea that industry worked underground.
All these sould died should n't be wasted.
Only things we should do is remember their sacrifice and create awarness.
Never forget.
Thank you for this. It gave some insight into what my paternal Grandmother went through.
@The World War II Old Time Radio Channel glad we could touch on something with a familial connection to you. I'm sorry she had to go through such an ordeal
In the 60’s I had a girl friend who studied architecture at The Technological University of Delft, the Netherlands. With a group they visited Speer in Germany, who was then no longer in prison, lived in a nice house. I understand they only talked about architecture in the 3rd Reich, nothing about the slave labor. At that time I was not fully aware who he was, now I am.
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks again for the public service you provide
@Bob Bobbers it's all thanks to the TimeGhost Army for making it all possible
Well done!
In a different comment thread, I brought up the novel "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis, describing an America being taken over by a fascist group in the same way Hitler came to power in Germany. What many Americans don't know is how many Nazi sympathizers (aka "Silver Shirts") there were in America, especially in Southern California In fact, there is a now-decaying fifty-acre former Nazi compound, set up to be self-sustaining and to house, train, and feed several hundred Nazi recruits, that had been built in the 1930's: Murphy Ranch in Rustic Canyon, Los Angeles.
This was able to be built because of the large number of anti-Semitic/pro-Nazi groups in Southern California. The feds had no interest in monitoring Nazis (they were focusing on Communists), so a lawyer named Leon Lewis created his own spy rings to infiltrate these groups. Thanks to his efforts, on the day after Pearl Harbor, the FBI was able to find and arrest several thousand Nazi sympathizers who had been spying for Germany. His group also broke up several plots to kidnap prominent Jewish leaders and execute them. He uncovered so many such plots that one historian believes that at least one of those plots could have been carried out, if Lewis had not interfered in some way.
Do a Google search with the phrase "FBI raid Nazi compound Los Angeles" to find dozens of articles about the Nazi movements in Los Angeles.
Something interesting I learned when I visited some of these sites in Germany is that the poor conditions the slaves and prisoners were kept in was also detrimental to the nearby German populations. The poor conditions were perfect for disease to spread, and eventually it got to the German population, causing large disease outbreaks. Essentially, a lot of German civilians died because the Nazis wouldn't give their slaves and prisoners decent conditions
On the whole they avoided major epidemics, in part because of their ruthlessness. Sick prisoners were often sequestered and left to die. Then their bodies and even the barracks they were in might be destroyed by fire. Typhus was a particular fear but it was worked into their ideology - posters distributed in Poland would associate Jews with lice and typhus.
A German doctor who testified at Nuremberg recalled being brought in to treat Russian female slave labourers in a bombed-out factory. They were dressed only in potato sacks that had holes cut in them. The doctor described large boils developing on his own body later because they and the factory they were housed in were so flea-infested.
At war's end a German nurse was brought in to treat concentration camp survivors. Her response - "Why should I have to nurse tubercular criminals?"
no more episodes?
I love your channel keep up the great stuff
Thanks as always, Oliver!
@@WorldWarTwo no problem 👍 it's always a pleasure watching your videos
These ending speeches are some of the best humanitarian writings I've ever heard
Thank you for taking it seriously and helping us remember what is at stake, Sean. Our whole crew is thankful to have such a keen audience of history enthusiasts, so thank you for being here & thanks for your humbling words. Never forget
I always enjoy your poignant sayings at the end Sparty. They are quite insightful. Never Forget.
Did Goebbels write notes in English?
@@johnhouser4494---Why do you ask?
I have said this before but this series is really hard to watch, BUT I force myself because we need to "Never Forget!"
Thank you korbell for watching & helping us remember the victims. It is not easy subject matter, but it is necessary to remember.
The war has been over almost 80 years. It ended almost 20 years before I was even born. Yet it still brings tears to my eyes. And I don't know if it's the history of the madness of WWII, or the insanity of our leaders today that breaks my heart more
Thank you for watching and helping us remember what is at stake. Human dignity must be respected and preserved, and the disastrous worship of nationalism and war must be eroded.
@@WorldWarTwo I couldn't agree with you more. Wars are never started by the common man or woman, or even the foot soldier. They have always been started by kings, presidents, PM, dictators. Until we stop following our leaders like blind we're blind sheep we will never have world peace.
RIESE In Poland for people who are interested in history of WWII is quite known. Huge underground complex. Under supervision of Organisation Todt and SS (especially end 1944 and 1945 totally controlled by general SS Hans Kammler) with commands from Minister Speer.
Mittelwerk is currently a museum of what Nazi war machine created sacrificing human lives.
There are also several construction sites around Silesia (Riese complex) which were cleared out of rubble after being blown up, when Nazis were retreating from Poland, and are open for visitors.
Owl mountains have many buildings, which purpose we can only guess.
Thank you for the suggestions
While the Nazis certainly had amazing underground factories -- most slaves labored under the trees. (!)
My Uncle was a condemned slave at Dora -- and for all of the early months -- sleeping directly under the trees was it.
They didn't even rate huts... anything ! ( No fires/ heat, either. )
BTW, Mittelbrau Dora is a post-war term. Absolutely no-one called it anything but "Dora" while it was operational.
The very term 'Dora' is a reference to Buchenwald -- as it was -- on paper -- Camp 'D' [ hence Dora] of Buchenwald -- even though it was miles away.
The Nazis were so paranoid -- knowing that the RAF was going crazy with photo-recon -- that no fires/ lights could be lit.
No guns were used by the SS... just truncheons. Murder was by way of brutal blows to the head...
( No gas, no bullets, ... nothing but head cracking until brains flowed.)
Every Tuesday, half of the labor force was culled -- the hard way... this was the grave digging detail... they were digging their own.)
The Nazis even routed ALL of Dora's mail through Buchenwald -- by way of a motorcycle courier. It had not a single telephone. (!)
[ The SS didn't trust their own phone company to run wires. ]
Even the locals in Nordhausen (pigpen) didn't know it was there. Honestly! When the US Army showed up, none believed what they were hearing.
The site had long been off limits -- some sort of nature preserve, IIRC. When the SS began operations -- they stayed away from the local towns.
Even with all of the Nazi production, the folks in Nordhausen remained clueless -- not as if anyone dared ask questions.
At war's end, the Allies found amazing numbers of Nazi planes in partial assembly across southern Germany -- in one wood after another.
Essentially the entire work force was forced labor -- with no huts near to hand, either.
As for left over underground factories -- there's one that terminates at Tempelhof airport. (!!!) It's still there. Yup.
( It's a tunnel that is just big enough for the plane. You have to crawl under to get past. The final step was elevation of the fighter up to the airport. )
The Nazis used it to assemble FW-190 radial engine fighters... some are still there -- almost complete. (!!!!!)
This tidbit comes by way of a German teenager who just couldn't obey the warning signs to stay out.
Poke around, you might still find his photos on the Internet.
No mention of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria death???
Covered in our day by day coverage
I do hope that at some point this series will touch on the GI's of Berga (sp) I was shocked when I met the son of one of the US P.O.W's who were held at and died at Berga. A story I have been seeking more information about ever since. What I do know is approximately 300 US P.O.W.s of Jewish faith were taken from a Stalag and transported to Berga and sent into the tunnels to work and die. I believe though am not certain they were building V2's at this site.
For those who think the German Peoples, were not aware of the magnitude of horror inflicted on innocent Peoples, in systematic industries of destruction and death, in factories and Concentration Camps, Pits and massive Funeral Pyres, Himmler summoned all Gau leaders, high ranking SS and SD, Foreign Service and Gestapo, and it was compulsory, in October 1943, Posen. Speer till the day he died denied being there. ( believe it or not, but a helicopter may have been used to get him there ), said he arrived late. Himmler laid it out in detail, the numbers Murdered and where, and much much else, lest some thought it impossible this could have happened in their Gau. Speer gave the Weapon and Food Production address, laid it all out, and what was needed to continue in raw materials. All Gaultier and staff's, all knew what had happened in there districts.
They knew earlier than that… we’ve documented that in detail in the past.
I always find it incredible(yes not in a good way) how they manage to put high technology rocket at such early times with slave badly treat. I wonder what was the malfunction rate
I imagine they had better treated slave at the end of production line who make sure everything was ok
I have heard London unexploded ordnance squads often have found bombs with small piece of paper inside in various languages, all stating same sentence: this bomb will not explode. So there must have been some intentional sabotage effort within those "death factories".
An argument could be made that people on all levels were horrified by the methods, and this slowed down both the rockets and the nuclear fission research.
Surely the failure of the Blitz to break UK morale was a lesson to bomber command. It seems the slaughter of civilians became an end in itself.
😖 Do not believe what the British government claimed as a success in this regard. Prime Minister Churchill was informed that in 1944 the morale of the British civilians was under severe stress, with consequences for all aspects of the war. Particularly so with the second V2 version of the blitz, as there was no defence against rockets once they had been launched. Unlike the V1 which could be intercepted by the RAF before causing death and destruction. Morale is a delicate concept, easily broken when under years of pressure. The difference here is between the Allies doing ‘good’ and the enemies doing ‘bad’. Being part of the former was a strong means of maintaining morale.
excellent introducing
It is estimated that more people died in the construction of the V2 rockets than in the bombings with them.
😡 Well, whoopsy doo! That excuses the use of such weapons by the Nazis absolutely. NO IT DOES NOT! The V2 was intended to carry a NUCLEAR WARHEAD, which the Nazis were close to developing using Norwegian heavy water in the process. Your entirely simplistic counting of numbers is a calumny against the many victims of those weapons in London, Rotterdam and Antwerp.
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat Would you please explain me how a simple statement on two numbers can be interpreted as a moral justification of any kind? I was just trying to add some knowledge. Relax.
@@markotrieste 😖 If there was no intention of comparing those deaths one with another, please explain why the comment was posted at all? And try not to be so patronising when responding to someone you know very little about. Relax, indeed!
@@sirmeowthelibrarycat I am not patronizing, just asking you a simple question. Where did I state any moral comparison? I am responsible for what I write, not fir what you understand or imply. Are you some kind of TH-cam inspector to whom I have to justify what I post?
It seems to me like strategic bombing of industries does have quite an effect. If you're forced to move whole factories underground that can't be cheap. It probably takes a lot more effort and manpower and materials to build/excavate. Nor can you achieve the same efficiency as a normal factory would. So while the nazi war machine is still increasing production each month, one must wonder just how much more production they'd have by now if left unhindered.
Sure… all those salaries add up. Oh… no, wait - they were slaves.
@@WorldWarTwo No need to get sarcastic, while ignoring the rest of my comment. While slaves are "free", they're not infinite and neither are the transports, resources and other things you need to (re)build factories and then produce weapons. With the same amount of resources and time you can produce more weapons more efficiently above ground than beneath.
Edit: just to avoid any unnecessary escalation: I do not condone slavery in any way, I am against bombing of civilian buildings and find firebombing of cities barbaric. And I also find this episode very striking. But that first hand account also made me think just how more difficult having factories underground must be - not just for the workers/slaves who suffer those conditions - but also for the ones organizing all the logistics and all that goes with it, which must impact production in a negative way.
No matter how you feel about it, facts universally contradict that feeling. Bombing civilians and infrastructure did not have any negative effect upon German war production or capacity, and in fact has exactly the opposite effect in terms of steeling resolve as well as killing skilled allied pilots.
And this is why a sober study of history is necessary, so that your own sentiment does not interfere with the statement of these facts.
Is this episode 75 of wah?
Yes it is
Humanity is a real piece of work. Take that in any and every way you can imagine
No disagreements here
I remember the story of one Jewish slave forced to build tanks in an underground factory. He said that when the Nazis were not looking, he and the others would pee into the wiring of the tanks which would cause it to short out at some point in the future. Revenge in any way possible I suppose.
Indeed: if we are going to be the ones who fight evil, we have to remember, there is *no* low they will not sink to, and they are just looking for the excuse. Sure, we must not fight with a hand tied behind our backs but must always be conscious of what is it we're doing, and *own* it -- not bury and hide it and try to burn it away to pretend it did not happen.
Add Do not become the evil we fight.
Sparty, you need to write a book.
If anyone wants to see these underground places, check out Tino Struckman's Lost battlefields channel on TH-cam. The scope of these tunnels and complexes are unimaginable.
Reminds me of modern China
It always strikes me as stupid to treat your slaves so poorly when you can only get poor productivity from starving and cold victims.
At this point the Nazi leaders understood they were about to lose the war, and the whole Mittelwerk system was set up more to follow orders and do at least something, than to reach the production numbers necessary to turn the war around.
If you consider them inferior and worthless except for their labor the attitude you can always get more if they die effects the whole enterprise and can work against your best interest which would be keeping the slaves healthy and productive. Instead there was a never ending search for more slaves.
Indy and Red have a bet on who can use Whack-a-Mole first in one of their videos? Spart-a-Mole wins!
I have always wondered if the US knew about the camps.
They sent recon aircraft out all the time and we never found a camp?
Kinda suspicious.
But I may not know the whole story 🤷♂️
Thanks Sparty and Jamie and gang! Much appreciated!!
Excelsior!!
They certainly knew about camps. Concentration camps were well known fron 1933 on. Death camps and work camps were certainly known from a number of sources recon, spies ,personal testimonies, radio intercepts etc.
@@caryblack5985 my point being all the guys on the ground seemed to know nothing about there being camps there from their testimonies.
I suppose it was only known by higher command.
No Twitter back then to alert the whole world I guess.
Russians too.
Their accounts state they didn’t know about the camps and when they found the first one they started really torturing Nazis.
Ok. So it was known, but not by many it seems.
Trying to clear that up.
@@5777Whatup I would say many knew it intellectually. They knew about camps and were told in orientation lectures and probably some forgot or it made little impression. When they actually liberated the camps and saw bodies stacked like cordwood. and hundred if not thousands in rags and starving, just skeletons they were horrified and enraged. So was Eisenhower and Patton and you know they would have all the information. The emotional impact seeing in real life what you were told about in the abstract was overwhelming. Many said I didn't know but they said that because they could not image the reality when they confronted it face to face.
@@caryblack5985 I think you’re a bit confused. The 1933 prisons all the way to 39 were political prisoners like stalins.
Anyone who read mein kampf would have realized what was coming. That’s why Einstein left.
They were not briefed in training about these camps. Although all my grandfathers are family were Air Force. They weren’t briefed. I know the army wasn’t. I don’t think anyone knew they were killing them until the Soviets liberated the first camps.
It was ww2 no one had all the information.
If you’re 30 under you won’t understand life without technology telling you things.
Except for codes and code reading.
Patton did not know. When he found his first camp he grabbed the whole town and made them tour it. In his diary, he didn’t know they were doing it either.
@@5777Whatup When I said that people knew about concentration camps from 1933 on was because there were news stories and published in newspapers and other places that were available especially the New York Times. There were news stories about the mass murder of Jews in the New York Times. That people paid no attention or were unconcerned did not mean the information was not there. I don't believe Eisenhower or Patton did not know there were concentration camps. There are books documenting what was published.
How Albert Sperr managed to escape the hangman at Nurenberg will never cease to amaze me ... You'd think Israel's Mosad would dona hit on him or something. Shame he wasn't taken out.
Mossad focused their efforts and limited resources on the Nazis who escaped justice entirely, like Eichmann and Mengele... for better or worse, Speer served his time.
@@TheTrickster923yup its not like he didn't got punished he was convicted but the main problem was more that people think he was innocent of any crimes well he was he just got 20 Years which is still a Life Sentence and not the Death Penalty.
An amazing story. Sad to think that so many escaped justice so the Americans and Soviets could get an earlier leg up on each other post war.
Just two words: Argentina, Chile
Who was the greater incompetent, Sir Douglas Haig, or Harris?
That last speech about the monster was INCREDIBLE.
Thanks for the kind words @Domy Jonsy
The last words he ends with are so powerful. I think of America's next big wars ... The effects of our bombing did we forget?
Americans have been too busy watching professional sports! American politicians are doing as they wish cause nobody cares enough.