I’ve noticed that particulary on documentary such as nazi megastructure who tend to overhype nazi tech and give the impression that the nazis had the best tech ever and the idea that more of something would allow the nazi to turn the tide of the war or win it (the me 262 per example+they had the myth about hitler delaying it too[ it seem to come from adolf galland]). Another example would be the nazi ufo stuff with “documentary” on them often saying they were the ebst/most advance etc (a good idea to debunk them would be: wouldn’t goebbels use them for propaganda and if they had die glocke wouldn’t they use it to shape the world as their image?). The german tank often get overhyped too with documentary sometimes not talking about their reliability and logistical issues(mostly the tiger I and panther, the other get ignore by most documentary)
Well one obvious answer is would the allies want to admit getting their butts kicked in 1940 by someone who had less technology than they did? It’s easier to say they were clever than we were stupid.
It goes all the way back to the start of the war. The German propaganda showed hordes of tanks and left off the bigger horde of horses. So I think the whole idea of the Germans as the master race and tech geniuses served both sides.
Over the last couple decades there has been a whole industry built around this. Nazi sells. Nazi spaceships, stealth bombers you name it people watch it.
Once people believe the legend, it becomes the truth.
I think the german general/veteran could also influence it (cf the story regarding the me 262 development)
I think separating German vs Nazi technology advancements, such as in modern physics or ballistic missiles, would better suit documentaries interested in truth of messaging.
I guess was Nazi meagstructure also is amazed about, is the amount of concrete te nazis could handle in e few months. The U-bosat pens, the Atlantic Wall an so on. Its not about technology, but about building logistic. Otherwise I think the programmes are fairly balanced.
It comes from several sources:
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The Germans liked to produce flashy public weapons like tanks. Thry came up short on quantity.
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I agree part of it is trying to whitewash Allied failures, particularly in France where an Allied superiority in tanks and airplanes in 1940 was squandered.
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Allied inventions were more closely guarded secrets like the Fighter Command direction system, code-breakkng Bombes and later Colossus.
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The Allies weren’t behind in Jet technology but didn’t see a pressing need for it while they were winning.
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The Allies made a conscious choice to go for quantity of production and ruthlessly standardized their production for this end. This ensured a steady supply of spare parts. This meant they kept older designs in production as they worked and worked well. Neither the US nor UK introduced a totalky new infantry rifle with a new cartridge during the war. The Germans did and it didn’t help. (Sturmgewehr I am looking at you).
I think it’s discovery channel which has the abandoned structures show and they are always showing these huge concrete world war 2 structures.
I think that the biggest reason is that these documentaries where meant for a general tv audience in the US or England.
They hype everything in the hope it gets people interested. Does it work? I am not sure.
They still do it too, while I had prime video free I watched a documentary about the shkval torpedo. The narrator couldn’t stop repeating that this amazing torpedo on the Kursk submarine would destroy the entire US fleet at the break of war. 1 weapon system and 1 submarine on their own, talk about over hyping lol
I tend to agree to the opposite: James Holland and Tony Pollard actually prove by default that most or nearly every so cold ’ mega structures ’ were more of an economic burden than an asset to the war effort. It is precisely why Germany lost the war, and we should be thankfull for that, imho.
So, my advice is to review and reassess the program ( that’s no punishment, I guess 
)
The reason for all the concrete is that it was paid for by the occupied nations themselves and the locals would happily work for the Germans as in was just passive concrete. Here In Denmark they just opened an account in our national bank when we we occupied. The bought the danish part of the Atlantic Wall and all the could get of, of our food production (80%) And then the war ended and they left without paying the bill and with an account in minus app 1 billion dollar in 1945 value
Well that exactly says why the Me-262 is in docu’s and the DH-Vampire which would have been deployed in WW2 was not. (The Germans lost tons of people by putting ridiculously badly trained crew in badly built plane and creating a vicious circle).
For one the few great YouTube channels like Greggs Airplanes, the Chieftain (tanks), Drachinfell (Naval stuff) plus TG obviously wouldn’t stand a chance at “History Channel formats”. The old media TV was zapbait and the goal of these was to keep people watching and don’t mind about the truth.
So they are touting supertech or often prototypes/models that could have won the war for Germany against the Allied crappy planes. (Which blew the Luftwaffe out of the sky).
Sonke Nieizel has an interesting point when he said that after the war Germany was needed for the Cold War. So the myth we lost but we were the best. To the Allied documentary makers the German supervillain made the Allied victory better and earlier defeats explainable.( a lot of those responsible still had careers and their name to protect.
Crappy movies like the 1965 Battle of the Bulge in the Spanish desert 
made it much worse as the Peiper character was Against the Malmedy massacre and his Hugo Boss boy uniform……puke. This movie is fun to watch as fantasy with Pluskat as the only person that makes sense.
This whole thing did do massive “opinion assignment/ maybe even brainwashing “ to the public which became to believe this because all the popular books said so and the general public doesn’t read Weinberg on the beach.
My greatest eye-opener was on Facebook with another Dutch guy posting that the FW-190 scared “the Americans” shitless on the wall of Chuck Yeager who disagreed vehemently and flew Mustangs in combat. His argument was “I read it somewhere “. That is mostly the problem, the “I found a quote I like” people.
I don’t think these Hollywood stereotypes go away anytime soon.
Lol. Even Ike hated the film.
I think Kelly’s heroes is more true than Battle of the Bulge lol
" Kelly’s heroes"
That movie was awesome and had some great advice on finding bridges, drop the negative waves 
. It was a perfect comedy 
which also featured “Karl-Otto Alberty” which became a stereoptype for the arrogant German/SS officer with too much hubris. And indeed still more likely to be true that the other one
I think they were the best. On equal terms they would beat anybody because of their operational training which left room for the single soldier to adapt to the actual situation. But they were to ambitious and was overwhelmed by men and machines from the allies
This is the popular (almost ubermensch) image but while the Germans had a training/experience advantage early on their quality got worse later in the war if I have to believe actual veterans and the more modern take on history.
Unlike the Battle of the Bulge movie suggests the Germans lost more men and Peter Craddick Adams wrote about the early wave attacks of the German soldiers which led to massive casualties. I had a long discussion with Ed Shames Lieutenant 101 when I toured Bastogne with him and he told me that the Germans were behaving like predictable automotons. They looked for the weak points attacked in waves, the let them come through close the lines and slaughter them. They were scary because they slaughtered civilians left and right but once you kept a cool head they would lose. The latter took experience.
Also there is the other case of Sepp Dietrich who had the vaunted fuel dumps nearby (300 yards) but drove past it. Even the German speaking Belgiums started hating them because their propensity to erratically slaughter civilians, so he got no intel from them plus his recon was a complete joke. This sort of events never make it into documentaries but should really.
Snow & Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45 - Peter Caddick-Adams - Google Books
And there are many other cases, the smartest of them was Bayerlein of Panzer Lehr who instead of going for Bastogne returned to his blond American nurse (talking about bombshells) from the medical battalion they captured. After spending way too much time with her it failed.
Snow & Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45 - Peter Caddick-Adams - Google Books
Also Air Force wise, Germany like Japan drastically cut Air Force training and never had a decent Advanced Trainer like the AT-6 Texan/Harvard which meant that the (Western) Allied pilots in general were much better trained. This is what Parshall refers to and the “small group elite pilots vs a large group of very well trained pilots”. A few aces don’t win the war and it is dubious if all the numbers of “kills” are actually true.
I’ve used Peter Craddick-Adams as he is amazing and everything he writes is very well sourced and often new!
In his book, the men who killed the Luftwaffe, Jay Stout details some of those numbers. Once the P51 with Superchargers came online the Luftwaffe loss rates in the west hit 80% per month and German pilots had a lifespan of 3 months as they averaged a death every 3 crashes. This took until mid 1944 to happen but it was very effective.
Also Germany trained between 30-40 thousand pilots in the war. The United States alone trained 200 thousand. That is a huge advantage. A summary of his book is presented here:
Here is another one. Greggs Airplanes did some really really great research using prime sources like Aircraft Manuals of the P-47/51s.
He dispells the myth that only the P-47 could not reach Berlin it could, but the USAAF after the war possibly wanted to hide that thy let the bombers flew unescorted for too long. Adding drop tanks would have helped.
Also especially the US bombers raids were designed to attain air superiority before D-Day because the German fighters had to go up to fight the bombers. He has prime sources for that too
Well, I post part 8 because it is mostly good to read the conclusions first with history books and then read the book to see how the maker came to the conclusions. (that is what I learned in Uni and it kinda works)
As for Greggs it is a huge series and the earlier episodes are quite technical so I see that not everyone is interested in those. There are far more P-51s flying that 47s, probably because they are much more expensive to operate and to built at the time.
Please let me know your thought, I am kind of interested if someone can poke holes in his logics (without dumping dubious wikipedialinkdumping preferably).
PS from minute 28 it really gets interesting as the D-Day part starts!
Well I think I made it almost all the way through before nodding off. Nothing boring about the content but he is kind of monotone a bit. There is a ton of information there indeed. Thanks for the link, I had seen Greg’s once or twice before and I don’t know of another channel that goes into any more technical depth than that.
TLDR lol, p47. Was a kick ass aircraft which could stand up in most ways to any other alllied fighter in a dogfight. But it was more expensive and also better suited to ground attack so p51 did more bomber escort later while p47 did more ground attack. I think I got it right.
Well, sometimes he throws a little too much info in 1 giant episode (by youtube standards). However it is all very well researched with prime evidence as opposed to “quotes from books seekers”. His point that the P-47 took the brunt is obvious, it also is obvious that using the US bombers to get Air Superiority before D-Day was a major success.
The only big thing with Greg is that he might be a bit technical for non-propellorheads 
