Going to pin any noted errors here: The Gold Cross I showed at 40:02 is a modern version of the same award, not the one Knispel would has received. I had noticed this pre-release and it was fixed in a different draft but when you have 14 drafts of the same video out and TH-cam says that Draft 9 is the one thats ad approved you just kinda have to roll with it. Some of the stories about Knispel may not be true, apparantly a lot of them were made up as part of the Clean Wehrmacht myth, sources seem a little dubious, I'll need to do more research.
I was a police officer for 30 years and interviewed hundreds of people after sudden, traumatic incidents. We would often get different stories from different people at the same incident. Sometimes they were lying and sometimes they just remembered wrong. For instance, there is a phenomenon called Tachypsychia where time and distance is altered, where, in one instance, I remembered running a hundred yards when it was actually only a few yards at most. Add in the confusion of sudden input of information to your brain, especially if it were a sudden ambush, and then add in years between the event and an interview, and any testimony can be tainted. The person really does remember what he is stating, but it may or may not be the actual truth.
Oprah Winfrey once did an experiment to show unreliable eye witness testimony can be especially in cases where the event happens quickly and they only get a fleeting glimpse of the event. She staged a fake robbery in front of the long queue waiting for her show, then had fake police officers show up and interview the people in the queue and they all gave contradictory statements about the number of robbers, their appearance, the victim, etc.
That's the thing about human memory! It's so completely fallible, especially over long periods of time. Plus memory doesn't just include sensory information like sight, sound, touch, smell, ect. You can have memories of just your thoughts, or even memories of just the emotions you felt in a situation. You can lose memories easily, but you can also have them degrade and become inaccurate. You can simply be mistaken. You can fail to form memories of an event in the first place and unknowingly imagine fake ones later. Seriously. Your mind needs time and good deep sleep to form proper long term memories., and sometimes they just don't get that, or your mind regards the information as irrelevant and doesn't form a memory on purpose. You yourself are not even fully in control of your own mind. There are processes that are subconscious and automatic. You can exert some more control over your mind with practice, but even this is limited in potential.
I learned this in psychology in my A levels. We watched a video then had to remember simple details, like the colour of the get away car. Most people couldn't remember simple facts. I've also been accused of things, and witness accounts varied wildly. The police still didn't want to look at the video I recorded 🤷
@@benholroyd5221As I understand it, adrenaline and cortisol released as a stress response in potentially dangerous situations is there to increase your reaction time and get your body ready to do some intense physical exertion, thereby throwing your focus onto whatever needs to be done to keep yourself safe immediately. It's an automatic response, whether you keep calm or panic afterwards is up to you. But regardless, it definitely makes it difficult for the mind to memorize everything when it's literally choosing not to in favor of keeping you alive.
When I was stationed in Germany I led battlefield tours working for the USO. One of the most popular was the Ardennes. A German acquaintance asked if he could bring along two veterans. One his uncle, was a Panther commander in 6th Panzer, the other a PzIV company commander in Italy. The whole "ace" thing came up and this is the gist of what they said, "Some kept track, most did not. It did not make sense, because crews change over time. We had a directive come down asking for names of the highest scoring commanders to be sent to Germany. We just picked a married guy who was due for leave." The other significant statement was, "I was too damn busy keeping my crew and company alive". Neither had a clue how many vehicles they destroyed.
People like that are easily forgotten in favor of the drama of aces - real or not. The irony of ‘Victors write the history’ is that German propaganda figures like the aces or great generals overshadow everyday heroes who just do what they can in their situation.
I feel like subordinates or low ranking officers would've been the ones keeping count . . . . but they were all dead or on the eastern front by this time. So we get nazi tank ace hysteria.
@@smasherblues5322 Yes, I remember watching a documentary about the Canadian WW2 Black Watch scout sniper section. A vet talked about his admission into its ranks when his high range scores in training seemed to qualify him for placement there on first joining the active combat regiment: The sergeant in charge took him on a stalk to a frontline riverbank, pointed across the river at a German sentry and asked "You see him? Okay, kill him." - a final entry test to see if he could cold-bloodedly shoot another human. He did. The sgt. then said: "Okay, you just shot your first German. Now quit counting. " And he did. And about 70 years later, he still had no clue what his "score" was...
Just for emphasis at 22:34, these French hedgerows were specifically cultivated and maintained for generations starting all the way back in the Medieval period. There are literal hundreds of years worth of effort behind creating these impassable fences of dense forest.
If anything, those photos look like Company of Heroes, Brothers in Arms, etc. actually UNDERSTATED the damn things (and the actual sizes of the fields they enclosed).
Rex is the very definition of a hero. Fighting an unwinnable battle so his buddies have just that little extra time to get set. He even did it smart, playing every strength that little Stuart could possibly muster against a tiger. Truly to Rex and his heroic crew
Well I mean I don’t want to damper the mood but I don’t think he had all of that in mind. Possibly and likely a commendable sense of duty and bravery. But that’s it. I don’t wanna downgrade his sacrifice I am just saying
@@Jesayou its all good mate, this kinda thing always gets me too, there's something about descriptions of such courage that brings me to tears and breaks my heart.
Okay, you know what? When I picture "hedge warfare", I just picture the usual box hedges we have in Canada. It was never something I thought to reevaluate. I knew that it made defence easier, I didn't realize France was building the Great Wall of China in hedge form.
Yeah, the technical distinction between a "hedge" meaning a decorative bush, and a "hedgerow" meaning a wall of intertwined vegetation including trees of any size short of it being woodland is not one that non-rural people realise.
@@Rapinasimpliciseventually they made a Sherman that could do it. It involved basically sticking a nightmarish looking combination of a hedge trimmer and a bulldozer blade on the front of it. Followed by ramming the 33 ton vehicle through the hedge at high speed.
@@insertnamehere7574 I have to admit, this is the first time I've been invited to a Muslim shindig. Jehovah's Witnesses are a dime a dozen around here.
I watched it all, but only for ritual purposes. Carenza, according to quite a few people I know, is a complete bitch. And not in a good way. Alice Roberts (I remember her as a baby archaeology student) however...❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
About 6 or something years ago i played world of tanks for like a month. Only time i did well was miraculous; set up with a tank destroyer at the bottom of a hill and wiped the 5 or six players that rolled over the top. One of the best feelings I ever got gaming, but i still sucked at the game when i went back a few months ago. Sometimes it's better to be lucky, but then you got to know when to stop.
And then killed by a Typhoon with a close air support attack in the last seconds of the battle. Yeah very much like War Thunder. And worse it was an uptiered CAS plane. :)
This video is a overstated... His cult is definitely too built up. But to say that he lived a comfortable life while fighting and dying in WW2. Just remember Lazerpig isn't a veteran, and wasn't there for anything. take it with a grain of salt. Some valid points but too sensational for my tastes.
There was a British world war two veteran at remembrance Day a few years And he described his time briefly mentioned he got injured by losing an argument with a tank
The thing about Dyas' interview/s, is that he comes across as a rather embittered man, deeply unhappy with his equipment, which he seems to have been exaggeratedly disparaging about.
"The most overstudied battle in history." For the United States, that quote applies to the Battle of Gettysburg. Dear God does it apply to the Battle of Gettysburg.
@@elishafollet5347 I don't think that's what they mean? The Confederacy definitely lost, and it was certainly one of the most pivotal battles in the course of the war from a strategic viewpoint, but I'd wager it wasn't very interesting/complex tactically.
@@elishafollet5347 > I thought it was pretty clear cut that the confederacy lost Sadly, the people writing History Channel documentaries and Texas schoolbooks have not yet accepted this fact. They're still pretty sure that _one more good push_ will have those Yankees on the run and slavery reinstated nationwide.
I study Central Asian history, which means I have to deal with a lot of made up bullshit propagated by Chinese and Russian sources that have worked overtime to erase and undermine anything produced by actual Turkic/Mongolian cultures. I really appreciate your words about primary sources and academia. That is something I have struggled with a lot, and a lot of my work has become undoing the damage done by historians with agendas.
I love reading Chinese historians write down things like three headed geese as a subversive way to inform the Emporer he did something wrong without getting their heads chopped off.
> Be Stuart commander > See Tiger roll up > All your unit is on rest and unaware > "Today's the day" >Suddenly George Washington himself posses your body > Charge head on > Die a hero
Why Washington? He's British. It would of been Lord Wellington. Plus he was a better commander than Washington was. He fought every battle against Napoleon and won. Washington muddled his way thru the revolution. Saved by fog at bunker hill, almost wiped out his army at valley forge and relied on other fronts succeeding. If people like Lafayette, Arnold and the overwhelming support from European powers most notably the Dutch and French, and him being the first president Washington would be seen as an overwhelming faliure of a military commander.
@@thepolishnzginna be honest though, at Waterloo he needed the help of the Prussians. Wellington himself said that. Without the Prussians, he couldnt defeat Napoleon alone.
@@GabrielUngacta No let you be honest. This is from 1973 Britannica : The Battle started at 1130hrs the French were on the run 1930 hrs in the interim it was Wellingtons troops that kept the French at Bay slaughtering 100s Blucher came in from Ligny at 1930hrs when the Guard had broken . Blucher turned that retreat into a rout. Blucher said he would come if Wellington could hold the enemy Wellington trusted Blucher so he held.
As an example of the frustration of historical sourcing, after the Titanic sank in 1912 consensus of the narrative generally settled on the conclusion that she sank in one piece. The inquiries concluded this, and every retelling went with this depiction, stern in the air, then slid beneath the waves. However there had always been eyewitness accounts that she had broken in two on the surface, indeed one survivor Jack Thayer relayed such an account to an artist aboard the rescue ship Carpathia, giving the first actual depiction of breaking in two on the surface (inaccurate in other ways, but besides the point). And yet it wasn't until 1985 when the ship was found and was indeed in two pieces well over half a kilometer apart that these eyewitness accounts were vindicated. So why did the initial inquiries conclude she sank in one piece? Because Second Officer Charles Lightoller, highest ranking survivor, testified that he saw it go down in one piece, even though later scholarship surmised he was too busy trying to keep a capsized lifeboat from throwing the men standing on it into the icy water for him to really get a good look at the final moments. Yet the inquiries deferred to his natural authority. I tell this to assure you that you are not alone when grumbling about the phenomenon of taking a single source as gospel.
Since we're on the topic of Titanic, I will forever be frustrated by the pop-history pseudo-parable claim that the Titanic was heralded as "unsinkable" by all that had seen the mighty ship prior to her sinking. From my understanding (and tell me if my account seems wrong), the only pre-sinking claim of being unsinkable was in an article in a maritime engineering magazine showcasing the Titanic's automatic watertight bulkhead doors. Beyond that, the narrative that man's hubris in the face of God's Earth was humbled when the unsinkable ship was sunk seems to be a post-disaster fabrication meant to further sensationalize the tragedy into some twisted moral lesson.
I've heard that once the Titanics lights went out everything there was complete and uder darkness. If that's true then it would be near impossible to actually see what happened to the ship.
The Army it's self wasn't unionised but the men who were drafted into it had come from union workforces. So despite not actually being in a union any more they carried a lot of those attitudes and mindsets with them.
@@lostalone9320 What the hell are you talking about? Modern unions are infinitely less demanding than the old ones. Back in those days, massive strikes and militant factory occupations were the norm for negotiations and trust me, they demanded pay rises. The modern middle class wouldn't exist if they didn't.
@@just_matt214 counter point the current writers guild strike seems to me to be asking for outrageous pay levels and terribly unrealistic concessions at a time when the studios are bleeding money. Seems like both reasonable and unreasonable trends are both present at all points in union history as is everything in human history.
Seeing photos of the French Hedges finally got it through my skull of why the Normandy Invasion was a pain in the ass, you can hide 10 8 foot Minotaurs in those things and never be able to find them.
You never thought to just google them before? Also you've just never seen them before??? Even the shitty documentaries on the history channel from 20 years ago had pictures of the things, they are a big talking point whenever WW2 comes up
@@christopherjones8448 Nope, didn’t really care enough about French Hedges to really look into them, nor do I watch WW2 Documentaries since said example you bring up. If I did learn about Normandy Invadion, then it’s about the Landings and not the subsequent fighting that happened during the Normandy Invasion.
The story of Rex Ingram really is quite something, it makes you wonder how many heroic deeds went unnoticed throughout that war all cause somebody couldn't or wouldn't share their story.
Never let anyone break your heart more than the bot did, doing an announcement for a vid in 25 hours. Edit: TH-cam borked and made this vid scheduled for tomorrow. Yes I know its out now.
I'm so glad I only have a 60 minute wait. But as soon as I saw that my mouth made a "noooOOoo" sound straight out of some cute Borderlands supporting character.
When Napoleon Bonaparte was criticised for winning battles simply because of luck, he famously retorted: “I'd rather have lucky generals than good ones.”
@@martinjrgensen8234 i believe he was shot, exiled and died of definitely-not-lead-poisoning because the walls of his room were painted with leaded paint. I could be wrong.
@@martinjrgensen8234 exiled a first time, got back in France and launched the Campagne des 100 jours (100 days campaign) that ended in the biggest defeat you could ever imagine even in your wildest dreams, so the English put him in another island very far away and he died like 5 years later
"Rex" - Latin. "King." No less. To the pebble that causes the avalanche-the drop that causes the flood. To the man who saved the lives of soldiers fighting evil, who wore no crown but a black beret. To Rex.
Ive been a soldier, a Historian, a researcher in the archives, a Military Museum supervisor and a reenactor. After I retired from the Army I went back to school to finish my BA in History. I got into an argument with the Dean of the History department over some falsehoods he was spreading about a particular battle in Iraq. He asked me how i knew he was wrong? My reply was because I was there as an Infantry Squad Leader. The next day i brought in all my Green books that contained all of the Op Orders i had recieved as further proof he was wrong. As a Historian the "Trust me Bro" doesnt always cut it.
@@Anonie324 Propaganda from the Leftist media is what he was using as the basis. I knew of journalists who never left the safety of their hotel room. They'd print stories based on what the heard soldiers talking about in the elevator up to the Dining facility at the Baghdad Sheraton hotel.
@@Anonie324 Many officers leaving the army may choose to write a book, especially if they want a political career afterwards. Many generals certainly have and many have lied to make themselves look better. Just the way of it. The Dean though... should have gone to the origin instead of a self-aggrandising autobiography or something similar
Dear Lazerpig, My grandfather was a tank radio operator who fought in North Africa, Greece/Crete and into Italy. (An ANZAC and in a Sherman tank, I think. I was too young to learn all the details). About the one story I know is that moving into Italy, they once saw a haystack in a field. They stopped. They looked at it. They agreed, something about it was fishy. The haystack fired a shell at them, which fortunately didn’t penetrate. They returned fire and blew the haystack and the tank hiding under it into a state of non serviceability. I think it turned into a bonfire. My grandad had keys to Italian towns and letters of gratitude from places he helped liberate, which is probably the nicest thing to come out of the war - people from far flung places and cultures bonded by hardship, sacrifice and humanity. My other other grandfather was recognized as an honorary german paratrooper! Certainly the best and worst of times. It’s easy to see why historians find first hand testimony so compelling when the stories are so interesting.
"The haystack fired a shell at them, which fortunately didn’t penetrate" is one of the funniest sentence i've read today. thank you for cheering my day up!
My great uncle apparently had a few of those stories, too, though he didn’t like to talk about them. He died before I was born, but supposedly, he “got volunteered” as a gunner on a B-17 for a mission, and one of the regular crew tossed him a lighter as a thank you gift. Another time, he had to play Midwife for a women in labor because he couldn’t leave his guard posting to find an actual doctor. All of those stories are likely to vanish someday…
it's not the german propaganda it's more a mixture of contrarianism and american/soviet propaganda cause yunno your enemy being tough reflects better on you and some people love trying to tear down the winner
To this day folk talk of Napoleon as the 'petit corporal' (he wasn't a small fella and was never a corporal), of the invincible caesarian legions... Propaganda works that's why we use it.
I feel like thatsome people are so unsatisfied with their empty life, that they need to make up something to stand out. "I know something most people will never know" - its the essence of every conspiracy theory. "I am special and intelligent, all the others are just sheep and snowflakes".
As an ex - NATO officer, I salute Rex Ingram and his crew. To overcome your own fears and choose to fight instead of flight, that is exactly what makes a good soldier. His actions gave his comrades time to evaluate the situation and act accordingly. Thank you for bringing this up. Brave men should never be forgotten. But for me, the most interesting thing about this batlle, is what propaganda can do, even after so many decades. Makes you really think about what you see on the news today...
Way late, but I did a tiny bit of digging and it appears that Rex escaped the tank but refused to leave the rest of his crew. It seems that he was gunned down while trying to open the driver hatch.
Rex was my Cousin on my Father's side and obviously a bit of a hero of mine. My Father knew him and his death occurred long before I was born. I did however know his Father, CPT. BWI Ingram when he was very old, himself a bit of a WWI hero. Uncle B as I called him gave me Rexs' medals and items of his uniform which I still have. As a Family, we've often wondered why he wasn't more recognised for his Gallantry..after watching this I can only assume that the British powers that be found the idea of a 19 year old taking Wittmann on head to head, a tad embarrassing... He's buried in the Bayeux War Cemetery if anyone wants to visit him and perhaps say a little prayer for him.
As a kid, I subscribed to a magazine about ww2 and it had a special issue about the best tank aces. That quickly became my favorite, but it actually featured a long article about Kurt Knispel and nothing on Wittman. Later when I became active on the Internet, I was extremely confused because everyone was talking about some Wittman guy when I wanted to know more about Knispel.
i got to read Otto carius's memoir when i was 10, but i was too confused to stand on a 'side'. so in the end i ended up being a bit of teaboo. his book wasn't super accurate or fun, but it came with a tiger manual that was translated into my language PLUS it contained the artwork that came along in with the original manual. i thought it looked too inappropriate so i threw it away a long time ago. now i miss it :(
As someone who went to Normandie two weeks ago - I looked for the hedges to see the WWII stuff, and I saw them… and completely understood why the breakout from the LZs lasted as long as it did. THEY WERE FUCKING MASSIVE - LIKE THREE TO FOUR TIMES MY HEIGHT.
I always wanted to send my Grandfather there, but he passed away before I could. He was in the 778th AAA Battalion(not a tanker, M16 AA half track) who also fought in the the Bulge, then helped guard the Remagen Bridge. He often spoke of a German pilot(s) they called "Midnight Charlie".
@WASDLeftClick Its more than just a hedge, some are just ancient stone walls that marked the property that had slowly had rock and soil put over it until we have a small hill... and a bush over it. You should see the diagrams of those things.
@@jacob5395 Having looked at those that's a lot more clear than just looking at photographs of it. But still, I just can't help but chuckle at the idea of some French farmers deciding not to trim the hedges and just have another croissant and cappuccino, every week, until "Hon hon hon, they were meant to be that way monsieur!". Maybe it's because that's the tone a lot of folklore has in the South were I grew up, often self-deprecating and humorous. Regardless they're very pretty to walk through I can imagine.
My great grandpa was at the Villers Bocage, He was part of the 15th Isle Of Man Anti Aircraft regiment which he was classed as experienced having been deployed in Greece (Crete specifically) and North Africa (Desert Rates). He landed on Gold beach and got to Villers through Tilly-Sur-Seulles as they supported infantry. The regiment was shot up near the Village on June 13th and saw a Cromwell tank burning while advancing on the secondary road. Soon the front of his convoy they were then shot at though he couldn't tell what "Whoever peaked first got hit first." "I assume it was a tank as it tore through one of the guns and men." The battle was very chaotic though he never went near Wittmann or Point 213... As in his words "It was like searching a trench but with tanks, because the French never cut their hedges." The regiment then later had to retreat as it was only light AA just before the rest of the forces did. He was disappointed how they had to retreat and the Air Force flattened the town later anyway. He Survived the war and lived to tell me. Unfortunately he passed away at 98 from old age in 2017. A truly great man and lived long enough to tell me this. Thanks lazerpig for making this video. Hope this provides an another account of the battle.
@@adamkoslin9302😂 nah, it was just 15th (Isle of Man) Light Anti Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery. The Isle of Man was added in brackets as is typical of Combat Support Arms of the British Army to highlight their territorial background. With the Island being so small and interconnected, most Manx folk will have some connection to the regiment. For example 2 of my grandmother's cousins were members of it. One becoming a PoW when the regiment's third battery was destroyed during the invasion of Crete.
@@adamkoslin9302 They did have Bofors and they were good anti tank weapons in pre war Europe but they weren't directly at the front of the convoy because they were AA and it was a narrow boncage. So i don't think the could fire but they were part of a convoy. I was mistaken i should have put (isle of man) as it was the 15th but they didn't have 15.
Knipsel looked like everyone's favourite companion in some ww2 themed rpg whose death launched a thousand playthroughts titled "using a glitch to save Knipsel, how to guide in minute 12" and "unnoficial community patch 1.2 adding the option to save Knipsel- fully voiced"
Yeah, his actions may have been overblown but if there's a dsiciplinary report about him assaulting a nazi for mistreating prisoners then eh alright he's cool I guess.
Alright, hot take here but. I rare say "based” due to how it’s used by werhaboos, racists and terminally online turbo nerds. But I will say without a doubt that Knipsel is probably the most "based" German soldier in WW2
@@deeznuts-kw6yv the non SS tank aces were sometimes not the worst, some of them were very bad, some of them (like knispel) had moments where they may have done good (i believe knispel was wrote up for preventing the execution of soviet pows), but were still bad.
@@magnum6763 I mean, I can understand that the were defending Nazi Germany of all things, but I ain't defending their actions here, more so showing some respect to the very few who had morals
Here's another great lesson about how much you can trust people's memory; some researchers have managed to gaslight people into "remembering" how they met bugs bunny at disneyland
It's why even when interviewing soldiers who fought in the very battle, while they can offer some insight you can't get elsewhere, in general, their viewpoint is worthless overall.
Lazer Pig: As everyone should know by now, there are about a thousand factors that effect penetration. The quality of the steel, the angle of attack, the temperature.. Me: The quality of the sacred oil and incense used to bless the machine. It also helps if it finds the other tank attractive and isn't too tired that day.
11:13 "Not that the Americans were having a particularly easy time regardless; they had Patton leading them" The amount of shade that LazerPig can summon out of nothing itself is truly inspirational.
@donaldhysa4836 having gone through your comments on this video (there's a lot, with timestamps, and I don't know why, considering that LP would never respond lmao) I can't tell if your a freedomaboo or a wehraboo Both are equally shit opinions, BTW
as a German historian working on his PhD I hope I can assuage your anger by stating, that the first thing we learned is source-critical thinking. We are taught to never fully believe anything, but say instead: "this is all we know from the sources of the time and these are the reasons why they are wrong or right."
Lazerpig just has a huge axe to grind with historians. He doesnt know what is taught and doesnt care for it. It isnt the first thing he brought up that historians just take everything at face value and dont think about the context of the source and it isnt the first time people have told him that no that isnt what you learn in university.
@@Shrrrg He, like a lot of people online, seems to think TV docs and history memes and hot takes are an accurate reflection of actual academic history. He's very entertaining, but serious history this is not.
@@Shrrrg To be fair, the Wehraboos he's angry at didn't exactly go to university. There's enough people around that claim to have "studied" by essentially paying a guy for online courses that mirror their own opinion.
@@Shrrrghistory lessons can teach historians various values and principles, what matters is if the discipline enforces those values. If you were a historian writing/speaking on this subject, the fact no one until Taylor went to speak to servicemen who experienced it tells us historians weren't doing that. Secondly the point of history on society level is to inform and teach people our past so we can learn from it. Thus the published books, tv documentaries and youtube views are how society sees historians
You know something else about Knipsel? He was a Feldwebel. The closest equivalent to that in the US is an E5 (Sergeant). In the aristocratic Nazi structure, having a common soldier, an NCO, as your top tanker (and not a Nazi) is unthinkable.
Well the Feldwebel is the master of his craft. They are definitely very capable etc. Also Nazis weren’t really aristocratic, not in the traditional sense. Though one could call it favoritism and elitism.
Knipsel was the German version of Donald Sutherland's Oddball. As for why German troops were so good in the operational military arts in the 19th and early 20th century, it was because of Napoleon, in particular the staff reforms. See *A Genius for War* by COL Trevor Dupuy for details.
Technically around an E-6 and with bigger responsibilities. In tanks and infantry one platoon would be commanded by an officer in a company and the others often by Feldwebel...on paper. Losses would make these billets flexible through the war. But enlisted nonetheless.
Glass duly raised to Rex Ingram and his crew. I'd never heard of him before, and his is a story that deserves to be told. Thank you for enlightening me.
a wise man once said. ''we all know that Germany would have won if'' -had infinite manpower -infinite resources -more incompetent enemies -infinite skilled people
Well I win as Germany all the time in Hearts of Iron IV, which as we all know is totally the same thing as real life, so clearly it could be done and Germany should have just done what I've done before ^_^
@AlexanderHenry-hz3td This religious shit would still be cringe and mocked if someone praised Jesus as lord and savior here. So don't take this as Islamophobia, but you suck.
One wonders Wether Whitman on his second command in Europe (the one that eventually got him killed) was due to him actually believing his ow hype. That the tanks he was shooting at would take one look at his tiger and run away screaming.
Rex's sacrifice is something that deserves a medal of honor, honestly. Selflessly charging right at a tank his little Stuart most likely couldn't disable, let alone scratch (though, im not a tank nerd so i dont rly know, maybe it could have), just to give his comrades a little more time to realize wtf was going on, it's certainly heroic.
what pains me most is that there we're so many allied troops that all did heroic shit like this, only to be a footnote like Rex. Most sacrifices will be lost to time, not even mentioned in a log, the stories taken to the graves by their friends.
Fuck, that last bit is heartbreaking. Rex’s Stuart going up against Wittman’s Tiger is on par with HMS Jervis Bay ( an armed merchant cruiser) going up against that German pocket battleship. A VC was earned for Jervis Bay that day, and if one wasn’t awarded to Rex Ingram I’m going to be pissed
@donaldhysa4836 Honestly, I kinda hoped Rex would manage to land a hit that would take out the Tiger's electricity and Michael Wittman's Tiger would be taken out by a tank that wasn't even designed to fight tanks.
Who’s says that we can’t? Okay hear me out: What if we look for soldiers who have done actions that is above the call to action and give them virtual awards and medals for their actions?
So what I'm getting from this is Wittmann is kind of like Nazi Germany in microcosm- a man of middling talent who got by by looking good and a long string of good luck, bought in to his own mythos and concluded he was a living god, then learned the hard way how wrong he was about everything. And to think I actually thought he was cool at one point. 13-year old me was the definition of cringe.
He could be fought of as the embodiment of Nazi Germany - did well initially due to certain fortunate circumstances, got complacent and arrogant as time went and eventually got shown what was good when the opposing side starts pulling its socks up
Nazi Germany really was just a country of middle managers thought they were gods until the employees unionized and kick their ass. They are great at handling people divided, but the minute they faced any sort of real resistance they fold like a paper crane.
I'm quite confident that if 2 soldiers were to meet on the battlefield and shoot at each other there would be 5 different version of the events: 1 for each soldier, 1 for each government explaining why their soldier is the best and a 5' version for people that don't believe anything they read because they think that they always know what is actually true and correct.
Like the Polish destroyer with Bismarck, and Rex in this story here. I absolutely love the way you bring attention to those that haven't received what they should. Thank you so much for these stories, for if not for you I don't think anyone would know about these amazing true heros.
The trees and hedges in Belgium must be seen to be believed. It's like being in a giant vineyard, except it's whitethorn and beech trees instead of grapevines
So basically being a historian is having to find every version of Rashomon ever, and trying to figure out what might have happened, knowing you can only get so close to what is by all factors, expired reality.
Most historians just take the written or spoken accounts given by those who were there (primary sources). But few take on the role of Battlefield Detective: what actually may have happened instead of what most people believe.
I read a quote once that stated that the only time historical events can only be seen in their true light is when they are actually happening. This quote was talking about other historic events that happened in my country and which still today have different interpretations depending on which side of political spectrum person talking about is.
Considering how huge the hedges are in France im surprised both the Allies and Axis did not suffer even more casualties just from the confusion of walking around a freaking puzzle piece
yeah i believe it. You know i saw tupac at Mcdonalds, he got a bigmac and some fries. I saw Tupac at Mcdonalds, looked right into his big brown gansta rapper eyes. I said you lied to me and my family and the whole world watching Mtv, I can't believe the things you did. He looked at me and he replied He said "west si-eeiiiiieeeiiieeiieeiieeiieeiide is the best siiiide"
Just like after the American civil war, the victors didn't root out the ideology and ultimately collaborated with the enemies that promised material benefit. In a way, the n@zis and Confederates won because their ideologies survive (and thrive in places) to this day
@@calebharris292 I had a debate once with a guy who claimed that the South seceded for “state’s rights.” Once I bring up the infamous Cornerstone Speech and numerous declarations of secessions from different states stating that they seceded from the Union to protect slavery, he went on to claim that it was “yankee propaganda.” The irony is that it’s the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy that are the ones who spread propaganda. Some people will refuse to admit that they are wrong despite the hard-hitting evidence is right in front of them.
I was drinking when I watched this video, so raising one to Rex happened by default, but I'm glad to do it anyway. It's the thing I've always wondered -- how many acts of heroism like Rex's goes completely unnoticed because in a major war with casualties in the millions, no one has the time to document every single soldier's actions. How many soldiers who took down half a dozen enemies in a heroic last stand while their friends retreated, and whose actions end up summarized as 'unit retreated at 1415 hrs with moderate casualties'.
How many heroic actions are erased by shells and bombs, or ended quietly? Planes and boats full of soldier tied down with gear were shot down and sunk, the lives on board over in an instant or not. Each one of them a story, each one of them in their way a hero fighting against tyrannical fascists and those that go along with it by "just following orders". The war was won by the Rexes, those that charged instead of hiding, not just for country but for their fellow soldiers in spite of organizational failures at the top. The Allies won through competent NCOs and junior officers who lead their men to victory, and by farmers and factory workers and supply lines that gave them the tools and supplies to do it.
@@granatmof I think this is why Band of Brothers is such a good story. Because its about the grunts having to do the best they can to overcome tactical missteps from the higher ups, with what they had on the ground.
as an american i can explain why time team was popular. Because Phil Harding is a legend. Not going to say its the most productive or info-rich show, but i will never get tired of watching that man get excited over rocks
@@jonprince3237 Tony: "What have you found here Phil?" Phil: "Weww Toneh, weev fownd sum post 'owes which we reckon arr frum a bronze ayge rownd 'owse. Thar's orso sum burn marks which doo serjest thut it woz bernt dowwn at sum poynt. Iy've manijed to fynd sum contemporeh pottereh sherds as well. Havalookertha!" Tony: "Wow, very nice Phil. Now onto Trench 4 and Brigid..."
Patton is a bit odd. Hes good at Strategy and Logistics when he actually stops to do Logistics, but is terrible at tactics and liable to ignore logistics entirely once he gets into action. He was given Bradley during Africa and Italy specifically because Bradley was good at Tactics and Logistics, making them a decent Joint command.
@@williambeavis9929 I enjoy the idea that he got killed by a British shell fired from an American tank named after a Soviet town if Joe Ekins' account is real. If not, then I enjoy the idea that he got smoked by Canadians, because either way, he got clowned on.
It's fun that tank ace was brought up because it wasn't really a thing tracked on an individual basis. Units may have had these figures but not quite an individual tank commander. A tank is also comprised of a crew of 4-5 men that all need to do their job properly. So the notion of 1 guy getting recognized over all the others of the tank is a bit crazy. This isn't like how air forces tracked kills because fighters were for almost all cases, crewed by 1 person. I also appreciate you brought up Kurt Knispel. He died on April 1945, he almost made it to the end of the war. But he doesn't have the recognition. You rightly brought up most of the reasons why he wasn't pampered, inflated like Wittmann was, i.e. his appearance and being a member of the Wehrmacht, not the SS, etc. But there's another reason why: Knispel was a Feldwebel, just an enlisted NCO. Armed services get kind of snobbish parading around a mere enlisted man for something, but more than happy to do so if it's an officer.
Hard to imagine how anyone could claim to be an ace of anything crew serviced. You could pair a tank commander that is literally mentally deficient with an expert crew that knows how to ignore him and end up with numerous kills.
I guess it could happen with 2 seat fighters like WW2 nightfighters. Everyone remembers Heinrich, Prince Sayn-Wittgenstein no one remembers the radar operators he treated like subservient peasants. Ironically for someone so aristocratic and extremely vain he didn't die to an allied nightfighter like a Mosquito but by getting smoked by a lowly teenage Lancaster gunner.
@@groofromtheup5719 partially, tank battles really often do boil down to who sees the other first. And that's where the tank commander really does come in.
@@GundamReviver I've never been inside of a tank, but I am guessing everybody is looking for the enemies. Yes, that is the comanders primary job, but nobody is going to stay silent if they see an enemy tank.
@@groofromtheup5719 well, no, but it's not like they have a lot of windows to look out of. The driver has a little scope of sorts or drives with his head out, but will be minding the road. Radio guy can't generally see shit, loader sees nothing, gunner can look through a 'silver straw' where the gun is aiming... But won't be moving the turret a lot since you don't want to smash it into stuff or have it facing the wrong way. It's why an anti tank tactic is to shoot at its vision slits and periscopes with machine guns and thst basically instantly blinds a tank, at least it did then, now there might be some special cameras or something.
Your mentioning of the Brits stopping to have a tea break reminds me of my dad's time during Desert Storm. He was with the 142nd field artillery regiment from Arkansas and they got attached to British 1st Armoured after the breach into Iraq. Apparently they always had a hot kettle on. "Would go over to their tracks a lot. Always had hot water, drank so much tea."
It's surprising how much of a difference a hot drink can make for moral lol. And hot water in general is just useful to have on tap, especially in the middle of nowhere
One of the lessons learned from WWII was the number of tank crew casualties that happened while the crew were outside the vehicle, often eating, making a brew etc. The Centurion tank, that came into service just too late for WWII, was therefore equipped with a BV, Boiling Vessel. Run off the vehicle's electrical system it's a box with a heating element in it, fill it with water and the crew can then heat their rations and make brews as and when required. Often considered the most important bit of kit on a British AFV.
@@sorashirogami1729 Define what Knipsel's "right reason" was. Nationalism? Germany was an overtly-racist, overtly-genocidal attempted ethnostate at the time (they are, obviously, better now) even if nationalism *isn't* a blight upon humanity. Hatred of Germany's enemies? Even worse; that just makes him another form of nationalist. Sense of duty? Then why'd he ignore regs?
@@ladywaffle2210mean, if we go with that kind of scrutiny, neither soviets nor Brits were any better, only US is barely better. Pretty much everyone fighting during ww2 was a shade of nationalist , a racist, or an imperial subject.
I’m a 14 year old and when I was 12 I did a bit of research and lost all of my wehraboo tendencies with the current state of the internet I’m surprised that people are still like that
@@SeshanTM true, but back in 2012-2014 Wehraboo hatred wasn’t as relevant and widespread as it is today. I’m glad we have made the internet a better place for young history buffs.
To be fair back in the days six kills or whatever it was was called a Whitman medal. I think it was renamed due to complaints about him being an SS Nazi though.
It used to be the Wittman medal. I had 2 in WOT, before it was renamed Knispel. Wittman was replaced, because it was pointed out that he was an unapologetic NAZI, Knispel wasn't.
Thanks Lazer, had i not watched to the end i would never have learnt about Rex. I hope that God forbid, if life tests me in the way it did him, then I can offer but a fraction of the courage that Rex and his men did. Selflessly and without hesitation. I think we all agree that given the odds he and his crew were not found wanting.
With that little dig at Patton, I'd like to see a Lazerpig video on him. Don't know much about him aside from some of the more controversial stories about him.
The only thing I have heard about him is how much people glorified him as if he was the greatest general of the war, and that he always had two pistols on him, and that he said they fought the wrong enemy (which refers to the Germans) which have lead to some conspiracy theorists believe that the US government had him killed in a auto accident because they claimed that he would have started a war with the USSR.
Yeah the Americans were not under Patton at that time. Patton didn't show up in Normandy in a command role till operation cobra when he took command of 3rd army.
@@kingofcards9516 well something tells me that if he did started to explain his jab against Patton, it would be a video in of itself and perhaps a Patton video is in the near future
I would like to point out a little bit of irony in the opening part of this historical video that in order to point out Rommel's flaws as a commander, you also have to acknowledge the incompetency and flaws on the British side of things and how they fudged up every attempt at defence until their enemy became so predictable in his reckless assaults that they could counter him with very little effort. I respect you for that, LP.
I don't think it's much of an open debate anymore that Monty, like Rommel, loved the smell of his own farts and was overrated as fuck. Market Garden being the hill his career died on, too little and too late. In the end, the only GOATed general on the Allies' side was Eisenhower, and in my view that's because of his magical ability to manage that fucking circus of inflated egos/divas in Allied Command he had to deal with (MacArthur, Monty, de Gaulle and Patton for example). Our greatest asset was a God-tier diva cat-herder and PhD-level War Logistician.
"it was only shear weight of numbers that the allies won" always remember kids, when a wehraboo says this remind them that they lost a town to two dudes and a jeep
and the "Wehraboo" will point to the K/Ds and the losses on both sides. And to the shit the germans pulled off. War is chaos. So shit like that happens on both sides
Yeah, ww2 has many weird stories... about how a guy with an eyepatch and a longbow fought on the beaches of normandy or how cat survived 3 sinkings of famous battleships or that the dutch escaped the japanese while being disguised as an island. But can we use these weird stories as a factor of how the war would have turned out? Or that they were just random events, or heck might even be propoganda to boost morale.
i watched a video glazing about Wittmann and a guy in the comment section said UNIRONICALLY "I've already watched this video about 10 times Michael Wittman was a true SS monster, his story is so beautiful, I'm proud to be able to know about this SS legend"
I agree. Those bastards have put a huge shit pile of shame on our history. Killed 6Millions alone through industrialized murder. And even more through Combat that they caused.
Or "If Only Nazi German FUCKHEAD Adolf Hitler had been dragged out of his bunker like the shit-stained coward he was, so he could stand trial and dangle on a rope, like scum like him deserve"
It’s an interesting what if, if the Weimar Republic got their shit together, what would the world look like. Would the Soviet Union be as powerful during the 20th century? Would the British empire fall? Would Hitler become an accomplished painter? Who knows
*Rex Ingram* is the kind of name a literary critic would say is too much of an action hero name for a person to realistically have, like Jack Stone or Miles Long.
@daniyarsadykov3385 Leo Major. The Canadian with balls of steel that stormed a village full of SS, several tanks and a lot of standard infantry With 2 people, couple of SMGs and a PIAT. And he fucking won
Note: I majored in history, and a lot of my professors would specifically stress the fact that we were to scrutinize the context and authors of our sources as well as the content. Of course, I can’t speak for every university, but I think it’s more than fair to say that actual history professors are very aware that primary sources are usually subject to heavy biases.
As someone who spent the better part of two decades either in or adjacent to history academics, I can confirm that lazarpig really doesn't know what he's talking about with regard to actual historians. Things may be different in a field as crowded with amateurs such as ww2, but I can't remember the last time I've personally witnessed a historian uncritically accept a primary source at face value. It's just not a thing in actual academia and is a pretty sure way to make your colleagues and critics think your work is unreliable. It's a beach of academic social norms on par with being overtly drunk and vomiting at a playground with other academics acting like mothers shooing their students away from such bad behavior.
Medieval History BA from a red brick university here. Yeah, I've know literally dozens of historians, and none I know are unaware of the limitations of primary sources. There is a whole area called "historiography" dedicated to the history of sources about a subject. I guess Pig mostly was directing that comment at amateur unpublished historians.
@@KingTrousereah that sounds reasonable. During my History BA at uni we were taught at length about being sceptical towards primary sources, the biases held by original author and the one examinating the material, as well as historiography in general. We even had a mandatory course in our 3rd year concerning the epistemology (philosophy of acquiring and critiquing knowledge) of the humanities, history in particular.
I thought that part is weird, but I have noticed particularly with WW2 people just accept primary sources far too readily. For instance Medieval or Classical sources there is a great deal of debating over what is said, and what those words really mean, who is the writer etc.
Hey LazerPig (not sure if you've heard this one but) one of my favorite WW2 bits of trivia is how the soviets strapped landmines to dogs to blow up enemy tanks and how, ironically, the dogs would turn around and blow up the soviets!
I read that the Red Army trained those dogs to find their reward, food, under tanks. Unfortunately, they only had T-34s to train the dogs with. Also, the dogs weren't subjected to gun and artillery fire during training. So probably those dogs just ran to save their own lives and tried to find cover under something sturdy, like their own tanks. BTW, anyone heard of the bat shit crazy story of American special ops training bats to detonate incendiary bombs they were carrying?
Did you ever hear of the pigeon guided bombs ? The U.S had an idea to put pigeons in bombs and have them guide the bombs to their target. There's a few videos of it out there, just another wacky idea during war time 😂
@@adamg.5525 Yep, read about them pigeons in the Dutch equivalent of Popular Science. The article started with the true and heartbreaking story of Cher Ami. British trained pigeon donated to the American Army fighting in France (First World War). The message he carried saved the lives of 194 American soldiers. Died eventually of his wounds in 1931. Awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French and the Animals in War & Peace Medal of Bravery by the USA.
Man LazerPig, you really are one of the good ones... as I write this, 339,000 humans now know the heroic deed of Rex Ingram. This is one of the good things about the internet. Someone's ultimate sacrifice is close to being forgotten to the sands of time but people like you come along and shine a massive spotlight on it with the potential to prolong its remembrance! To Rex and his crew! 🍻
Rommel is interesting to study for another reason. Rommel becoming this "Legendary Tank Commander" Myth is less about himself and his ego, and more about George Marshall and his Marshall Plan that was used in Europe and was copied wholesale for MacArthur's use in Japan. Part of Marshall's approach to rebuilding Germany into something workable, and to finally end the centuries of tit for tat European Warfare was he needed to win the Hearts and Minds of the German people. He could not leave them to simmer as a defeated enemy stewing in its own anger. That after all was how the world ended up with WW2. So the German's needed a heroic figure to still focus on. A German War Leader who could be portrayed as honorable. The base requirements were they had to be somewhat effective at their jobs, or at least not completely incompetent. Have no real connection to the major horrific war crimes, and be dead. Very Very Dead. This avoided a lot of awkwardness. Marshall's psy ops people then took to legitimizing the figure and building their myth. Not just in Germany, but in the English speaking world. Thus we get the legend of the Desert Fox. Pure Hollywood. Over in the Pacific they pulled the same scam using a conveniently dead fellow by the name of Isoroku Yamamoto. You may have heard of him? Like Rommel he has been elevated to one of Histories Greatest Naval Strategists. An Honorable Man who only did what his nation ordered. Whereas the truth is Yamamoto was a cagey and ruthless political operator. A moderately competent Strategist at best sub tier at his worst (Yeah Operation MI was pure fan fiction delivered as a military plan). And really an all around horrible excuse for a human being. Drunken Whoring aside. But they needed a dead "honorable" hero for the Japanese to look to instead of the vapid cowardly war criminals awaiting the hangman. Their only options were Yamamoto and Koga. So Yamamoto got the full Hollywood Package. Fake quotes and all. ("I fear we have woken a sleeping Giant!" yeah... no)
Last time I had a brief surface look into it, that sleeping giant 'quote' comes from the "Tora, Tora, Tora" film as a start point. I don't know if it was intended as a quote in the film or just written as a somewhat poetic line.
Also helpful that Rommel was implicated in the July 20th plot against Hitler, so if Marshall found that out it would likelyhelp his efforts (Rommel's role was hidden away since he was a war hero, hence why he got to take cyanide vs everyone else whoeither got hanged or shot)
@@durhamdavesbg4948 As I recall the Movies Producer and/or screenwriter claimed to have access to letters from Yamamoto with that quote. These documents have never ever been produced for anyone, no matter how many promises were made. And Yeah, they're rather clearly complete Hollywood Bullshit. As is the quote. The actual quote seems to be a paraphrasing of a comment often attributed to Napoleon (But that seems suspicious too). The quote concerned China. "China is a sickly sleeping giant, but when she awakens the world shall tremble". I'm sure if you dig deeper you'd find it attributed to some other war in the distant past.
Three cheers to Rex Ingram. It has been recorded (not sure the source) that he survived the Tiger’s 88mm hit to his Stuart, likely shielded by his oversized “titanium balls”, jumped out, and was attempting to open the driver’s hatch to rescue his driver when Whitt(for-brains)mann machine gunned him down. His family had an inscription added to his tombstone at the Bayeux War Cemetery: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”. RIP
Honestly, it kinda reminds me of the only German tank I care about. That being Porsche's tiger. You'll see countless retellings of it's story about how it buried itself when driving, was so incredibly sluggish, that Porsche was still working on it at the test ground, and caught fire. But the actual reports that I did get to read translated versions of, as well as handful of people who were present that I got to talk, said that it was slow getting off the railyard and that in prepping the tank for transport, a bolt worked loose and one of the engines didn't turn over. So Porsche "working in the tank" would be just a simple "that's odd. Let me check it out. Oh hey, a worker didn't secure this, lemme plug it in." and it worked. Handling some terrain better than the Henschel and climbing better, and while it did over heat in a climb, it didn't combust, they just let it idle for a little. The only things that really held it back was A The extensive copper usage. B: the original track width was a little narrow for the mass so it did sink a little further than the Heschel in mud, slowing it down some, but still being able to hit typical combat speeds. This being a simple fix of adding grousers. And C: The two modified Pz4 engines used to power the generators drank a lot more fuel than the HL230 that the Tiger H used. Now, it wouldn't have really mattered that much which tank was chosen, but I do feel the Tiger(P) gets shafted a little too much because the first reports of the trials and only published stories about the event came from Henschel's mouth and the people who were there to record the newest tank from one of Germany's more renowned tank designers. But even then, as you said, sometimes the stories people remember are just as faulty as the stories written with political agenda's.
Pretty much all the tanks manufactured after the defeat at Moscow were war losing tanks. Which means they weren't tanks at all as much as they were (kinda) mobile bunkers. They were defensive in nature, absolutely incapable of raids that won Poland, France and the first stage of the Russian campaign. They could be carried by rail to the general vicinity of the war ops, drive the ramaining 40-50km sometimes without burning their engine and then wait for the enemy attack. They had monstrous front armours and huge cannon calibers. Those calibers were so huge because the Germans were pretty much out of tungsten for the penetrators and they had to compensate by upping the caliber. So the shells were fatter, fewer, harder to load, more expensive to manufacture and transport and underpeforming American and British ones. All in all you had mobile defences that worked well when they could sit in ambush and when the enemy had no choice but to attack them from the front. Each time they tried assaulting, they got their asses handed to them because in an assault you are not sitting nicely in place and you have no guarantee of showing just your front armour to the enemy. Suddenly the fact a Panther gunner can burn the tank down by trying to rotate the turret when the tank is in motion starts to matter - a lot. All Tigers, Panthers, Koenigstigers and the rest of that wank were pretty much useless as tanks. They were worth the same as a Stug or a PAK AT but hugely overpriced.
You mean it was meant to attack. It was a result of the tank design philosophy of a breakthrough tank - a monster so huge and uparmoured it could just punch through any defense. The results were dismal, both for the Germans with their Konigstigers and for the Brits with their Churchils. Konigstiger was also designed and manufactured for a nation that had no fuel for its absurd needs, hence could not properly train crews for those bunkers and could not maintain it properly. It was just one of the "let's make the loss happen a bit later" tanks.
@@piotrsmolanski8777 did say that it wouldn't have mattered. I just like the layout and how easily everything was to reach and take apart on the Porsche tiger. Need a replacement transmission? Remove the back grate, decouple it from the engines and drive sprockets and hoist. Suspension shot? Break track, remove wheels, take off the suspension bracket and replace it. But ultimately, it wouldn't have mattered. My point is; I think the tiger p gets too much hate compared to the tiger h because of a false recounting of the story.
Every tank design claims to be for aggressive actions. Because you won't get your funding unless it's all about attacking. But the "breakthrough tank" concept never, ever worked. The only time where tanks seemed to be shrug off all fire and push forward was the early war Matilda IIs. At all other times, up armoring tanks was a waste of good metal. And the right way to handle static defences was to not hurl yourself at them.
Very well done video, as always! About Lt. Rex Ingram, I'm now reading (hopefully others will confirm) that his family was told he didn't die when the tank was hit (in fact, his Stuart seems in relatively good shape). It seems that all the crew survived that hit, and Rex himself managed to bail out. When he realized the driver was stuck, he went back to try and save him. That's when he was gunned down by MG's fire, just for the sake of it. If this is true, that makes Wehraboos' obsession with Wittmann even more disgusting, and Rex's tale even more outstandingly heroic. In any case, thanks a lot for this gem of a story. All the best to you, and all friends of the Even Rounder Table.
I still remember killing Whitman in Call of Duty 3. Which was weird because the mission had you play as a Free Polish tankcommander serving in the british army but driving a sherman, all in the Fallaise gap(Im sure I misspelled that, but i cant be bothered to check google)
It's impressive that Villers-Bocage occurred within a week of the Allies landing at Normandy, and they were already capable of holding off a sizable chunk of a heavy tank battalion
I had an incredible history professor that would always say “I don’t care if you get the exact date or place wrong, as long as you can explain why something happened and it’s effect on people.” As someone who loves studying the “why” part of history and having a bad memory for numbers like dates, I loved his classes.
"If you want to be Historian, dont study history, study people" As a History Student, this is the first thing come in mind when my Professor talk about Introducing History. But one thing to note that he also said nor humans, but every aspect of environment have their own story to tell.
@@weybye91 he's not mean we need to just forgot the time periode, what he mean is dont ended up into Historicism. If we just learn History, we only learn about how people develop, what things change from time to time. By learning "the people", we know what cause and why it happen, what idea and view of people in that time over the matter they want to change. This is why there's phrase "if you want to be Historian, dont learn history. Lean the people." If you want to be actual historian, what you learned is not just time and progress, but background and the motives.
As a German from Bavaria whose local brewery is called "Wittmann", thank you i have never heard of this guy and now i can't enjoy my favorite beer anymore. 👍
@@johnhonker437 Not the same. In your analogy it would be more accurate to say that sth called Koresh is bad bc David Koresh is a piece of shit, and personally I have no idea who the hell David Koresh might be but I'm not putting Koresh beer into my system, that's for sure. That sounds like some sort of bootleg Turkish swill.
Would love to see a Pig video on the multicultural mosh pit of the First Canadian Army. Canadians, Brits, Americans, Poles, Belgians and I believe the Czechs all bundled together
Could we get some coverage on the P38 lightning? It’s one of my favorite planes of the second world war, I don’t know much about it in terms of its actual effectiveness besides it being the most photographed plane of WWII
It's the only American fighter to be built before the war and right through to the end, so figure it had something on the ball. Saburo Sakai said the Zero was helpless against it.
@@JohnWilliamNowak I am, by no means a historian, but wasn't the Zero one of those planes that was really amazing when it was introduced and then just go unchanged until the end of the war resulting in it being entirely outclassed by what was being produced?
You know, the part at the end about Rex is suddenly giving me inspiration to make a diorama based around that situation. Call it my little toast to Rex and his crew’s bravery.
I respect the break from Ukraine content for some historical stuff. You've mentioned it before Mr LP, but there is the fog of war that really makes it a bit hard to say anything other than "fighting ongoing" - plus Russian politics is about as esoteric as Lovecraftian gods.
Going to pin any noted errors here:
The Gold Cross I showed at 40:02 is a modern version of the same award, not the one Knispel would has received. I had noticed this pre-release and it was fixed in a different draft but when you have 14 drafts of the same video out and TH-cam says that Draft 9 is the one thats ad approved you just kinda have to roll with it.
Some of the stories about Knispel may not be true, apparantly a lot of them were made up as part of the Clean Wehrmacht myth, sources seem a little dubious, I'll need to do more research.
Thank you for demolishing the wehraboos LP.
The errors in your T-14 video are enormous and the list wasn’t ever updated with all (plethora) of them. Will you be addressing any of those?
This is not an issue if you could just tell us more about this Kurt Knispel guy.
I feel like we owe him something.
We still love you Mr. Pig.
Also,
to Rex,
a gentleman knows no fear, cheers,
Raised one to Rex and his crew! May their heroism be remembered and their spirits found peace.
Lucky me to have a beer at arms reach. To Rex!!!
Raised a tea to Rex myself, he deserves to be better documented
Perhaps it's fitting to say he was a bloody good bloke. To rex!
Berlioz requiem, Rex Tremendae. Listen to it, and feel the intensity of his bravery and honor.
Sorry to ask but didn't the m3 Stuart have raido
This is a British hedge: "Hmm. Seems normal."
This is a French hedge: *[fucking narnia]*
I was a police officer for 30 years and interviewed hundreds of people after sudden, traumatic incidents. We would often get different stories from different people at the same incident. Sometimes they were lying and sometimes they just remembered wrong. For instance, there is a phenomenon called Tachypsychia where time and distance is altered, where, in one instance, I remembered running a hundred yards when it was actually only a few yards at most. Add in the confusion of sudden input of information to your brain, especially if it were a sudden ambush, and then add in years between the event and an interview, and any testimony can be tainted. The person really does remember what he is stating, but it may or may not be the actual truth.
Oprah Winfrey once did an experiment to show unreliable eye witness testimony can be especially in cases where the event happens quickly and they only get a fleeting glimpse of the event. She staged a fake robbery in front of the long queue waiting for her show, then had fake police officers show up and interview the people in the queue and they all gave contradictory statements about the number of robbers, their appearance, the victim, etc.
That's the thing about human memory! It's so completely fallible, especially over long periods of time. Plus memory doesn't just include sensory information like sight, sound, touch, smell, ect. You can have memories of just your thoughts, or even memories of just the emotions you felt in a situation. You can lose memories easily, but you can also have them degrade and become inaccurate. You can simply be mistaken. You can fail to form memories of an event in the first place and unknowingly imagine fake ones later. Seriously. Your mind needs time and good deep sleep to form proper long term memories., and sometimes they just don't get that, or your mind regards the information as irrelevant and doesn't form a memory on purpose. You yourself are not even fully in control of your own mind. There are processes that are subconscious and automatic. You can exert some more control over your mind with practice, but even this is limited in potential.
The best one i have heard is "Aliens took me to meet naked woman on their space ship". Complete bollocks, but not a lie.
I learned this in psychology in my A levels.
We watched a video then had to remember simple details, like the colour of the get away car. Most people couldn't remember simple facts.
I've also been accused of things, and witness accounts varied wildly. The police still didn't want to look at the video I recorded 🤷
@@benholroyd5221As I understand it, adrenaline and cortisol released as a stress response in potentially dangerous situations is there to increase your reaction time and get your body ready to do some intense physical exertion, thereby throwing your focus onto whatever needs to be done to keep yourself safe immediately. It's an automatic response, whether you keep calm or panic afterwards is up to you. But regardless, it definitely makes it difficult for the mind to memorize everything when it's literally choosing not to in favor of keeping you alive.
When I was stationed in Germany I led battlefield tours working for the USO. One of the most popular was the Ardennes. A German acquaintance asked if he could bring along two veterans. One his uncle, was a Panther commander in 6th Panzer, the other a PzIV company commander in Italy. The whole "ace" thing came up and this is the gist of what they said, "Some kept track, most did not. It did not make sense, because crews change over time. We had a directive come down asking for names of the highest scoring commanders to be sent to Germany. We just picked a married guy who was due for leave." The other significant statement was, "I was too damn busy keeping my crew and company alive". Neither had a clue how many vehicles they destroyed.
People like that are easily forgotten in favor of the drama of aces - real or not. The irony of ‘Victors write the history’ is that German propaganda figures like the aces or great generals overshadow everyday heroes who just do what they can in their situation.
@@NotQuiteSteele Yes, by "drum and trumpets" historical writers, movies and commercial wargames (too a much smaller degree).
I feel like subordinates or low ranking officers would've been the ones keeping count . . . . but they were all dead or on the eastern front by this time. So we get nazi tank ace hysteria.
Canadian sniper culture was similar. Counting kills is gay af.
@@smasherblues5322 Yes, I remember watching a documentary about the Canadian WW2 Black Watch scout sniper section. A vet talked about his admission into its ranks when his high range scores in training seemed to qualify him for placement there on first joining the active combat regiment:
The sergeant in charge took him on a stalk to a frontline riverbank, pointed across the river at a German sentry and asked "You see him? Okay, kill him." - a final entry test to see if he could cold-bloodedly shoot another human. He did.
The sgt. then said: "Okay, you just shot your first German. Now quit counting. " And he did. And about 70 years later, he still had no clue what his "score" was...
Just for emphasis at 22:34, these French hedgerows were specifically cultivated and maintained for generations starting all the way back in the Medieval period. There are literal hundreds of years worth of effort behind creating these impassable fences of dense forest.
That was the US Sector. The Commonwealth sector was much more open ground. Caen to Falaise was all open.
@@michaelkenny8540There were definitely also hedges in the Commonwealth sector.
Lol and we welded cut up beach obstacles to the front of tanks and ran right through em. Priceless
Thay kinda make me think of like ancient monoliths of nature or a natural shrine to an ancient god or smthn
If anything, those photos look like Company of Heroes, Brothers in Arms, etc. actually UNDERSTATED the damn things (and the actual sizes of the fields they enclosed).
Rex is the very definition of a hero. Fighting an unwinnable battle so his buddies have just that little extra time to get set. He even did it smart, playing every strength that little Stuart could possibly muster against a tiger. Truly to Rex and his heroic crew
Maybe its because Im coming of my anti depressants but this made me cry fuck me
Well I mean I don’t want to damper the mood but I don’t think he had all of that in mind.
Possibly and likely a commendable sense of duty and bravery. But that’s it. I don’t wanna downgrade his sacrifice I am just saying
He saw one of the biggest tanks of the war barreling down the road towards him and said "Bet."
@@Jesayou its all good mate, this kinda thing always gets me too, there's something about descriptions of such courage that brings me to tears and breaks my heart.
Agreed. War thunder players wouldn’t attempt this in a game
Okay, you know what? When I picture "hedge warfare", I just picture the usual box hedges we have in Canada. It was never something I thought to reevaluate. I knew that it made defence easier, I didn't realize France was building the Great Wall of China in hedge form.
Funny enough, Ukraine's hedges can be just as bad, and were/are integral in slowing down Russian forces.
The Great Wall of Chiba wishes it was the French Hedgerows, you can't bribe a bush!
Yeah, the technical distinction between a "hedge" meaning a decorative bush, and a "hedgerow" meaning a wall of intertwined vegetation including trees of any size short of it being woodland is not one that non-rural people realise.
I’ve always heard stories that to break into a hedgerow it usually required engineers with explosives or artillery.
@@Rapinasimpliciseventually they made a Sherman that could do it. It involved basically sticking a nightmarish looking combination of a hedge trimmer and a bulldozer blade on the front of it. Followed by ramming the 33 ton vehicle through the hedge at high speed.
“He occupies the footnote that Whitman should be in” God damn what a takedown and elevation in one single sentence
I came here to post that quote if it wasn’t. A brutal and brilliant bow tie.
Amen to that. Perhaps in time, the historical narrative will be justly and rightly reversed.
To Rex, a hero who gave his life for his comrades. This is the first I've heard of him, and I am glad I did.
@AlexanderHenry-hz3td Sorry, not interested.
@@chrisschultz8598 holy shit lmao. Jehovas Witnesses have nothing on this guy
@@insertnamehere7574 I have to admit, this is the first time I've been invited to a Muslim shindig. Jehovah's Witnesses are a dime a dozen around here.
@AlexanderHenry-hz3td i think lord of the rings is a better fictional book than the quran or the bible
@@thecursed01Damn bro, edgy
The Pig has crawled out from the ashes and brought forth new material
His braincells had to recover a little more after that debate with Lira
All praise the Pig! ✋ 🤚
\ /
Ugh we talk about ww2 battles and you talk about LP crawling from the .... ASHES
@@themvko i think that goes for all of us.
@@u2beuser714Cope.
I love Lazerpig, but how very dare he question the popularity of Time Team
Aye Tony! Itsa bitta pottaray!
I agree, Time Team is fun and I feel older every time I think about it
Saw all 20 seasons and some of the new version. Now know more British history than 90% of my fellow Americans know about the US
I watched it all, but only for ritual purposes. Carenza, according to quite a few people I know, is a complete bitch. And not in a good way. Alice Roberts (I remember her as a baby archaeology student) however...❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Why was baldric on the time team again?
Wittman feels like that one War Thunder match where you just miraculously survive everything.
Ikr
About 6 or something years ago i played world of tanks for like a month. Only time i did well was miraculous; set up with a tank destroyer at the bottom of a hill and wiped the 5 or six players that rolled over the top.
One of the best feelings I ever got gaming, but i still sucked at the game when i went back a few months ago. Sometimes it's better to be lucky, but then you got to know when to stop.
And then killed by a Typhoon with a close air support attack in the last seconds of the battle. Yeah very much like War Thunder. And worse it was an uptiered CAS plane. :)
This video is a overstated... His cult is definitely too built up. But to say that he lived a comfortable life while fighting and dying in WW2. Just remember Lazerpig isn't a veteran, and wasn't there for anything. take it with a grain of salt. Some valid points but too sensational for my tastes.
@@chrisbricky7331 Typhoon is a real menance with 1000ib and fighter ability to make sharp turns.
"Describes the feeling of a 88 millimetre shell passing between his legs" Is a god damn chilling sentence, bravo
I wonder how it feels, is it like "woosh" hm.
There was a British world war two veteran at remembrance Day a few years
And he described his time briefly mentioned he got injured by losing an argument with a tank
@AlexanderHenry-hz3tdbro can you please shut up
The thing about Dyas' interview/s, is that he comes across as a rather embittered man, deeply unhappy with his equipment, which he seems to have been exaggeratedly disparaging about.
"The most overstudied battle in history."
For the United States, that quote applies to the Battle of Gettysburg. Dear God does it apply to the Battle of Gettysburg.
Wait really? I thought it was pretty clear cut that the confederacy lost
@@elishafollet5347 I don't think that's what they mean? The Confederacy definitely lost, and it was certainly one of the most pivotal battles in the course of the war from a strategic viewpoint, but I'd wager it wasn't very interesting/complex tactically.
I figured that was the battle of Normandy itself, since that's been filmed and parodied to high hell
@@elishafollet5347Gettysburg is so documented you can map it second by second at this point. It’s that insane
@@elishafollet5347
> I thought it was pretty clear cut that the confederacy lost
Sadly, the people writing History Channel documentaries and Texas schoolbooks have not yet accepted this fact. They're still pretty sure that _one more good push_ will have those Yankees on the run and slavery reinstated nationwide.
I study Central Asian history, which means I have to deal with a lot of made up bullshit propagated by Chinese and Russian sources that have worked overtime to erase and undermine anything produced by actual Turkic/Mongolian cultures. I really appreciate your words about primary sources and academia. That is something I have struggled with a lot, and a lot of my work has become undoing the damage done by historians with agendas.
thank you for enlightening us all.
I think a better term would be "revisionist propagandists".
I'm learning a very different side of Mongolian history from a Mongolian Friend than I get on Wikipedia. It's like the CCP writes Wikipedia
@@hazzardalsohazzard2624 it's almost as if Wikipedia is biased on highly political topics lol.
I love reading Chinese historians write down things like three headed geese as a subversive way to inform the Emporer he did something wrong without getting their heads chopped off.
> Be Stuart commander
> See Tiger roll up
> All your unit is on rest and unaware
> "Today's the day"
>Suddenly George Washington himself posses your body
> Charge head on
> Die a hero
Why Washington? He's British. It would of been Lord Wellington. Plus he was a better commander than Washington was.
He fought every battle against Napoleon and won.
Washington muddled his way thru the revolution.
Saved by fog at bunker hill, almost wiped out his army at valley forge and relied on other fronts succeeding. If people like Lafayette, Arnold and the overwhelming support from European powers most notably the Dutch and French, and him being the first president Washington would be seen as an overwhelming faliure of a military commander.
Truly, the man was possessed by the spirit of Sir John Moore. Fighting an overwhelming enemy until the last moment.
@@thepolishnzginna be honest though, at Waterloo he needed the help of the Prussians. Wellington himself said that. Without the Prussians, he couldnt defeat Napoleon alone.
@@GabrielUngacta No let you be honest.
This is from 1973 Britannica : The Battle started at 1130hrs the French were on the run 1930 hrs in the interim it was Wellingtons troops that kept the French at Bay slaughtering 100s Blucher came in from Ligny at 1930hrs when the Guard had broken . Blucher turned that retreat into a rout.
Blucher said he would come if Wellington could hold the enemy Wellington trusted Blucher so he held.
As an example of the frustration of historical sourcing, after the Titanic sank in 1912 consensus of the narrative generally settled on the conclusion that she sank in one piece. The inquiries concluded this, and every retelling went with this depiction, stern in the air, then slid beneath the waves. However there had always been eyewitness accounts that she had broken in two on the surface, indeed one survivor Jack Thayer relayed such an account to an artist aboard the rescue ship Carpathia, giving the first actual depiction of breaking in two on the surface (inaccurate in other ways, but besides the point). And yet it wasn't until 1985 when the ship was found and was indeed in two pieces well over half a kilometer apart that these eyewitness accounts were vindicated. So why did the initial inquiries conclude she sank in one piece? Because Second Officer Charles Lightoller, highest ranking survivor, testified that he saw it go down in one piece, even though later scholarship surmised he was too busy trying to keep a capsized lifeboat from throwing the men standing on it into the icy water for him to really get a good look at the final moments. Yet the inquiries deferred to his natural authority.
I tell this to assure you that you are not alone when grumbling about the phenomenon of taking a single source as gospel.
Since we're on the topic of Titanic, I will forever be frustrated by the pop-history pseudo-parable claim that the Titanic was heralded as "unsinkable" by all that had seen the mighty ship prior to her sinking. From my understanding (and tell me if my account seems wrong), the only pre-sinking claim of being unsinkable was in an article in a maritime engineering magazine showcasing the Titanic's automatic watertight bulkhead doors. Beyond that, the narrative that man's hubris in the face of God's Earth was humbled when the unsinkable ship was sunk seems to be a post-disaster fabrication meant to further sensationalize the tragedy into some twisted moral lesson.
anywhere where I can find said illustrstion? I'm quite interested
@@randomearthling4147 commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thayer-Sketch-of-Titanic.png
@@randomearthling4147 Jack Thayer has a wikipedia page and the illustration is there
I've heard that once the Titanics lights went out everything there was complete and uder darkness. If that's true then it would be near impossible to actually see what happened to the ship.
The fact the British Army was unionized is something I’ve never heard before and I’m honestly blown away, the jokes make so much sense now wow
The Army it's self wasn't unionised but the men who were drafted into it had come from union workforces. So despite not actually being in a union any more they carried a lot of those attitudes and mindsets with them.
@@lostalone9320 What the hell are you talking about? Modern unions are infinitely less demanding than the old ones. Back in those days, massive strikes and militant factory occupations were the norm for negotiations and trust me, they demanded pay rises. The modern middle class wouldn't exist if they didn't.
@@lostalone9320Unions in *this* era don't do that, mate.
@@lostalone9320 "Outrageous pay rises" mate what union are you talking about?
@@just_matt214 counter point the current writers guild strike seems to me to be asking for outrageous pay levels and terribly unrealistic concessions at a time when the studios are bleeding money. Seems like both reasonable and unreasonable trends are both present at all points in union history as is everything in human history.
Seeing photos of the French Hedges finally got it through my skull of why the Normandy Invasion was a pain in the ass, you can hide 10 8 foot Minotaurs in those things and never be able to find them.
You never thought to just google them before? Also you've just never seen them before??? Even the shitty documentaries on the history channel from 20 years ago had pictures of the things, they are a big talking point whenever WW2 comes up
@@christopherjones8448 Nope, didn’t really care enough about French Hedges to really look into them, nor do I watch WW2 Documentaries since said example you bring up. If I did learn about Normandy Invadion, then it’s about the Landings and not the subsequent fighting that happened during the Normandy Invasion.
The story of Rex Ingram really is quite something, it makes you wonder how many heroic deeds went unnoticed throughout that war all cause somebody couldn't or wouldn't share their story.
Never let anyone break your heart more than the bot did, doing an announcement for a vid in 25 hours.
Edit: TH-cam borked and made this vid scheduled for tomorrow. Yes I know its out now.
It's in one hour.
I'm so glad I only have a 60 minute wait. But as soon as I saw that my mouth made a "noooOOoo" sound straight out of some cute Borderlands supporting character.
@myselfremadeahh yes google says that "ree" means goat
@@The31stcenturyfox TH-cam messed up, and initially put this for tomorrow.
25 hours? Mine notified me 25 minutes
When Napoleon Bonaparte was criticised for winning battles simply because of luck, he famously retorted: “I'd rather have lucky generals than good ones.”
Let's be thankful his luck ran out.
And how did that turn out in the en?
@@martinjrgensen8234 i believe he was shot, exiled and died of definitely-not-lead-poisoning because the walls of his room were painted with leaded paint.
I could be wrong.
@@martinjrgensen8234 exiled a first time, got back in France and launched the Campagne des 100 jours (100 days campaign) that ended in the biggest defeat you could ever imagine even in your wildest dreams, so the English put him in another island very far away and he died like 5 years later
lucky is so much overrated
For Rex, the man who saved the day, even at the cost of his crew, his tank and himself.
too Rex, cheers!
@@stevensexton2221 to, not too.
"Rex" - Latin. "King."
No less.
To the pebble that causes the avalanche-the drop that causes the flood. To the man who saved the lives of soldiers fighting evil, who wore no crown but a black beret.
To Rex.
@@ladywaffle2210 Iubentium, Rex!
@@ladywaffle2210
Rex - Latin. "King"
Ingrum - Scandinavian. "Raven of peace; Raven of Anglia"
King Raven indeed!
Ive been a soldier, a Historian, a researcher in the archives, a Military Museum supervisor and a reenactor.
After I retired from the Army I went back to school to finish my BA in History. I got into an argument with the Dean of the History department over some falsehoods he was spreading about a particular battle in Iraq. He asked me how i knew he was wrong? My reply was because I was there as an Infantry Squad Leader. The next day i brought in all my Green books that contained all of the Op Orders i had recieved as further proof he was wrong. As a Historian the "Trust me Bro" doesnt always cut it.
I wonder where he got his shitty info from, then?
@@Anonie324 Propaganda from the Leftist media is what he was using as the basis. I knew of journalists who never left the safety of their hotel room. They'd print stories based on what the heard soldiers talking about in the elevator up to the Dining facility at the Baghdad Sheraton hotel.
Hell yeah king
@@Anonie324 Many officers leaving the army may choose to write a book, especially if they want a political career afterwards. Many generals certainly have and many have lied to make themselves look better.
Just the way of it.
The Dean though... should have gone to the origin instead of a self-aggrandising autobiography or something similar
GG v 0b😊 00 c @@Anonie324c
Dear Lazerpig,
My grandfather was a tank radio operator who fought in North Africa, Greece/Crete and into Italy. (An ANZAC and in a Sherman tank, I think. I was too young to learn all the details).
About the one story I know is that moving into Italy, they once saw a haystack in a field. They stopped. They looked at it. They agreed, something about it was fishy.
The haystack fired a shell at them, which fortunately didn’t penetrate. They returned fire and blew the haystack and the tank hiding under it into a state of non serviceability. I think it turned into a bonfire.
My grandad had keys to Italian towns and letters of gratitude from places he helped liberate, which is probably the nicest thing to come out of the war - people from far flung places and cultures bonded by hardship, sacrifice and humanity.
My other other grandfather was recognized as an honorary german paratrooper! Certainly the best and worst of times.
It’s easy to see why historians find first hand testimony so compelling when the stories are so interesting.
Neat
ANZAC? Didn’t they have the funny penis tank?
Quite interesting
"The haystack fired a shell at them, which fortunately didn’t penetrate" is one of the funniest sentence i've read today. thank you for cheering my day up!
My great uncle apparently had a few of those stories, too, though he didn’t like to talk about them. He died before I was born, but supposedly, he “got volunteered” as a gunner on a B-17 for a mission, and one of the regular crew tossed him a lighter as a thank you gift. Another time, he had to play Midwife for a women in labor because he couldn’t leave his guard posting to find an actual doctor.
All of those stories are likely to vanish someday…
it is insane how the german propaganda machine was so effective that people still fall for it almost 100 years later
Almost 90💀
it's not the german propaganda it's more a mixture of contrarianism and american/soviet propaganda cause yunno your enemy being tough reflects better on you
and some people love trying to tear down the winner
The Confederate’s propaganda machine is still effective in the USA around 160 years after they lost the civil war.
To this day folk talk of Napoleon as the 'petit corporal' (he wasn't a small fella and was never a corporal), of the invincible caesarian legions...
Propaganda works that's why we use it.
I feel like thatsome people are so unsatisfied with their empty life, that they need to make up something to stand out. "I know something most people will never know" - its the essence of every conspiracy theory. "I am special and intelligent, all the others are just sheep and snowflakes".
As an ex - NATO officer, I salute Rex Ingram and his crew. To overcome your own fears and choose to fight instead of flight, that is exactly what makes a good soldier. His actions gave his comrades time to evaluate the situation and act accordingly. Thank you for bringing this up. Brave men should never be forgotten. But for me, the most interesting thing about this batlle, is what propaganda can do, even after so many decades. Makes you really think about what you see on the news today...
Way late, but I did a tiny bit of digging and it appears that Rex escaped the tank but refused to leave the rest of his crew. It seems that he was gunned down while trying to open the driver hatch.
Ex NATO officer??? Right.
@@SportbikerNZ ever heard of retirement?
@@PixelTheMushroom Ever heard anyone refer to themselves as a Nato officer instead of an officer of their own country?
Rex was my Cousin on my Father's side and obviously a bit of a hero of mine. My Father knew him and his death occurred long before I was born.
I did however know his Father, CPT. BWI Ingram when he was very old, himself a bit of a WWI hero. Uncle B as I called him gave me Rexs' medals and items of his uniform which I still have.
As a Family, we've often wondered why he wasn't more recognised for his Gallantry..after watching this I can only assume that the British powers that be found the idea of a 19 year old taking Wittmann on head to head, a tad embarrassing... He's buried in the Bayeux War Cemetery if anyone wants to visit him and perhaps say a little prayer for him.
As a kid, I subscribed to a magazine about ww2 and it had a special issue about the best tank aces. That quickly became my favorite, but it actually featured a long article about Kurt Knispel and nothing on Wittman. Later when I became active on the Internet, I was extremely confused because everyone was talking about some Wittman guy when I wanted to know more about Knispel.
awww based magazine!
i got to read Otto carius's memoir when i was 10, but i was too confused to stand on a 'side'. so in the end i ended up being a bit of teaboo.
his book wasn't super accurate or fun, but it came with a tiger manual that was translated into my language PLUS it contained the artwork that came along in with the original manual. i thought it looked too inappropriate so i threw it away a long time ago. now i miss it :(
I’ve noticed that reading older books on many subjects has a ton of info about things that aren’t even mentioned today.
If that magazine is still in your parents attic, dig it out and edit wikipedia with a published source.
@@jmackmcneill Interesting idea. Might try it. I definitely know that I stored these in my parent's attic and I don't think they threw it out.
This video is an hour long? It feels significantly shorter than that. LazerPig's such a good story teller.
Agree, I felt like that was about 20 minutes - LP knows how to present, that's for sure...
As much as his schtick is being frantic and histrionic, he sure knows how to set up a topic.
Not an hour long. It's 52 minutes.
He also has a very, extremely, amazingly unfuckable voice, that somehow makes the content even more watchable.
tru lazerpig one of the best
As someone who went to Normandie two weeks ago - I looked for the hedges to see the WWII stuff, and I saw them… and completely understood why the breakout from the LZs lasted as long as it did.
THEY WERE FUCKING MASSIVE - LIKE THREE TO FOUR TIMES MY HEIGHT.
They are dense as hell too, must have been hell fighting in
French ingenuity or French laziness? You decide!
I always wanted to send my Grandfather there, but he passed away before I could. He was in the 778th AAA Battalion(not a tanker, M16 AA half track) who also fought in the the Bulge, then helped guard the Remagen Bridge. He often spoke of a German pilot(s) they called "Midnight Charlie".
@WASDLeftClick Its more than just a hedge, some are just ancient stone walls that marked the property that had slowly had rock and soil put over it until we have a small hill... and a bush over it. You should see the diagrams of those things.
@@jacob5395 Having looked at those that's a lot more clear than just looking at photographs of it. But still, I just can't help but chuckle at the idea of some French farmers deciding not to trim the hedges and just have another croissant and cappuccino, every week, until "Hon hon hon, they were meant to be that way monsieur!". Maybe it's because that's the tone a lot of folklore has in the South were I grew up, often self-deprecating and humorous. Regardless they're very pretty to walk through I can imagine.
My great grandpa was at the Villers Bocage, He was part of the 15th Isle Of Man Anti Aircraft regiment which he was classed as experienced having been deployed in Greece (Crete specifically) and North Africa (Desert Rates). He landed on Gold beach and got to Villers through Tilly-Sur-Seulles as they supported infantry.
The regiment was shot up near the Village on June 13th and saw a Cromwell tank burning while advancing on the secondary road. Soon the front of his convoy they were then shot at though he couldn't tell what "Whoever peaked first got hit first." "I assume it was a tank as it tore through one of the guns and men."
The battle was very chaotic though he never went near Wittmann or Point 213... As in his words "It was like searching a trench but with tanks, because the French never cut their hedges."
The regiment then later had to retreat as it was only light AA just before the rest of the forces did. He was disappointed how they had to retreat and the Air Force flattened the town later anyway. He Survived the war and lived to tell me. Unfortunately he passed away at 98 from old age in 2017. A truly great man and lived long enough to tell me this. Thanks lazerpig for making this video. Hope this provides an another account of the battle.
The Isle of Man had enough people to form 15 Anti-Aircraft regiments?!?! What, do Manx pop out the womb with a Quad Bofors each?!??
@@adamkoslin9302😂 nah, it was just 15th (Isle of Man) Light Anti Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery. The Isle of Man was added in brackets as is typical of Combat Support Arms of the British Army to highlight their territorial background.
With the Island being so small and interconnected, most Manx folk will have some connection to the regiment. For example 2 of my grandmother's cousins were members of it. One becoming a PoW when the regiment's third battery was destroyed during the invasion of Crete.
Thanks to your Grandpa for defending the land of my Grandpa, Grandma and Mother (Crete)
@@adamkoslin9302 They did have Bofors and they were good anti tank weapons in pre war Europe but they weren't directly at the front of the convoy because they were AA and it was a narrow boncage. So i don't think the could fire but they were part of a convoy.
I was mistaken i should have put (isle of man) as it was the 15th but they didn't have 15.
@@DotDotDot0272 Unfortunately we did not win that battle, though one of the 15th batteries was destroyed by paratroopers.
Knipsel looked like everyone's favourite companion in some ww2 themed rpg whose death launched a thousand playthroughts titled "using a glitch to save Knipsel, how to guide in minute 12" and "unnoficial community patch 1.2 adding the option to save Knipsel- fully voiced"
Yeah, his actions may have been overblown but if there's a dsiciplinary report about him assaulting a nazi for mistreating prisoners then eh alright he's cool I guess.
Alright, hot take here but. I rare say "based” due to how it’s used by werhaboos, racists and terminally online turbo nerds. But I will say without a doubt that Knipsel is probably the most "based" German soldier in WW2
How is it everyone keeps mispronouncing his name?
@@deeznuts-kw6yv the non SS tank aces were sometimes not the worst, some of them were very bad, some of them (like knispel) had moments where they may have done good (i believe knispel was wrote up for preventing the execution of soviet pows), but were still bad.
@@magnum6763 I mean, I can understand that the were defending Nazi Germany of all things, but I ain't defending their actions here, more so showing some respect to the very few who had morals
One of my history teacher once told our class: "The eyewitness is the natural archenemy of the historian".
What I have learned from this video: old age and failing memory is the archenemy of the eye witness.
Here's another great lesson about how much you can trust people's memory; some researchers have managed to gaslight people into "remembering" how they met bugs bunny at disneyland
@@AudieHollandtime is the death of truth
It's why even when interviewing soldiers who fought in the very battle, while they can offer some insight you can't get elsewhere, in general, their viewpoint is worthless overall.
It's also why eyewitness testimony is considered to be nearly worthless in a court of law. Forensic evidence is much, much more reliable.
Lazer Pig: As everyone should know by now, there are about a thousand factors that effect penetration. The quality of the steel, the angle of attack, the temperature..
Me: The quality of the sacred oil and incense used to bless the machine. It also helps if it finds the other tank attractive and isn't too tired that day.
The machine spirit can be a saucy one - making it oily makes it happy
Techmarine, calm the Machine Spirit!
PRAISE THE OMNISSIAH
11:13 "Not that the Americans were having a particularly easy time regardless; they had Patton leading them"
The amount of shade that LazerPig can summon out of nothing itself is truly inspirational.
I'd rather have anyone leading me than Patton, I will say.
Patton was ten times as capable than the best british general of both world wars
@donaldhysa4836 having gone through your comments on this video (there's a lot, with timestamps, and I don't know why, considering that LP would never respond lmao) I can't tell if your a freedomaboo or a wehraboo
Both are equally shit opinions, BTW
@@donaldhysa4836 ten times zero (Monty, Haig) still equals zero, so that ain't the flex you think it is.....
@@Codaddictmonty never got defeated by rommel tho, so i guees he is higher than zero.
Also, O'Connor existed
as a German historian working on his PhD I hope I can assuage your anger by stating, that the first thing we learned is source-critical thinking. We are taught to never fully believe anything, but say instead: "this is all we know from the sources of the time and these are the reasons why they are wrong or right."
Lazerpig just has a huge axe to grind with historians. He doesnt know what is taught and doesnt care for it. It isnt the first thing he brought up that historians just take everything at face value and dont think about the context of the source and it isnt the first time people have told him that no that isnt what you learn in university.
@@Shrrrg He, like a lot of people online, seems to think TV docs and history memes and hot takes are an accurate reflection of actual academic history. He's very entertaining, but serious history this is not.
@@Shrrrg To be fair, the Wehraboos he's angry at didn't exactly go to university. There's enough people around that claim to have "studied" by essentially paying a guy for online courses that mirror their own opinion.
@@Shrrrghistory lessons can teach historians various values and principles, what matters is if the discipline enforces those values.
If you were a historian writing/speaking on this subject, the fact no one until Taylor went to speak to servicemen who experienced it tells us historians weren't doing that.
Secondly the point of history on society level is to inform and teach people our past so we can learn from it.
Thus the published books, tv documentaries and youtube views are how society sees historians
@@croxrailway1616 " the fact no one until Taylor went to speak to servicemen who experienced it" that is not a fact but utterly *?&%$§.
You know something else about Knipsel? He was a Feldwebel. The closest equivalent to that in the US is an E5 (Sergeant). In the aristocratic Nazi structure, having a common soldier, an NCO, as your top tanker (and not a Nazi) is unthinkable.
Well the Feldwebel is the master of his craft.
They are definitely very capable etc.
Also Nazis weren’t really aristocratic, not in the traditional sense. Though one could call it favoritism and elitism.
Knipsel was the German version of Donald Sutherland's Oddball.
As for why German troops were so good in the operational military arts in the 19th and early 20th century, it was because of Napoleon, in particular the staff reforms. See *A Genius for War* by COL Trevor Dupuy for details.
@DrCruel The General Staff was a "secret weapon" of the Prussians for so long and then it caught on fast in the late 19th century.
Technically around an E-6 and with bigger responsibilities. In tanks and infantry one platoon would be commanded by an officer in a company and the others often by Feldwebel...on paper.
Losses would make these billets flexible through the war.
But enlisted nonetheless.
From what I've read of memoirs and such, its closer to a SFC. And German NCO's of the era were generally given more responsibility than other nations.
Rex's Commander Ability: When there is a Heavy Tank within 150m of you, increase reload speed by 250%.
Glass duly raised to Rex Ingram and his crew. I'd never heard of him before, and his is a story that deserves to be told. Thank you for enlightening me.
And only 19.
Even his wikipedia page does not show up.
@@bgcvetan Make it then
To Rex!
Rushed to grab a drink to raise!
a wise man once said. ''we all know that Germany would have won if''
-had infinite manpower
-infinite resources
-more incompetent enemies
-infinite skilled people
@AlexanderHenry-hz3tdSeek help, allahboo
Well I win as Germany all the time in Hearts of Iron IV, which as we all know is totally the same thing as real life, so clearly it could be done and Germany should have just done what I've done before ^_^
@AlexanderHenry-hz3td This religious shit would still be cringe and mocked if someone praised Jesus as lord and savior here. So don't take this as Islamophobia, but you suck.
I mean do people forget it was fighting countries of compared able industrialization several times it's size?
@@sonnguyenvan1599 he's preaching fast cuz he mustafa she'ite...💩.🤗..
One wonders Wether Whitman on his second command in Europe (the one that eventually got him killed) was due to him actually believing his ow hype. That the tanks he was shooting at would take one look at his tiger and run away screaming.
22:29 Good God, that montage set to Verdi's Requiem Libera Me is just perfect, especially that final zoom out accompanied with the soprano.
Rex's sacrifice is something that deserves a medal of honor, honestly. Selflessly charging right at a tank his little Stuart most likely couldn't disable, let alone scratch (though, im not a tank nerd so i dont rly know, maybe it could have), just to give his comrades a little more time to realize wtf was going on, it's certainly heroic.
what pains me most is that there we're so many allied troops that all did heroic shit like this, only to be a footnote like Rex. Most sacrifices will be lost to time, not even mentioned in a log, the stories taken to the graves by their friends.
again don't honor a white supremacist crown apologist like rex, you two don't get the bigger picture
@@denneledoe873 Its probably why a lot of decorated veterans will say they aren't a hero, the real hero's are the ones who never came back.
@AlexanderHenry-hz3tdAll Deities Are Fictional
@AlexanderHenry-hz3tdbro I’m not converting over a TH-cam comment. I’m gonna stick to Jesus
Fuck, that last bit is heartbreaking. Rex’s Stuart going up against Wittman’s Tiger is on par with HMS Jervis Bay ( an armed merchant cruiser) going up against that German pocket battleship. A VC was earned for Jervis Bay that day, and if one wasn’t awarded to Rex Ingram I’m going to be pissed
He probably thought the Tiger would break down before it could fire back cause he watched Lazerpig
I cried a little bit during that last segment
True bravery and heroism in the face of overwhelming odds
@donaldhysa4836 Honestly, I kinda hoped Rex would manage to land a hit that would take out the Tiger's electricity and Michael Wittman's Tiger would be taken out by a tank that wasn't even designed to fight tanks.
Who’s says that we can’t? Okay hear me out:
What if we look for soldiers who have done actions that is above the call to action and give them virtual awards and medals for their actions?
@@DemonHunter2271 he deserves a posthumous medal, recognized by his government. Not a bunch of pixels
Rex and crew. Your bravery saved many that day.
Better soldiers died that day to save their fellow men. May you all rest in peace.
To Rex and the crew of his tank: cheers to you and your brave sacrifice. May you smile in heaven, having served your time in hell.
So what I'm getting from this is Wittmann is kind of like Nazi Germany in microcosm- a man of middling talent who got by by looking good and a long string of good luck, bought in to his own mythos and concluded he was a living god, then learned the hard way how wrong he was about everything.
And to think I actually thought he was cool at one point. 13-year old me was the definition of cringe.
"13 year old me was the definition of cringe"
You can thank the History Channel for that one.
He could be fought of as the embodiment of Nazi Germany - did well initially due to certain fortunate circumstances, got complacent and arrogant as time went and eventually got shown what was good when the opposing side starts pulling its socks up
Nazi Germany really was just a country of middle managers thought they were gods until the employees unionized and kick their ass.
They are great at handling people divided, but the minute they faced any sort of real resistance they fold like a paper crane.
A lot of us were, friend. :)
Nah, you weren't cringe. You knew how to learn. Counts for a lot!
I'm quite confident that if 2 soldiers were to meet on the battlefield and shoot at each other there would be 5 different version of the events:
1 for each soldier, 1 for each government explaining why their soldier is the best and a 5' version for people that don't believe anything they read because they think that they always know what is actually true and correct.
Like the Polish destroyer with Bismarck, and Rex in this story here. I absolutely love the way you bring attention to those that haven't received what they should. Thank you so much for these stories, for if not for you I don't think anyone would know about these amazing true heros.
The trees and hedges in Belgium must be seen to be believed. It's like being in a giant vineyard, except it's whitethorn and beech trees instead of grapevines
So basically being a historian is having to find every version of Rashomon ever, and trying to figure out what might have happened, knowing you can only get so close to what is by all factors, expired reality.
Brilliant if unexpected reference to a fantastic film. An astute and cultured reference.
I made that analogy in the designer's notes for my "The Second World War" wargame. It is soooo true.
Yeah pretty much
Most historians just take the written or spoken accounts given by those who were there (primary sources).
But few take on the role of Battlefield Detective: what actually may have happened instead of what most people believe.
I read a quote once that stated that the only time historical events can only be seen in their true light is when they are actually happening. This quote was talking about other historic events that happened in my country and which still today have different interpretations depending on which side of political spectrum person talking about is.
Considering how huge the hedges are in France im surprised both the Allies and Axis did not suffer even more casualties just from the confusion of walking around a freaking puzzle piece
MIchael Wittmann isn't a myth, i saw him last week at tesco.
Did you remember to customary kick him in the pelvis?
I've heard that the bogeyman checks under his bed every night for Wittman ;)
Yeah *shows grainy phone video of someone running around in a cardboard tiger tank costume*
yeah i believe it. You know i saw tupac at Mcdonalds, he got a bigmac and some fries. I saw Tupac at Mcdonalds, looked right into his big brown gansta rapper eyes. I said you lied to me and my family and the whole world watching Mtv, I can't believe the things you did. He looked at me and he replied
He said "west si-eeiiiiieeeiiieeiieeiieeiieeiide is the best siiiide"
He tried to leave my pub without paying his tab the other day.
I think it is hilarious how they spew Nazi post war propaganda and then proceed to say "history is written by the victors"
"Nazi post war propaganda" is usually historical fact that is drowned out by the "history is written by the victors".
Just like after the American civil war, the victors didn't root out the ideology and ultimately collaborated with the enemies that promised material benefit.
In a way, the n@zis and Confederates won because their ideologies survive (and thrive in places) to this day
@@calebharris292they only thrive in the less important spaces, so did the Nazis really win? (No lebensraum)
What's Nazi post war propaganda? Post war there wasn't a Nazi Germany.
@@calebharris292 I had a debate once with a guy who claimed that the South seceded for “state’s rights.” Once I bring up the infamous Cornerstone Speech and numerous declarations of secessions from different states stating that they seceded from the Union to protect slavery, he went on to claim that it was “yankee propaganda.”
The irony is that it’s the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy that are the ones who spread propaganda.
Some people will refuse to admit that they are wrong despite the hard-hitting evidence is right in front of them.
I was drinking when I watched this video, so raising one to Rex happened by default, but I'm glad to do it anyway. It's the thing I've always wondered -- how many acts of heroism like Rex's goes completely unnoticed because in a major war with casualties in the millions, no one has the time to document every single soldier's actions. How many soldiers who took down half a dozen enemies in a heroic last stand while their friends retreated, and whose actions end up summarized as 'unit retreated at 1415 hrs with moderate casualties'.
Agreed. May we live to be worthy of such brave actions
I drink to that.
How many heroic actions are erased by shells and bombs, or ended quietly?
Planes and boats full of soldier tied down with gear were shot down and sunk, the lives on board over in an instant or not. Each one of them a story, each one of them in their way a hero fighting against tyrannical fascists and those that go along with it by "just following orders".
The war was won by the Rexes, those that charged instead of hiding, not just for country but for their fellow soldiers in spite of organizational failures at the top. The Allies won through competent NCOs and junior officers who lead their men to victory, and by farmers and factory workers and supply lines that gave them the tools and supplies to do it.
Probably a lot. It is both sad and great to know that people do incredible things all the time and we just don't hear about them.
@@granatmof I think this is why Band of Brothers is such a good story. Because its about the grunts having to do the best they can to overcome tactical missteps from the higher ups, with what they had on the ground.
Indeed the heroic deeds we never know
as an american i can explain why time team was popular. Because Phil Harding is a legend. Not going to say its the most productive or info-rich show, but i will never get tired of watching that man get excited over rocks
Not rocks, broken pottery.
@@jeremypnet and post holes that no longer contain posts, but you can clearly see where they once were.
@@jonprince3237
Tony: "What have you found here Phil?"
Phil: "Weww Toneh, weev fownd sum post 'owes which we reckon arr frum a bronze ayge rownd 'owse. Thar's orso sum burn marks which doo serjest thut it woz bernt dowwn at sum poynt. Iy've manijed to fynd sum contemporeh pottereh sherds as well. Havalookertha!"
Tony: "Wow, very nice Phil. Now onto Trench 4 and Brigid..."
@@jeremypnet Phil loved flint too!
You might be thinking of Phil Blinkhorn (the pottery expert and real MVP of Time Team)
@@alexhando8541 wasn't it Phil who also had that expression "Stone the crows!" ? i miss "Time Team" (and RIP Mick :/ )
My dad served in Patton's 3rd Army in Europe... and he would have agreed with LazerPig about him.
Patton is a bit odd. Hes good at Strategy and Logistics when he actually stops to do Logistics, but is terrible at tactics and liable to ignore logistics entirely once he gets into action. He was given Bradley during Africa and Italy specifically because Bradley was good at Tactics and Logistics, making them a decent Joint command.
Patton's voice also sounds a lot like Donald Trump's...
@@samuel_excelsok and?
@@samuel_excels 🤣🤣 Now I'm picturing Donald Duck giving the famous Patton speech.
I mean absolutely no disrespect to your father, but how is his opinion on a man he probably never met and knew nothing about relevant?
Did you know that if Germany just did the thug shaker they probably would've won WW2?
Stug shaker
They did that on D day. It was a brutal battle that day, but luckily the Canadians and Americans were able destroy that horrible weapon
my favourite thing thing about Whittmann was how he got double teamed by the Northampton shire Yeomanry and Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment
Sigh.
I personally enjoyed the fact that a 75mm or a 17 pounder entered his personal space and killed him.
@@williambeavis9929 I enjoy the idea that he got killed by a British shell fired from an American tank named after a Soviet town if Joe Ekins' account is real.
If not, then I enjoy the idea that he got smoked by Canadians, because either way, he got clowned on.
@@williambeavis9929 I enjoyed how many he before killed man thats so epic ^^ My best Boy :3
@@ikko93 youtube subscription to the history channel detected. Opinion: discarded.
It's fun that tank ace was brought up because it wasn't really a thing tracked on an individual basis. Units may have had these figures but not quite an individual tank commander. A tank is also comprised of a crew of 4-5 men that all need to do their job properly. So the notion of 1 guy getting recognized over all the others of the tank is a bit crazy. This isn't like how air forces tracked kills because fighters were for almost all cases, crewed by 1 person.
I also appreciate you brought up Kurt Knispel. He died on April 1945, he almost made it to the end of the war. But he doesn't have the recognition. You rightly brought up most of the reasons why he wasn't pampered, inflated like Wittmann was, i.e. his appearance and being a member of the Wehrmacht, not the SS, etc.
But there's another reason why: Knispel was a Feldwebel, just an enlisted NCO. Armed services get kind of snobbish parading around a mere enlisted man for something, but more than happy to do so if it's an officer.
Hard to imagine how anyone could claim to be an ace of anything crew serviced. You could pair a tank commander that is literally mentally deficient with an expert crew that knows how to ignore him and end up with numerous kills.
I guess it could happen with 2 seat fighters like WW2 nightfighters. Everyone remembers Heinrich, Prince Sayn-Wittgenstein no one remembers the radar operators he treated like subservient peasants.
Ironically for someone so aristocratic and extremely vain he didn't die to an allied nightfighter like a Mosquito but by getting smoked by a lowly teenage Lancaster gunner.
@@groofromtheup5719 partially, tank battles really often do boil down to who sees the other first. And that's where the tank commander really does come in.
@@GundamReviver I've never been inside of a tank, but I am guessing everybody is looking for the enemies. Yes, that is the comanders primary job, but nobody is going to stay silent if they see an enemy tank.
@@groofromtheup5719 well, no, but it's not like they have a lot of windows to look out of. The driver has a little scope of sorts or drives with his head out, but will be minding the road. Radio guy can't generally see shit, loader sees nothing, gunner can look through a 'silver straw' where the gun is aiming... But won't be moving the turret a lot since you don't want to smash it into stuff or have it facing the wrong way. It's why an anti tank tactic is to shoot at its vision slits and periscopes with machine guns and thst basically instantly blinds a tank, at least it did then, now there might be some special cameras or something.
Your mentioning of the Brits stopping to have a tea break reminds me of my dad's time during Desert Storm. He was with the 142nd field artillery regiment from Arkansas and they got attached to British 1st Armoured after the breach into Iraq. Apparently they always had a hot kettle on. "Would go over to their tracks a lot. Always had hot water, drank so much tea."
It's surprising how much of a difference a hot drink can make for moral lol. And hot water in general is just useful to have on tap, especially in the middle of nowhere
One of the lessons learned from WWII was the number of tank crew casualties that happened while the crew were outside the vehicle, often eating, making a brew etc. The Centurion tank, that came into service just too late for WWII, was therefore equipped with a BV, Boiling Vessel. Run off the vehicle's electrical system it's a box with a heating element in it, fill it with water and the crew can then heat their rations and make brews as and when required. Often considered the most important bit of kit on a British AFV.
British tanks have built in kettle boilers just for this reason.
@@killer3000adthat’s making efficient use of a hot engine…
i think we have something to learn from britain here. if not tea, we could at least have like.. a coke cooler idk
It's a shame Rex's titanium balls were not in front of the place the tiger shot at, they could have voiced the shell and saved the whole crew
So basically Knipsel was everything Wittmann was claimed to be... just *not* Nazi, so infinitely better.
Knispel and Carius were the real chads.
@@michividz7861 Let's not go that far. They were still fighting for unequivocally the wrong side.
@@ladywaffle2210 People can fight for the wrong side for the right reasons.
@@sorashirogami1729 Define what Knipsel's "right reason" was. Nationalism? Germany was an overtly-racist, overtly-genocidal attempted ethnostate at the time (they are, obviously, better now) even if nationalism *isn't* a blight upon humanity. Hatred of Germany's enemies? Even worse; that just makes him another form of nationalist. Sense of duty? Then why'd he ignore regs?
@@ladywaffle2210mean, if we go with that kind of scrutiny, neither soviets nor Brits were any better, only US is barely better. Pretty much everyone fighting during ww2 was a shade of nationalist , a racist, or an imperial subject.
The fact that I only had Wehraboo tendencies when I was literally 12-14 speak volumes on where these peoples heads are at.
I’m a 14 year old and when I was 12 I did a bit of research and lost all of my wehraboo tendencies with the current state of the internet I’m surprised that people are still like that
@@SeshanTM true, but back in 2012-2014 Wehraboo hatred wasn’t as relevant and widespread as it is today. I’m glad we have made the internet a better place for young history buffs.
I lost mine the same age, my realization is that they lost and they were not the best.
I successfully dodged the wehraboo draft
Dodged the draft, bro I muntined after being sent againist the army's of logic and research.
There's a reason that world of tanks has the Knipsel's medal and not the Whitman's medal.
To be fair back in the days six kills or whatever it was was called a Whitman medal. I think it was renamed due to complaints about him being an SS Nazi though.
Knipsel is just as badly overblown ironically
@@LordNinja109source?
@@carved6749 in the video? total kills was attributed to the unit, not the tank. so we don't really know any kill count.
It used to be the Wittman medal. I had 2 in WOT, before it was renamed Knispel. Wittman was replaced, because it was pointed out that he was an unapologetic NAZI, Knispel wasn't.
Thanks Lazer, had i not watched to the end i would never have learnt about Rex. I hope that God forbid, if life tests me in the way it did him, then I can offer but a fraction of the courage that Rex and his men did. Selflessly and without hesitation. I think we all agree that given the odds he and his crew were not found wanting.
With that little dig at Patton, I'd like to see a Lazerpig video on him. Don't know much about him aside from some of the more controversial stories about him.
The only thing I have heard about him is how much people glorified him as if he was the greatest general of the war, and that he always had two pistols on him, and that he said they fought the wrong enemy (which refers to the Germans) which have lead to some conspiracy theorists believe that the US government had him killed in a auto accident because they claimed that he would have started a war with the USSR.
Yeah the Americans were not under Patton at that time. Patton didn't show up in Normandy in a command role till operation cobra when he took command of 3rd army.
I don't really like his jabs since he doesn't actually explain anything and so they come off as a bit petty.
@@kingofcards9516 well something tells me that if he did started to explain his jab against Patton, it would be a video in of itself and perhaps a Patton video is in the near future
@@kingofcards9516He absolutely is. Take it as a humor channel, nothing serious
I would like to point out a little bit of irony in the opening part of this historical video that in order to point out Rommel's flaws as a commander, you also have to acknowledge the incompetency and flaws on the British side of things and how they fudged up every attempt at defence until their enemy became so predictable in his reckless assaults that they could counter him with very little effort. I respect you for that, LP.
nah, the brittish were the best and gromwell is the best tank ever made, if you disagree you are A NAZI WEHRABOO.
Monty was, like, "Wait... is this for real? He's just been doing the same shit over & over!"
The British during the early years of the war were a showcase of incompetence.
I don't think it's much of an open debate anymore that Monty, like Rommel, loved the smell of his own farts and was overrated as fuck. Market Garden being the hill his career died on, too little and too late.
In the end, the only GOATed general on the Allies' side was Eisenhower, and in my view that's because of his magical ability to manage that fucking circus of inflated egos/divas in Allied Command he had to deal with (MacArthur, Monty, de Gaulle and Patton for example). Our greatest asset was a God-tier diva cat-herder and PhD-level War Logistician.
@AlexanderHenry-hz3td Allah deez nuts in your mouth you foul smelling misogynistic, hedonistic, and overall unsavory devil
"it was only shear weight of numbers that the allies won"
always remember kids, when a wehraboo says this remind them that they lost a town to two dudes and a jeep
I prefer to throw back at them that the Germans were successful in June 1941 only because of shear weight of numbers.
Is that the two Canadian guys?
and the "Wehraboo" will point to the K/Ds and the losses on both sides. And to the shit the germans pulled off. War is chaos. So shit like that happens on both sides
Yeah, ww2 has many weird stories... about how a guy with an eyepatch and a longbow fought on the beaches of normandy or how cat survived 3 sinkings of famous battleships or that the dutch escaped the japanese while being disguised as an island. But can we use these weird stories as a factor of how the war would have turned out? Or that they were just random events, or heck might even be propoganda to boost morale.
Leo Major? And a Canadian too, eh.
i watched a video glazing about Wittmann and a guy in the comment section said UNIRONICALLY "I've already watched this video about 10 times Michael Wittman was a true SS monster, his story is so beautiful, I'm proud to be able to know about this SS legend"
Yep, I was under a SS war song video and the comments section was infested with similar sentiments.
"if you are like me and have a drink in your hand, to Rex, cheers" Its a tradition to watch Lazer's quality content with a drink
Not this guy again
@@mrkrabs4913you seem a little. Seem a li- A little KRABBY
@@Banana_BansheeAR AR AR AR ARRR
“If only” and “nazi German” should only ever be together in the sentence “if only the nazis had never existed”
“if only more nazis died”
I agree. Those bastards have put a huge shit pile of shame on our history. Killed 6Millions alone through industrialized murder. And even more through Combat that they caused.
Or "If Only Nazi German FUCKHEAD Adolf Hitler had been dragged out of his bunker like the shit-stained coward he was, so he could stand trial and dangle on a rope, like scum like him deserve"
And Stalin and Mao and and..... you know where I am getting at
It’s an interesting what if, if the Weimar Republic got their shit together, what would the world look like.
Would the Soviet Union be as powerful during the 20th century?
Would the British empire fall?
Would Hitler become an accomplished painter?
Who knows
I think we can all agree that the Bob Semple Tank was the best tankl ever created and fielded.
I think the church tanks of 40k are superior
@@normalperson2462 everybody gangsta till the churches start walking
The Bob Semple is like a trebuchet,the superior weapon that can't be outclassed
Agreed, It could definitely take down a Maus with one shot.
Agreed..but..the M22 Locust is the greatest of them all.
That explains why my German teammates on War Thunder suck. They are RPing as Wittmann himself!
no they are just brainlets when they are on your side.
@@lowtierlike Whitman
@@superdevton1137 Also some russain teamates as well, since their mostly Level 5 with all-premium lineups
@@lowtierthere is a Russian bias in war thunder it doesn’t account for for poor armor quality or spawling.
*Rex Ingram* is the kind of name a literary critic would say is too much of an action hero name for a person to realistically have, like Jack Stone or Miles Long.
Max Fightmaster
Rex Stealbalz.
I instantly remembered Leo Major: A Guy with an eyepatch who stormed Nazi occupied village alone while dual wielding smgs
@daniyarsadykov3385 Leo Major. The Canadian with balls of steel that stormed a village full of SS, several tanks and a lot of standard infantry
With 2 people, couple of SMGs and a PIAT. And he fucking won
He ran around firing eraticlly in his small inferior tank and got killed. How is that action hero material exactly?
Thank you lazerpig for gracing us with this.
Note: I majored in history, and a lot of my professors would specifically stress the fact that we were to scrutinize the context and authors of our sources as well as the content. Of course, I can’t speak for every university, but I think it’s more than fair to say that actual history professors are very aware that primary sources are usually subject to heavy biases.
And there's a big difference between what a historian says, and what a journalist says.
As someone who spent the better part of two decades either in or adjacent to history academics, I can confirm that lazarpig really doesn't know what he's talking about with regard to actual historians. Things may be different in a field as crowded with amateurs such as ww2, but I can't remember the last time I've personally witnessed a historian uncritically accept a primary source at face value. It's just not a thing in actual academia and is a pretty sure way to make your colleagues and critics think your work is unreliable. It's a beach of academic social norms on par with being overtly drunk and vomiting at a playground with other academics acting like mothers shooing their students away from such bad behavior.
Medieval History BA from a red brick university here. Yeah, I've know literally dozens of historians, and none I know are unaware of the limitations of primary sources. There is a whole area called "historiography" dedicated to the history of sources about a subject. I guess Pig mostly was directing that comment at amateur unpublished historians.
@@KingTrousereah that sounds reasonable. During my History BA at uni we were taught at length about being sceptical towards primary sources, the biases held by original author and the one examinating the material, as well as historiography in general. We even had a mandatory course in our 3rd year concerning the epistemology (philosophy of acquiring and critiquing knowledge) of the humanities, history in particular.
I thought that part is weird, but I have noticed particularly with WW2 people just accept primary sources far too readily.
For instance Medieval or Classical sources there is a great deal of debating over what is said, and what those words really mean, who is the writer etc.
To Rex. Even when theirs no possible way to win the fight, you fight anyway, truely bold in the face of certain death. Absolute champ.
Hey LazerPig (not sure if you've heard this one but) one of my favorite WW2 bits of trivia is how the soviets strapped landmines to dogs to blow up enemy tanks and how, ironically, the dogs would turn around and blow up the soviets!
Amazing! That's a really lesser known fact, you should go tell more people!
I read that the Red Army trained those dogs to find their reward, food, under tanks.
Unfortunately, they only had T-34s to train the dogs with.
Also, the dogs weren't subjected to gun and artillery fire during training.
So probably those dogs just ran to save their own lives and tried to find cover under something sturdy, like their own tanks.
BTW, anyone heard of the bat shit crazy story of American special ops training bats to detonate incendiary bombs they were carrying?
Is it actually true. I accepted it without question when I read about it as a kid, but hearing Lazerpig talk about it makes it seem like bollocks.
Did you ever hear of the pigeon guided bombs ? The U.S had an idea to put pigeons in bombs and have them guide the bombs to their target. There's a few videos of it out there, just another wacky idea during war time 😂
@@adamg.5525 Yep, read about them pigeons in the Dutch equivalent of Popular Science.
The article started with the true and heartbreaking story of Cher Ami.
British trained pigeon donated to the American Army fighting in France (First World War).
The message he carried saved the lives of 194 American soldiers.
Died eventually of his wounds in 1931.
Awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French and the Animals in War & Peace Medal of Bravery by the USA.
Man LazerPig, you really are one of the good ones... as I write this, 339,000 humans now know the heroic deed of Rex Ingram.
This is one of the good things about the internet. Someone's ultimate sacrifice is close to being forgotten to the sands of time but people like you come along and shine a massive spotlight on it with the potential to prolong its remembrance!
To Rex and his crew! 🍻
Pour one out for sexy Rexy ✊️
To Rex and his crew: We will remember you and we thank you for your sacrifice. Cheers 🍻
Remember R=×!
@@manoftheocean6988got you Rexy!
Rommel is interesting to study for another reason. Rommel becoming this "Legendary Tank Commander" Myth is less about himself and his ego, and more about George Marshall and his Marshall Plan that was used in Europe and was copied wholesale for MacArthur's use in Japan. Part of Marshall's approach to rebuilding Germany into something workable, and to finally end the centuries of tit for tat European Warfare was he needed to win the Hearts and Minds of the German people. He could not leave them to simmer as a defeated enemy stewing in its own anger. That after all was how the world ended up with WW2. So the German's needed a heroic figure to still focus on. A German War Leader who could be portrayed as honorable. The base requirements were they had to be somewhat effective at their jobs, or at least not completely incompetent. Have no real connection to the major horrific war crimes, and be dead. Very Very Dead. This avoided a lot of awkwardness. Marshall's psy ops people then took to legitimizing the figure and building their myth. Not just in Germany, but in the English speaking world. Thus we get the legend of the Desert Fox. Pure Hollywood. Over in the Pacific they pulled the same scam using a conveniently dead fellow by the name of Isoroku Yamamoto. You may have heard of him? Like Rommel he has been elevated to one of Histories Greatest Naval Strategists. An Honorable Man who only did what his nation ordered. Whereas the truth is Yamamoto was a cagey and ruthless political operator. A moderately competent Strategist at best sub tier at his worst (Yeah Operation MI was pure fan fiction delivered as a military plan). And really an all around horrible excuse for a human being. Drunken Whoring aside. But they needed a dead "honorable" hero for the Japanese to look to instead of the vapid cowardly war criminals awaiting the hangman. Their only options were Yamamoto and Koga. So Yamamoto got the full Hollywood Package. Fake quotes and all. ("I fear we have woken a sleeping Giant!" yeah... no)
interesting, never heard that before. thank you
Last time I had a brief surface look into it, that sleeping giant 'quote' comes from the "Tora, Tora, Tora" film as a start point. I don't know if it was intended as a quote in the film or just written as a somewhat poetic line.
Interesting.
Also helpful that Rommel was implicated in the July 20th plot against Hitler, so if Marshall found that out it would likelyhelp his efforts (Rommel's role was hidden away since he was a war hero, hence why he got to take cyanide vs everyone else whoeither got hanged or shot)
@@durhamdavesbg4948 As I recall the Movies Producer and/or screenwriter claimed to have access to letters from Yamamoto with that quote. These documents have never ever been produced for anyone, no matter how many promises were made. And Yeah, they're rather clearly complete Hollywood Bullshit. As is the quote. The actual quote seems to be a paraphrasing of a comment often attributed to Napoleon (But that seems suspicious too). The quote concerned China. "China is a sickly sleeping giant, but when she awakens the world shall tremble". I'm sure if you dig deeper you'd find it attributed to some other war in the distant past.
I love how the only thing you need to say in order to make a Wehraboo start crying into their pillow at night is "They lost."
Three cheers to Rex Ingram.
It has been recorded (not sure the source) that he survived the Tiger’s 88mm hit to his Stuart, likely shielded by his oversized “titanium balls”, jumped out, and was attempting to open the driver’s hatch to rescue his driver when Whitt(for-brains)mann machine gunned him down.
His family had an inscription added to his tombstone at the Bayeux War Cemetery: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”. RIP
Honestly, it kinda reminds me of the only German tank I care about. That being Porsche's tiger. You'll see countless retellings of it's story about how it buried itself when driving, was so incredibly sluggish, that Porsche was still working on it at the test ground, and caught fire. But the actual reports that I did get to read translated versions of, as well as handful of people who were present that I got to talk, said that it was slow getting off the railyard and that in prepping the tank for transport, a bolt worked loose and one of the engines didn't turn over. So Porsche "working in the tank" would be just a simple "that's odd. Let me check it out. Oh hey, a worker didn't secure this, lemme plug it in." and it worked. Handling some terrain better than the Henschel and climbing better, and while it did over heat in a climb, it didn't combust, they just let it idle for a little. The only things that really held it back was A The extensive copper usage. B: the original track width was a little narrow for the mass so it did sink a little further than the Heschel in mud, slowing it down some, but still being able to hit typical combat speeds. This being a simple fix of adding grousers. And C: The two modified Pz4 engines used to power the generators drank a lot more fuel than the HL230 that the Tiger H used.
Now, it wouldn't have really mattered that much which tank was chosen, but I do feel the Tiger(P) gets shafted a little too much because the first reports of the trials and only published stories about the event came from Henschel's mouth and the people who were there to record the newest tank from one of Germany's more renowned tank designers. But even then, as you said, sometimes the stories people remember are just as faulty as the stories written with political agenda's.
Pretty much all the tanks manufactured after the defeat at Moscow were war losing tanks. Which means they weren't tanks at all as much as they were (kinda) mobile bunkers. They were defensive in nature, absolutely incapable of raids that won Poland, France and the first stage of the Russian campaign. They could be carried by rail to the general vicinity of the war ops, drive the ramaining 40-50km sometimes without burning their engine and then wait for the enemy attack. They had monstrous front armours and huge cannon calibers. Those calibers were so huge because the Germans were pretty much out of tungsten for the penetrators and they had to compensate by upping the caliber. So the shells were fatter, fewer, harder to load, more expensive to manufacture and transport and underpeforming American and British ones. All in all you had mobile defences that worked well when they could sit in ambush and when the enemy had no choice but to attack them from the front. Each time they tried assaulting, they got their asses handed to them because in an assault you are not sitting nicely in place and you have no guarantee of showing just your front armour to the enemy. Suddenly the fact a Panther gunner can burn the tank down by trying to rotate the turret when the tank is in motion starts to matter - a lot. All Tigers, Panthers, Koenigstigers and the rest of that wank were pretty much useless as tanks. They were worth the same as a Stug or a PAK AT but hugely overpriced.
@@piotrsmolanski8777sorry lad, but no. Also the King Tiger was a tank designed to attack.
Defensive tanks were casemate tanks
You mean it was meant to attack. It was a result of the tank design philosophy of a breakthrough tank - a monster so huge and uparmoured it could just punch through any defense. The results were dismal, both for the Germans with their Konigstigers and for the Brits with their Churchils.
Konigstiger was also designed and manufactured for a nation that had no fuel for its absurd needs, hence could not properly train crews for those bunkers and could not maintain it properly. It was just one of the "let's make the loss happen a bit later" tanks.
@@piotrsmolanski8777 did say that it wouldn't have mattered. I just like the layout and how easily everything was to reach and take apart on the Porsche tiger. Need a replacement transmission? Remove the back grate, decouple it from the engines and drive sprockets and hoist. Suspension shot? Break track, remove wheels, take off the suspension bracket and replace it. But ultimately, it wouldn't have mattered. My point is; I think the tiger p gets too much hate compared to the tiger h because of a false recounting of the story.
Every tank design claims to be for aggressive actions. Because you won't get your funding unless it's all about attacking.
But the "breakthrough tank" concept never, ever worked. The only time where tanks seemed to be shrug off all fire and push forward was the early war Matilda IIs.
At all other times, up armoring tanks was a waste of good metal. And the right way to handle static defences was to not hurl yourself at them.
Very well done video, as always!
About Lt. Rex Ingram, I'm now reading (hopefully others will confirm) that his family was told he didn't die when the tank was hit (in fact, his Stuart seems in relatively good shape). It seems that all the crew survived that hit, and Rex himself managed to bail out. When he realized the driver was stuck, he went back to try and save him. That's when he was gunned down by MG's fire, just for the sake of it.
If this is true, that makes Wehraboos' obsession with Wittmann even more disgusting, and Rex's tale even more outstandingly heroic.
In any case, thanks a lot for this gem of a story.
All the best to you, and all friends of the Even Rounder Table.
@AlexanderHenry-hz3tdwhy don’t you go annoy the pro-Russian channels with your spam- you’re more likely to find followers there.
@AlexanderHenry-hz3tdfuck allah and your child raping prophet may they rest in eternal piss
@AlexanderHenry-hz3tdPraise Xenu.
I still remember killing Whitman in Call of Duty 3. Which was weird because the mission had you play as a Free Polish tankcommander serving in the british army but driving a sherman, all in the Fallaise gap(Im sure I misspelled that, but i cant be bothered to check google)
Great, now I want to cry over the death of Rex. The man's a bigger hero than Wittmann could even fathom.
It's impressive that Villers-Bocage occurred within a week of the Allies landing at Normandy, and they were already capable of holding off a sizable chunk of a heavy tank battalion
@AlexanderHenry-hz3td your people ra*e women on large scale.
I had an incredible history professor that would always say “I don’t care if you get the exact date or place wrong, as long as you can explain why something happened and it’s effect on people.”
As someone who loves studying the “why” part of history and having a bad memory for numbers like dates, I loved his classes.
"If you want to be Historian, dont study history, study people"
As a History Student, this is the first thing come in mind when my Professor talk about Introducing History. But one thing to note that he also said nor humans, but every aspect of environment have their own story to tell.
To know history of people you need to study the history of the time period they are from, then you can study people
@AlexanderHenry-hz3td uhh, you're telling me i need to Say Syahadah? Ahh sorry m8, already done via Adzan from my Dad since day one birth.
@@weybye91 he's not mean we need to just forgot the time periode, what he mean is dont ended up into Historicism. If we just learn History, we only learn about how people develop, what things change from time to time. By learning "the people", we know what cause and why it happen, what idea and view of people in that time over the matter they want to change.
This is why there's phrase "if you want to be Historian, dont learn history. Lean the people." If you want to be actual historian, what you learned is not just time and progress, but background and the motives.
As a German from Bavaria whose local brewery is called "Wittmann", thank you i have never heard of this guy and now i can't enjoy my favorite beer anymore. 👍
You just have to drink enough of it to forget again. Problem solved!
That's like saying something named "David" is bad, because David Koresh was a bad guy. Imagine being so sensitive...
@@johnhonker437 yeah lol
Correct me if I am wrong, but Wittman has to be a relatively common last name?
@@johnhonker437 Not the same. In your analogy it would be more accurate to say that sth called Koresh is bad bc David Koresh is a piece of shit, and personally I have no idea who the hell David Koresh might be but I'm not putting Koresh beer into my system, that's for sure. That sounds like some sort of bootleg Turkish swill.
Would love to see a Pig video on the multicultural mosh pit of the First Canadian Army. Canadians, Brits, Americans, Poles, Belgians and I believe the Czechs all bundled together
The German Reich: basically a crackhouse that no one took seriously till they suddenly did
Could we get some coverage on the P38 lightning? It’s one of my favorite planes of the second world war, I don’t know much about it in terms of its actual effectiveness besides it being the most photographed plane of WWII
It's the only American fighter to be built before the war and right through to the end, so figure it had something on the ball. Saburo Sakai said the Zero was helpless against it.
P-40 says, 'hi'.
An excellent plane whose greatest weakness was that it cost around one and a half times comparable fighters.
Incredibly useful and versatile but had some issues in a dive and at high altitudes
@@JohnWilliamNowak I am, by no means a historian, but wasn't the Zero one of those planes that was really amazing when it was introduced and then just go unchanged until the end of the war resulting in it being entirely outclassed by what was being produced?
I appreciate my dad buying me a box set of hogan heroes which probably stopped me from becoming a wehraboo in my young teens.
Comedy is the cure for getting caught up in dumb political bs
AMENNNN BROTHER
For those who don’t know, Time Team is back! It’s on TH-cam now, and it’s crowdfunded. They even have some of the original cast
And it's largely still as fun- but without Sir Tony, it's missing an important element.
@@mattl3729 It'll never be quite the same without Tony and Mick, but it's still so damn satisfying.
You know, the part at the end about Rex is suddenly giving me inspiration to make a diorama based around that situation.
Call it my little toast to Rex and his crew’s bravery.
The perfect example of "Let's make our deaths memorable ones"
I respect the break from Ukraine content for some historical stuff. You've mentioned it before Mr LP, but there is the fog of war that really makes it a bit hard to say anything other than "fighting ongoing" - plus Russian politics is about as esoteric as Lovecraftian gods.
Just go to Perun.
Perun's more going to a Pilitics 101 lecture that isn't boring, whose topics are loosely pulled from "What the Hell is Russia Doing Today?"