Re: WW2: The Resource War - IV: Strategic Bombing - Extra History @Extra Credits

Extra Credits / Extra History a while ago (when I was quite busy) did a quite problematic video on "strategic bombing", yet which had many errors and repeated two times German war-time propaganda and also failed to point crucial points about the Western Allied Bombing campaigns. Their video is highly uncritical and loaded with errors.

» HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT MILITARY HISTORY VISUALIZED «

» SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS «

---Sources---
--Books--

Overy, Richard: The Battle of Britain – The Myth and the Reality

Frieser, Karl-Heinz: Blitzkrieg Legend

Boog, Horst: Die strategische Bomberoffensive der Alliierten gegen Deutschland und die Reichsluftverteidigung in der Schlußphase des Krieges; in: Müller, Rolf-Dieter (Hrsg.): Der Zusammenbruch des Deutschen Reiches 1945 – Erster Halbband – die Militärische Niederwerfung der Wehrmacht.

--Websites & Links--

Professor Overy

---Song----
Ethan Meixsell - Demilitarized Zone (the Irony :D)

[Sneakleak]

After watching this video and doing follow up research I can't bring myself to watch their content anymore. Their blatant lies and wrong portrayals of history is something that i can't stand. My only regret is to not have realized the truth sooner.

[GGhost]

"History is not a Che-Guevara t-shirt. It's portrayal needs more than just two colours." Now THAT needs to be a T-shirt.

[Epicurus]

I find it quite remarkable how so many people seem to miss how much the Wehrmacht was dependent on horse-drawn transport during the entire war...

[RealHrrrshw]

wehrabooism is so pervasive in pop history that people don't often know they're repeating it

videos like yours are appreciated in helping to correct the record

[VladVlad-ulio]

when i watched extracredits' videos, i sensed lots of mistake but i couldn't properly define them. This helped me a lot. :)

[ioannestheiberian]

I love this channel, a true gem for military history nerds.

[flobotron]

Part of the issue is with the Extra Credits approach. Their videos present history as a consistent narrative with built in drama. That works well with ancient history which is also written that way in certain cases, but it doesn't work too well for modern history.

[frankdantuono]

Usually when Extra Credits History does a video series of a subject they end it with a Lies episode explaining the mistakes, misnomers and decisions they made that were misleading to the viewer. That is not the case in the WW2 The Resources War series so well done MHV for the research and clarification. It is counter balancing videos like these that make YouTube the positive community that it is.

[lafeeshmeister]

As always, thank you for your continual struggle toward producing objective content. Seriously. Thank you.

[SuperTrooper]

big fan of your work, love the effort and historical accuracy that comes with your videos

[MaxRavenclaw]

Oh, this should be interesting. Hope you didn't go too hard on them.

EDIT: Obligatory reaction to German horse drawn equipment: "You had horses! What were you thinking?!"

EDIT2: Wait, you didn't mention that the Germans bombed London first, albeit accidentally.

EDIT3: Yes, great video and you handled it in a civilized and effective way. Good job!

[WiiPlayPCToo]

It's awesome to see how quickly your channel has been growing! The videos you produce are consistently both well educated and objective and it's great to see them reaching a larger audience.

[FulmenTheFinn]

Just started watching. But before I continue, I must say that a lot of people actually did note the many errors in Extra Credits' video and videos, myself included. Especially when Paradox Interactive made threads linking to him.

Personally I do not regard him as a credible source of history and haven't for a long time. There are just too many obvious inaccuracies in his videos that would've required even only limited studying to get right. And frankly I think the voice changer eats away his credibility a lot. I know his channel is mainly for entertainment, but come on, he isn't 15 anymore.

[juhotuho]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by other things, such as incompetence. Although this video is much needed, I don't think they had a malicious intent.

[Zanator]

I'm in history university and I have to say, you are an inspiration for historical accuracy and impartiality. :D

[thenoobinator]

3:35
military history visualied is mad

[ddjay]

"History is not a Che Guevara T-Shirt". Well said.

[Thex]

Good respond. Mate, if you ever are going to make a video (or a series of videos) about strategic bombing or strategic warfare I can recommend you a book called "Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace" by Edward Luttwak. In this book he covers a lot of aspects of aerial bombing from early 20s XX century theories to modern view on this subject, giving a lot of examples from different eras.

It was so disappointing to watch that video from Extra History. They call their video "The Resource War - IV: Strategic Bombing" but discuss Battle of Britain only! It's like there were no other strategic bombings during the whole history at all. You mention that in your response video and thus you deserve my like.

Please keep being objective as much as possible, mate. This is very important when having a discussion about history.

[TomatoBreadOrgasm]

Yeah, I'm just watching for the accent, but sometimes I also learn things! Thanks for doing what intellectuals must and correcting false information.

[thomasvandevelde]

Growing up between Wehrmacht veterans, I heard a lot of scorn for the Allied Bombing Campaign during World War II. However, as a twist of irony, during a vacation in France I befriended an English Boy, who's father turned out to have served in Bomber Command during World War 2. My father and him, forgot his name, sat together at the diner table in the hotel for the rest of the 2 weeks we spent there in Southern France. He left with a completely different view of the situation, the motive behind the Bombing Campaign and above all the crews themselves. After seeing an interview with a véry old Arhut Harris somewhere on Youtube, I found an even more interesting set of "views"" and inside-story that highlights the reasons why specific towns were bombed, like Lubeck, and also the enormous problems that both Bomber Command and the USAAF had about compiling information about the effectiveness of their raids. At one point he kinda stated "well it'sn not we could send somebody into Germany to go take a look on the ground, and ask if we were hitting the factories in the right places or not: we were entirely reliant on aerial photographic intelligence for the most part, and as we know this created a misleading view for both us and the Americans." and he explains about the Photographic Recon Units coming back with pictures of destroyed factories and infrastructure... Only to later learn that it was purely the roofs that had been blown off, and that the 500 pounder bombs with immediate contact-fuses were ineffective since they just "airburst" the moment they passed through the roof. The problem was that they (indeed) could not see anything from the ground! So when they saw the same factory was still running, the response was "well it's clear we gotta go at it again!" and this created an atmosphere of at times make-belief. Only later in the war, when a lot of Lancasters were coming in big numbers, they could switch to the short-finned 1000-pounders with a DELAYED fuse that Bomber Command would have as the "Standard anti-industrial" loadout for a Lancaster, so to speak. The shorter fins allowed for more bombs in the bombay and also prevented "hanging" and other problems, the bombs were not slowed down as much or hindered by their own fins when crashing trough the roof of a factory. Instead, now they fell through the roof, the delayed fuse being a tail-triggered affair, all the way to the bottom of the factories. And actually *destroying the machinery itself* besides causing heavy floor-shifting and such.

This latter is reflected in Germany's capacity to produce Microwave Radars later in the war: making magnetrons is a very fine business, micrometer work. Due to the need for dispersion of industry, Germany never had the LMS10 (their copy of the British H2S transmitter magnetron) build in acceptable quantities and quality. In fact, by 1945 German vacuum-tube production had dropped to a mere 3% of what it was, electronics being the only industry at the time that could NOT be decentralized without making production completely impossible. And even during the post-war Era, you see the German electronics and vacuum tube production start with basically 100% obsolete types by that point. Even in 1952 to 1956 they produced types of vacuum tubes that were 1935 vintages... The reason was twofold:
1) Due to the extremely high degree of destruction of the electronics sector, especially the production of vacuum tubes, even for civil applications like Telephone or Telegraph Repeaters using these older types there was by 1944 already a complete exhaustion of this stock. The machinery still intact could not produce anything else, because of the aforementioned precision-tooling still lacking due to the bombardement.
2) The Logistics and Communications lines in Germany had been destroyed to such as extent by 1945, that even by 1950 the shortfall of vacuum tubes for required for repairing these older installations, had still not been made good. And one could not make more modern, easier to mass-produce types because of... Yes, again the lack of tooling and precision equipment, which had been destroyed "into oblivion" one can say.

This where the "Zulieferungskrise" hit first, and hardest: although Germany perfectly had the capacity to go toe-to-toe with the Western Allies in terms of Radar Development (even having the lead before 1942) at a theoretical level, the so desperate shortage of vacuum tubes just made it impossible for them to capitalize on this technical superiority. This in turn forced the Luftwaffe and Defence of the Reich to invent things like the Wilde Sau tactics, which were highly dangerous, costly and ineffective compared to dedicated night-fighters having a good quality radar and radar-operator. It even came to the point that the cannons were being fired automatically by the Radars on board... But there wasn't enough parts to build them, let alone keep expanding the force. And once Göring ordered the nightfighters to intercept the daylight raids as well, that was the end of that, since the Allies could take all the pictures they wanted about otherwise hidden at night features, including radar antennas... This was a disaster, since if you know the Antenna's length, you can calculate it's resonant frequency and hence the frequency the Transmitter (inside the radar itself) was working on.

My father mentioned it got SO worse at the radio repair shops, that they used aluminium wire because copper didn't come through, nor brass, nor any other suitable material. It was a continuous struggle to keep all this functioning, while at the same time?
"German Wartime Production peaked in 1944!" yes it did, but for example due to the railway-network being completely whiped away, you've got situations where less than 10% of the coal mined actually ever left the pit-heads. By March 1945 this number crept up to >90% of coal piling up, same for tons of other resources, same for those "brandnew" U-Boats being blasted to pieces by them laying in rows next to the piers, awaiting spare parts for repairs. The German U-Boat Fleet was numerically at it's peak in January-February 1945, with 451 boats being "operational". The number hunting around the British Isles and the American East Coast however never got higher than 100. Even 75 boats in the water was a véry good day for the Kriegsmarine. And all these boats had leaks, failing Schnorkels causing CO-poisoning... Even assuming that they had 75 snorkeling away happily during the Inshore Campaigns, we've got a 1 out of 6 ratio of U-Boats at See versus the available "operational" number. This indicates a drop by 50% in efficiency compared to the "Happy Times" and this DESPITE the fact that supply-networks to the U-Boats had been SHORTENED considerably (since all the major U-Boat wharfs were still in Germany, like Germania-Werft or Blohm u. Voss) since they now operated from Germany itself. So no need to transport all this material to the pens at Lorient anymore. So the bombing campaign being "ineffective"..?

These are just some raw numbers, which indicate that Logistics, Communications and above all: the Air and Sea War had either been completely surpressed or won outright by Strategic Bombing. It was not a stand-alone factor, for example the Nazi-regime was simply living in a fantasy world of Wunderwaffen while in reality they were simply incapable of even producing functional prototypes of many "Miracle Weapons" like the XXI Elektroboot. Which was solely kept from ever setting sail by heavy strategic bombing, but enough on this matter.

Keep up the good work, always admire this channel, and your attempts to present a "3-D view" of the conflict, rather than the usual bipolar stuff or "Turning Points"... G*d I hate those "Turning Points" lol. Strategic Bombing ironically is the exact opposite of "Turning Points", slowly and gradually making your opponent impotent by the use of Airpower alone.

Regards,
Thomas