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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- End Game 1944 with Jonathan Dimbleby (Operation Bagration)
Operation Bagration Week
• Operation Bagration
Part of our ongoing Eastern Front series on WW2TV
• Eastern Front Week
Also part of our 80th Anniversary Series
• 80th Anniversary Special
The year 1944 was the turning point of World War Two, and nowhere was this more evident than on the Eastern Front. For three years, following the onslaught of the German Army during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Red Army had retreated and then eventually held, fighting to a stalemate while the Germans occupied and ravaged large parts of the Soviet Union and its republics. Finally, following the breaking of the German siege of Leningrad in January 1944, Stalin and his generals were able to consider striking back. In June, they launched Operation Bagration , during which more than two million Red Army soldiers began an offensive, pushing west. The results were almost immediate and devastating. Within three weeks, Army Group Centre, the core of the German Army, had lost 28 of its 32 divisions. The ending had begun. In today's show Jonthan Dimbleby joins us to talk about this monumental year.
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Jonathan Dimbleby is a British presenter of current affairs and political radio and television programmes, author and historian. He took his degree in philosophy at University College, London and began his career as a television and radio reporter for the BBC including hosting Radio 4's The World at One in 1970. He joined Thames Television in 1972, as a reporter for ITV's This Week, where he won BAFTA's Richard Dimbleby Award for his report on the Ethiopian famine of 1973. He was behind many classic ITV and BBC productions over the next decades, including The Eagle and The Bear, First Tuesday and On The Record. He also anchored the 1997, 2001 and 2005 General Elections. His previous books include the highly acclaimed Second World War histories The Battle of the Atlantic and Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein, which was shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman Prize and was followed by his BBC2 programme Churchill's Desert War. His other books include, Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and Its People, Richard Dimbleby: A Biography, The Palestinians, The Prince of Wales: A Biography and The Last Governor: Chris Patten and the Handover of Hong Kong.
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Brilliant partnership here, with Woody asking the right questions and letting Dimbleby answer. "Breaking Wehrmacht"; what a great way of saying it. Also, great connection of geopolitical factors. WW2 at its best.
Thanks very much
Important note about blocking detachments. According to Glantz and House in “When Titans Clashed” and in their “Stalingrad” book were more in charge of reorganizing stragglers and while did execute deserters this was more of a secondary objective than a primary one and had almost ceased to exist by mid-1944.
This was another diamond of an episode. Johnathan was delightful to listen to, and kept my attention throughout his talk. He answered every question thoughtfully and honestly and made me stop to think each time, "I never thought about it quite that way." I only hope I am as keen and poised if I reach the age of 80. I must try to find his BBC2 documentary "Churchill's Desert War."
Yep, Jonathan is a very measured historian, and as you say considers every question carefully
He, his father and brother have a deserved reputation for fine journalism and writing.
His father David brought to the world the realities of Belsen
Anoying missed this live, I have bought Jonathans book, a great broadcaster. Another accomplished presentation, thank you Jonathan and Woody, brilliant as always
One of a family of great journalists and broadcasters.
His father Richard Dimbleby was a war correspondent who reported from Belsen bringing the reality of Nazi evil to the world.
Woody/ Jonathan. Superb chat which I found to be very interesting. Woody, all your guests are great but you have excelled yourself with such well known guest of Jonathan’s calibre. A true testament to the excellence of your channel. Thanks gents. Bob
Glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for the nice words
I binge watched this entire series.
Absolutely mind boggling ! So many details and new elements surfacing which each episode.
Everyone knows D-day, but this gigantic feat remained under a dust cloud for ages.
Thx big time for bringing these !
Respect !
Its a great point that *maskirovka* was baked into Soviet troop movements, with Signal Companies specifically assigned to stay in place and replicate an Army Corps being reinforced, when the real Corps and Armies were on the move in radio silence to another Front. Its what allowed the success at Stalingrad and the Southern advance of early 1943. It fails in places like Rzev, because the Wehrmacht were well organised for flexibly deploying reserves on that entire Front, but in places were the Germans were stretched thin it was very effective against the increasingly inflexible High Command map-based orders.
Doubtful, German recon was usually spot on, they saw the huge number of tanks on the Don by air photographs for example, the thing was just nothing could be done. At Bagration the Russians found an old undefended railway track that had been overlooked by the Germans and the Russians send in the 2nd tank corps to get behind the Germans that way. The fact remains the Germans just couldnt defend every spot on the eastern front which is why the soviets by their superior numbers always could probe and they would find an undefended weakspot somewhere, then together with lend lease and all the trucks they got they could easily outmanouve the germans by 1944.
Fantastic chat with Jonathan, a most distinguished guest. Really brought home the attrition on the Wehrmacht by a much improved, battle hardened Red Army, that in comparison to the now delusional Hitler, is now allowed to fight more creatively with their resources by Stalin, who has become a realist.
It's crazy how the Soviets were able to bounce back like this considering Hitler’s forces destroyed over 124 Red Army divisions, and took 3.8 million prisoners of war and captured an area the size of Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined. Literally the greatest "They had us in the first half" ever.
This is the best ww2 channel in the world we love it. thank you jonathan i remember your dad he was nice too. brilliant presentation.
Fantastic presentation. I really like the way that he covers the subject, not down in the weeds, but a good overall view. I also like how he relates to future events. This book is going to the top of my very long list of books to read. Tom Mullen, Geneva IL USA
Got home from Turkey and thoroughly enjoyed this presentation on a re-run.
Jonathan just exudes professionalism in his TV journalism. He also mirrors that with his historical knowledge.
Woody, your questions were impeccable, I would just be open-mouthed salivating at Jonathan's presence, lol.
Brilliantly done
Thanks, I was a bit nervous, Jonathan is something of a legend
@@WW2TV can say that again
Great interview as always Woody 👍.
Incidentally I was out last weekend wearing my WW2TV t shirt when a man came up to me and said ‘WW2TV the best history channel on TH-cam’.
I couldn’t agree more 😊
Wow, that was cool
Great show! Looking forward to reading his book!
His previous works on the desert war and Barbarossa are equally notable in their research and references
WW2TV bringing in the top guests, time and time again. Great Discussion.
I wish I would have caught this live. I will own the audio book once it is out. Great author. Thanks for another quality guest sit.
No worries! I had to go with Jonathan's busy schedule
Big thanks to Jonathan.. Amazing stuff..
Mr Dimbleby is absolutely right. Fully 60% of Werhmacht casualties -- three million out of five million -- were inflicted on the Eastern Front by Soviet forces.
More like 80% .
@@Occident. I'm certainly amenable to correction, I was working top of the head and it's been 20+ years since I read Erickson's "Road to ..." pair.
Magnificent channel, I had been giving up on WW2 content as alot of it wasnt giving me any new info, Then I found you.... Keep up the great work!
Thank you
Woody has so many amazing guests.
Not just English and Americans but historians from around the world.
A lot of documentaries are aimed at people whose knowledge of WW2 is basic and as you say it covers the same ground again and again.
But WW2TV is for anyone who wants to learn more than 1939 Hitler invades Poland, 1940 Battle of Britain, 1941 Pearl Harbour etc.
Name an area and Woody tries to bring us people who know their stuff, whether tactics, strategy, logistics, atrocities, politics, technology you name it and Woody has covered it or will do in the future.
Thanks Nigel
Consider me a heretic, but the Red Army advance from Kursk to Romania in 1943/early 1944 proved that Russia could attack and defeat the Germans with T34/76s and limited logistics, and essentially defeated the best of the German panzer divisions. Bagration 1944 was a great victory but a rerun of 1943, though the better version. The war was won by Red Army around December 1943!
Excellent programme. I must read this book. It always amazes me how Bragation and the subsequent Warsaw Uprising are overlooked in the West.
The Easten Front is increasingly recognised as where the Wehrmacht was broken.
I was at university in the mid nineties and even then we were taught about the importance and the size of the Nazi/Soviet war.
The general public are only now beginning to realise this, mostly through the books of people like Beevor, Glantz et al.
@@nigeh5326 very true. I' ve read most of Glantz' s books👍
@@jasonmussett2129 if you haven’t read Beevor’s books they are a good read imo.
He does at times show an anti Soviet bias, not surprising given he is an ex British Army officer, but they are enjoyable to read.
@@nigeh5326 I read Stalingrad and his book on the Ardennes but not Berlin. Must check it out, thanks😀
Really enjoyed that thank you
Thank you. I enjoyed that talk
You are so welcome
I enjoyed this video i have just bought the kindle version of his book. Like you i prefer physical books but sadly i have so many books especially on warfare i would have no space left in my house to store them and im thankful we have the convenience of kindle to store all my books. I do have all of Jonathan Dimbleby books most of David M Glantz one other major historian on the Eastern Front is the two epic volumes by the late John Erickson who sadly is forgotten now.
Erickson is not forgotten here. Hugh Davie referenced him in his talk last week and I'm pretty sure Philip Blood did too
Like him or not Antony Beevor has also done a lot to raise interest in the Eastern Front with his best sellers Stalingrad and Berlin.
Howdy folks! Jonathan needs more opportunities to enlighten us. Great presentation on the biggest military operation since Barbarossa.
Jonathan you really need a better microphone. Fascinating subject.
IMHO from my reading I see FDR as so focused on his vision that creating the United Nations would lead to world peace, he was overly willing to give in to many of Stalin's demands to get his participation. A secondary concern was trying to get Stalin's commitment to attack Japan. In hindsight, that and his insistence on including China led to other problems which hampers the effectiveness of the UN in assuring world peace.
FDR was for a long time a very ill man. This I feel caused him to not be as wily and tough in negotiating with Stalin.
Still I’ve always felt he was a great president who gave his all to try and build a post war world where the UN could resolve issues before they became wars, and where even if wars broke out the UN could be used to intervene.
Yes to us now this may seem fantastically optimistic, but at the time it was an honourable idea just as Wilson’s 14 points at the end of WW1 were.
@@nigeh5326 What is so easy for people to forget is that we're dealing with the frailties of humans. Too many expect perfection, when we should hope they're more right than wrong. From my reading, FDR wasn't the best or clearest administrator, but a visionary and good persuader. He also, like all politicians, made decisions based on perception of public opinion. His build up for the war was always done with an eye on how to dodge the minefield of public isolationism. Obviously, his health slowed him down and probably contributed to his acquiesce to Stalin to achieve his post-war dream - driving for agreement before he passed.
Great stuff guys
Ultimately, as Jonathan points out, boots on the ground was by far the greatest influence on the postwar situation. To change the outcome, the U.S. in particular would have had to make a very different set of strategic choices. For example, by deferring most offensive action against Japan, the U.S. would have made available more shipping, landing craft, aircraft, and troops for an earlier (or much larger) cross-channel invasion. The British similarly had resources tied up in the Burma campaign. The Allies didn't really have a "Germany First" strategy; they fought both the Pacific and European wars offensively at the same time.
There was a conscious decision when the US entered the war that Germany would be the priority.
Some in the US military and political establishment disagreed, but this view won out.
This can be seen by the fact that the US airforces in Europe lost more men than the USMC did in the Pacific.
Imo It was the right decision strategically as Germany was a much bigger threat than Japan to the Allies overall.
I am not in any way minimising the heroic efforts of this who fought in Asia and the Pacific, including members of my own family.
@@nigeh5326 Quite. Sorry that you missed my point entirely. While the US and UK agreed on "Germany First, " in reality the US in particular continued to wage a vigorous offensive war against Japan at the same time. This decision wasn't wrong, but it did mean that substantial critical resources (like shipping, troops, LSTs and landing craft) were deployed to the Pacific and hence not available for operations in Europe. This impacted the scale and timing of operations against Germany, which, in turn, contributed to the US and UK being poorly positioned to prevent Soviet control of Eastern Europe at the end of war. As I said, the US would have had to make very different strategic decisions--primarily to stand on the defensive in the Pacific in 42-43--to have had any chance of obtaining a different outcome in Europe in 1945. This is not to argue that the US should have made different decisions, only to emphasize that despite "Germany First," committing resources to the offensives against Japan had real consequences for operations in Europe.
I don't believe that "Germany First" is synonymous with "let's ignore Japan and defeat Germany first". Once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the American public wouldn't have stood for that. So, they had to, at the very least, fight them to hold them before cutting off the SLOC to Australia.
Before Pearl Harbor, however, it seems that Roosevelt was trying to avoid war with Japan to prioritize helping the Commonwealth and the Soviet Union defeat Germany first - if what James Bradley writes in his book, "The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia" is correct. Despite America's support for the Nationalist Chinese government, the United States was still selling petroleum products to Japan, which they relied upon to wage their war in China, to avoid having to fight them too. It was the embargo of those, and scrap metal, that forced the Japanese to execute their Nanshin-ron (南進論) strategy, leading to their multi-pronged December 7/8 attacks. According to Bradley, the cutting off of these strategic materials was not a decision by Roosevelt, but a move by Commerce Department bureaucrats while Roosevelt was meeting Churchill at the Atlantic Conference. By the time Roosevelt found out, he was unable to reverse this.
@@rickgreen2957 My comment was not about what Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on in 1941 but about how decisions made in 1942 and later affected the situation on the ground in Eastern Europe in 1945. The context was the question over whether the Western Allies could have done anything keep the Soviets from dominating Eastern Europe at the end of the war. Soviet domination was a "boots on the ground" issue. To prevent it, the Western Allies would have had to get into Eastern Europe before the Soviets. To have attempted to do so, they would have to devote disproportionately greater resources to a more rapid defeat of Germany, which implies a mid-1943 cross-channel invasion. This would have meant foregoing the offensive operations conducted against Japan in 1943 and 1944. An LST cannot be in two invasions at the same time, especially if they're on opposite sides of the planet. The massive deployment of resources to the Pacific ensured the defeat of Japan as well as Germany in 1945, an outcome of a U.S. strategy to wage offensive wars against Germany and Japan simultaneously, regardless of what was said about priorities in 1941-42.
On a side note, in 1942 US and UK leaders could not have possibly anticipated that the Soviets would be on the Oder and deep into Eastern Europe by the end of 1944. I suspect that in 1942, if someone asked, US and UK military staffs probably would have expected the Red Army would still be bogged down well inside their own territory. But I haven't read anything that suggests Western Allied commanders were actually thinking that far ahead.
@@marchuvfulz I know exactly what your comment was about. I was simply pointing out that if Roosevelt had been able to continue providing the Japanese with the means for continuing their war in China, that may have limited the Second Sino-Japanese to a regional conflict which would have enabled the US to allocate greater resources to Europe earlier. Then, perhaps, the buildup would have been sufficient enough to avoid going into Italy and landing in France in 1943, thereby giving the Western Allies a better opportunity to have boots on the ground in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, I am skeptical Stalin would not respond to an earlier rollback on the Western Front. It might just simply bring forward the Soviet timetable with the same result.
Dimbleby! wow.
Rather a coup for the channel, congrats Paul.
The more i learn about the Eastern Front, the more i learn how valuable the Western Front truly was.
Can't have one without the other
Belarus/Vitebsk was a bad event lasting 3 years before the Russians did a pincer movement there 1944
I have gotten used to my Kindle. I do a lot of traveling though. I have found its much easier to carry a few hundred saved books in my kindle than to carry them, especially if baggage is limited, as it often is when it comes to Biological field work. Give me a choice between carrying my kindle, and fifteen hardbacks in my rucksack when hiking to an out of the way sample site, its going to be the kindle every time. Or in the limited cabin space aboard a research vessel.
I do *prefer* proper books. If choice and circumstances favour it I much prefer to sit next to the fire with a proper book, but I have become used to my Kindle. Better that than not having much to read at all!
Fair points
I have this picture of the Russian rabble without 400,000 American trucks!
❤
6.5 million lost soldets seems rather high, unkess it counts dead and wounded. And of those wounded a sizeable proportion would return back to service
6.5 million (of course) includes dead, wounded and captured
Such an interesting chapter but unfortunately Jonathan's audio was one of low quality...
Keep up with your excellent videos but please pay attention to the audio issues...
It wasn't the very best, but it was perfectly understandable I think
It is one of the relative downsides to a live stream, as addressed in the conversation with Paul Bavill earlier this week - there's less control over the sound setup with your remote party and sometimes it's less than perfect.
That's the trade-off with doing live, and I'll take it considering the content is more important.
Indeed
But it was worth concentrating on every word - great content
I think you should give your viewers a bit more respect whether it's Jonathan Dimbleby or not. The opening five minutes of this piece would have you believe that we know nothing whereas I would wager that the overwhelming majority of your viewers have, like me, been studying and researching the subject for decades and have creaking shelves full of books on the subject.
So, here's how it works. Jonathan Dimbleby is one of the author types who bring new people to subjects. There will be people who read his book who know almost nothing about the campaign. The same applies to my TH-cam show. I can tell you that my data says that an average WW2TV has maybe 5% new viewers, this had 35%. Therefore it is the type of show where I deliberately did a soft start, to ease people in to the subject, in the hope they will stay and check out more content. If that 5 minutes is boring to you, because you know it already. Well, I guess that can't be helped. Maybe you could ask for a refund?
@@WW2TV Fair comment. Noted.
Thanks for understanding. I always consider what level of detail to go in to and it's all about balance
American and British aid in Trucks, Jeeps, Tanks and fighter planes, and massive amounts of food and Oil saved the Soviet Union. The aid started arriving just in time to stop the German advance on Moscow in October 1941. The Russians were good fighters. But they could never have won with out the huge amount of aid. Capitalism, saved Bolshevism.
At what point in this video did we say that wasn't the case?
seems Jonathan's Russian researcher did a good job in getting him to write a Russian propaganda narrative.
Then you need to read the book, because that's not the case
Jonathan has definitely read and been taken in by Russian propaganda.
He likes a bit of "both sides" ism.
Can you give an example?
This ignores how near the bottom of their manpower barrel the Soviets were, how unreliable many of their own minorities and conquered East European nations were, and how dependent they were on Western Allied technology to make their armaments effective and provide mobility.
Suggesting something was "ignored" implies that it was deliberately omitted, when the actual reason is there is only so much that can be said in one interview. The Red Army's deficiencies are all addressed in the book.
Until the USSR started to advance into areas such as Poland East European nations weren’t really fighting with the Soviets.
Most of Eastern Europe was occupied by the Nazis or allied to them eg Hungary and Rumania.
There were some who fought with the Soviets but in terms of the overall numbers they weren’t a large part of Soviet forces overall.
Also the Soviets were able to develop their own technology that was comparable to the Nazis and the West.
A couple of examples being the T34 (the Soviets started with the 76mm gun then upgraded to the much better 85mm with a larger turret), the PPSH a simple sub machine gun with a v high rate of fire that was liked even by Nazi troops, the IL2 Sturmovik which proved v effective against Nazi armour, not forgetting the clothing, boots, oils and lubricants that were superior to the Nazi equivalents in the intense cold of the East.
@@nigeh5326 About a third of the Red Army came from non-Russian Soviet minorities of questionable reliability. In the last year of the war the USSR had run out of its own liberated territories to recruit from and instead raised two Polish, one Bulgarian, two Yugoslav, and two Romanian armies and a Czechoslovak corps to help fill its infantry ranks.
@@nigeh5326 The T34 used an American designed engine, an American-dsigned suspension system and American radios. It is also the most knocked-out tank in history.
Like the T34, the IL2's radio was American. It is also a candidate for the most shot-down aircraft in history. Nor do German records support the claim that it was a very effective tank hunter.
Everybody had SMGs, which ar low tech weapons. The Germans chose to copy the British Sten gun, not the PPSH.