Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

[Glassfan]

Also...if anyone has any other history podcasts that are good in their opinion, please recommend them to me as I am always looking for good pod-casts to listen to.

On iTunes:

History of Rome by Mike Duncan - one of the best, 90+ episodes, nice sense of humor.

12 Byzantine Emporers by Lars Brownworth - extremely interesting.

Matt's Today in History - a shorter daily topical podcast.

 

[DivljaJagoda]

On iTunes:

History of Rome by Mike Duncan - one of the best, 90+ episodes, nice sense of humor.

12 Byzantine Emporers by Lars Brownworth - extremely interesting.

Matt's Today in History - a shorter daily topical podcast.

Awesome thanks! I will check out the History of Rome one for sure and will look at the other one later. (less interest in byzantine empire)

 

[Smellincoffee]

I've listened to and enjoyed his Punic Wars series, as well as the episode on the Apache.

 

[BuckyRea]

Thanks a lot for this mention. I've not seen it before, being a technology knucklehead. On a quick sampling, this looks like a fun resource to turn to to punch up my trivia knowledge.

 

[Lord Baal]

Although, I think discussion is more than warranted, because by the same token since Second World War history "theory", has been mass produced, it has been in my opinion simplified for public consumption. So if someone wants to approach the Second World War from an academic standpoint, points to them. In a better world, it might even foster public awareness of actual history, instead of "Durr, Germans are evil, they invade small countries and kill Jewish people, durr George Washington fought the British with a giant panzer tank and had grenades for hands."

George Washington had a giant panzer tank and grenades for hands? Now that's a podcast I'd listen to!

Lord Baal, you seem to believe that the war in Yugoslavia with the Germans was essentially over with their initial invasion on April 6, of 1941, when in reality it wasn't. True, Yugoslavia was initially invaded because it was on the road to Greece and Greece was seen to have been the more troublesome of the two (Yugoslavia also not being trusted however by Hitler, with the recent coup).

I never said anything of the sort. I am well-aware that operations in Yugoslavia continued until the Germans left. As occured in every single occupied nation, including Austria. Even Germany, where there was still some underground resistance to Nazism, particularly from what was left of the German communist movement. My objection is to your claims about the size of the operations and the effect they had on the outcome of the war.

The Balkans in entirety were important for the Germans because this is where they acquired "50 percent of their oil, all of their chrome, 60 percent of their bauxite, 24 percent of their antimony and 21 percent of their copper." (cited from German Anti-Guerilla Operations in the Balkans).

That should read "Southeastern Europe" rather than "the Balkans," considering that most German oil came from Romania and Hungary, but is essentially correct. I don't see how this even remotely refutes anything I said.

In terms of the battle numbers, I don't have my source on the exact number of units deployed in operation Weiss, which was the fourth major offensive that the Germans launched against the Partisans in Yugoslavia but I have that they deployed "7 SS Prinz Eugene Division, the 369 Legionary Teuffel Division and the 714 German Division." (Book called Tito, by Dedijer). Not to mention, that in this battle the Germans got the local Serb Cetniks to fight the Partisans.

The Cetniks were anti-German partisans. Don't make the mistake of assuming that because Tito emerged as the strongest of the partisan leaders at the end of the war that he was the only partisan leader who gave the Germans trouble. The Cetniks were considerably more effective than Tito's group in 1941-42, but due to the anti-royalist nature of most non-Serbian Yugoslav nationalists at this time - and many Serbs as well - they found it difficult to gain popular support, whereas the communist and nationalist groups found great support. And, if you'll reread my earlier statements, you'll note that I flat-out state that the different partisan groups spent as much time fighting each other as fighting the Germans. That hardly means that one group or the other was on the same side as the Germans. The only paramilitary group that fought alongside the Germans was the ustache, which the Cetniks, a mostly Serbian group, fought far more vehemently than they ever did the communists.

In the fifth anti-Partisan offensive the Germans used 12 divisions of about 100,000 total units (Book by Neil Barnett). In total, the Germans launched seven offensives which diverted troops from their fronts to combat the Partisans. Weiss, occured during the German siege of Stalingrad and the fifth offensive occured in May of 1943.

Too bad that the Germans had lost the war before Stalingrad then, hey? So the operations had absolutely no effect on the actual outcome of the war? Not to mention that a good number of those troops were actually engaged in operations related to the Holocaust. Do those books mention that Serbia was the first nation in Europe to successfully be rid of Jews by the Germans? Serbian Jewry was utterly wiped out by the SS in 1943. According to Himmler himself, "Serbia is the first nation in Europe where the Final Solution to the Jewish Question has been successfully implemented."

You say that supplies were more the issue than numbers. So the same argument can be made against you about all these numbers that the Germans continually poured into an area that they captured within twelve days after their initial invasion in 1941. Did they not require supplies themselves that could have been a huge benefit to the Russians?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you referring to Operation: Barbarossa, and mean 'the Russian Front' rather than "the Russians?" Because if so, then I don't see what possible effect the Yugoslav comflict had on that operation. Contrary to popular, erroneous belief, operations in Yugoslavia and Greece didn't slow down Barbarossa. They actually assisted it, since the Germans were able to allocate resources used in the Balkans to Barbarossa which had previously been stationed elsewhere in the Reich.

P.S. I said that they disrupted the North-South lines because I got such information from a scholar on the issue in the book Tito, Mihailovic, and the Allies 1941- 1945 by Walter Roberts. Saying that my source doesn't know what he's talking about seems kind of childish.

Either your source doesn't knwo what he's talking about or you are misinterpreting them. There is literally zero possibility that Yugoslav operations even remotely effected the situation in North Africa. There were no supply lines running through the country for the partisans to cut. Even supplies sent to German and Italian forces in Greece went via Bulgaria and Albania, not Yugoslavia.