"He who tries to defend everything ends up defending nothing" Rommel said and he knew a thing or two about defence and attack, great content as per Simon!!!
@History Thoughts Sadly we are on the way to repeat the cycle again, due to re writings and ideology instead of truth and desire to actually make a change in the future NOT just the writings of the past.
In reality, Rommel wasn't that great of a General. Like most propaganda, ya go with what you have,otherwise Africa would have gone differently. Yeah, he was sick,and recalled, but if you look at his body of work,ultimately, he lost. Yes I recognize the victors write the history, but he was an average Commander, who out ran his supplies, a rookie mistake.
@History Thoughts Guess that whole History diploma from a southern military college comes in handy occasionally. Lol... Capt.Bob, SV (Sailing Vessel) 27th Chance, Tampa Fl. USA 🇺🇸 Full disclosure, my grandfather was captured at Stalingrad. Mom's dad ..
I remember playing in the German bunkers on Guernsey as a kid with my friends, wasnt until years later we found out about the dark history. Still very interesting places to visit
@@prateek4279 as kids we just thought the bunkers were like playgrounds, lots of dark rooms to play hide and seek and scare your friends. There's even a place here that hosts BB gun fights in one of the old bunkers called the Mirus Battery. We'd have birthday parties there and kids still do. Just part of growing up on Guernsey!
I assumed when you said found out about the dark history you meant the slave labour. used to build them. Men starved to death building those bunkers and they were never used. Hitler was obsessed with it as it was his one little part of Britain. I'm really just going on the documentary "Hitler's Island Madness." It interviews some of the survivors and locals about the horrific conditions. This one in fact - th-cam.com/video/jtgzh6_czNQ/w-d-xo.html
@History Thoughts the beginning of the reign of nazism over Europe was the moment when Czechoslovakia including all the weapons, equipment and large industry was GIVEN to Germany by Munich deal.
@@enjibkk6850 The only thing preventing YT from rolling their face all over the demonetized button was the fact that their algorithm doesn't have a face programmed in yet.
@@theangryotaku3361 if he walked up the stairs he could have. The French had damaged the lift specifically to make it much harder to use it in propaganda.
Use the Hoover dam for a better comparison of concrete quantity. It used 2.4Mm3 of concrete when being built. The Atlantic wall used a little over 7x that amount in it's construction.
He's trying to get the scale in our head, saying 7 times would be to detract from the statement. Unless the video is about the hoover dam, but it's not
Hey thanks for that info! When he was doing the concrete comparison I actually wondered why he didn't use a more useful comparison like the hoover dam lol
1:35 - Chapter 1 - All quiet on the western front 3:10 - Chapter 2 - The battle of britain 4:25 - Chapter 3 - A long border 5:15 - Chapter 4 - The channel islands 6:05 - Chapter 5 - Fuhrer directive N°40 7:10 - Chapter 6 - Building the wall 11:00 - Chapter 7 - Field marshall erwin rommel 13:55 - Chapter 8 - D Day 15:00 - Chapter 9 - The failed wall
My Polish grandfather (then a teenager) was one of a few thousand slave labourers building part of the Atlantic Wall system on Alderney and Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Expecting to be liberated following D-Day, in fact they were quietly evacuated by the Nazis a few weeks(?) later, slipping through the Allied shipping lines and fetching up in Belgium en route to Dachau.
Here's a drinking game: take a shot whenever Simon says "We've covered this in another video". If you want to be really hardcore you can also take a shot when he says "We've covered this on one of my other channels". Do this for all of his videos. Say goodbye to your liver.
At this point, I’m starting to think Simon IS the TH-cam algorithm. But maybe that’s cos I’m stuck in a Business Blaze, Geographics, Biographics, Casual Criminalist, TIFO, Megaprojects and Side Projects binge I’ll probably never get out of!
@@AutisticCat Dunno, with what is going on today in the US a good chunk of the population already forgot their history (or more likely, never taught the deeper details).
Simon I only discovered you recently but I love the content, your channels certainly stand out. Well narrated, written and produced. Respect to you and your crew, we all notice your hard work. 👍
Hey Simon can you do a video on the building, destruction, and rebuild of the Oroville dam that nearly failed in 2017? Its a fascinating story of massive engineering gone wrong as well as what went into fixing it
But would nazi Atlantic Wall IKEA serve meatballs? These are the profound questions we must ask ourselves when we try to understand deconstructed furniture oppression.
Hers's is an idea for a video. Who and how was the clean up of the wall done after the landings. How did they get rid of all the mines and obstacles? I know that some parts of the artificial harbors are still off the beaches but derelict. Remains of the bunkers are still visible.
Here in Holland, there still pretty much bunkers to see, although a part is buried by the authorities under a thick layer of sand because they are unstable and to dangerous to get in.
The Channel Islands still have hundreds of bunkers and the wall is pretty much intact. This is an excellent documentary on it. I guess each local area cleared up what they wanted to clear but many bunkers were just left or filled in. They are literally everywhere. Clearing mines was a slow careful job by hand and I remember them still finding mines, even the big floating mines when I was a kid. They find unexploded WW2 bombs literally every few months. They blew up a WW2 bomb a couple of weeks ago here in the UK. ttps://th-cam.com/video/jtgzh6_czNQ/w-d-xo.html
This is them blowing up a WW2 bomb they found in the UK only a couple of weeks ago. This was a British bomb dropped from a damaged British plane returning from a bombing mission but German ones are also found. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-57953506
Danish West Coast is still littered with hundreds of these indestructible bunkers. Ironically the Nazis forced us both building and paying that useless megalomaniac project ... Nazi siblings in fourth generation are now happy invading these fine beaches, and leaving each summer 🥳👙⛱️💶💶💶
In the Seventies and Eighties I went on summer holidays to France quite a bit, bear with me. We went to Brittany (and some of Normandy). As a kid I used to play (with other kids) in what we called "the dog kennels" which were Nazi fortifications on the coast. They were concrete bunkers, often sliding into the sea (because they'd been built on sand, what do you want!). They had slits (for the machine gunners), rooms, doors, they were just weird playthings. We only went in the "safe" ones, often they stank (of poo, or worse). We kind of knew the significance of these very "odd" buildings, but to us they were just another place to play in and explore. Remember, the early years when I went there were only 3 decades after the end of the Second World War.
Hi, i love Maga projects, but in this case I would have liked to have more specific information. I maybe a “too Mega” project to cover in this format. There are tons of remaining parts of this wall and the scale of the ambition is mind blowing. I would propose a follow up on the part of the wall that was also the domination of the entry/exit to the Baltic See - between Denmark and Norway - where two enormous gun positions were built on ether side and mines see mines in the middle. It’s crazy! You can visit the places today in both Denmark and Norway. I haven’t been the the Norwegian site, but in Hanstholm/Danmark there is a great museum in the old fortifications.
I live almost next to the museum and gun position here in Møvik, Norway. I recommend that you visit as we have a great outdoor museum with trails between all the positions, an ammunition train, and the actual gigantic cannon as opposed to Denmark. We also have the gigantic casemate that was supposed to house one of the four cannons, of which only one arrived in time, which is the one still standing today.
Not sure why Yankee Stadium was used for the concrete comparison. Grand Coulee Dam contains some 9.1 million cubic meters of concrete, 3x that of Hoover Dam.
That’s not Yankee Stadium being shown at 10:20 either; the stadium shown in the video here is The Polo Grounds. The Polo Grounds was home to the New York Giants baseball team, although the Yankees also played here from 1913 to 1922, most pertinently while Yankee Stadium was under construction from 1922 until its completion in 1923.
There's an ironic comparison between the Atlantic Wall and the Maginot Line. The French spent huge amounts of time, resources and manpower on a defence network that was bypassed by the Germans though strategy and deception. Only for the Allies to to the same to them four years later.
@@edew9180 I find it difficult to comprehend what was moronic about destroying the transportation system supporting the wall. Dropping 20,000+ troops in advance behind the wall the night before to seize and/or neutralize key objectives. Pummelling the wall by air in advance of a troop assault. Using a huge concentration of battleships, cruisers and destroyers to provide targeted tactical support in breaching the wall and securing the lodgement. All this through detailed meticulous planning. What was 'moronic'?
I thought history, as taught in school, was boring as hell, but since graduating, lo, a half-century plus ago, I find myself watching and learning about stuff that only vaguely interests me _because I never know when it'll give me insight into something that_ *does* _interest me._ To quote Nero Wolfe, fictional detective, "The more you put into your brain, the more it will hold." It couldn't hurt, right?
"The writing was on the wall-" *snaps finger and smirks cheekily* "Pun intended" This mans is so damn talented at making me nearly choke on my water while I laugh like a crazy person and my parents look at me like 'What have I given birth to...'
Back in the 1960s I used to play a board game called D-Day. We found the Germans always won if they raced every unit back to the Rhine ASAP after D-Day. If virtually every German unit in the west was concentrated east of the Rhine the allies could not cross. Of course this game ignored the massive Russian army
@@MrPancake777 Depends, If France Belgium were liberated with no attack threat would the Western powers gone for a peaceful settlement allowing the regieme to retain a (united?) Germany ?
What exactly made you think about Disney land? Not THAT close to this video's subject... 🤔😉 I mean - disney land probably has some nice walls to keep people from entering the park without paying, but probably they are a wee bit smaller than the atlantic wall?! 😅
@@alexandergausJTP Ha ha! Good point! It is a weird transition to bring up Disneyland on a video about the Natzi Atlantic Wall. I think it was because I saw a video from Disneyland before this video. However I still think it would make a good Megaprojects video!
@@alaeriia01 I don't think those places made such an impact to family culture or pop culture as Disneyland has. They also aren't nearly the tourist destination as Disneyland or Disneyworld has.
@@chrisyanover1777 oh, you want something with an _impact,_ do you? The best themed amusement park in the world, a park that ran out of space four roller coasters ago, or what happens when you give a small park an unlimited budget doesn't cut it? Let's try der Efteling, the legendary Dutch park that was the inspiration for Disneyland. Or perhaps Energylandia, which opened in 2014 and already has more coasters than anywhere else in the world with the exception of SFMM.
Please check where the arctic circle is realated to the northern most extremities of Norway. Spoiler its like 15-20 hours drive south of the northern most point of Norway
4:30 the coastline extends well NORTH of the Arctic circle - as Norway wraps around the north of Sweden, and we have the Arctic circle passing through Sweden....
I know you've already got a couple of video's on dams and one on artifical islands, but could you do a video on land reclemation? Personally I'm more interested in draining marshlands than the Netherlands' efforts to push back the sea (which seems like the obvious choice for a video.) when learning about ancient history you sometimes hear that an area at the time was impassible due to being a vast marsh ( where hannibal lost his eye for example.) But nowadays it feels like outside of somewhere scarcly populated like russia they've all been turned into farmland if they're not being kept as a nature reserve. it'd be interesting to learn about early efforts to reclaim such land.
David brought a sling, a weapon capable of projecting a stone at the same speed as the muzzle velocity of a .32 calibur bullet... he brought the gun of his day to a sword fight, how is this an underdog? lol
@@cass7448 I'm still trying to figure out how a yo-yo worked as a weapon---and don't have a clue about boomerangs as weapons or otherwise. But slings---oh, yeah! Fast, accurate, and deadly.
@@highpath4776 I never tried one. Probably would've killed the neighbor's cat--behind me--or put a knot on my own head. I wasn't too bad with an old Remington single shot, bolt action .22, shooting at targets, but the one time I went hunting rabbits and squirrels, by the time I got the twist safety on the back of the bolt turned, the bunny was in the next county. Did make some tasty squirrel soup, one time, when friends visited me and went on the same mission. They plunked 'em down on my sink drain counter and said to do something with 'em, so I took tweezers and picked off all the damn guard hairs (autumn hunting season), cut 'em up, and added 'em to a big pot of Lipton's Chicken Soup Starter (1970's). Damn fools wouldn't even try it, but I enjoyed it for quite a while.
Another masterful job by Simon Whistler to provide a reasonably understandable presentation of a very complex topic. If only I had school teachers that could lecture as entertainingly as Simon.
Simon. The A-37B. The most underappreciated success story of the Vietnam War. Loved by both sides, forgotten in the west. Great Cold War jet story. Think of the ratings!
Glad the Allies won... But we need a reality check here: the only reason Operation Overlord was a success was because Hitler was asleep when it began (with strict orders not to disturb him) and it required his order to unleash the Panzer groups that would have ended that. It was ridiculous luck that made D-Day a success. Not complaining, just realistic.
Unsure if this was sarcasm or not but it is hilarious either way. If this was the case then it was incompetence that was the reason. The allies were invading with unprecedented force and no one made the call to wake him up or overrule the decision? Whether you believe this or not incompetence would have been the downfall regardless not luck.
They dominated Japan bc of arrogance thinking the shores of Japan that were thought to be incapable of penetration bc of reefs that were right below waterline eager beavers flew one mission and USA came up with vehicles that went right over the impenetrable reefs and the Japanese general said here come the death horses of the American troops
I'm a Jersey Bean, I can highly recommend a trip here for any history fans. As well as WW2 bunkers and tunnels, we also have medieval castles, Napolionic forts and Martello towers, Neolithic structures, and the tenth oldest building in the world (six thousand years) Lots to see and do here 👌 🍻
A good topic for mega projects would be the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. That would have made D-Day look like a beach party. The plan included allied troops potentially marching through the radiation left by up to 6 atomic bombs which had been requested by General Marshall and tentatively approved by President Truman. The plan also included provision for hundreds of thousands of hospital beds, prosthetic limbs, graves markers, and Purple Hearts. The supply of medals purchased for the invasion lasted into the 1980s. A great book on the topic is Hell to Pay by Giangreco.
There are still large parts of the wall visible in Blavand, Denmark. About 10 boy scouts could of held off an attack there. Some very impressive infrastructure. That and the millions of mines they laid in the area as well!
Fun fact: I transcribed the diary of a British officer who landed in Normandy a week or so later. They were given bags, which in typical military fashion were labelled 'Bag, Vomit, Army For The Use Of.'
Guys, is it true that the Atlantic wall was nothing more can a couple of bunkers and trenches until Rommel took over and started fortifying 3 months after he was placed in charge of the Southern France region facing England? I read the book D-Day from the German perspective and it seems the Americans took heavy causalities in their sectors because of Rommel while the other allies landing locations was a perfect example of what the coastal defense was supposed to be.
That’s not Yankee Stadium being shown at 10:20; the stadium shown in the video here looks like The Polo Grounds (Polo Grounds IV, the fourth iteration of the stadium, to be precise, which was built from concrete. Previous versions of Polo Grounds were largely wooden structures). The Polo Grounds was home to the New York Giants baseball team, although the Yankees also played there during the 1913 to 1922 seasons, most pertinently while Yankee Stadium was under construction from 1922 until its completion in 1923. Anyway … that’s the Polo Grounds, not Yankee Stadium.
I never really understood two things about the allied invasion of Europe in World War II. First was the attack at Omaha Beach. It's a long shallow beach leading to very high cliffs. There was he really no reason to put troops ashore there. They could simply land further north and then attack southward overland through the less defended sections behind Omaha beach. ... The second thing that always puzzled me was why attack Italy when southern France seemed a much more logical target. Even a small incursion into southern France would stretch Hitler's forces even further and been more effective militarily, especially given the horribly botched initial landing in Italy.
@@badluck5647 ...So I've heard. Hundreds of moles of easily defended mountains with multiple layers of overlapping fire in the prime German ally is not my idea of "soft". But then Churchill was not the best battlefield strategist.
From my reading it seems that the main goal was to capture airfields north of Rome which could be used to bomb southern Germany. Also, knocking Italy out of the conflict would make the convoy route to the Suez Canal and hence India and the Far East much safer. North Africa had already been cleared of Axis forces. When Italy capitulated while the mainland landings were taking place it weakened the defense of Italy by removing Italian soldiers from the equation, though not nearly as much as hoped given the trouble they had taking Rome. It was also hoped for some time that a good performance against Italy would help convince Turkey to enter the war on the side of the Allies to open up the Black Sea route for convoys to supply the U.S.S.R. That happened too late to be of much help.
Perhaps diving into the logistics with supplying so much construction work could be interesting? I found myself wondering how they paid for all this, where they got the materials from, etc.
Grew up with bunkers all over the place. They're still plentiful. Living in one of the 7 targeted cities during the invasion of Norway, yep we got peppered with the concrete monstrosities. They're somehow everywhere but never seen...
I would love to see a video on the Doiran line of WWI on the balcans Check the " biggest military disaster of the British army" video, to see more. But the engineering part there is really amazing as well
Would love to see a video on the Savannah River site in South Carolina it was one of the largest producers of weapons grade plutonium in the US and currently holds a large amount of the US nuclear waste stockpile
The bit about the IKEA bunker is just silly. It would obviously be called Försvara (Swedish for Defend). You’d find it next to the section called Förvara (Swedish for Storage, or just Store).
You got to talk about those wall bits in the Channel Islands. Talk about over kill, and then there was what they man in charge said as he saw the D Day ships simply go pass the islands. Then there the islands getting food from the allies after Germany cut them off. In fact the whole period of time from D Day to the actual surrender of the islands is a great story.
My dad was a child in Jersey during the war, I thought the allies decided to starve the Germans out after D day. They didn't get supplies for about 6 months (December 1944). Churchill, "Let 'em starve. They can rot at their leisure."
@Megaprojects could you do an episode about Hitler and Albert Speer’s plans for Germania [the super city that they wanted to build if they’d won WW2]? You could easily do a +1 hour episode on how it would’ve looked etc. It would be a very big hit for your channel
Simon, slight correction re Liberation of the Channel Islands. VE Day was 8th May 1945. The Channel Islands were Liberated by British Forces the following day. Hence 9th May is known as Liberation Day in the Channel Islands.
I've asked this on another video, and don't want to appear like a peasant beggar* but here we go. You read the titles of each section on your CC channel, would that be possible for megaprojects? Or is that a post production addition?
All the bunkers in Jersey are documented with a number and there is one "Ho. 17" with no record of it. So a bunker somewhere on the island but can't be found.....
There's a shortage of drivers. Well, so you tell your drivers to work longer hours. Well, so they then can say "I can get another job tomorrow. Did you really want me to drive that much more? I am not really very keen on that......."
"He who tries to defend everything ends up defending nothing" Rommel said and he knew a thing or two about defence and attack, great content as per Simon!!!
@History Thoughts Sadly we are on the way to repeat the cycle again, due to re writings and ideology instead of truth and desire to actually make a change in the future NOT just the writings of the past.
In reality, Rommel wasn't that great of a General. Like most propaganda, ya go with what you have,otherwise Africa would have gone differently. Yeah, he was sick,and recalled, but if you look at his body of work,ultimately, he lost. Yes I recognize the victors write the history, but he was an average Commander, who out ran his supplies, a rookie mistake.
@History Thoughts Guess that whole History diploma from a southern military college comes in handy occasionally. Lol... Capt.Bob, SV (Sailing Vessel) 27th Chance, Tampa Fl. USA 🇺🇸 Full disclosure, my grandfather was captured at Stalingrad. Mom's dad ..
Trump Hitler Stalin. Walls Walls Walls
@@spada. Walls don't just keep people out. They keep people in. 🙄
I remember playing in the German bunkers on Guernsey as a kid with my friends, wasnt until years later we found out about the dark history. Still very interesting places to visit
Just for curiosity , what did you think it was ?
@@prateek4279 as kids we just thought the bunkers were like playgrounds, lots of dark rooms to play hide and seek and scare your friends. There's even a place here that hosts BB gun fights in one of the old bunkers called the Mirus Battery. We'd have birthday parties there and kids still do. Just part of growing up on Guernsey!
That is amazing... So cool
@Schlomo Baconberg Errrm... what?
I assumed when you said found out about the dark history you meant the slave labour. used to build them. Men starved to death building those bunkers and they were never used. Hitler was obsessed with it as it was his one little part of Britain.
I'm really just going on the documentary "Hitler's Island Madness." It interviews some of the survivors and locals about the horrific conditions.
This one in fact - th-cam.com/video/jtgzh6_czNQ/w-d-xo.html
I grew up in jersey, the coastal towers, defences and underground hospital are still standing and are stunning to visit.
Awesome
Hitler laughs at the futility of the French defending the Maginot line.
*Builds the Atlantic wall.*
@History Thoughts the beginning of the reign of nazism over Europe was the moment when Czechoslovakia including all the weapons, equipment and large industry was GIVEN to Germany by Munich deal.
And the Siegfried line
Americans and Commonwealth forces smash through the Atlantic Wall, Maginot Line and then the Siegfried line... 😧
Comment of the hour !!!!
@History Thoughts The Maginot Line didn't fall, held up pretty well so much so the Germans went through another country to avoid it.
“Now look, we’re not a channel that is known for praising the Nazis but…”
*TH-cam overlord’s finger hovers above the “demonetize” button.*
most of the megaprojecta were made by the nazis and cold war era americans and comunists.
He said nazis and there where pictures of Hitler. Not sure it only hovered
@@enjibkk6850 The only thing preventing YT from rolling their face all over the demonetized button was the fact that their algorithm doesn't have a face programmed in yet.
@@steeljawX I imagine it's a clone of Zuckerberg but it has Trump's voice.
As long as the content boils down to 'mustache man bad', the WONDERFUL people at TH-cam will be as happy as pigs in sh**.
Even Hitler couldn't resist having a picture taken in front of the Eiffel Tower. 🗼
Can you blame the man though? Taking Paris is a major victory.
couldn't take a selfie on top tho
@@theangryotaku3361 if he walked up the stairs he could have. The French had damaged the lift specifically to make it much harder to use it in propaganda.
@@jouebien i know, my favourite part is the fact that the lift "mysteriously" started working the day the allies took paris
Imagine one where he’s holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Use the Hoover dam for a better comparison of concrete quantity. It used 2.4Mm3 of concrete when being built. The Atlantic wall used a little over 7x that amount in it's construction.
Random measurement comparisons are kind of a tradition here, like how many horses does an SR-71 weigh.
@@kevintemple245 using 1500 pounds for average horse I get about 93.3 horses!
Apparently the concrete required to repair thd ruir dams after the RAF destroyed them significantly interrupted the construction of the Atlantic Wall.
He's trying to get the scale in our head, saying 7 times would be to detract from the statement. Unless the video is about the hoover dam, but it's not
Hey thanks for that info! When he was doing the concrete comparison I actually wondered why he didn't use a more useful comparison like the hoover dam lol
1:35 - Chapter 1 - All quiet on the western front
3:10 - Chapter 2 - The battle of britain
4:25 - Chapter 3 - A long border
5:15 - Chapter 4 - The channel islands
6:05 - Chapter 5 - Fuhrer directive N°40
7:10 - Chapter 6 - Building the wall
11:00 - Chapter 7 - Field marshall erwin rommel
13:55 - Chapter 8 - D Day
15:00 - Chapter 9 - The failed wall
This legend.
Thank you for this
Concrete and cement are two different things. Cement is a component, the "glue", in concrete.
yeah its what holds the sand aggregate and steel together i would know ive mixed my fair share by hand not a very enjoyable task on a hot day
I definitely, 100%, knew this... 100%.
@@megaprojects9649 Yep, Simon told me all about the difference just the other day, video coming soon on side projects lol
My Polish grandfather (then a teenager) was one of a few thousand slave labourers building part of the Atlantic Wall system on Alderney and Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Expecting to be liberated following D-Day, in fact they were quietly evacuated by the Nazis a few weeks(?) later, slipping through the Allied shipping lines and fetching up in Belgium en route to Dachau.
A truely cruel fate.. Glad to know he survived ✌️
😞
Here's a drinking game: take a shot whenever Simon says "We've covered this in another video". If you want to be really hardcore you can also take a shot when he says "We've covered this on one of my other channels". Do this for all of his videos. Say goodbye to your liver.
Megaprojects: building the distillery that supplies the booze to play this game.
I'm not a drinker. I do bongers. I figure it balances out the brain cells.
Simon is challenging the TH-cam algorithms to its limit.
Pushing that envelope.
At this point, I’m starting to think Simon IS the TH-cam algorithm. But maybe that’s cos I’m stuck in a Business Blaze, Geographics, Biographics, Casual Criminalist, TIFO, Megaprojects and Side Projects binge I’ll probably never get out of!
He's got all the "right" opinions so he will be fine
The TH-cam algorithm is trying to white wash history to protect sensitive snowflake eyes and ears
@@AutisticCat Dunno, with what is going on today in the US a good chunk of the population already forgot their history (or more likely, never taught the deeper details).
Simon I only discovered you recently but I love the content, your channels certainly stand out. Well narrated, written and produced. Respect to you and your crew, we all notice your hard work. 👍
Hitler: "I want Germany to have its own Great Wall of China"
Rommel: "made out of cardboard?"
Hey Simon can you do a video on the building, destruction, and rebuild of the Oroville dam that nearly failed in 2017? Its a fascinating story of massive engineering gone wrong as well as what went into fixing it
Thanks!
Issue with standardized bunkers, once the enemy cracks one open they will know how to crack them all open.
not sure that knowing the floorplan was the issue, it was destroying it from the outside and/or getting inside in the first place
But would nazi Atlantic Wall IKEA serve meatballs? These are the profound questions we must ask ourselves when we try to understand deconstructed furniture oppression.
Unrelated but VW's most produced part is currywurst.
shnitzel
They would probably serve Bratwursts made in to meatballs.
Hers's is an idea for a video. Who and how was the clean up of the wall done after the landings. How did they get rid of all the mines and obstacles? I know that some parts of the artificial harbors are still off the beaches but derelict. Remains of the bunkers are still visible.
Here in Holland, there still pretty much bunkers to see, although a part is buried by the authorities under a thick layer of sand because they are unstable and to dangerous to get in.
The Channel Islands still have hundreds of bunkers and the wall is pretty much intact. This is an excellent documentary on it.
I guess each local area cleared up what they wanted to clear but many bunkers were just left or filled in. They are literally everywhere. Clearing mines was a slow careful job by hand and I remember them still finding mines, even the big floating mines when I was a kid. They find unexploded WW2 bombs literally every few months. They blew up a WW2 bomb a couple of weeks ago here in the UK.
ttps://th-cam.com/video/jtgzh6_czNQ/w-d-xo.html
This is them blowing up a WW2 bomb they found in the UK only a couple of weeks ago. This was a British bomb dropped from a damaged British plane returning from a bombing mission but German ones are also found.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-57953506
Danish West Coast is still littered with hundreds of these indestructible bunkers.
Ironically the Nazis forced us both building and paying that useless megalomaniac project ...
Nazi siblings in fourth generation are now happy invading these fine beaches, and leaving each summer 🥳👙⛱️💶💶💶
German pows did lots of the work
In the Seventies and Eighties I went on summer holidays to France quite a bit, bear with me. We went to Brittany (and some of Normandy). As a kid I used to play (with other kids) in what we called "the dog kennels" which were Nazi fortifications on the coast. They were concrete bunkers, often sliding into the sea (because they'd been built on sand, what do you want!). They had slits (for the machine gunners), rooms, doors, they were just weird playthings. We only went in the "safe" ones, often they stank (of poo, or worse). We kind of knew the significance of these very "odd" buildings, but to us they were just another place to play in and explore. Remember, the early years when I went there were only 3 decades after the end of the Second World War.
Wow! So Nice to see you here, Simon! You’ve got sharp Navigation Skills. So Happy, I, so easily, stumbled, on this Video ❣️
Hi, i love Maga projects, but in this case I would have liked to have more specific information. I maybe a “too Mega” project to cover in this format. There are tons of remaining parts of this wall and the scale of the ambition is mind blowing.
I would propose a follow up on the part of the wall that was also the domination of the entry/exit to the Baltic See - between Denmark and Norway - where two enormous gun positions were built on ether side and mines see mines in the middle. It’s crazy! You can visit the places today in both Denmark and Norway. I haven’t been the the Norwegian site, but in Hanstholm/Danmark there is a great museum in the old fortifications.
Maga projects??? You must be referring to the failed Mexican wall.
Unfortunate typo lol
I live almost next to the museum and gun position here in Møvik, Norway. I recommend that you visit as we have a great outdoor museum with trails between all the positions, an ammunition train, and the actual gigantic cannon as opposed to Denmark. We also have the gigantic casemate that was supposed to house one of the four cannons, of which only one arrived in time, which is the one still standing today.
@@tobiaseilertsen06 does Møvik actually provide what the name indicates... 🤩🧚
Not sure why Yankee Stadium was used for the concrete comparison. Grand Coulee Dam contains some 9.1 million cubic meters of concrete, 3x that of Hoover Dam.
You're new here, aren't you? Random measurement comparisons are kind of a tradition with this channel.
That’s not Yankee Stadium being shown at 10:20 either; the stadium shown in the video here is The Polo Grounds. The Polo Grounds was home to the New York Giants baseball team, although the Yankees also played here from 1913 to 1922, most pertinently while Yankee Stadium was under construction from 1922 until its completion in 1923.
Another great video really enjoyed it.
Keep up the good work fella and stay safe
There's an ironic comparison between the Atlantic Wall and the Maginot Line.
The French spent huge amounts of time, resources and manpower on a defence network that was bypassed by the Germans though strategy and deception.
Only for the Allies to to the same to them four years later.
Close, we punched through like morons. They went around. We had deceit, and enough blood and metal. they had strats and enough blood and metal
@@edew9180 I find it difficult to comprehend what was moronic about destroying the transportation system supporting the wall. Dropping 20,000+ troops in advance behind the wall the night before to seize and/or neutralize key objectives. Pummelling the wall by air in advance of a troop assault. Using a huge concentration of battleships, cruisers and destroyers to provide targeted tactical support in breaching the wall and securing the lodgement. All this through detailed meticulous planning. What was 'moronic'?
Always wondered an alternative history where Belgium did build their part of the line instead of leaving it wide open what would the Germans had done
So maybe it's France that can't be defended and not a statement of how these two lines fell. I mean, even in WW1 they were just outside Paris.
@@edew9180 Yes, the Allies should've just gone around the Atlantic Wall. Which direction though? North or South Pole?
FYI: Northern Norway starts at the arctic circle.
Arctic circle: 66° N
Northern tip of Norway: 71° N
So many of these bunkers are still there. Can remember playing as a child in and around those bunkers in Britany (Bretagne) 🙈
Mega project idea. HMS Dreadnought, the worlds first ever all big gun battleship.
Good idea, but mentioning it triggers Americans.
"The battle of France is over, the Battle of Britain
has now begun."
The "little Corporal" made a mistake.😁
@@cauyawolfe4724 both.
There’s a Tolkien joke in here somewhere but I can’t form the words
Simon!!! You must’ve known I was waiting for a new episode! Thank you so much! Always learn something new in my 48 years of age.
Don’t tell people how old you are. It’s your secret, keep them guessing. M.
I thought history, as taught in school, was boring as hell, but since graduating, lo, a half-century plus ago, I find myself watching and learning about stuff that only vaguely interests me _because I never know when it'll give me insight into something that_ *does* _interest me._ To quote Nero Wolfe, fictional detective, "The more you put into your brain, the more it will hold." It couldn't hurt, right?
"The writing was on the wall-" *snaps finger and smirks cheekily* "Pun intended"
This mans is so damn talented at making me nearly choke on my water while I laugh like a crazy person and my parents look at me like 'What have I given birth to...'
well....they have given birth to a guy who likes a good pun and history
If you aren't fed up with that sort of joke your dad has failed you! :P
@John Barber salt.
Back in the 1960s I used to play a board game called D-Day. We found the Germans always won if they raced every unit back to the Rhine ASAP after D-Day. If virtually every German unit in the west was concentrated east of the Rhine the allies could not cross. Of course this game ignored the massive Russian army
WWII on novice mode...got it ;)
@Grand Master he would have still lost. The allies had overwhelming power at this point.
@@MrPancake777 Depends, If France Belgium were liberated with no attack threat would the Western powers gone for a peaceful settlement allowing the regieme to retain a (united?) Germany ?
In real,life if the panzers were closer and used early could have pushed us into the sea
No
When Todt raised doubts about Hitler, Hitler made him disappear.
When Rommel raised doubts about Hitler , Hitler made him disappear.
When Hitler realised doubts became facts he made Hitler disappear.
Consequent leadership ...
3:57 *This was inspired by Winston Churchill - Imagine today **-Queer-** Starmer or Bliedon - say no more !*
Could you please do a video about Operation Downfall? It was the planned invasion of mainland Japan that utterly dwarfed the D-Day landings
Rommell arguably knew exactly what he was doing when he left.
Disneyland and/or Disneyworld would also be another great Megaprojects!
What exactly made you think about Disney land? Not THAT close to this video's subject... 🤔😉
I mean - disney land probably has some nice walls to keep people from entering the park without paying, but probably they are a wee bit smaller than the atlantic wall?! 😅
For that matter, Phantasialand, Grona Lund, or Cedar F***ing Point.
@@alexandergausJTP Ha ha! Good point! It is a weird transition to bring up Disneyland on a video about the Natzi Atlantic Wall. I think it was because I saw a video from Disneyland before this video. However I still think it would make a good Megaprojects video!
@@alaeriia01 I don't think those places made such an impact to family culture or pop culture as Disneyland has. They also aren't nearly the tourist destination as Disneyland or Disneyworld has.
@@chrisyanover1777 oh, you want something with an _impact,_ do you? The best themed amusement park in the world, a park that ran out of space four roller coasters ago, or what happens when you give a small park an unlimited budget doesn't cut it?
Let's try der Efteling, the legendary Dutch park that was the inspiration for Disneyland. Or perhaps Energylandia, which opened in 2014 and already has more coasters than anywhere else in the world with the exception of SFMM.
Shot in the dark here - can we get Simon to be the new host of Jeopardy?
Glad to hear simon saw my comment on youtube 🔥✌
Please check where the arctic circle is realated to the northern most extremities of Norway.
Spoiler its like 15-20 hours drive south of the northern most point of Norway
4:30 the coastline extends well NORTH of the Arctic circle - as Norway wraps around the north of Sweden, and we have the Arctic circle passing through Sweden....
Thank you for mentioning us, most don't. I live in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands
You should do the ITER fusion reactor or Nuclear Fusion in general.
yeeah trying this for over half a year....maybe some day
Thanks
The allies secret to winning; accurate long term weather reports.
"I'll be back" - Britain
Playing 2nd fiddle.
8:29 The highlight of this video...LOL! Love your videos Simon, keep them coming...!!
I know you've already got a couple of video's on dams and one on artifical islands, but could you do a video on land reclemation?
Personally I'm more interested in draining marshlands than the Netherlands' efforts to push back the sea (which seems like the obvious choice for a video.) when learning about ancient history you sometimes hear that an area at the time was impassible due to being a vast marsh ( where hannibal lost his eye for example.) But nowadays it feels like outside of somewhere scarcly populated like russia they've all been turned into farmland if they're not being kept as a nature reserve. it'd be interesting to learn about early efforts to reclaim such land.
David brought a sling, a weapon capable of projecting a stone at the same speed as the muzzle velocity of a .32 calibur bullet... he brought the gun of his day to a sword fight, how is this an underdog? lol
Yeah not a lot of people realise just how deadly a sling can be.
@@cass7448 I'm still trying to figure out how a yo-yo worked as a weapon---and don't have a clue about boomerangs as weapons or otherwise. But slings---oh, yeah! Fast, accurate, and deadly.
@@oldenweery7510 I can never get the aim and release on a Sling.
@@highpath4776 I never tried one. Probably would've killed the neighbor's cat--behind me--or put a knot on my own head. I wasn't too bad with an old Remington single shot, bolt action .22, shooting at targets, but the one time I went hunting rabbits and squirrels, by the time I got the twist safety on the back of the bolt turned, the bunny was in the next county. Did make some tasty squirrel soup, one time, when friends visited me and went on the same mission. They plunked 'em down on my sink drain counter and said to do something with 'em, so I took tweezers and picked off all the damn guard hairs (autumn hunting season), cut 'em up, and added 'em to a big pot of Lipton's Chicken Soup Starter (1970's). Damn fools wouldn't even try it, but I enjoyed it for quite a while.
Another masterful job by Simon Whistler to provide a reasonably understandable presentation of a very complex topic. If only I had school teachers that could lecture as entertainingly as Simon.
Let's get a video for the A-10 Thunderbolt II
BEST host on TH-cam. Thank you.
Simon. The A-37B. The most underappreciated success story of the Vietnam War. Loved by both sides, forgotten in the west. Great Cold War jet story. Think of the ratings!
Can you do an episode on the Thrust SSC?
Why? Hardly well known, outside of the false claims made about it. Sure, it was fast , but claims have been exaggerated.
A lot of the work of the SciFi artist, Chris Foss was inspired by the German fortifications in the Channel Islands.
Glad the Allies won... But we need a reality check here: the only reason Operation Overlord was a success was because Hitler was asleep when it began (with strict orders not to disturb him) and it required his order to unleash the Panzer groups that would have ended that. It was ridiculous luck that made D-Day a success. Not complaining, just realistic.
Unsure if this was sarcasm or not but it is hilarious either way.
If this was the case then it was incompetence that was the reason. The allies were invading with unprecedented force and no one made the call to wake him up or overrule the decision? Whether you believe this or not incompetence would have been the downfall regardless not luck.
They dominated Japan bc of arrogance thinking the shores of Japan that were thought to be incapable of penetration bc of reefs that were right below waterline eager beavers flew one mission and USA came up with vehicles that went right over the impenetrable reefs and the Japanese general said here come the death horses of the American troops
Not a realistic analysis in any form whatsoever. An amateur comment from someone who has never served or lacks the ability to sresearch.
Read James Holland Normandy 44 then come back to the big boys
“ spoiler, alert, it didn’t work” very funny. That will be cracking me up for a long time.!
Great video as always. Suggestion: do Operation Barbarossa!
Love the way this took so many resources and it didn't work. Brilliant.
I'm a Jersey Bean, I can highly recommend a trip here for any history fans.
As well as WW2 bunkers and tunnels, we also have medieval castles, Napolionic forts and Martello towers, Neolithic structures, and the tenth oldest building in the world (six thousand years)
Lots to see and do here 👌 🍻
Brilliant, I loved it!
A good topic for mega projects would be the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. That would have made D-Day look like a beach party. The plan included allied troops potentially marching through the radiation left by up to 6 atomic bombs which had been requested by General Marshall and tentatively approved by President Truman. The plan also included provision for hundreds of thousands of hospital beds, prosthetic limbs, graves markers, and Purple Hearts. The supply of medals purchased for the invasion lasted into the 1980s. A great book on the topic is Hell to Pay by Giangreco.
There was an Atlantic Wall built in Surrey for troop training prior to operation Overlord. The wall still stands today on Hankley Common.
There are still large parts of the wall visible in Blavand, Denmark. About 10 boy scouts could of held off an attack there. Some very impressive infrastructure. That and the millions of mines they laid in the area as well!
please do a video on the Flak Towers! that would be awesome, im fascinated by them
Airborne infantry: exists
Hitler: You weren’t supposed to do that!
About 6 minutes in, and I feel like this is going to be the Nazi Maginot Line.
Minor point -- at @ 10:00 minutes, the stadium is the Polo Grounds not Yankee Stadium.
Fun fact: I transcribed the diary of a British officer who landed in Normandy a week or so later. They were given bags, which in typical military fashion were labelled 'Bag, Vomit, Army For The Use Of.'
So any chance you can run a master class on snarky comments and English humor?
Good thing the Germans didn't use Ikea bunkers, they would have waited weeks for all the missing parts to arrive🤣🤣🤣
Mega project on the F-15 would make for a couple episodes
Kudos to the first guy that landed on those beaches, balls of steel to be the vanguard in such an operation
Guys, is it true that the Atlantic wall was nothing more can a couple of bunkers and trenches until Rommel took over and started fortifying 3 months after he was placed in charge of the Southern France region facing England? I read the book D-Day from the German perspective and it seems the Americans took heavy causalities in their sectors because of Rommel while the other allies landing locations was a perfect example of what the coastal defense was supposed to be.
Top stuff!
Longer Megaprojects please
You should do a video on the Bird of Prey aircraft. Wild stuff
That’s not Yankee Stadium being shown at 10:20; the stadium shown in the video here looks like The Polo Grounds (Polo Grounds IV, the fourth iteration of the stadium, to be precise, which was built from concrete. Previous versions of Polo Grounds were largely wooden structures). The Polo Grounds was home to the New York Giants baseball team, although the Yankees also played there during the 1913 to 1922 seasons, most pertinently while Yankee Stadium was under construction from 1922 until its completion in 1923. Anyway … that’s the Polo Grounds, not Yankee Stadium.
I never really understood two things about the allied invasion of Europe in World War II. First was the attack at Omaha Beach. It's a long shallow beach leading to very high cliffs. There was he really no reason to put troops ashore there. They could simply land further north and then attack southward overland through the less defended sections behind Omaha beach. ... The second thing that always puzzled me was why attack Italy when southern France seemed a much more logical target. Even a small incursion into southern France would stretch Hitler's forces even further and been more effective militarily, especially given the horribly botched initial landing in Italy.
After the Italians botched the invasion of Greece, Churchill saw Italy as "Europe's soft underbelly".
@@badluck5647 ...So I've heard. Hundreds of moles of easily defended mountains with multiple layers of overlapping fire in the prime German ally is not my idea of "soft". But then Churchill was not the best battlefield strategist.
From my reading it seems that the main goal was to capture airfields north of Rome which could be used to bomb southern Germany. Also, knocking Italy out of the conflict would make the convoy route to the Suez Canal and hence India and the Far East much safer. North Africa had already been cleared of Axis forces. When Italy capitulated while the mainland landings were taking place it weakened the defense of Italy by removing Italian soldiers from the equation, though not nearly as much as hoped given the trouble they had taking Rome. It was also hoped for some time that a good performance against Italy would help convince Turkey to enter the war on the side of the Allies to open up the Black Sea route for convoys to supply the U.S.S.R. That happened too late to be of much help.
Perhaps diving into the logistics with supplying so much construction work could be interesting?
I found myself wondering how they paid for all this, where they got the materials from, etc.
3:33 What plan3 is that? With rear turret?
Grew up with bunkers all over the place. They're still plentiful. Living in one of the 7 targeted cities during the invasion of Norway, yep we got peppered with the concrete monstrosities. They're somehow everywhere but never seen...
Could you please add subtitules to your amazing videos? it would be VERY helpful. Thank you very much!
I would love to see a video on the Doiran line of WWI on the balcans
Check the " biggest military disaster of the British army" video, to see more.
But the engineering part there is really amazing as well
Would love to see a video on the Savannah River site in South Carolina it was one of the largest producers of weapons grade plutonium in the US and currently holds a large amount of the US nuclear waste stockpile
Me: Hey honey, another Megaproject video was uploaded
Her: Nice! Is it about the Germans and/or WWII?
Me: Imma let you take an educated guess.
What, he should only do stuff on the Soviets?
14:38 - That's some work-life balance worth following.
Yes, great video. And I just watched the maginot line ep, perfectly timed
The bit about the IKEA bunker is just silly. It would obviously be called Försvara (Swedish for Defend). You’d find it next to the section called Förvara (Swedish for Storage, or just Store).
You got to talk about those wall bits in the Channel Islands. Talk about over kill, and then there was what they man in charge said as he saw the D Day ships simply go pass the islands. Then there the islands getting food from the allies after Germany cut them off. In fact the whole period of time from D Day to the actual surrender of the islands is a great story.
My dad was a child in Jersey during the war, I thought the allies decided to starve the Germans out after D day. They didn't get supplies for about 6 months (December 1944).
Churchill, "Let 'em starve. They can rot at their leisure."
Can you cover more of D Day and the Allies moving into France?
@Megaprojects could you do an episode about Hitler and Albert Speer’s plans for Germania [the super city that they wanted to build if they’d won WW2]? You could easily do a +1 hour episode on how it would’ve looked etc. It would be a very big hit for your channel
Simon, slight correction re Liberation of the Channel Islands. VE Day was 8th May 1945. The Channel Islands were Liberated by British Forces the following day. Hence 9th May is known as Liberation Day in the Channel Islands.
America is the equivalent of Britain tag-teaming in Randy Savage
Ooooooooooh yeah!!!!!
hey si, can u make a video on the saturn c8?
I've asked this on another video, and don't want to appear like a peasant beggar* but here we go. You read the titles of each section on your CC channel, would that be possible for megaprojects? Or is that a post production addition?
All the bunkers in Jersey are documented with a number and there is one "Ho. 17" with no record of it. So a bunker somewhere on the island but can't be found.....
There's a shortage of drivers. Well, so you tell your drivers to work longer hours. Well, so they then can say "I can get another job tomorrow. Did you really want me to drive that much more? I am not really very keen on that......."
Spoiler alert killed me 🤣🤣