An Italian 88cm Armed King Tiger Tank In Action Against Patton's U.S. 1st Army In Northern Turkey in 1940
Normally my wife is the only person priveleged enough to be party to my soapbox presentations, but lately she doesn’t put the same effort into her “gee honey, that’s facinating, I really am listening intently” face. Not to mention she wouldn’t understand the importance of not calling an Sd.Kfz. 8 an Sd.Kfz. 9 so you lucked in today because I have my rant hat on.
I decided to waste another hour of my life watching yet another load of drivel on the “history” channel and wondering why I don’t just turn the sound off and enjoy the pictures, and I can’t help thinking, why can’t someone who calls themselves a History channel actually do a little research into things so that they don’t come across as the “we slapped this together for war film fans to score some advertising dollars” channel.
Yet again we have archive footage of Pz.Kpfw. IVs whilst talking about Pz.Kpfw. IIIs ( which by the way did you know were apparently the backbone of German armour throughout the war ). Yet again we have random footage from all time periods and theatres of the war portayed as being from one particular battle. Which reminds me I did see a good one once on the “History” channel where in two episodes of the same programme the exact same footage was described in one episode as retreating German armour and in the next as advancing British armour.
Yet again we have the usual off the cuff statement “The T-34 was undoubtedly the best tank of the war”. Hello people, the word undoubtedly means there are no doubts. Most numerous ? Yes. Best ? No. If 1000 drunk pygmies managed to attack and overwhelm five SAS soldiers would that then make drunk pygmies undoubtedly the best soldiers in the world. Morons. Who proofs this garbage ? Who pays for it ?
I’ve yet to see a single WWII related program on the History Channel that didn’t contain inaccuracies, even if just showing the wrong footage. And WWII is still within living memory and is easy to research. If they can’t get that right then does that mean there are thousands of Civil War enthusiasts out there annoyed because they don’t get any of those programs right either ? Do they get anything right ? Do they care ? Or is the important thing to just make sure you have a guy with a pipe so you look scholarly and people will just accept it ?
In short do we care if history is accurate, or do we just want to be entertained. Am I stupid to expect that a commercial broadcasting channel will actually try to be accurate just because they use the word “History” in their title ? Seems I am.
So if you want to know what really happened in the world before you were a part of it expect to do a lot of your own research and reading. Don’t expect it to be neatly packaged in a one hour presentation because all you’ll get is rewarmed servings of 1960s ideas served up with different images.
So if you want to watch the history channel just turn down the sound and enjoy the pictures. It’s less frustrating that way.
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The Kingtigers in support of Pipers battlegroup made great propaganda footage but what of the Tiger 1 claimed by the programme and the yanks who fought in the battle?
I have read that at times late model panzer 4s were mistake for Tiger 1s.
Yeah there were no Ausf.Es in Kampfgruppe Peiper. He did lose one Pz.Kpfw.IV with two more damaged on the approach to one of the towns ( can’t remember which one off the top of my head but it wasn’t Stavelot ), but that scene in that programme where the two guns took out four Tigers outside Stavelot appears to be total fiction, not to mention the bit about Wessel’s 105 which backed into the building. Whilst a true event it happened the following day when more of the 501st were passing through Stavelot to catch up with KPs forward elements. It’s a shame that with so much easily researched material on a battle as well known as the Ardennes Offensive that a programme maker chooses instead to rely solely on firsthand accounts which are at best “dubious”. Also, and this shouldn’t be seen as an endorsement of some of the actions taken, but whilst they did focus on the deaths of civilians they made no mention of all that local armed militias working with the U.S. forces took part in the battle.
One of the worst was the Greatest Tank Battles The Battle of Bulge according to the Yanks to the rest of us the Ardennes Offensive.
The whole programme evolved around a small unit of US tanks! Who whipped out by a group of Jagdtigers shown as Jagdpanzer 4 langs on the programme!
They kept referring to Tiger tanks in the programme I can find no evidence of Tiger 1s being deployed Kingtigers yes although Kampfgroup Piper did not use them.
Nothing of the reasons why the german offensive failed;
Roads running the wrong way.
Running out of fuel.
Bridges blown or unable to carry the weight of the Panther.
Or the deployment of the British army to the north.
Instead it was all down to Patton. The reality was by the time he arrived most German tanks had either run out of fuel or lost the ability to manovure at Battalion level, then the skies cleared…
Kampfgruppe Peiper used a battalion of 45 LSSAH King Tigers ( 501st Heavy ) though from all I’ve read there’s nothing to support the belief that he commanded one. In fact he felt they slowed down his whole advance as he had to stop a couple of times to let them catch up, and they used up too much of his petrol. By the time he reached La Gleize he only had six which were all left there, seven others were lost/abandoned along the way, the rest broke down and were recovered. There’s no record anywhere of KP having any Jagdpanzer IVs, only Kampfgruppe Hansen following but they had their first one fall through a bridge and weren’t able to back up KP. There’s also no record anywhere of two US guns taking out four Tigers, only of one German tank driving over two guns after their crews fled. Peiper totally missed the fuel dump outside Stavelot and eventually ran out of gas and no one backed him up. In all the reading I’ve done on it no U.S. armour put up anything more than a passing resistance and inflicted few casualties. The damage came when he was out of food, ammo and fuel, the skies cleared and the U.S. counterattack kicked in.
I should have added “Do you agree there can never such a thing as ‘too many shoes’?” in there. Who needs all that lovey-dovey-blahblahblah? xxxx
Tell you what, I’ll work on my “gee honey” face when you’re watching History Channel if you work on your “gee honey” face when we’re out shoe-shopping.
I knew I should have included “Do you agree to feign suitable interest in Dean’s self righteous rantings” into our vows.
good rant, and spot on. Even a semi military history buff such as myself spot too many errors!!
There’s nothing like a good rant to start the day off on a good self-righteous footing.