Captain Tom, Garden Fox (with Pierre Novellie) | Monty vs Rommel (Part 4/4)

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0:31Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said.

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1:44Welcome back to Finverse History. We're still joined by the Colossus, Pierre Novelli. I meant intellectual and also you're a big guy. A looming man. who happens also to be the biggest man I know. We're being thigh-mogged. For once, I am being thigh-mogged. No, I've got very small thighs, very small knees, and Finn's got big ones, but now it's like, it shows the whole gamut. And then behind the paywall, he's put his jeans up so you don't get to see them. No, exactly. Subscribers only. On the Patreon, we'll get his thighs out. Shorts and boys. Yeah. Do you struggle to find shorts? No, you always wear shorts, though.

2:18Yeah, but those are the precious shorts that I've discovered. Those are relics almost. I pine for this era we're discussing now of enormous big shorts wide wide shorts somehow wider on the thigh than in the waist huge yeah they need to be my waist is smaller than my thighs yeah me too I go out like PC Plot now we're in part 4 the final part of this epic Monty and Rommel series to recap where we left off the second battle of El Alamein has proved to as hit a second battle of l l main someone please photoshop uh it's rommel whispering to hitler yeah yeah a second battle of l l main and uh monty has a he's been there for three months yeah and he sorted out it's pretty good i didn't quite realize because it's monty versus rommel but monty basically just comes and goes right now fuck off right done yeah he basically does it in three months but with a lot of these things we there's all the glory of beating the nazis and all these fields of war it does always feel like if you break it down the allies were always going to win these things well this is this is the great al murray holland uh revisionism i don't and i imagine you're uh susceptible to because i i actually think pierre pierre would be a great person to have done this podcast the only issue pierre has is that he cares too much about getting stuff right it's a fatal flaw i said to you before um you really care about what actually happens i do yeah unfortunately but so do you kind of irrelevant which is not not really the spirit but i mean when he came to the office this morning he genuinely inspected our medals as if they were actual medals i needed to know yeah you need to know i instinctively stood to attention now so are you are you vulnerable pierre to the uh the uh hobsbawm argument that world war ii is essentially two factories racing each other i mean that's a great question are you vulnerable yes but But if you don't use it, then you won't win.

4:19Thank you. So it's this whole thing of going, oh, well, actually, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but if you can't be bothered to do it, then you'll lose. What do you mean, can't be bothered? What is this like? Vietnam. The Italians. Yeah. Even Vietnam. Yeah. If the Americans could have been, you know, capital B bothered, they'd have just won. But it just would have been horrible. Oh, let's explore that riff before. What do you mean by capital B bothered? Like really, like we're here for 50 years. Right. like we're not leaving like japan night night bothered or yeah yeah they put more bombs than world war ii in the jungle in fucking laos alone so then if you had like a cadre of like fanatics as opposed to a conscript army full of people who've only just found out about weed and shagging yeah it's just like horrible to be there great music though exactly but then in the cut in the culturally in that 20 years life meant so much more way more it was pressure it became precious yeah oh yeah for the first time in history life suddenly meant something it matters when someone explodes yeah it matters yeah before it was it was irrelevant yeah yeah it was generally oh my Led Zeppelin vinyl yeah my dad exploded my dad exploded irrelevant brilliant yeah whatever congratulations yeah you're a man now yeah yeah whereas in Vietnam I guess it but even by that point a soldier dying was a tragedy when wasn't in World War II.

5:39No, but fundamentally, Monty had more resources, more men, more everything than Rommel. But crucial. Rommel could have brought, powered through though and could have been a mental glass. Here's a good counterfactual. Could Rommel have beaten, now, I mean, the first battle of El Alamein, which as we say is the hipster's choice, my favourite, because that is Rommel's chance, right? Because before Monty arrives, that's the real chance to break through. But would he ever have actually punched through the geography with that supply line? Could he ever actually have pulled it off and gone all the way to Suez Canal.

6:09That's what it's all about. Not with that geography. Unless the Germans, Greeks go like Palestine down, but then the Palestine, there's a Palestine regiment, but the Brits have, isn't there? Yeah. And then also, sorry, there's also all this fucking French, the Brits fight the Vichy French in Syria. Yes. Which I didn't even know about. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We're still at war with France. Yeah. We're at war with France in World War II. I know. Is it French people? Yeah. Yeah. Fuck me. yeah they're from the naughty half of france so it's all de gaulle like he managed to whitewash a lot of that we've got to do that at some point we've got to get b back on to do yeah we fucked the french up in world war ii yeah yeah brilliant but yeah but yeah i mean pierre's an absolute encyclopedia for the we fought the french in madagascar we did yeah fuck crazy i know anyway so yeah so is there a world in which vichy french come down through syria and pincer the brit i think Rommel could have got through the geography if he had uninterrupted supply lines if you just give him enough fuel he'll do it but he just but the fuel is going to Barbarossa at this point yeah but also the problem is always like the Royal Navy whenever anyone tries to do a complicated plan across the Mediterranean you just go yeah but the Royal Navy the Royal Air Force so no but also we hadn't yeah Malta and this set the tone for the rest of the war when did Barbarossa when did Stalingrad happen it starts in early 42 And it goes on for nine months, I think.

7:34Yes. So it's happening during this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're almost holding out for like, well, we probably won't win here because we don't have any petrol. But if we hold out long enough for our mates to deploy. Because Army Group South, the whole point of Stalingrad is to get fuel for the whole war machine. Everyone's bringing their own gear. It's nice. We've all finally out loud. We can say Army Group South out loud. Georgian oil fields.

8:03so let's keep to the topic though because we don't want to we've got to fucking wind the spit away from you so Monty in three months has Sam Allardyce Rommel fuck off Rommel is now in retreat contravening Hitler's orders and he's got do we find out how long the supply line is he goes all the way back how long is a piece of string well it's a thousand miles a thousand miles it's funny to answer that with like clear like we know we need to know because it's really important it's really important Rommel does Rommel does fight a very good rearguard action supposedly but he does he's not like the Italians it's roughly 1 ,100 miles from El Alamein back to Tripoli or Benghazi you and Burkheim is fighting a rearguard action I'm bravely fighting a rearguard action in Burkheim no no no what do you mean this is a chill out room there are four men with their fists up my arse now now holding you up like a trophy like i hold it like we held you aloft in your wedding day 1966 world cup win genuinely probably more than finn's arse so that was uh pierre's wedding yeah uh ivo and myself and one of your best men lifted you up as as the tradition is couldn't believe i couldn't believe and you won an iron man didn't you yes i did i got a huell sponsorship off the basis of the fact that I lifted Pierre up.

9:26The hardest geezer. It was extraordinary. Oh, man. And it could, yeah, it was also not long enough. It couldn't last. Listener, this episode of Finn vs. History is brought to you by Surfshark. What more can we say about our friends at Surfshark that we already haven't? They are the lone brave salmon who are sponsoring this podcast. The unsponsorable podcast, they said. Not Surfshark. The people who provide the best virtual pussy networks in the entire country said no. No. They are responsible. I believe. The kind of people who are buying Surfshark are the same tot of people, good people, who listen to Fiverr's History.

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11:22I am, right? Yet again, I'm a lone salmon swimming upstream, right? 30-day money-back guarantee, risk-free. God bless Surfshark and God save the king. I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, Autobotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.

12:02Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

12:34You want to impress them on a first date, but also play it cool. So what do you do? I'm Rufy Thorpe and I wrote and read a real love story about a hinged couple that navigated exactly that Listen to the free audiobook now Keep your data safe and we'll see you next time Goodbye Anyway, so Operation Torch happens days after Monty's victory at Alamain Yeah And this is the Americans arriving in North Africa in what would be, I guess, French North Africa Yes, bloody hell Which the Germans now, when, is that Vichy French North Africa? Yes, it is. So have the Germans control it? This is Casablanca. Yeah.

13:15The film Casablanca would be. That kind of thing. Yeah. They actually land non-Vichy French generals secretly and kind of go in and try and say, come on, lads, the Americans are about to land. Just fucking come over to the good boys. Be good boys. Yeah. And they have some generals who are like, like, no, that's dishonorable. And they go, okay, well, we're kidnapping you then. And there is a bit of fighting. But ultimately, a lot of the French do just go, okay. And is Patton leading Operation Torch at this point? I'm not sure. Because Patton is in Italy, is he? Patton is the big boy with Sicily.

13:55Yes, he would be, because this is the ultimate, the long road to Operation Husky. The Yanks have a bad time at Kasserine Pass. Sorry, go on. The Yanks have a bad time. At Kasserine Pass. They haven't fought a modern war before. Rommel fucks them up. Kasserine Park. So where's that? Is that Tunisia? I think so. Sorry, just to get the job to be up. Rommel has retreated from Egypt back into Libya, and then Monty is pursuing, which is the great thing that we didn't do in Compass or Crusader, one of the other earlier operations before Monty arrived. We didn't chase them back across the desert, which allowed them to regroup.

14:32Complacent. We sent stuff to Crete, maybe. I can't remember why. Anyway, this time, they're not making that mistake again. Monty just goes after them thousands of miles across Libya and pushes them into what would be Tunisia, where the Americans have landed and they're basically pinstering them, which I suppose, you know, you could say that El Alamein was pointless if the Americans were landing and they just would have had to go up to where Rommel was. Well, the Germans, Rommel could have technically broken through montesiline if there was a collapse from the british and then taking the switzer's canal yeah yeah and then you also have the french syrian yeah so then it would be one front potentially the sheer amount of men and equipment they lost is the point right because they could have if if they just waited for the americans to arrive and rummel had retreated in good order yeah we're talking i mean there's what 300 000 italians prisoners of war we disposed of it's an enormous amount of german prisoners of war had to leave so many tanks behind the ones we didn't blow up.

15:29That could all have just been shipped back to Europe. Where are these 100 ,000 horny Italian guys? Because that's why I'm worried. They are horny. We haven't talked about how horny they are. These are horny blokes and they're probably being stuck. It's like a war crime because they don't have escorts. Charlie, what have you Googled? How loud would it be if 300 ,000 Italian men cried at the same time? Let's get this to decibels. Extreme acoustic level, a high-powered gunshot. Close-range fireworks or a top-fueled dragster is 300 ,000 Italian crying men. Surprisingly little in a way. I don't feel like they've got a grip on it.

15:59They are Italian. AIO doesn't... What three Italians crying is like a gunshot. Yeah. And are they making the same noise or is it kind of a brain? They're throwing themselves on the ground. It's messy. It's messy. But that's the whole point, right? Is it attrition? Yes. So if you just wait for the angst to show up and scare everyone, then you're just going, oh, well, let's just allow the enemy to concentrate themselves where it's already hard enough to get rid of them. So, yeah. Yeah, so Rommel fights quite a good rearguard action, fucks the Americans up at Kasserine Pass. Do you know anything about what actually happened there?

16:35Well, is this because Americans are new to the war, basically? Yeah, they didn't quite... Is this their first action in Europe? In the European theatre, yeah. Yeah, like a baby deer just fucking... Yeah, well, they got a lot of tanks knocked out because they did just go down a pass and just got anti-tank to fucking bits. Are we in the territory of the first American foreign intervention? It must have been on this one. But we nearly are. Yeah. Not quite Tunisia. It would have been... You said it was in Tunisia, I believe. The shores of Tripoli. Yeah. You're asking about... The Barbary Pirates. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:04The first US Barbary War. Was it in slavery? Well, actually, it was actually. White slavery, yeah. Algiers. And so maybe it was about the same. Yeah, it was. They must have been thinking, yeah, we've been here before. So maybe 130 years after the first American intervention in the Middle East. But there was like quite... Or Africa, rather. There was like this mythology about the daring kind of... kind of Delta Team style. The Marines. Yes. So I wonder if that was part of their whole mythology going into North Africa. Now it says here in the script that Operation Torch renders Monty's victory at El Alamein strategically unnecessary.

17:42I refute that. Yeah, I think I do as well. I think the Americans at this point, they only knew, has the Battle of Midway happened? It has. It must have happened. Yeah. It's almost earlier than I thought it was later. It's quite early on. Yeah. so all they know is the Pacific Ocean at this point which they have dominated to be fair to me anyway so Rommel's Axis forces are surrounded so they basically just constantly withdraw and then it gets to the point where they have to surrender because they cut off Rommel's planned route of retreat so the 8th army coordinates with the Americans which is quite a funny story of the SAS boys trying to link like the SAS guys are constantly doing these like insane they're basically hardest i mean they're hardest geezering it in the desert yeah and and they're just trying to they're like following the stars and finding i'm pretty i'm hopefully i'm gonna bump into some americans yeah recognizing a dune yeah and they they stumble up there's a story of like they go behind rumble's lines and they like they haven't drunk water for four days and they're about they really know their feet are cut to shit and it turns out Senegalese French troops because they're involved as well.

18:51Yes, yes, yes. So they eventually link up. They squeeze Rommel out and there's some minor battles in Tunisia and then eventually he is recalled to Germany by Hitler in March 43 to save the humiliation of him having to surrender. So this is quite a long period because the second battle of Alameh was mid. It ends in November. So it's a good four or five month retreat. Eventually they're surrounded in Tunisia in May 43, which leads to the widespread surrenders and there's big old victory parties with palm trees. And North Africa is liberated from access control in May 43. Yeah. Huge. That's a big shit.

19:31A theatre has closed down. You love theatre. I love theatre closing down. You're like Bromwell. My favourite part of COVID. Theatre shop, brilliant. You know, again, baby bathwater. so attention to Rommel is taken to Germany attention now turns to Sicily and the now this was Churchill's great hope for liberating Europe wasn't it was going through as you said the soft underbelly what was this whole thing about why go out of the foot and why not strike at the knee was that whole thing about potentially go landing to Rome he didn't do that so I don't know why that quote he had lots of ideas Yes, and always in great sound bites.

20:15Yeah. Monty gets tasked with going up the Adriatic coast of Italy, the eastern side of the hill, which is the gnarly side. Yeah. So Avalanche, which is the western side, Italy's actually quite gnarly fighting. There's no infrastructure and it's all just rock. There is no infrastructure. In the south, it's just like the 1300s. Yeah, yeah. Everyone's still farming with sickles. The mafia, like... They just have sickles. My mum, I think, went to Sicily like a couple of months ago and there's this beautiful old theatre that cannot afford to put any productions on because if they put any production on, they have to pay so many of the mafia off.

20:53They can't make any of the money back. So nothing gets made. There's also, there's so many roads that just stop or bridges half built because the amount of corruption, they've been giving enough money to build a bridge, but the amount of money being taken by the mafia means that they can only build half the bridge because everyone takes their cut. So I imagine it's that sort of stuff. So basically, Monty has quite... Sorry, we did this in the Mafia series. This is when loads of the Italian-Americans. Yes, yeah. They have like a badge on for fucking Lucky Luciano and stuff. They wear like an LL or something.

21:23Yeah, yeah. This is the birth of the Americano. Yeah. We should place this. 43. 43. Do you want to do another placing? Come on. Yeah, you nailed it last time. So you come to any two dates. Operation Huskies, when in 40? Is it July 43? Is it summer? I can't remember. Before and after. Okay. this is after Bruce Forsyth's 21st birthday Christ he's just pulled that off the dome after his 21st birthday Bruce Forsyth is older than 21 and is he shagging a lot I'm guessing Bruce Forsyth was 21 during Operation Husky I think so Christ he was so old wow this is tight this is tight it's tight no how old is Bruce Forsyth in 43 he would be 15 15 so it's before it's after his 14th birthday after his first wank before he became legal before he became legal barely legal Bruce Forsyth you don't want that coming up on the old history search barely legal Bruce Forsyth that's fine and I guess that's fine yeah and it's so it's before Bruce Forsyth became legal but it's after no sorry it's after but it's after has he got oh wait I got one go on Charlie Charlie likes to rhyme them yeah it's gonna be something fucking stupid because it might be it might be no he's not so why would he be circumcised bruce foreskin i don't say bruce foreskin but oh right yeah is bruce foresight's circumcised there is no public information available well it's after he may have been circumcised this before he um yeah he became legal god it's messy it's absolutely it's messy stuff all right anyway barely know we can't know we can't know barely legal bruce Forsyth is around when Operation Husky starts.

23:11Now, Rommel gets assigned to try and defend Italy from the incoming invasion. He has differing ideas with Field Marshal Kesselring. Yes. Kesselring wants to defend the whole of Italy. Rommel, who I think is rarely wrong, decides that there is no point trying to defend the south because it's a fucking pudding and who cares. Yes. So let's just pull all our lines above Rome and use the territory of the Alps and the mountainous north to hold them off, which they eventually do, but Hitler doesn't like that and he goes for Kesselring's strategy, which means that the south of Italy is pretty gnarly fighting.

23:50So is Rommel in Italy? Yeah. Rommel and Monti are both in Italy. So they do North Africa, Italy and Normandy. They follow each other around. That's why we're doing this series. And then at the end, they came so near to just finally kissing yeah they never actually met would you know when the the nearest point they met so obviously they start in 1940 they they fight geographically the closest they were must have been normandy yeah monty goes up the eastern side which is they have quite a tough time going up the eastern side uh this is where pattern's involved and he does not like general pattern no we don't i mean basically italy becomes a stalemate when do they get knocked out of the war is it 43 it's debatable because you've got like the the republic of the kingdom of southern italy or whatever the republic of southern italy that the allies kind of make up oh yeah they want to bring all the italian pow's and and non-aligned italians into the war and and they do fight because they they can't afford to keep them prisoners they got from north africa some of them yeah there's half a million men to look after to Babysit.

24:53Italians. They would do things like send 20 ,000 of them to just dig an entirely new harbour at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. Too busy. In Orkney. My gran would tell me, she was from the Orkneys, and she would say, yeah, there's all these Italians just having to do this horrible freezing cold, like pouring concrete and trying to repair Scapa Flow from when the Germans blew it up. Christ. Yeah, a lot of labour. But this is the, it's this division, the southern italy where the allies basically yeah they're they don't really want the new country to manage this is where the mafia becomes so powerful again it's because they just take over because the americans are whatever you run it if you're willing to say look we'll just make people go away yeah because we are fine with that and you're not totally well your supplies will be left alone yeah so rommel does uh i think he does quite a good job in defending the northern or the gothic line yeah line of mountains just south of rome like monte cassino and all that now monte cassino we'll get into that separately anyway let's well there's too much of italy to go through really but basically by early 44 they're both pulled out of italy uh because uh it's time for the the for d-day for the big push yeah from the allies to win the war in europe uh Monty is assigned as the commander of the 21st Army Group.

26:16So he's responsible for controlling two separate field armies. Now, Pierre, you have a very good grasp of like army terminology and scale. This is tough though. Compared to us and our listeners who are thick and smelly and sad. Very sad. Very sad. How big is a field army? It's a full army on its own. so it has its own detachments of like artillery infantry armor maybe even an attached wing yeah from a from an air force so when you talk about like monty's eighth army is that a field army that's a whole army yes yeah that's a field army so he's controlling two entire field armies british armies yeah so there'll be commonwealth commonwealth so this could be and then what uh controlling is it oh the whole thing he's the supreme commander europe and then And is Patton doing...

27:09Patton has fucked everyone off so much by this point that they make him not do D-Day, and his job is to drive around East Anglia waving him from the Jeeps and stuff as part of the pretend army that's going to attack Calais. They're making him do the pretending thing with all the inflatable tanks and things. Oh, really? They got so fucking sick of him because he went and he bullied that guy in the hospital. Patton showed up and was visiting troops in the hospital, and there was a guy there with, like, terrible shell shock, and he just started shouting at him. he started screaming at him and hitting him with sticks and things really yeah he went mad at him and everyone was like oh jesus even for you this is bad so his punishment kind of was to drive around east anglia saluting rubber tanks that someone had inflated that's very funny so everyone was like we've seen him patterns here and the germans were like he is too crazy to be wasted on the inflatable tanks it must be real we talked about this in the in the previous episodes in the britain at this point is doing so much amdram yeah yeah in the desert we're using more amdram than any other nation.

28:05No one else is doing it. Japan's not doing Amdram. The Russians aren't tapping into the Amdram. But these are our cultural skills. Of course. Autists. Amdram. Hobbyists. Big shorts. Big shorts. This is what wins the war. Charts, big shorts, amateur dramatics. Yeah. Navy. Yeah, Monty's autism. Yeah. I mean, D-Day is probably one of the high points of autistic preparation. Definitely. The scale of it. Unbelievable. I mean, how many... I mean, Dad at an airport scale, up yeah to infinity it's the it's the end have you got your passports yeah yes have you got your landing craft have they got fuel have they got maps are the maps laminated to protect themselves from the water you didn't need passports to go into d-day d-day there was no border control i guess there was these days though trying to fucking help trying to get trying to get into tannerie fingerprints please stay an amphibious landing yeah i prefer it i might the queue was probably was worse than fucking being shot out of a bunker genuinely disgrace the new eu exit controls were disgrace yeah um anyway so yeah monty they put because he's so meticulous they put him in charge of planning uh is it the is it all the larger is it all the landing areas is it an arm is it a field army per beach uh unsure i know he's the one who argued for much wider landing areas and and like a much bigger broader front as opposed to like a little or cove or something like he was very keen on yeah like spreading it we need to really land yeah otherwise they'll just push us into the sea yeah and fascinatingly it is rommel i didn't know this who uh he is tasked with building the defenses yeah for the d-day landings yes which is kind of a punishment as well i think because like a lot of the troops as well on d-day are like ost troops like like conscripted random eastern europeans and wounded regiments from the eastern front and stuff they kind of don't think it's going to happen yeah or if they do they think yeah well you're just a guy in a bunker and is this because the the the like the height of the wehrmacht is in is still in russia yeah yeah yeah there's elite panzer regiments like waiting to push into the beaches if they do land but the actual troops there like there's a lot of like because by the time they actually get to like they cross the Rhine everyone's a teenager and it's terrifying the book I read the Ben McIntyre SAS book yes depends what you're into I guess depends what you're into there's a barely legal proof of war yes I suppose there's an argument that maybe Monty would have really liked to cross the Rhine but we'll get to that but yeah I mean it's like a teenage German boy would come out with his hands up and then just basically fucking jihadists just blow himself up in front of and just take out Allied troops.

30:56It's pretty gnarly. Anyway, Rommel's asparagus. Yeah. Talk us through what that is. It's a big stick that you jam into the beach and it stops landing craft. It was disappointing when I saw Rommel. Yeah. I thought it would be more exciting. It sounds pretty exotic. I mean, I bet it's piss stank. Yeah. Having been on Speed in the Desert for 18 months. Oh, like engine oil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so that kind of iconic Save and Private Ryan opening scene with all the fucking... Are those Rommel's asparagus? did he come up with that or did he just I reckon we just shove a fucking shove some scrap metal on the beach make it really annoying but he also is in charge of the whole bunker the Atlantic wall but I don't think he's getting enough money or time or resources to build it concrete you need concrete factories could you build a wall on the actual shore build a massive wall that's a bit of a charlie question that can you build a wall on the beach just yeah i'm just trying to think if they could have done more if you have some time to prepare a beach it'd be interesting to see like the plans for what it should have been like when it was finished because it was horrifying enough as it was well i did also they didn't know that they were where was the main preparations where were they were they planning for calais what was the worst the very worried about calais it was the most point right the narrowest point and actually it's not normandy but there is one mega cannon or a couple that the nazis built you're gonna like a nazi mega cannon you know because by this point in the war it's the v2 era the nazis let's not forget have gone to space yes so exactly right the wonder weapons so uh there's a massive mega cannon basically just pointed at london from calais just route one just fuck off yeah i don't think they ever fired it i I watched a video of James Holland.

32:47I was having to go through a tough time. I watched a video of James Holland inside a mega cannon going, wow! That's a video of his wife. Amanda was out. Amanda was out. Please come home. Please. Anyway, so Rommel also oversaw all these minefields because that's what he'd done in North Africa. But he set all the traps to try and funnel the allies into kill zones. So I guess is this, you know, with what we know about how Monty beats Rommel, how does how did the allies get through like is it preparation is it the overwhelming naval bombardment just numbers sheer numbers resources is it true we talked about this maybe on another episode that monty's was so much into rehearsing it he rehearsed so many there's so much training for d-day and most of it was in like cornwall in terrible weather yeah more people died in the training for d-day on monty's side then there was an actual d-day there was some big disaster of his two armies there was a yeah i think loads of people that like 2 000 people died yeah don't something crazy a bunch of ships capsized the landing craft capsized it was a big like the weather was awful how many of you died in um 749 exercise tiger that's exercise tiger so that's i mean lime bay in devon i know german torpedo boats ambushed the convoy and friendly fire it took place.

34:07As a joke? What do you mean as a joke? Why would they do that? We were at war with the Germans. But the Americans are doing it, aren't they? What? I thought the Americans just shot at the English people. No. Because German torpedo boats ambushed the convoy and then they got confused and friendly fire happened. I misunderstood. As a joke. As a joke. As a joke. Guys. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer.

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