Hitler Laughed At The Americans During The Bulge - Until The Secret Fuze Appeared

Warcharts is now on Spotify, for listening on the go 🎧 https://open.spotify.com/show/2lZCX7R... Adolf Hitler planned his Ardennes offensive on a belief: the Americans were slow, divided and badly led, their generals would not move a division without asking Washington and London first, and fog and snow would keep their airmen blind. His planners expected no major American units to arrive before the third day. Behind the American lines sat a secret he had never heard of, the proximity fuze, a radio device that made an artillery shell burst above its target by itself, in the dark and in the fog. This World War II documentary follows Hitler's last great gamble from the German side, then tells the hidden story of the VT or "POZIT" fuze: Merle Tuve's Section T, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the cruiser Helena's first kill in January 1943, the rule that kept it over the sea, and its release for ground artillery just before the Battle of the Bulge. It shows what the fuze did in the snow, from Patton's "devastating" letter to the fuze dump evacuated just in time, and what the official history says the legend gets wrong. Also in this video: Lt. Lyle Bouck's eighteen-man reconnaissance platoon holding up Joachim Peiper's spearhead at Lanzerath, Brig. Gen. Bruce Clarke's week-long defense of St. Vith with the 7th Armored Division, and Patton's Third Army turning north from Verdun to break through to Bastogne. If a man in your family fought in the Ardennes that winter, whether as a gunner, a rifleman, a tanker or a medic, leave his name and his unit in the comments so we can remember him with you. Chapters: 0:00 The Fuze They Never Saw Coming 26:44 Eighteen Men at Lanzerath 52:48 The Town They Meant to Take on Day One 1:19:00 The Turn North Sources: Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, ch. I (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1965): https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/20... Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, Epilogue (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1965): https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/20... Lida Mayo, The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1968): https://ia903200.us.archive.org/fullt... Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, APL and the VT Fuze, APL Technical Digest (1962): https://secwww.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/... U.S. Naval Institute, Tiny Miracle: The Proximity Fuze, Naval History (1999): https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-... Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, ch. V (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1965): https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/20... Capt. John Della-Giustina, The Heroic Stand of an Intelligence Platoon, Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (1996): https://irp.fas.org/agency/army/mipb/... Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, ch. XII (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1965): https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/20... Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, ch. XVII (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1965): https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/20... Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, ch. XXI (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1965): https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/20... David T. Zabecki, The Untold Story of Patton at Bastogne, HistoryNet (2007): https://historynet.com/untold-story-p... Dave Melancon, Cobra King history, U.S. Army Europe (2009): https://media.defense.gov/2018/Mar/28... This documentary uses archival film, photographs and the original terminology of the period for historical and educational purposes. It is not intended to glorify war or to offend any person, nation or group. #WW2 #BattleOfTheBulge FOOTAGE AND IMAGE SOURCES U.S. National Archives: https://www.archives.gov Internet Archive: https://archive.org Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org