As the fronts are closing in on Germany, so too are the skies. We have a special video covering Allied Flying Aces, check it out here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/odCAbMJ9sp-znok.html

Ever notice how people who say, "It must be held/taken at all costs" never have to pay any of the actual costs?

“If you own a globe, you can see thats pretty optimistic” 15:52 may well be one of my favourites lines of the series

Woah, when did the American fleet become so large? I seems just like last year they only had a single carrier operational at times, and now Mitscher has 12?!

Leningrad really deserved the title of Hero City. Almost 3 years of absolute hell from German bombardment and starvation. I also love how you never forget to add the smiling to Albert Kesselring's name lol

Another side note this week on January 29 1944 is that the US Navy battleship *USS Missouri* (BB-63) is launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City in the United States, sponsored by Mary Margaret Truman, daughter of Senator Harry Truman. She is noteworthy as the last battleship to be commissioned by the United States and would have a long and illustrious career, participating in a few conflicts after the war, such as the Korean War and the Gulf War. It is now currently a museum ship based at Pearl Harbor at Hawaii.

Shout-out to my mom, born on February 4th, 1943, in Manchester UK. 80 years old today. Her parents both worked at the Fairey Aviation plant in Manchester during the war, coming to Canada in 1947.

17:45 My wife's grandfather was a captain in the 9th Panzer Division, part of the 6th Army, when it tried to hold the Nikopol bridgehead. He died during a commando action in the confusion of 12 February 1944 near Apostolovolo. His body was never found. My wife's family still has the letter of condolence from General Erwin Jollasse to my wife's grandmother, in which he praises the Captain's bravery and virtue. His promotion to major was imminent....

Among the ships in Mitscher's giant task force 58 is a small Benson class destroyer USS Meade. Among those men on her is my great uncle Bob Aukerman who is a gunner's mate. During the Tarawa campaign he participated in the sinking of Japanese Submarine I-35. Meade would have a mostly unexciting career after the Marshall's mostly being in escort or bombardment roles, but the GI bill Bob got from the war enabled him to go to Stanford college where he introduced my grandmother to my grandfather.

The good news, you are receiving 150 replacement planes. The bad news, partial assembly required...

Surreal to see the front lines moving closer and closer to the Baltics. In Latvia we had multiple ghettos, one of them established in part of a fortress constructed during the imperial times. My great grandmother recalled of stories of German soldiers coming everyday, asking for eggs, milk and then leaving.

I worked for a guy who had been part of Darby's Rangers, the group in Anzio who were so badly mauled. Earlier he had been hit by shrapnel and was in the hospital while the Anzio invasion occurred. He wanted me to try and find other men from the Rangers but given his age and the events of this week, he was likely the last one.

A rather unusual event that happened this week on January 30 1944 is that warplanes from the escort carrier USS Card will have a somewhat bizarre encounter with an unidentified ship that refused to respond to challenges and had made erratic changes in course. It tried to even fire on the ship by having an aircraft dropping two bombs off the ship’s bow, to no avail. The unidentified ship was later only recognised as the Canadian merchant cruiser HMCS Prince Henry when the escorting destroyer USS Livermore came close aboard and made direct contact with the ship. The reason for the poor communications was likely due to poor weather and rough seas in the mid-Alantic.

when i was 12 i tryed walking up to monte cassino from the town i gave up after five hours when i was only a 1/3rd of the way up and got the bus to the top, i cryed when i saw the polish cematery, what was a british 12 year old doing alone, it was 79 and kids were free to be kids plus it was my mums home town-ish she gave me some money and told me not to pick up anything from the mountain and not to go into any caves as there were still some booby traps and that a couple of boys had been blowen up the year before, did not go into any cave but i did find the top of a spent german landmine which i brought back to blighty and still have

Man I remember when Barbarossa and its really hard to believe that its already 1944 and after all this time the Leningrad siege was finally lifted and stuff like that. Helps you really understand how long it really was

Worked for several years quite a while ago in Naples. Made trips to Rome and elsewhere EVERY weekend (am a closet history freak... what can I say). Monte Cassino is something...

Another great episode. What a brilliant idea it was to cover the war day by day . I love the way Indy delivers each episode. Thanks to you all .

The Canadians are also in action again this week along the Adriatic front. On January 30th, the 1st Canadian Division begins attacks along the Villa Grande - Tollo Road. These attacks are meant to keep the pressure up on the Germans to reduce their ability to move troops to the Anzio sector and to probe their defences along the Adriatic front. The attack begins at 4:00 in the afternoon, spearheaded by 2 companies of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, supported by the Calgary Tanks. The Hasty P's advance to within 200 yards of their objective, but come under heavy fire from the 1st Battalion, German 4th Parachute Regiment. They hold their position, but make another attack on the 31st supported by artillery. Again they come under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, but four of the Calgaries' tanks manage to break through the smoke to catch the Germans with their heads down, "inflicting considerable casualties and knocking out three 75-millimetre antitank guns". Despite this the Canadians take heavy casualties and have to pull back. While the Canadians gain little ground, they keep the pressure on the Germans who despite the need to reinforce at Anzio, “did not feel free to withdraw from the Adriatic front the brilliant fighters of the 1st Parachute Division”.

USA in the Pacific: Vaoooom!! Allies in Italy: What the F is going on in that monastery? Germans in Italy: Haha, the Allies think we've got a monk for a mole. Russians: Vaooom! Germans in Russia: What the F is that Austrian corporal doing? Damn, it's like 1941 again! Me: Are you going to do some episodes or specials on the D-day training? Your last promo episode for D-day, with Indy and Sparty near Itter Castle, inspired me to find radio coverage of the big event to listen too for myself. I found about 12 hours worth on KZfaq and listen to a little each night after everyone else is in bed so I don't get interrupted. It's really awesome! I think the hardest thing is to remember that I can turn it off without missing anything. My brain likes to believe it's live coverage!

It’s sad, but the fog of war. I’ve told this story a hundred times here. My grand uncle was there. Fought from West Africa up through Italy to France.

I find it interesting that you haven't mentioned anthing about Finland yet. I know nothing has happened there, but a mention about Germany losing ground and how the Finns feel about that, would've been interesting. Looking forward to you commenting on the vyborg-petrodzavosk offensive in summer of 1944.

TIK Battlestorm has been doing an in-depth study of the Korsun pocket. One thing he pointed out was that von Manstein, by moving the 24th Panzer north without permission to do so, actually imperiled the entire southern region of the front (which was on the point of collapse). The absence of the 24th Panzers in this region at this critical time probably helped Malinovsky's attack succeed. So this is one case where Hitler's intervention made sense.

Waiting with great patience for the Soviet Hammer to fall upon Finland. Finland had quite a long history of trying to carve out a Nation from the Civil War of 1917, to the Russo-Finn war of 1939-40, The Continuation war of 41-44, and the last war the Lapland War of 1944-45. The Germans their erstwhile and loyal allies,did not expect to get out of Lapland with their lives ,following the Soviets pursuit of them out of Finland, though the Finns, dogged them feigning attacks, but let them slip through Lapland into Norway. Always liked that story. and they left signs telling them how appreciative they were in helping them against the Soviets.Indy should do a story on it also.

Thanks for bigging up Woody's channel (WW2TV), Indy. For anybody who hasn't heard of it, where have you been? It's a truly unique show that offers livestream presentations from authors and general experts, some you'll have heard of and some you won't. Much of it challenges traditional narratives and the chat is something to behold as it has includes many with considerable expertise, frequently able to add to, correct or clarify something from the presentation. There is simply a huge amount of stuff there that you simply will not find anywhere else.

One thing I love about the series is that gives us living in the 21st century, a sense of how long the war actually lasted.

1st British Division and 1st US Armored Division in Anzio (29 January - 1 February 1944) , part 1 At 2300 hours, the Irish and Scots Guards advanced behind a ferocious creeping barrage. The aim was to keep the enemy’s heads down long enough for the infantry to pounce on them unchallenged. A mixture of the dark, smoke and battlefield debris, however, combined to slow the two battalions and they fell quickly behind the protective wall. The attack covered half a mile before the Germans illuminated the battlefield with flares and Very lights. Small groups of Guardsmen could be seen scuttling along in the slowly falling light, to be cut down by German machine gunners. An NCO shouted an order whilst silhouetted by burning scrub and he too was poleaxed. The battalions had walked into a killing bowl. Mesmeric tracers hissed, supply vehicles exploded turning their drivers into charred mummies, shells burst spraying deadly fragments into soft bodies and the wounded screamed. The platoons made an attempt to reach the enemy that were firing from all around them, but the attack quickly became fragmented. The officers tried to bring order to the chaos, but often became casualties themselves whilst leading their men in the face of the German guns. The two commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel C.A. Montagu-Douglas-Scott of the Irish Guards and Lieutenant Colonel David Wedderburn of the Scots Guards, were both at Dung Farm trying to control the battle through radio links with the companies, but they had difficulty trying to work out what was happening as shells began to tear their headquarters to pieces. The two battalions staggered forward in small unit actions, firing and manoeuvring. It was a messy battle, as one Guardsman recalls: "Such a lack of information, and no cover in those vines. Shells screaming and whirring like mad, vicious witches. Sprays of fire all over the place. Shrapnel like hail. Bullets whizzing from nowhere. And on top of that the bloody rain. We were so cold. Half the soldiers disappeared - mown down, captured, or just f..ked off, everything you can imagine." Gradually the Guards managed to get close enough to their enemy to use their bayonets and grenades in vicious hand-to-hand fighting, but by midnight they only had a tenuous hold on the lateral road either side of the Via Anziate. Digging in as best they could, they managed to hold on to their positions for the rest of the night, but with dawn threatening, armoured support was required if they were not to be overwhelmed. Brigadier Alistair Murray promised tanks to the Scots Guards advising them by radio, ‘I’m going to send up our heavy friends to see what they can do. Stand by!’, but just five Shermans arrived from a weakened 46th Royal Tank Regiment, and there were none for the Irish Guards. One Irish Guardsman wrote that he had been trying to dig a shell scrape for hours to give himself a precious few inches of protection, but mortars and shells constantly interrupted his work. ‘The most frightening moment came just before dawn’, he recalls, ‘when a ruddy great Tiger tank appeared about 150 yards in front of me. We had no weapons to attack it with and so I prayed that the thing would go away and it did. It clanked across the field and disappeared. Some other poor sod had to deal with it.’ Two Tiger tanks engaged the Irish Guards and the situation was becoming critical for them, but just when they needed guidance from battalion headquarters most, radio communication was lost. Radio operator Lance Corporal G. Holwell dismantled his 18 set to try and solve the problem, laying out a plethora of fragile pieces on a ground sheet. Using the thin beam of a shaded torch which attracted fire, he reassembled them and got the radio working again just in time to receive the order to withdraw at 0615 hours. The remnants of the battalion pulled back down the railway line but Holwell was not amongst them, a shell fragment having killed him. General Penney , 1st Britsh Division commander , had to strike back at Campoleone quickly, for by dawn on 30 January the Scots Guards were firm but vulnerable around the lateral road. At 0900 the artillery threw down another bombardment and the Irish Guards, supported by a company of King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, again attacked. They pushed through a scene of devastation - smouldering vehicles, destroyed buildings, the wounded crying for help and the dead. The air was acrid with smoke and the smell of cordite. The renewed effort linked up with the Scots Guards and the five Shermans supporting them and together they clattered into the German defences. It was enough to dislodge the tired defenders who retreated back to the embankment below Campoleone Station. The British needed to maintain their momentum and so at 1500 hours 3rd Brigade leapfrogged the exhausted Guards and struck towards the embankment - 1st Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (Dukes) on the left and the 1st King’s Shropshire Light Infantry Regiment (KSLI) on the right. The men screamed and shouted at the enemy as they attacked to give themselves courage, but many fell trying to cross the open ground. Sergeant Ben Wallis recalls the moment when he attacked: "I had never been so frightened. We were all frightened, don’t believe anybody that says he wasn’t. We’d heard the fighting earlier in the day, seen the dead and dying - now it was our turn. I turned to my mate before the off and we shook hands. The order was given to advance, and we walked into bullets, mortar bombs and shells. They were waiting for us, we didn’t stand a chance. My mate, Billy, was killed by a sniper. I was shot through the shoulder and evacuated out. I was lucky as I later heard that out of our platoon - which was about 35 men - only 10 survived." After two hours the KSLI and Dukes were still short of the embankment. Exposed and vulnerable at the end of a long salient, the battalions did what they could in the growing darkness to dig in. That night 3rd Brigade continued to suffer casualties as Private David Hardy of the Dukes explains: "We were shelled and mortared throughout the hours of darkness, unable to move. I was in a shell hole with another bloke which we managed to deepen a little. Others were in far worse positions and had no real protection. The lads on our left and our right copped it that night.When one Dukes officer who was contacted on the radio by brigade headquarters and asked about their situation replied, ‘We feel like the lead in the end of a blunt pencil’, he was told not to fret because the armour would force its way through with the next drive forward. The officer was not impressed and said, ‘The bastards said that they would be here today, but I’ve seen nothing of them.’ The attacks that day would have been assisted by strong armoured support, but Harmon made no impact on the battle. Having struggled to get his tanks to the start line immediately prior to the attack on the 29th, he did not begin his advance until seven hours after the infantry. When the tanks, tank destroyers and half-tracks eventually began to move, they were again held up by the terrain and picked off by German anti-tank guns on the Vallelata Ridge directly in front of them. It was a natural tank trap. A number got stranded in irrigation ditches. General Harmon , 1st US Armored Division commander (nicknamed Old Gravel Voice) tried to help, but only succeeded in diluting his resources: "I ordered an armored wrecker to pull them out. The wrecker was ambushed by the Germans. I sent four more tanks to rescue the wrecker. Then I sent out more tanks after them. Apparently I could learn my first Anzio lesson only the hard way - and the lesson, subsequently very important, was not to send good money after bad. Because I was stubborn, I lost twenty-four tanks while trying to succour four." One by one the stranded vehicles were destroyed and evacuating crews cruelly picked off by snipers. Harmon’s attack had failed even before it had got going: "Half of me was seething and the other half was shattered. When I moved up to the front line at 8 o’clock that morning, nothing was moving and I was greeted not by rapidly moving armoured fighting vehicles, but by their smouldering wrecks and scores of dead and wounded.On hearing that Harmon had called off his attack Penney immediately radioed him and said: ‘Would you mind putting some of your tanks on to the Campoleone road so that they might help out my 3rd Brigade in the morning?’ The 1st US Armored Commander replied: ‘Show me the way!’, and that night moved 25 light tanks onto the Via Anziate to assist with the attack on Campoleone Station the following morning. Anzio - Lloyd Clark

Indy showing himself as a huge dork who would have thought the History nerd would love comics

Great video Indy, you and your staff have done an outstanding job!

A rather famous photo was taken of a dead Japanese on Namur, probably a sailor fighting as infantry. He was lying on his back in a dugout and had the barrel of his rifle pointed at his chest. He had squeezed the trigger with his foot.

Battle of Korsun, one of the many brutal episode of the eastern front...

It’s great to see Woody get a shout-out! His channel is one of the hidden gems of YT and it’s practically criminal how few people know about it.

2:30 on Rising Storm, it was exactly 300m from the observation tower at B to the fuel tanks at the last spawn at E. one of the few spots where -stolen type 96s with the scope- .30 cals could be used with the extended iron sights for sniping

It was not mentioned, and I really hope that it will be in the Day by Day updates tommorow and Next Week. But tommorow, and the 5th of February, the Battle of Admin Box in Burma will begin. That theatre is really going to start heating up in short order, with that battle being followed by the Japanese Invasion of India, and then Stillwell's continued offensive into Northern Burma. Its a really obscure theatre, so Im really hoping that it gets covered!

Hey TimeGhost team! As your coverage of the Pacific theater starts to progress into Micronesia, I was wondering if you had considered doing a special on the Japanese colonial system in the Pacific. I'd love to see you folks engage with some of the (somewhat limited) works about the experiences of native Pacific Islanders during the conflict. A couple of authors that I'm familiar with that might help would be Wakako Higuchi's work on the Japanese military colonial system and Tony Palomo's memoir of the Japanese occupation of Guam. Thanks, and keep up the great work!

Nice maps, every episode, such a treat. Most morning, my single hunk of kine bud, is a light sativa, but Saturday am is a different puff altogether!!!!! Indica is IT!

Always looking forward to posts and reading comments from fellow members, cheers to the weekend TimeGhost Army!

Love this channel’s work, thanks for the best history content on yt

Thank you very much, your animated maps and comments are just amazing!

I Love Long and Eventful Episodes like this Amazing Work Guys Thank you And Thanks to all the TimeGhost Army Funding Everything on Patreon

Best birthday present I could’ve asked for, thank you Indy and the time ghost homies🙏🏼

Never underestimate Smiling Albert Kesselring.

Awesome episode as usual!! Loving the content

Another great episode: really enjoying hearing in depth about a time of the war which is often skipped over.

Absolutely love ya work. Simply brilliant!

A great show for a late Saturday night! Thanks for this.

Hi guys!! Thanks once again for another masterpiece!! Good luck for D Day!!

Thank you for the lesson.

Thank you all for the production and distribution of this great series

Perfect as always!

Thanks!

Stellar maps and graphics! Top-notch research and presentation as well!

Love Paul. Been watching a bunch of his stuff.

Thank you Indy and everyone at World War Two channel for leading with the Pacific and giving that arena significant time this week.

Appreciate your work Indy. You're looking healthy and refreshed Sir

Brilliant Video!!!

love the comicbook references!

Could you do an episode on American shipbuilding possibly? Maybe even comparing to the Japanese (lack of) shipbuilding capabilities?

Thanks for the update on the war. I hope it ends before too long. It sounds terrible. Glad I'm in Greenland, but I appreciate the updates so I know what's going on.

We don't need a globe we can see from your maps that it was very optimistic!! Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up

Indy, I noticed that you did not button down the right side of your collar! Busted again, ha, ha, ha! 🤣 Just this week Paul at WW2TV has been examining the Canadians in WW2. Terrific programming if you want to learn a lot more about Canada's role in WW2! 🍁 Famous movie star Lee Marvin was with the 4 Marine division and a big part of the fighting in the Marshall Islands, invading 19 of the 97 separate islands as a Marine scout-sniper, inserted just at dawn to spy out the Japanese strongholds and report back to the much larger invading force just on his heels.

We're not retreating, we're advancing in the opposite direction.

"Pulling back" these days is called 'regrouping as a goodwill gesture.' (добровольная перегруппировка).

"What kind of weirdo doesn't read comic books?". Damn right Indy! 👍👍

The ending… that’s what you call foreshadowing

The picture of the monastery on the top of Monte Cassino was a sad image for me because my father fought there in WWII as an American soldier and was severely wounded from German shells. Fortunately, his leg was saved by an American doctor who had knowledge of new, almost experimental surgerical ideas of using a vein from an uninjured leg to safe his left leg. My father suffered from the injury the rest of his life but lived to 82. I mentioned that my Dad fought at Monte Cassino on another UTUBE video about the war in Ukraine, and there was an interesting response by a guy whose Dad also fought there. But his father fought on the German side! Now almost eighty years later it is somewhat ironic that once enemies are now in sympathy for the losses of the war. For some of us this battle still resonates after all this time.

Love the Eastern Front coverage, thank you!

In the Netherlands, DC/Marvel comics seemed to have been relatively rare. All I ever saw were Donald Duck, Suske and Wiske, and various kid's comics. We knew big DC/Marvel characters from cartoons and games and merch, but the only actual comic I ever laid my eyes on was Marvel Graphic Novel Issue #8 - Super Boxers.

15:57 Indy with the John Pinette impression "nay, nay, nay!" 🤣

This would be a good time to watch the 1968 movie "Anzio", by Edward Dmytryk and Duilio Coletti. The film centers on a group of soldiers during the Anzio landings, particularly the battles of Cisterna going on this week (the one with 99% casualty rate). Period covered: Late January-Early February 1944 IMBD grade: 6.0/10

The way our host ends his phone call is the way I feel like ending every phone call I've ever had in my entire life.

I wonder how Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria feel at this point in the war.

Liked the beginning..... Everyone has looked at or read a comic book in there lives!! Me I am a Die hard DC fan! I know a few fact's about them during the 1940's!! Superman couldn't be drafted because of eye problems, Diana was a secretary they used the flash to carry messages between the great leaders, Aquaman was pretty much a footstool by making all the sea creatures defuse underwater mines giving intel on the German and Japanese ships and Batman used machine guns against German and Japanese soldiers! Operation Flintlock was an overwhelming success because Pete Mitchiner and Ray Spruance thought a lot alike! They would both come up with a plan and let there subordinates come up with the details! What airgroups would hit what islands and the ground troops on what artillery and other support they would need! That's what will make them a great success in the up and coming in later campaigns!!!

Nice foreshadowing end.

I hope that Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin gets mentioned in the coming weeks, probably the most interesting and most educated german general who played a big part in kesselring agreeing to not occupy the monte cassino monastery... thanks Freyberg!

I’m going to start watching this more again

Part of the problem for Japanese air power was the massive increase in USN AA capabilities. The USN mounted thousands of 40mm Bofors, 20mm Oerlikon as well as the best AA weapon of the war, the 5"38- add to that the proximity fuse, which made conventional air attacks on USN surface forces near suicide. The throw-weight of USN ships in 1944 had increased ELEVEN times from what they did in 1942. This made the eventual "Special Attack Squadrons" (Kamikaze) the only weapon that the Japanese had at their disposal.

It's such a pity the playlists are not kept up to date. I'm not going to scour youtube myself for all the episodes I missed - I love you, but not that much ;)

Now I really see where the "Mad Man Hitler" People come from. He acts just like Stalin in 1941 micromanging everything... Also its Awesome to see that after 5 Years you are still stepping up the qualtity!

Fantastic ending

And in Anzio, Lieutenant Eric Fletcher Waters longs for his 5 month's old son. Will he ever see him again?

There is no retreat✊ Only advancing in a different direction

Oh, *THAT* Namur. I thought it was funny there was so much going on in Belgium.

Hey sir , you mention around 10 aircraft carrier and 700 plane of USA in this video . Please make a video on US Navy ship production , coz this is so rapid growth

It's quite funny that every time the Americans are about to advance through the central Pacific, the Japanese decide to strip their carriers of planes and pilots barely days before that and send them to Rabaul. I suppose that the result wouldn't had been different, but they probably would have had a better chance fighting their decisive carrier battle in November 1943 instead of June 1944.

Darn, I missed the premiere! I had to thaw my kitchen pipes. It was -20 deg. F last night!!

I'm curious as to why the forces landed at Anzio weren't primarily attacking to the south(east)to flank Monte Casino and the Gustav Line. Even if the Anzio forces managed to capture Rome, they could never hope to hold it unless the main force penetrated the Gustav line and joined up with them.

can't wait for the series to progress to the part which steel division 2 covers

Not One Step Back!

On Feb. 1, 1944 battleships USS Washington and USS Indiana collided while maneuvering at night resulting to severe damage to both ships and some loss of life.

The interesting thing about the BAR is that literally every other nation who used it made a better version. Infact it could be easily argued that the M1918A2 was the worst mass produced version of the bar used by anyone anywhere

Very intersting

11:18 18th army has combat strength of 1 division. Wow!

As of Feb 1, 1944 the Germans had 1,508,305 deaths on the Eastern Front and approximately 4,500,000 wounded. In February the will have an additional 68,330 deaths and approximately 200,000 wounded.

The cold open was quite timely.

To think... the Saracens were there at Monte Cassino back in antiquity and then made an appearance hundreds of years later in the movie The Warriors.

the biggest problem with Monte Casino was, it was such the perfect target. Every Arty Squad ever, wants a target like that..should have a bullseye on it, for maps. ..it's like a giant beer can on a post...sure beats shooting defalading guess-timations.

I can not imagine how frustrating it should be for the common German soldier to get sent to somewhere just to turn back and doing nothing but just struggling through mud. It must be very good for the morale.

This week, soldiers from the 3rd DIA of the French Expeditionary Corps counter-attacked on Colle Belvedere (hill 862) and Colle Abate (hill 915) and captured the position again by the 4th of February. Details of the battle bellow:

Will there be a special on Audie Murphie? I think that he's a very interesting person, especially for PTSD recognition

Feb 2, 1943 the Germans surrender at Stalingrad. It seems they've never really gotten fully organized and refitted since then and have been short handed and on the back foot for an entire year. Even their offenses (Kursk for example) depended on all of the stars aligning to have a chance at being a close run local success.