r/interestingasfuck • u/Distinct-Question-16 • 23h ago
World War II German Panzer radio operators trained on "shaking tables" mechanized platforms that violently jolted and vibrated in every direction
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u/horrorace 22h ago
It doesn't show how the platform was bouncing. I am imagining a few people jumping up and down on the side they didn't show having a great time and shouting, "wheeeeeee!!!"
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u/muntrammdryn 19h ago
The ole Mormon method
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u/Vachie_ 18h ago
I had to let that soak in to get it
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u/redpandaeater 16h ago
So whoever first came up with it I just have to imagine the balls on him to try convincing his girlfriend to go for it. Then because he probably thought there was no chance of it actually working he then had to actually find some friends that would be willing to do it and watch.
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u/Dracomortua 16h ago
And then? Everyone who participated somehow believes, on some level, that they utterly fooled their All Knowing All Seeing and All Powerful God with this one sticky tricky trick.
Totally. Got away with it. Scott free.
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u/skubaloob 17h ago
Germans having a great time shouting wheeeeeee? It’s not a stereotype the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Reddit legend.
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u/EngagedInConvexation 17h ago
IS this what she meant when she said she was "gonna bounce on it while you hit the button like a telegraph operator"?
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u/Key-Performance-9021 13h ago
Translation:
"It is no easy task for the future tank radio operator. He must learn to operate his telegraph key cleanly, no matter how rough the ride gets. - A Finnish officer among the trainees."
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u/Roflkopt3r 15h ago
Translation of the narration:
"It is not easy for the future tank radioman. He has to learn to do keep his radio communications in order, however rough the ride. A Finnish officer [is] among the students."
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u/TonUpRockerBoy 23h ago
Look how that worked out…at the end they were just throwing the elderly and youth in the same tanks with little to no training.
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u/cryptotope 23h ago
Seems like a good idea for a resource-limited military.
If you have a lot of resources and can spare extra tanks, sure--put trainees in the actual fighting vehicles as soon as possible.
If you have a very limited supply of vehicles (and fuel, and other resources) then you want to do as much training - and screening of trainees - under conditions where you don't have to use those precious tanks for anything except fighting.
If your radio operator trainee is going to wash out because they get motion sick or can't focus when they get bounced around while taking notes, then it's way cheaper to find it out with a bouncing desk than with a tank.
The fact that the Nazis ran out of time, men, and resources at the end of the war doesn't mean their training process wasn't rational before that.
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u/Hoosier_Daddy68 23h ago
The nazis were good at some shit, people just don't like to admit it because it makes us feel wrong for doing so.
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u/cryptotope 22h ago
Competence and morality are orthogonal.
The Nazis did some of the incredibly shitty things they did with a high level of skill.
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u/TadpoleOfDoom 22h ago
I won't call it a "fun fact," but animal rights in Germany were introduced under Shitler. Shame he had more love for animals than for people.
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u/xaos_____ 22h ago
He was vegetarian..
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u/undefined-username 18h ago
According to Speer he would, at the dinner table, give vivid and gruesome accounts of animal suffering to try and dissuade others from eating meat, which is more than a little ironic (if it's true. Albert Speer is a pretty dubious source in general.)
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u/elmutanto 12h ago
Even Goebbels is dead for over 80 years, one of his propaganda campaigns is still in the head of people. Hitler was in fact not a vegetarian, he had so many health issues that he reduced his meat consumption by a lot, because he had too. Goebbels made a nice little campaign out of it.
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u/TheRealtcSpears 10h ago
No he wasn't
One of his favorite dishes was liver dumplings, and he loved sausages.
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u/TadpoleOfDoom 22h ago
Your point? Does being vegetarian make it harder to see the value in humans too?
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u/SPP_TheChoiceForMe 21h ago
I mean they obviously were doing some things well, otherwise a country the size of Ohio wouldn’t have been able to take on the world.
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u/Termsandconditionsch 21h ago
More like they made some very risky gambles that worked until they didn’t. Going through the Ardennes was a bit of a hail mary but they absolutely did not want to end up in trench warfare again so decided that it was worth it.
They also gambled on France & the UK not having the will to go on the offense for real in September 1939. And so on.
But yes, they had some very competent people and good organisation. The modern research university is a German invention.
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u/Gammelpreiss 20h ago
you dont conquer most of europe and hold for 6 years against the world by just gambling
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u/Think_Reporter_8179 22h ago
This is why history should be left to the historians, and everyone else should just read it and shut up.
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u/MageDoctor 19h ago
To be fair, historians write books to inform everyone else. And discussion is what allows us to learn.
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u/Crab2406 21h ago
Germans only had three good things
-Stug III
-jerry cans
-invention of disposable anti-tank launcher
Thats it, other stuff were either dogshit or okay at best
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u/Gammelpreiss 20h ago
gentlemen, the internet expert has spoken.
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u/TheRealtcSpears 10h ago
He's not wrong
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u/Gammelpreiss 10h ago
yes he is. this german equipment bad hyperbole is famous on the internet...but only there. you do not go and wage a 6 year old world war against the three major world powers with only "okay" equipment.
you have those two extremist sides on the internet, wehraboos on the one hand and ppl like you on the other, that only think in extremes.
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u/Crab2406 9h ago
I remind you that germans started WW2 with their vampire economy, and without stealing shit, it would implode. You cant really apply logic to them
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u/Ynwe 21h ago
How is that related to the video at all?... That's like watching a video of how former US special forces trained and then writing "lol, all that and they got beaten in Vietnam and ran away from Afghanistan" or some shit. How are those two things even related?
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u/I_travel_ze_world 17h ago
Well there was a different break down between all of the wars you mentioned..... I don't know why you bring up the comparison.
Germany had a lot of time to prepare for their Blitzkrieg is what their comment was trying to point out.... and at the end of it they did not have the training or man power left to continue their failed war efforts.
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u/SkrikOnanist 13h ago
So the big difference is that the US didnt have time to prepare for war in Vietnam or Afghanistan? Or is it Irak too? Iran?
Man, when the F did you guys win a war last time? :D
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u/I_travel_ze_world 1h ago edited 46m ago
Didn't the US invade Pakistan and murder Osama Bin Laden?
Didn't the US invade Venezuela and kidnap their president?
Is Saddam Hussein still breathing?
Ali Khamenei was taken out pretty early in Iran, lol.
*edit: Oh yeah.. funny you say that the US had a lot of time to prepare for Afghanistan... do you not know anything about 9/11? Or are you the type of person who says Bush did 9/11?
9/11 happened and on 10/13 the Taliban were kicked out of Kabul
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u/SkrikOnanist 43m ago
Sooo.. whos running Kabul now when youve beaten the Taliban? :D
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39m ago edited 23m ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SkrikOnanist 33m ago
You still havnt won any wars, and everybody hates you. The US is nothing but a development country with iPhones and nukes, owned by russia :D
Pakistan is a long time ally of the US, still harboured Usama (you cant even spell his name right, its actually "Usāmah") but Im sure the taliban has you guys in high regard
Hey, hows the war in Iran doing, you like the cheap gas over there?
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u/TonUpRockerBoy 1h ago edited 1h ago
The bin Laden raid, the capture of Maduro, and the Iraq invasion are different types of military operations, but they all raise questions under international law. Pakistan condemned the bin Laden raid as a violation of its sovereignty. The 2003 invasion of Iraq is widely viewed by many international law experts as unlawful. And the 2026 operation to capture Maduro has likewise prompted significant debate over whether it violated Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law.
Not the flex you think it is…
Edit: saw you added Iran to the list after my reply, proving you can’t argue with stupid.
You’ll wake up one day and (hopefully)understand you live in one of the worst countries in the world right now… and no one will feel sorry for you.
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u/I_travel_ze_world 1h ago
Oohh nooo its UNLAWFUL, lol, what the fuck you gonna do about it? just cry some more please
What happened to Gaddafi in Libya? Do you think the US wasn't involved in that?
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u/GayRacoon69 21h ago
Well this video is a training video from WWII
The guy was commenting on the state of the German army "at the end"… of WWII
By the end of the war they ran out of fighting age men and resorted to sending elderly and children with no training into combat
They lacked training like the kind seen in this video. That's why it's relevant
It's more like watching a video of US military training for Vietnam and then saying "all that and they got beaten by farmers". It's not a perfect analogy but it's closer than yours
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u/SkrikOnanist 13h ago
They lacked tanks too so no youth or elderly where in any tanks by the end of the war.
Except for Waffen SS Hitlerjugend, but that is a whole other thing.
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u/GayRacoon69 12h ago
They also lacked planes but that didn't stop young inexperienced pilots from being sent up
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u/SkrikOnanist 12h ago
So the historybooks are wrong?
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u/GayRacoon69 11h ago
No? I'm just saying they lacked a lot of things. They didn't have enough tanks or experienced crew members just like they didn't have enough planes or pilots
The history books are very clear that the German army at that stage was a shitshow
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u/SkrikOnanist 10h ago
No old folks where in any tanks by the end of the war, nor where they flying any airplanes. Old folks were part of the Volksturm, but thats about it - the fact that their whole army was a shitshow will not make the argument that old people were part of the Panzerwaffe true.
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u/link3945 18h ago
video of how former US special forces trained and then writing "lol, all that and they got beaten in Vietnam and ran away from Afghanistan" or some shit. How are those two things even related?
To be fair, there is a very interesting critique in there about operator culture and why those high performance elite units may not be great for the armed forces as a whole.
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u/Other-Databas 18h ago
The high speed guys have their role to play, the fault lies in how hyped up they've become.
They've come to the spotlight with decades of asymmetrical warfare, we're now shifting into a world of potential near peer conflict. The logistics guys will have their hayday again lol
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u/Own-Faithlessness986 19h ago
Umm it had nothing to do with this training , this is actually pretty good way to train for being ready to operate in the tank , theres alot of reasons why germany lost but it definitely wasn't because of quality of training.
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u/Chaddles94 18h ago
What does this training have to do with who replaced them? By the end of a war youre losing, ofc you would use anyone you could. But this training would still be happening if they could comfortably keep up the supply chains to do so.
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u/UTraxer 16h ago
it worked out great. The figures show that millions of German men that supported Hitler and loved fascism were mowed down and died horrible deaths, mostly on the Eastern Front.
Same with the Japanese.
The most fervent assholes were entirely wiped out of the population, and the extreme majority of those left alive saw they weren't so superior after all.
I would call that a success overall.
The Russians are experiencing it now. If you are being sent to die for a shitty dictator, fight back against them and don't just go quietly and let them use you as cannon fodder.
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u/RogueJSK 23h ago
Not just German... In the final shot is a Slovak Army First Lieutenant.
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u/Lt_Schneider 23h ago
The speaker said something about there being a Finnish officer among the pupils
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u/RogueJSK 23h ago
That may be, but the man in the final shot is wearing a Slovak uniform, not Finnish.
Finnish collar tabs didn't use stars, and were a different shape. Their tunics were also a different cut.
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u/GCdotSup 13h ago
is the guy with stars on his shoulders Romanian? Definitely not German.
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u/Nerd997711 4h ago
"Ein finnischer Offizier unter den Schülern." = A Finnish officer among the students.
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u/handyandy314 12h ago
If they used someone with Parkinson disease would the two shaking cancel themselves out?
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u/skyblueleaves 11h ago
Where is the whole documentary of the entire country of Germany during Ww2, engineering, books, education, systems, politics, etc.
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u/redpandaeater 17h ago
For some reason it reminds me of the USAAF bombardier training. Just a very basic but effective setup.
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u/Over_Butterfly_2523 20h ago
My understanding is they barely had any radios in tanks.
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u/LetGoPortAnchor 13h ago
Germany was one of the first, if not the first to equip every tank with a radio. The Panzer I only had a receiver but from the Panzer II onwards it could also transmit.
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u/TheRealtcSpears 10h ago
The Germans did.
That's what got them through the low countries so quickly.....well that and pervitin
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u/Natural_Traffic_2727 23h ago edited 15h ago
And they STILL lost
Edit: Found the Nazis lmfao
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u/cryptotope 21h ago
True, but their loss was unconnected with the quality of their training program for radio operators.
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u/GayRacoon69 21h ago
Part of their loss was due to a lack of trained troops so arguably it is kinda connected
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u/NowYuoSee123 20h ago
Lack of manpower in general. They had plenty well trained troops (over 3 million at the start of the war). The problem started a few years down the road when they were losing more men than they could train or were enlist-able
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u/GayRacoon69 19h ago
The issue is that those well trained troops died and were replaced by people without sufficient training
I've mostly read about this problem in relation to the Luftwaffe, the elite aces were dying and being replaced with pilots who had minimal training
Meanwhile allied pilots got to go home after enough missions to train new troops.
But yes lack of manpower in general was also a significant factor on top of a lack of resources, politics, strategical errors, and more
The German military was held together by duct tape and propaganda near the end. It was a shit show for many reasons
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u/cryptotope 18h ago
Nazi Germany had a lack of everything by war's end--or even war's midpoint.
Fundamentally, Germany did not have the human or industrial resources to match the powers it fought against, even before the United States joined the war. (Economically Germany was probably on par with one of the Soviet Union or the UK; by population it outnumbered the UK but was dwarfed by the Soviet Union.)
Hitler's anticipated path to victory rested on several defective notions: that the UK could be induced to negotiate a separate peace after the fall of France; that the Soviet Union's industrial base could be quickly overrun; that World War 1 had been lost through internal strife and disunity; that the Americans would not be able to project power effectively across the Atlantic (or with any enthusiasm); plus all of the Nazi delusions about racial superiority; etc. Kick a couple of legs out from under that stool of supposition, and the Nazi defeat was nigh unavoidable.
By the time U.S. troops started to meaningfully engage the German soldiers in the field - in North Africa, as part of Operation Torch in November 1942 - Hitler was already well on the way to losing the Battle of Stalingrad. (Germany's 6th Army was fully encircled by Soviet troops on 20 November.) American involvement only hastened a foregone conclusion.
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u/GayRacoon69 18h ago
I understand that. That's why I said it's "arguably kinda connected" instead of just "connected"
Thank you for explaining why Germany lost WWII. I don't know why you thought it was necessary and I'm still not quite sure if this is meant to be a rebuttal or an agreement but thanks anyways I guess
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u/TacTurtle 18h ago
The German over-reliance on radios for military communication made it much easier for British intelligence to intercept and code break sensitive information.
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u/deflectreddit 23h ago
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u/HerrMatthew 23h ago
So you know how we have roads that are level, flat, perfect to drive on, and then we have rough terrain that's... essentially everything but that? Ok, good.
So there are tanks, right? Big, long metal boxes that weigh several tonnes and can fire projectiles the size of a person's head. When they go off the road, they shake like crazy. Also, when the main gun is fired, it shakes like crazy.
Back in the 1940's the suspensions weren't as advanced as today. Also, they didn't have computers, so everything communicated through a radio had to be written down. Commands from the higher ups, directions, pois, targets, allies/enemies in the area, communication of the crew, targets eliminated, whatever you can think of might be relevant.
TL;DR: it's a tank. it shakes even when it's stationary.
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u/Somhlth 23h ago
We could have used them two decades later on the bridge of the Enterprise.