This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Tonight Kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold. Let's see for sensational!
The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Redefining the sport tonight at 8 Eastern 7th Central on NBC and Peacock. At Lowe's, get up to 35% off select major appliances. Plus, members get free delivery, install, and more when you spend $2,500 on select major appliances. Lowe's, we help, you save.
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Subject to change. Visit your nearby Lowe's on East 17th Avenue in Hutchinson. This Sunday, iHeartRadio brings you live to Levi Stadium in Santa Clara for the Super Bowl 60 Tailgate Concert. Presented by NetApp, it's the ultimate pregame party, featuring an exclusive performance from Teddy Swims. Two seven.
Your front row experience will be on iHeartRadio stations across the country and the free iHeartRadio app is Sunday at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific. Then, after the concert, tune in to the Super Bowl 60 pregame show on NBC. Hello, Malcolm Glaudwell here. We're here in New York City with T-Mobile for Business recording another episode of Revisionist History about how 5G network slicing strengthens trust and connections across worldwide industries. Slicing can be used for so many different things.
We're here with our friends from CNN, from Siemens Energy. The ways that it can be used, frankly, are limitless and are really, really built to think through how can T-Mobile understand the pain points that our customers have, smash those pain points, and help you deliver very specific outcomes. No. And we continue with Our American Stories. Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians.
He passed in 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here on Our American Stories, thanks to those who run his estate. Our next story is the story of weapons in World War II. Here's Stephen Ambrose. There were all kind of ways in which people could go about killing each other in the Second World War. or in destroying other weapons.
or in destroying buildings and factories or bridges.
Some of them were new.
Some of them were of World War I vinyl.
Some of them went back, although somewhat improved in design, to the American Civil War.
Some were as old as. Warfare itself. As a big generalization on the weaponry of World War II, for the most part, the war was fought with the same weapons. that were used in the First World War. Although there were significant improvements in many areas, but very Little of The weaponry that we associate with the Second World War in fact originated with that war.
Obviously not rifles or hand grenades or machine guns, but also tanks had come along in the First World War. There even were the barest beginnings of aircraft carriers in the First World War. There were bombers in the First World War. Yeah. There were weapons used in the First World War, as you'll see, that were not used in the Second World War.
Oh. Having said that, there were some tremendous breakthroughs in the Second World War. Perhaps most. Dramatic were the coming of the intermediate range ballistic missile. And the atomic bomb.
And there were some Awfully big advances in transportation. in the Second World War.
Well, the first thing you did in the Second World War when you took up a defensive position was to get the barbed wire stretched out in front of you. Right there, you've got the simplest type of weapon of war. Not a weapon really, but an implement of war. that was developed on the Great Plains of North America. because they didn't have any trees out there, nor any other way of making fences.
So the barbed wire was developed not as a implement a war but as a means of Pinning up cattle. It proved to be ideal, however, to stop the momentum of a charging enemy and was used. by every side all over the world in the Second World War. and put up in front of your position, then behind that position. And in front of it, if you could.
You put in those devices of the devil known as landmines. Millions. And millions. of these awful things were put in place. in the Second World War.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of them are still in place today. Still live. In France today, do you know that they still lose between 25 and 50 farmers every year plowing fields? Partly because they go over mines, others because they go over artillery shells that didn't explode when they penetrated the earth. They're just all kind of live ordnance all around the world.
In Vietnam, it's a terrible problem. all the land mines that are left over from that war. The land mines came in all types and sizes. Very true. Just gruesome things, the S-mine that Rommel loves so much and the Germans used so widely.
especially in defending the Atlantic Wall. You stepped on or near one and it would trigger a device that would pop the mine up into the air to just about groin level and then it would explode there. Yeah. It's put a bit of terror into the hearts of men who saw it happen to others. and it had a big effect very often on slowing up the speed of advance.
Other mines were big enough to blow up Tank tracks and stop a tank. These would not respond to the pressure of a foot. going over them. A soldier stepping on them wouldn't set them off, but the heavier pressure or weight coming from a tank or a truck would. Then you'd put your machine gun in place.
After you had your barbed wire up and your minefield laid, you'd put your machine gun in place to cover as broad a field of fire as possible. The machine gun was a development of the very end of the 19th century and more so of the first part of the 20th century, was extensively used in the First World War, was the big killer. in the First World War and so too in the Second World War. It was an improved weapon in the Second World War. It reached its peak.
The best of all the machine guns of the Second World War was the German MG-42, which had an astonishing rate of fire and heavy caliber, a lot of hitting power to it. Yeah. Very high velocity, very accurate, very reliable weapon. But very heavy, heavier than the American machine gun, much higher rate of fire. There we go.
Americans complained about The Germans having the better machine gun, except when they were Having to lug their machine gun on an advance or carry it back with them on a retreat. and the American lighter machine gun. Was at that point to be preferred. And I make that. Illustration.
To point out that in weaponry is with any other manufactured product, or I with anything. Wherever you gain something, you lose something. The Germans had a very reliable weapon that could throw out a hell of a lot of lead, but it was heavy. It was harder to produce. It was a lot uh More involved in just the weight of the gun, too.
To keep feeding that gun, you had to have almost continuous belts of ammunition, which meant you had to carry an awful lot more ammunition with you, and you tended to be far more wasteful. In firing the weapon, than you were with American machine guns. Once that machine gun was put in place with sandbags around it or whatever protection you could get and the field of fire was cleared out, then you put your infantry. into the ground. dug holes or a trench.
Their primary job was to defend that machine gun. Who was the primary weapon for defending the immediate position? Small arms in the Second World War. were not much improved from those of the First World War. The American M1 was a much better rifle than the Springfield 1903.
They're not all that much better. It was a semi-automatic the Springfield was bald action. Yeah. M1 was a very reliable weapon. You could take it through a swamp, you could take it across the sand of a beach like Omaha, you could immerse it in salt water.
You could punish that weapon. in every way imaginable when it would come up firing. Wonderfully reliable weapon. But the German rifles were also very good.
So the Russians Just about everybody had good small arms. Artillery in the Second World War. Why is it? Very similar to and in many cases identical with the artillery of the First World War. The most basic artillery piece of the First World War was also the most basic of the Second.
It was the 75mm cannon. and had a reach. that went up into the four, five, six kilometers and and more in some cases. The most feared artillery piece of the Second World War, the most respected, was the German 88 millimeter. It had a dual function.
It was both Germany's number one anti-aircraft weapon. and their number one field artillery piece. The The velocity of the 88 was such that you could lay those babies just flat out. And fire straight across a field and The velocity was such that the power of gravity wouldn't begin affecting it until it had gotten a long way out there, a lot further out than the 75 did. And we have more of these stories from Stephen Ambrose and a terrific job on the storytelling editing by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to the Ambrose Estate.
For allowing us to hear these terrific stories. And as he put it, there were all kinds of ways people went about killing each other in World War II.
Some were new, and some were as old as warfare itself. But the improvements in these weapons, staggering. And but the same old deal, you needed the barbed wire, then there was, of course, the machine gun, and then there were the holes you dig in the ground to protect that machine gun. The story of the weapons of World War II with Stephen Ambrose here on Our American Stories. This Sunday, iHeartRadio brings you live to Levi Stadium in Santa Clara for the Super Bowl 60 tailgate concert.
Presented by NetApp, it's the ultimate pregame party, featuring an exclusive performance from Teddy Swims. Seven three. Your front row experience will be on iHeartRadio stations across the country and the free iHeartRadio app is Sunday at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific. Then, after the concert, tune in to the Super Bowl 60 pregame show on NBC. Insurance may all seem the same on the surface, but having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm.
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