Any WWII buffs need to check out this channel:

https://m.youtube.com/@WW2Tales

The quantity and quality of the content is amazing.

I suspect -- due to the frequency of release and the length of the videos -- that they must be AI generated, but each story is entertaining and enlightening. Many of the stories I never heard before.

The jingoism is strong in this series. The allies -- especially the Americans -- were superior in every way to the Germans and Japanese, and the videos make it seem that allied victory was never in doubt. But, hey, history is written by the victors.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the channel enough to pass it on.

 

Not a fan of war documentaries. But I may check this one. Thanks.

 

 

Any WWII buffs need to check out this channel:

https://m.youtube.com/@WW2Tales

The quantity and quality of the content is amazing.

I suspect -- due to the frequency of release and the length of the videos -- that they must be AI generated, but each story is entertaining and enlightening. Many of the stories I never heard before.

The jingoism is strong in this series. The allies -- especially the Americans -- were superior in every way to the Germans and Japanese, and the videos make it seem that allied victory was never in doubt. But, hey, history is written by the victors.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the channel enough to pass it on.

I don't think "superior in every way" is very meaningful. The Germans were using ballistic missiles for example to bomb London, no one was superior to them in that area. The fastest (by quite a margin) propeller fighter aircraft in WWW2 was the German Focke-Wulf TA 152H. German tanks were more advanced, they had a "railway gun" with an 800mm caliber, 7 ton shells, they had the fastest machine gun at 1500 rounds/minute the MG42, I mean seriously the Germans dominated in many areas.

The British invented the cavity magnetron which revolutionized radar (they then gave this technology to the USA), the British cracked Enigma. The USA role was of course very significant but shouldn't be overstated. Hitler's fatal error was attacking the USSR when he did, had that not happened things might have turned out different.

The USA too was powerless to confront the Third Reich without Britain, it was access to the British isles that gave the USA a base from which to work from.

There's no doubt in my mind that had Britain not repelled the Luftwaffe in late 1940, it would have been invaded by the Nazis and the USA would then have been powerless.

The Battle of Britain was absolutely key to how the war turned out, the USA joined that European war late, after Britain had almost single handedly fought the Nazis for two long years.

 

As someone who lived through WW11, albeit quite young. I will be interested to watch it.
The first memories of Americans in Britain, was when I would leave to go to school, most mornings we had an american convoy parked on the kerb outside the house, the standard phrase was "got any gum chum" the reciept of which would get us in trouble later with the teacher!

 

You did learn to tell incoming enemy aircraft before you even saw it, just by the unique sound of each.!

 

As someone who lived through WW11, albeit quite young. I will be interested to watch it.
The first memories of Americans in Britain, was when I would leave to go to school, most mornings we had an american convoy parked on the kerb outside the house, the standard phrase was "got any gum chum" the reciept of which would get us in trouble later with the teacher!

If you've not watched the entire World at War series I encourage you to do so, you in particular would really appreciate it.

 

I don't think "superior in every way" is very meaningful. The Germans were using ballistic missiles for example to bomb London, no one was superior to them in that area. The fastest (by quite a margin) propeller fighter aircraft in WWW2 was the German Focke-Wulf TA 152H. German tanks were more advanced, they had a "railway gun" with an 800mm caliber, 7 ton shells, they had the fastest machine gun at 1500 rounds/minute the MG42, I mean seriously the Germans dominated in many areas.

The British invented the cavity magnetron which revolutionized radar (they then gave this technology to the USA), the British cracked Enigma. The USA role was of course very significant but shouldn't be overstated. Hitler's fatal error was attacking the USSR when he did, had that not happened things might have turned out different.

The USA too was powerless to confront the Third Reich without Britain, it was access to the British isles that gave the USA a base from which to work from.

There's no doubt in my mind that had Britain not repelled the Luftwaffe in late 1940, it would have been invaded by the Nazis and the USA would then have been powerless.

The Battle of Britain was absolutely key to how the war turned out, the USA joined that European war late, after Britain had almost single handedly fought the Nazis for two long years.

The British didn't crack Enigma, the Poles did, who then gave the Brits everything they had when it became evident that Poland was going to be overrun. The Brits then ran with it. One of the things that is often overlooked, both at the time by Germany and when looking back at history, is that the Germans were fully aware of the theoretical weaknesses of Enigma and understood how they could theoretically be exploited. There official operating procedures make that pretty clear. But they also had a good feel for the degree of effort that would be required to exploit them and, looking at the world through the lens of the aggressor, couldn't imagine an opponent that seemed back on their heels being able or willing to commit the needed resources. What they failed to appreciate is that Britain viewed things from the perspective of a nation facing an existential threat. Once they determined that breaking Enigma (and other ciphers) was critical to survival, they also recognized that they couldn't afford not to commit the needed resources, no matter how desperately they might be needed elsewhere.

It's actually hard to predict how things would have worked out had Britain fallen. For instance, the U.S. had numerous programs in place that were based on the assumption that Britain would fall. One of those, for example, was the B-36 program, started in 1941, which was for the purpose of being able to strike targets in Continental Europe directly from based in the United States. When Britain didn't fall, those more extreme programs were scaled back and/or received lower priority than they would have had Britain actually fallen. By the same token, had Britain fallen, those programs would have been accelerated massively.

People often point to the Me-262 and remark how it would have turned the tide in favor of the Axis had it been introduced a little earlier and in greater numbers. This is likely not the case. At the time the Me-262 was introduced operationally in April 1944, the U.S. already was flying the P-80 (first flight in January 1944). This, despite there being no real perceived critical need for a jet fighter by that time as the tide had turned pretty firmly in favor of the Allies by then. But the Allies were aware of the Me-262, which had first flown in April 1941 after two years of development. Lockheed delivered the P-80 prototype in 143 days and, on its maiden flight, it was pretty evident that it could hold it's own against the Me-262. The P-80 actually did see service in Europe before the end of the war, but only in its reconnaissance role. Each had advantages over the other in terms of raw performance, but the P-80 was much more reliable and maintainable, which likely would have tilted things in its favor. The P-80 saw service as a frontline fighter up until the mid-1970s with other countries and it's twin-seat trainer version, the T-33, was in service with the U.S. until 1997 and the last was retired operationally in other countries in 2017. When I was in the service, we had a squadron of them and so I worked on a few. They often played bomber simulators in intercept exercises against the modern fighters of the day and they could given them an amazingly good run for their money.

It's also important to keep in mind that during those two long years that Britain fought the Nazi's almost single-handedly, they became critically dependent on supply convoys from the U.S. and Canada across the Atlantic. In addition, many countries provided support to Britain's forces around the world and I don't think that there's much hope that Britain could have survived the attritional stage between the Battle of Britain and formal U.S. entry.

But I agree that taking the attitude that the Allies were superior in every way to the Axis powers, or that the U.S. was somehow head and shoulders above the rest of the Allies in every regard, is patently absurd. All players had there strengths and weaknesses.

 

An old saying:
WW2 was won with British intelligence, American industrial might and Soviet blood.
I would add Chinese suffering.

Before anybody starts becoming furiously ballistic at me, I am perfectly aware that every ally contributed more than the simple traits described by a simplistic saying.

For instance, the Soviets ran the War’s most successful spy rings, learning on one hand that Japan would definitely not invade Siberia which allowed them to concentrate their full forces on the Germans, while another ring siphoned the Manhattan project’s secrets.

 

i thought i will watch one or two and there goes my Saturday

 

i thought i will watch one or two and there goes my Saturday

The annunciation of the narrator is clear and consistent enough that you can watch at 2x speed to save time.

 

What's amazing is that another new hour long episode is posted every couple of hours.

Maybe AI is good for something.

 

What's amazing is that another new hour long episode is posted every couple of hours.

Maybe AI is good for something.

I'll pass on all AI slop.

 

What's amazing is that another new hour long episode is posted every couple of hours.

Maybe AI is good for something.

It's good at generating noise at an alarming rate.

I haven't watched any of the videos on that channel yet. I might or might not.

As I take breaks in front of my computer, I often find myself getting sucked into videos that look like they might be interested. A huge fraction of them are pretty clearly AI generated. A huge fraction are also purely misleading, with the title or intro claiming that they are going to show you one thing and then never showing you anything related to it. I'm also seeing documentaries on Prime and Netflix that bear the same hallmarks.

Fundamentally, I don't have anything inherently against such AI-generated stuff. These tools are pretty darn good at dredging up obscure and interesting things. The problem is that a significant fraction of what they then craft is simply wrong, but it is usually presented in a very confident and plausible way. When you happen to know some of the truth behind some of the things, the errors can be glaring, but would otherwise be completely believable. There are also a lot of internal inconsistencies or absurdities in these videos (in general, again, I haven't watched any of these, so I don't know where they fall in this regard) that are easy to gloss past unless you happen to be attuned to spotting them. I was watching a documentary on either Netflix or Prime a few weeks back about the development of fighter aircraft and it was littered with contradictions in performance numbers and in several places stated things that were ludicrously absurd. But if you weren't paying attention to the actual numbers being spouted and actually thinking about them, they easily slip right on past. This always makes me wonder whether the people that make these things ever bother to actually have someone review them with any kind of critical eye at all. I think I know the answer. But, the end result, is that as soon as I see a telltale that something is AI-generated, I tend to bail on it because I know that I am as susceptible as most people to being suckered into believing something that is plausible, but wrong, if it is presented well enough in a confident, authoritative, believable way.

 

It's good at generating noise at an alarming rate.

I haven't watched any of the videos on that channel yet. I might or might not.

As I take breaks in front of my computer, I often find myself getting sucked into videos that look like they might be interested. A huge fraction of them are pretty clearly AI generated. A huge fraction are also purely misleading, with the title or intro claiming that they are going to show you one thing and then never showing you anything related to it. I'm also seeing documentaries on Prime and Netflix that bear the same hallmarks.

Fundamentally, I don't have anything inherently against such AI-generated stuff. These tools are pretty darn good at dredging up obscure and interesting things. The problem is that a significant fraction of what they then craft is simply wrong, but it is usually presented in a very confident and plausible way. When you happen to know some of the truth behind some of the things, the errors can be glaring, but would otherwise be completely believable. There are also a lot of internal inconsistencies or absurdities in these videos (in general, again, I haven't watched any of these, so I don't know where they fall in this regard) that are easy to gloss past unless you happen to be attuned to spotting them. I was watching a documentary on either Netflix or Prime a few weeks back about the development of fighter aircraft and it was littered with contradictions in performance numbers and in several places stated things that were ludicrously absurd. But if you weren't paying attention to the actual numbers being spouted and actually thinking about them, they easily slip right on past. This always makes me wonder whether the people that make these things ever bother to actually have someone review them with any kind of critical eye at all. I think I know the answer. But, the end result, is that as soon as I see a telltale that something is AI-generated, I tend to bail on it because I know that I am as susceptible as most people to being suckered into believing something that is plausible, but wrong, if it is presented well enough in a confident, authoritative, believable way.

I just stumbled upon a typical example of what I was talking about. A video about "swim call" in which sailors jump off of the ship into the ocean. At the very beginning, they state that sailors jump hundreds of feet into the sea. Yet they show sailors jumping from the elevator of an aircraft carrier. Now, the deck of this class aircraft carrier is typically about 65 feet above the sea surface and the elevator is clearly slightly more than half way between the deck and the sea. That would put the distance at something like 20 to 30 feet. Using the height of one of the sailors as a reference, I got an estimate of around 20 to 25 feet, so in line with that. Hardly the "hundreds of feet" claimed by the AI-generated narration. So, what's the point of listening to anything else that the video says, since I have no reason to believe than any of it is accurate. Maybe most of it is, but I have no idea which parts are and which parts aren't, so listening to it just risks filling my head with a bunch of incorrect "facts" that anneal themselves in my mind over time and become part of the truth as I accept it.

This is also why I generally avoid movies that are "based on true story," because so often the only part of the "true story" that is accurately reflected in the movie is the name of the main character and, perhaps, the state in which it took place.

 

Plage du Canadel

C’est à ce point précis desormais historique que dans la nuit du 14 au 15 août 1944 debarqua la première vague des commandos d’afrique avant garde des troupes alliées.

This is the precise historic point on the night from 14th to 15th of August 1944, the first wave of commandos from Africa landed, the vanguard of the allied troops.

 

There was considerable support for Hitler in the US, this was a pro-Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden in 1939. We can't assume the US would not have accepted the new Germany had Pearl Harbor not been bombed, Hitler was seen by many prominent people as a strong defense against the spread of communism.

 

 

I just stumbled upon a typical example of what I was talking about. A video about "swim call" in which sailors jump off of the ship into the ocean. At the very beginning, they state that sailors jump hundreds of feet into the sea. Yet they show sailors jumping from the elevator of an aircraft carrier. Now, the deck of this class aircraft carrier is typically about 65 feet above the sea surface and the elevator is clearly slightly more than half way between the deck and the sea. That would put the distance at something like 20 to 30 feet. Using the height of one of the sailors as a reference, I got an estimate of around 20 to 25 feet, so in line with that. Hardly the "hundreds of feet" claimed by the AI-generated narration. So, what's the point of listening to anything else that the video says, since I have no reason to believe than any of it is accurate. Maybe most of it is, but I have no idea which parts are and which parts aren't, so listening to it just risks filling my head with a bunch of incorrect "facts" that anneal themselves in my mind over time and become part of the truth as I accept it.

This is also why I generally avoid movies that are "based on true story," because so often the only part of the "true story" that is accurately reflected in the movie is the name of the main character and, perhaps, the state in which it took place.

Good point, I think this is a serious problem for society going forward. People "our age" if I may, are well versed in distinguishing fact from fiction, we read books, we studied but today's generation have little experience of this, they rely on trust, trust in their chosen narrative, trust in Twitter, trust in social networking.

If some claim furthers that narrative then it labeled as true, the definition of true these days is increasingly based on how much it furthers some narrative.

I can see today that many people simply do not care for the traditional meaning of truth, they simply do not care, this is where we're headed.

 

Willow Run B-24 bomber assembly plant in Michigan, U.S.A.