This has been a fundraising week here at TimeGhost as we continue to grapple with the constantly shifting monetization and age restriction policies of KZfaq. We know you don't want us to sanitize or self-censor our coverage of the war, and thankfully we don't have to because of all of you in the TimeGhost Army: www.patreon.com/join/timeghosthistory

I can't believe we are just over a week away from Market Garden. Time really does fly by. One thing never changes though:Smiling Albert Kesselring will never stop smiling lol

16:41 there it is, the long anticipated attack on Calais Just as the Germans predicted Only 2 months late and from the opposite direction

Over 4 years later... Now it's the Germans stuck in Dunkirk

Getting real strong vibes that the Cold War kicked off in earnest in 1944.

4:24 Bulgaria: You must be wondering how I ended up in this situation.

The puns, the puns.... Ohhh the humanity... The chills are multiplyin'....

The speed with which France and Belgium are liberated after the long slog in Normandy, is stunning.

I'd just finished school when this war began and now I'm buying a house and potentially getting engaged, wild Edit: ye I'm really old edit edit: obviously not really

The level of colapse of the Germans pretty much everywhere is mind blowing, however the wildest part is knowing that even with all the disasters suffered by the axis the war in Europe still has six more months to go.

It's bad news when they say the story about your city will be covered in more detail in War Against Humanity.

Ironically, Bulgaria will be the only Axis minor that gains and keeps territory after the war.

Ian Kershaw's "The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45" is a great book for explaining why Germany didn't surrrender and fought until the very end.

16:40 that's the cleanest pronunciation of Ghent i've ever heard by a non-dutch speaker

Kinda crazy to see the Polish divisions in all 3 European fronts

Just one day away from Luxembourg City being liberated! Sorry, I couldn't attend the stream like I always did. Keep up the great work! I can't wait until tomorrow! Or I guess, next week. YES! You mentioned us again!

Churchill is "hopelessly devoted to Greece/Grease" hahahahahah. Its the one that he wants, do do do, indeed oh yes indeed. And greased lightning. Love the easter egg! John Travolta would be proud!!!

Don’t worry guys. I’m sure Germany and Hungary alone can still turn things around!

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” ― Leon Trotsky

Fantastic as per usual. As a Belgian I do have to ask: Please give the Battle of the Schelde it's fair due. I feel it's a very overlooked battle that is only too vaguely remembered as a sideshow to the liberation of the rest of Belgium.

Imagine an alternate universe where Bulgaria manages to defeat every country and becomes the most powerful nation in the world

I have worked in Mindenao, Cebu, and Luzon on the Philippines. Wonderful people. Very friendly and inviting. My Dad worked with someone who survived the Bataan death march. He never talked much about it.

This is the best ww2 channel on KZfaq, I love these weekly summaries

Dear Ww2 team. Attention! You are entering a minefield named "greek civil war". Nomatterwhat you will say, you will be attacked by all sides.

Watching this while on a train passing through Lyon and besançon is a nice experience

So I will admit that I haven't been keeping up to date with the week-to-week episodes. I was here when it started years ago, and then poke my head up when an interesting event occurs (Invasion of France, Barborossa, North Africa, Sicily etc). In this most recent bout, I started watching again on the D-Day episode, and have been binging every episode since, catching up a few hours ago, just in time for this week. Can't wait for the next few weeks!

Greating from Spain! I used to pay little atention to the east front in WWII. Since I studied in Warsaw and tripped through the Balkans by train, I feel like eastern europe is not that far away. Thank you for these videos!

For the Germans, the rapidity of the Soviet advance must have been chilling right to the bone.

Great video as always, Indie, and I loved the Grease musical references at the beginning!

Oh god that opening dad joke was a warcrime all by itself.

As a Bulgarian, I can proudly say: this is how we roll!

Can’t wait to watch your videos covering the Battle of Athens and the December events!

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." - Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps)

Thanks for all the great work, I look forward to each new episode.

The educational content that you guys provide is so important.

Hi Indy Another interesting week. As you said last two week completetly changed war. Thanks for the episode

Intro: Grease! An American musical comedy romance production that was made into a movie in 1978, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. (It was the first Broadway show I attended in 1976 at age 12. It held the record for the longest run on Broadway at the time).

This week in French news. The 4th, in the GPRF, all commissars take the title of Ministers and with some changes. (All Details in response) The 6th, a French government in exile is proclaimed in Belfort, led by Fernand de Brinon, with Darnand at the Interior, Luchaire at the Information, Bridoux for the prisoner of war and Déat to Labor. This delegation leaves the next day for Sigmaringen. Pétain arrives the 8th but doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. There is about a thousand of French there holding a government in exile with flags, radios, journals, and stamps. The milice is staying in the concentration camp of the Stuthof (Alsace, type II) for some day before going to Germany [The main camp, and the minor camps in Alsace, is being emptied at the same time since the 4th , and most prisoners are sent to Dachau. All the auxiliary camps in Germany are still up and running]. The same day the GPRF asks Eisenhower to use French troops for the invasion and occupation of Germany. The 9th, the first government of De Gaulle is proclaimed, a large reorganization is done to be representative of all political movements. However, the right is mostly excluded replaced by individual from the Resistance or Christian democrats. Jules Jeanneney (president of the Senate) is made Minister of State. (Details in response)

Thanks for bringing back the phone work. The pop song references were hilarious. (And apparently above the heads of many!)

I can’t wait to hear more about the Philippines

Churchill just casually siding with the Nazis before the war is over, very classy altogether. "Britannia waives the rules"

Always knew my birthday was on a special day throughout history. Great show, keep this info rolling. Better than any mainstream cable show.

Rimini was eventually occupied by units of the Greek 3rd Light Brigate commanded by col. Thrasibulos Tsakalotos

In the Netherlands, 5 September was 'Dolle Dinsdag' (Mad Tuesday). Rumors of the liberation of Breda or sometimes cities even further North led to a celebration of the oncoming liberation and panic among the Germans and collaborators.

I just found your channel, and I realized you have 1 about ww1, and the interwar period, I have so much to watch, keep your work going good

Another great episode from your team. Really loved the opening segment.

Churchill's handling of the Greece issues is classic Churchill. He was a dedicated monarchist and wanted to see the monarchies of Greece and Albania, etc, maintained or restored. He also was firmly rooted in the 19th century and wanted Britain to play the game of kingmaker on the European continent that they had played for a couple of centuries, balancing power between various countries, as if Britain was still the world-dominating superpower of c.1890s. In his history of WW2 Churchill goes on and on and on about how unreasonable it was of the US to not support sending a "few" British divisions to invade Greece and/or the Balkans. The provision of landing craft was a key bottleneck. This began prior to D-Day or the invasion of southern France. The US knew, of course, that there was no way to fight on a small scale there, the Germans would far outnumber any force the Brits could spare. They also knew Churchill would keep enlarging his demands for resources to fight up into all of the Balkans - to be able to play kingmaker post-war. (He also ignored the fact fighting in the mountainous Balkans would be slow, very slow, and bloody, at least as bad as Italy.) The US didn't want to support these British goals, and they were unrealistic anyway. Yes, Churchill was right about not wanting that part of Europe to be taken over by Communists but the reality was that that was basically impossible to prevent.

do not forget Churchills deal with Stalin trading Poland for Greece

Great Video Indy!!! You never disappoint!!🙂👍

And with this both my late grandpas could finally return to home and resume they're lives. After two wars it was finally over for them.

Funny to no one ever mention this little episode with Churchill directly supporting Germans in Greece (just one of many)

A new army On the same day that Antwerp was captured by the 11th British Armoured Division , 4th September , the gap between 15th German Army and 7th German Army had widened to no less than one hundred kilometres. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Hitler decided to recall an old warhorse, 69-year old Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, to take over as OB West, correctly judging that holding two jobs (OB West as well commanding Heeresgruppe B ) was too much even for Model, who could now concentrate on the latter. Von Rundstedt was to take over on the following day. The fall of Antwerp on 4 September was a real shock to German commanders and OKW. In fact after the war General von Zangen, in charge of the 15th German Army which was outflanked and pushed into Beskens at Channel Coast , confessed that when retreating from the Seine he ‘had no fear that Antwerp would be taken since it was far behind the front line (…) When I heard on 4 September that it had been captured it came as a stunning surprise.’ Early that morning Model had ordered a security screen to be set up behind the Albert Canal and the 15th Army to pull back to a line from Gent to Brussels and Namur. The fall of Antwerp meant that the 15th Army was now cut off and might be lost for good. He sent a cry for help to Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg requesting fresh divisions. Unless he received five Panzer and ten infantry divisions the door to the Reich would stand wide open, he suggested. His telegram jolted the German High Command into action. Later that day OKW was in desperation when they realised Montygomery's swift advance , not only secured second biggest port in Europe but also isolated 15th Army at Channel coast and outflanked neglected and empty German defenes at West Wall. Both OKW and Hitler realised that 88th German Corps (General Hans Wolfgang Reinhard) with its single division plus a few battalions could never plug the gap on its own. They would have to put in more troops, in fact a whole new army. But where to find one? That afternoon a phone call went out to Generaloberst Kurt Student, Oberbefehlshaber der Fallschirmtruppen in Berlin-Wannsee. He was ordered to form a defence behind the Albert Canal from Antwerp to Maastricht with a new army, to be called 1st German Parachute Army. A bridgehead at Hasselt was to be maintained in order to allow units of the 15. Army to fall back. For the same reason the Woensdrecht area was to be defended. The new army was to come under German Army Group B. Flak support was to be provided by the 18. Flakbrigade which was on the run from France plus thirty heavy and ten mixed Flak batteries from Luftgaue VI and XI. The idea was an extension of the West Wall from Aachen along the Albert Canal to Antwerp. This stretch was called the Brabantstellung. This now became Student’s responsibility and his first reaction was "Parachute Army ? Well , a bombastic name for a force that does not exist yet!" So called Parachute Army was assigned with only 25 tanks and its front was almost 150 miles long in first week of September 1944. Student is one of the more famous German generals and much has already been written of his exploits, such as the airborne operations in May 1940 and the seizure of Crete in May 1941. What is less well-known is that among his peers in the higher echelons of the Wehrmacht, Student was not without his detractors. The main reason for this seems to be some kind of speech defect. His opponents accused him of being dim-witted and occasionally Goering was asked if he had an idiot running the Fallschirmjäger. Still, what mattered to Hitler and Goering was that while Student may have looked slow and certainly was not a military genius, he was known to be a ‘Steher’, a tough commander in defence, which was what they needed at this stage of the war. In addition 88th Corps, Student was assigned an impressive array of troops, at least on paper. Still, one of the divisions was a static one (719th Infantry Division), one was composed of convalescents (176th Division zur besondere Verwendung) and the paratroop units were spread all over Germany and would need a few days to reach the battlefield. So time was not on his side. But he was in for a pleasant surprise.

Fantastic as per usual... .thank you for sharing

This is a brilliant well-informed series, thankyou..my father landed on Gold beach on D+1 at 18 years old and fought through Caen and Falaise, I served in The Royal Marines and my 12 year old son has just joined The Royal Air Force Air Cadets and loves the history of the 2nd World War and War gaming..thanks again, we appreciate these knowledgeable programmes..

The new graphics are eye-catching and exciting!

The more details I read and hear about the supply situation, the more I shake my head at the missed opportunity to clear the Scheldt. Monty gets more blame than he deserves for the things that went wrong during Market Garden, but he deserves the flak he gets for the Antwerp approaches. When Admiral Ramsay AND Admiral Cunningham are both telling you that you need to do something, it's because you need to do it. I can maybe imagine ONE of them being wrong about something, but not both of them at the same time.

Excellent Video, as always :)

That introduction was gold! Bravo 👏🏻😂

I wish I would have found this project earlier. This is awesome. =)

Thanks! keep up the great work!

nice pun during the intro, towards -Greece- - I mean: Grease

I wonder if the western Allies have a clever plan ready to cross the Rhine and liberate the Netherlands in one go before the winter starts.

Brilliant narration as always 👍😀

Shout out to the editor here. Last few months have been an steady increase in quality

Thanks for the episode! The figure of 350.000 for the Army Group E includes the XXI Mountain Corps which is already deployed in Albania (297th ID) and Montenegro (181st ID) by the time the great trek north begins. During October, the HQ of the XXII Mountain Corps moved to Skopje, while a part of the corps ("Gruppe Steyrer") moved into Albania. The total number of German soldiers on all Aegean islands short before the retreat began was 57,550 plus 13,850 foreigners (largely Italian HiWis). Of these, 34,250 (+6,500 foreigners) were deployed on Crete. As for the Allies' apparent lack of interest in the evacuation to the mainland, FM von Weichs wrote in his diary: "Do they wish to build us a golden bridge in this way?"

Really awful what Churchill did letting the German troops escape from the Greek islands.

Love this channel! Thanks WW2!

Quote from Alan Brooke (CIGS) on Churchill's Greece: "[Churchill] seems to be still very much of the opinion that we might be justified in dropping a parachute brigade (about 2 000 - 3 000 strong) near Athens with some 150 000 Germans still in Greece! I had to convince him that such a plan was out of the question and that the dropping of this party was dependent on the Germans evacuating Greece or being prepared to surrender." Alanbrooke War Diaries, 5th September 1944

i think i know the next topic. A combined operation to Conquer some bridges in the Netherlands all the way up to the city of Arnhem which was a bridge to far afterwards. the name of the operation was Market (airborne part) and garden ( assault by ground forces)

19:20 was the moment I realised that I actually was there for a week or two on vacation. It is a stragen feeling when places you actually been to appear in this series.

Great albeit confusing episode with all those players changing sides.

the liberation of Greece and Yugoslavia is little known by many of us so the continuing content is much appreciated, Just watched Sparty's exhaustive episode on the 2 countries + Albania

Thank you.

At 20:00 the Pacific War Map is inadequate in that it shows too many islands (such as Truk, the Carolines, Nauru, and some of the Marshalls) as being under Allied control, whereas they remained in the Japanese Empire until the end of the war.

“On the other hand gentlemen, what if we gave a war and everybody came?” The Far Side

There is now so much happening in the war each week one can’t possibly go into any further detail without making the episode more than thirty minutes long

The speed of liberation (or just more occupation) in the Balkans really is something. How did the logistics of turning the whole army around to fight your former ally play out? How did Soviet troops react to now working with soldiers who had been trained to kill them and spent years doing so already? Was this move in any way popular with the average civilian?

5:55 '* units not to scale' xD Someone was having fun.

Awesome episode

A Full Life , Memoirs of General Sir Brian Horrocks (part three) At the time ,right the day we entred Antwerp , next stop Albert Canal seemed the obvious objective, but I realise now that it was a serious mistake. My excuse is that my eyes were fixed entirely on the Rhine, and everything else seemed of subsidiary importance. It never entered my head that the Scheldt would be mined, and that we should not be able to use Antwerp port until the channel had been swept and the Germans cleared from the coastline on either side. Nor did I realise that the Germans would be able to evacuate a large number of the troops trapped in the coastal areas across the mouth of the Scheldt estuary from Breskeris to Flushing. Napoleon would no doubt have realised these things, but Horrocks didn't. His mind was fixed on the Rhine. I am not suggesting that with one overextended and out of supply armoured division I could have cleared both banks of the Scheldt estuary, but I believe that I could have seriously impeded, if not stopped altogether, the evacuation of the German 15th Army. As it was, the German General Schwabe succeeded in evacuating some 65,000 men belonging to eight shattered German divisions, using this route. If I had ordered Roberts, not to liberate Antwerp, but to by-pass the town on the east, cross the Albert Canal and advance only fifteen miles north-west towards Woensdrecht, we should have blocked the Beveland isthmus and cut one of the main German escape route. Roberts was ordered to, and did in fact, secure a bridgehead over the Albert Canal, but was subsequently forced to withdraw in face of increasing German resistance. He had not sufficient troops to seize the docks, clear the town and occupy the bridgehead. With the capture of Brussels and Antwerp 30th Corps was ordered to halt. The reason given was that we had out-rim our administrative resources. No port had yet been opened anywhere. The first, Dieppe, did not come into operation until 7th September, and then only for a trickle of supplies. It did not build up to the figure of 6,000 tons a day until the end of September, We were still receiving all our supplies from the beach-head some 300 miles away, and we were told that supplies, particularly of petrol, were running short. This was a tragedy because, as we now know, on the next day, 4th September, the only troops available to bar our passage northwards consisted of one German division, the 719th, composed mainly of elderly gentlemen who hitherto had been guarding the north coast of Holland and had never heard a shot fired in anger, plus one battalion of Dutch SS and a few Luftwaffe detachments. This meagre force was strung out on a fifty-mile front along the canal. To my mind 4th September was the key date in the battle for the Rhine. Had we been able to advance that day we could have smashed through this screen and advanced northwards with little or nothing to stop us. We might even have succeeded in bouncing a crossing over the Rhine. But we halted, and even by that same evening the situation was worsening. A General Chill, with his 85th German Division, had reached Turnhout in Holland on his way back to Germany to refit. On hearing that Brussels had fallen, and without any orders, he turned round and moved his division down to the line of the Albert Canal. He also placed teams of officers and NCO.s on all the roads to round up the German stragglers and reorganise them into efficient fighting units. By 6th September he had succeeded in collecting quite a formidable force. He must have been a man of great initiative. But worse still, General Student's Parachute Army, headed by the 6th Parachute Regiment, commanded by the redoubtable Van der Heydte, was being rushed down from Germany to bar our progress. So from 6th September onwards the German forces on the Albert Canal increased rapidly. It is easy to be wise after the event, and I was only a corps commander with no overall responsibility;; but I believe that if we had taken the chance and carried straight on with our advance instead of halting in Brussels the whole course of die war in Europe might have been changed. On 3rd September we still had 100 miles of petrol per vehicle, and one further day's supply within reach, so we were not destitute. But there would have been a considerable risk in advancing farther north with only these supplies and a lengthening line of communication behind us. When we were allowed to advance on 7th September, the situation had worsened drastically. We were no longer sweeping up through the coastal plain; we were fighting hard again. Every day fresh German formations appeared against us, and within three days, instead of being on a fifty-mile front, which is excellent when in pursuit, the Corps was concentrated on a five-mile front engaged in a tough battle. The Guards Armoured Division took four days to advance over the next ten miles up to the Meuse-Escaut Canal where the Irish Guards by a most successful coup de main captured a small bridgehead, which was at once named " Joe's Bridge " after Lieut.-Colonel Joe Vandcleur, O.C. their 3rd Battalion. This was very different from their previous record of 250 miles in six days. The Germans had been given time to recover and we had missed our chance. A Full Life -General Sir Brian Horrocks , 30th Corps commander

'Maybe none of that is a big deal after all' - this was the funniest epilogue by Indy ever!

That’s not a Blitzkrieg, THATS a Blitzkrieg.

there is a story that Tolbukin's army entered the Greek city of Xanthi, which had been annexed by Bulgaria. When they realized that they had crossed the old greek-bulgarian border, they immediately retreated north of the Rodope Ridge. I have read this story in a couple of sources. If this is true, then it seams that sphears of influence had been arranged long before the October '44 and the so-called "percentage agreement" between Stalin and Churchill.

Every bit counts! Keep it up!

I've been waiting for 5 years to get to Operation Stalemate. Much love from Palau!

In September 2019 Dutch public news broadcaster NOS started a series about 75 years liberation of The Netherlands. Each day two news items about the last year of WW2. It started about Dolle Dinsdag (Mad Tuesday, 5 Sept 1944) and ran until the surrender of Japan. It can still be found online. One of the things I learned from that is the slow progress and the longstanding difficulties around the Battle of the Scheldt. I never learned that while it is one of the important battles of WW2.

Market Garden In military strategy, a choke point (or chokepoint) is a geographical feature on land such as a valley, defile or bridge, or maritime passage through a critical waterway such as a strait, which an armed force is forced to pass through in order to reach its objective, sometimes on a substantially narrowed front and therefore greatly decreasing its combat effectiveness by making it harder to bring superior numbers to bear. A choke point can allow a numerically inferior defending force to use the terrain as a force multiplier to thwart or ambush a much larger opponent, as the attacker cannot advance any further without first securing passage through the choke point.

Buglaria: Ayo Soviets plz don't invade us we ditched Germany we kool now right 🙂 Soviets: 😒🙄

In far south central China, on the Burmese border, songshan is finally taken by Chinese forces. The city of tengchong, some 40 km away, is also about to fall. The best and most well equipped troops China has in China have been fighting here for 3 months and have been blocked by Stilwell from going to help the fight in central china.

Seeing images of my city of Ghent being liberated was very unexpected. I cried as a saw the Cathedral of Saint Bavo and the houses lined up next to it. It's a façade I know too well!

Good work

Alternate history : Bulgaria wins over all of them and the world is unified under them and the earth bulgarian empire.

So the war will be over by Christmas? Edit: 22:20 hence the British hit song "99 142 red balloons"

OMG the phone conversation!! 🤣🤣🤣

@WorldWarTwo In a few episodes you will talk about the battle Market Garden and the 'spin off' the battle of Overloon. I had my parish in Overloon. I heard it was a very tough fight there. Elderly people are still talking about the shelling of Overloon (up to 20.000 shells a day, they say).

Boy, is this an important week. 1944 will have a really busy ending whatever happens

Thx for covering Shinto Maru's sinking. Those Hell Ships, and even a lot of troopships, are constantly sunk during this period with high loss of life.

I am sure Bulgaria can turn this around and conquer the world!

7:50 Helping your enemy to fight your unfriendly ally in order to create a friendly ally is so Churchill.

Gee I sure hope the allies make clearing the Scheldt estuary a priority. Open up those supply lines as quickly as possible!