Greetings Dramatards

I watched an Australian movie last night. and unfortunately I was left unsatisfied.

It revolved around the very famous event in WW1 in the Western Front trenches, in which the western Allies devised a very daring scheme to detonate an astronomical explosion beneath enemy trenches, via sappers (military mining specialists) whom would smuggle explosives underground, beneath the enemy positions in secret and in silence.

This particular event (7 June 1917) wasn't the only instance in which strategic strongpoints along enemy trenches were mined and detonated, but it would become noteworthy for being the singular largest (deliberate non-factory disaster) explosion created by man in history up until that point, and would remain so up until the pre-nuke era.

This movie also rekindled my neurodivergent issues I have had with useless contemporary pop-historian strags whom had made me very mad with their lack of research effort and allowing the telephone-game of historic mistake regurgitation to continually proliferate when discussing famous historic events - especially in war history where wingcuckery and national pride can be the order of the day.

Unfortunately for those History Buffs, and by History Buffs i mean Western non-kraut dipshits whom only ever exclusively focus their historic obsession with WW1-WW2, and totally let their bias and modern wingcuckery let them see the complex nuances of history, the event is only really famous because Anglophiles who themselves off about the impressive accomplishment of the operation,

and the stature of the Anglo-French alliance who so soundly defeated the Krauts, let the long term reality of the outcome of this event on the Strategic level, rather than Tactical level be something they can't envision properly outside of the usual Anglophilia

In summary the operation of secretly mining, smuggling explosives beneath enemy bunkers/trenches, and detonation itself, were a stunning success, but the long term effects of the operation was what was overlooked by both commanders at the time, and the usual Wingcuck anglophiles

Basically, the operation could be historically argued to have been a massive MASSIVE resource sink, which had diminishing returns of a very high order. And while the Western Allies had decisive resource and manpower advantages from the onset of the Great War, compared to the krauts with their colonies, larger population pools, and not being Geographically turbo cucked by being surrounded by foes and having shortage of needed materials - they too still were under constant strain to actually deliver resources to keystone fronts.

Example: The 990,000 pounds (450,000 kg) installed beneath Hill60 up until the day of detonation (7 June 1917), often mistaken for over a million pounds of detonation materials, when it was just shy of it; were a massive, massive, MASSIVE resource investment.

Explosives which could have been used better elsewhere in the Western Front's war of attrition. Some historians argue that the large detonation of Hill 60 (7 June 1917), were of a similar inefficient expenditure of finite resources as the famous Gustav super-heavy railway gun artillery used by Nazi Germany during WW2 in the Eastern Front.

A weapon which famously was founded upon Hitler and the Nazi High Command's obsession with large and bombastic (punny ) superweapons, which nonetheless were in fact highly inefficient resource sinks of finite resources.

The Gustav railway gun took so long to build, that it was not finished in time for the Wehrmacht to invade franch in 1940, intended to blow a depression into the Maginot Line, a colossal series of forts and bunkers along the borders between Frogland and Germany. Instead the Gustav would be shipped to the Eastern Front, at the siege of Sevastopol where it saw some successful action against the land battleship-tier turrets defending the city against kraut tanks.

It's hard to judge historically whether Gustav succeeded or failed at its role, and whether the weapon system had performed its charge adequately - in the Siege of Sevastopol it did in fact do major contribution towards busting open key bunkers and destroying the coastal guns aimed towards kraut tanks. But the momentum of the german advance had also been aided by the dominancy of airpower against the Soviets, and their divebombers. And lesser kraut artillery also aided in busting open Soviet bunkers and strongpoints.

The issue of the Gustav railway gun was getting it to the point of combat operation, because it had exponential increases of manpower and maintenance costs, with regards to operating the system when compared to contemporary artillery of vast calibre sizes.

Depending on which historian is doing the definition, between 2500 - 4,000 were needed to get the gun into firing position; and between 250-500 men were needed to operate the firing of the weapon system. The goddarn fricking reason why there is a fricking RANGE of men instead of an exact figure towards its support staff, is because unlike traditional artillery battalions, the line between immediate military personnel and logistics support is near non-existent for this cumbersome weapon.

It took 5 weeks to set up the weapon from stage zero, to the point of detonation. 2,500 men were needed to lay tracks and dig embankments (for the heavy structure foundation). 2 flak battalions were needed to protect the gun from air attack. And finally 250 core personnel to assemble the gun in 3 days (54 hours) onsite.

https://www.sandboxx.us/news/the-nazi-schwerer-gustav-rail-gun-big-bang-for-the-buck-or-small-spark-for-the-reichsmark/

Only 47 rounds were fired at Sevastopol and worn out its original barrel, which had to be shipped back to factory for realignment, and the spare barrel refitted.

The siege of Sevastopol would remain the only theatre in which the Gustav railway gun contributed ANYTHING of value to the operation of war for Nazi Germany. The gun was moved to Leningrad but the Germans then avoided that mire as it had no advantage to get stuck into another Stalingrad urban siege, then the Gustav was sent to Warsaw and may have been intended to be used in the Warsaw Uprising like other German heavy siege pieces, but the uprising was crushed before it could be prepared to fire.

A reason why the fricking thing took so long to transport, was that "the railway tracks were specifically engineered to accommodate the immense weight and size of Schwerer Gustav. Constructed with reinforced steel, these tracks provided a stable foundation for the weapon's movement." So they literally couldn't just use regular tracks - they require the literal reconstruction of highly specialized weight resistant tracks!!!

This is why I and many afrikaans authors had referred to the Gustav railway gun as a weapons-system, rather than just a weapon itself, because it required intensive logistical support structures beyond its immediate military unit command, and why there is a fricking RANGE of personnel from 2500-5000, as independent railway construction units had to often pitch in to aid in the transporting of this cumbersome motherlover over Eastern Europe.

And also why the continual operation of this railway gun wasn't JUST the material and financial cost of its initial construction in the factory it was produced. It took continuous resources in addition to its initial cost, in terms of new expensive railway construction just to move from one campaign to another, to replenish its barrels and components, to guard it from areal attack.

By the end of the war, as fortunes reversed in the Eastern Front, and the krauts lost airsuperiority against the Soviets, the fricker Gustav would continue to become more and more vulnerable against air attack, and just housing it became a liability.

I believe the Gustav railway gun is a perfect parallel between the 2 World Wars with regards to flashy weapon operations with diminishing returns - the amount of resource investment far outstripped the long term effects on the overall war on a strategic level.

OVERHYPE OF HILL 60 OPERATION'S EFFECTS:

The overhype of Hill 60's detonation could thus be summed up as a complete absence of influence on the wider impact of the war on a strategic level. What is meant by this is that though a metric shitload of krauts perished in the blast, and the stunned and discombobulated survivors were immediately overrun by Commonwealth troops timed for the explosion event - they had failed to penetrate any further than 3km behind enemy lines - a paltry gain even by WW1 static front standards.

Many dipshit pop culture article writers and youtube pro-Bong (Lindy Beige dry heave) anglophile "History Buffs" fools would unquestioningly jerk off to the success of this operation (which it was), and it being another historic hallmark to the superiority of the Bong, but fail to understand the nuances of the effects of such an event on the contemporary war strategic aims and longterm effects.

Even dry heave Indy Nidel (@Aevann) has an excerpt in one of his episodes surrounding the events of Hill 60, where the British failed to capitalize upon the success of Hill 60's detonation.

Indy dry heave rightfully indicates the reality in which the British Commander-in-Chief Douglas for the oversight of Hill 60, didn't further take advantage of the breakthrough, and consolidated his forces upon Hill 60 (now probably crater 60) for which he was criticized by his fellow generals for failing to exploit such a unique and expensive opportunity to burst through and outflank the enemy, hastening the end of the war.

But just breaking through enemy lines just wasn't as realistic a one might imagine, even if Douglas had exploited the breakthrough, rear reserve German units existed, and would possibly have stopped his exhausted men, only resulting in a Bulge front, surrounded on 3 sides.

Additionally support units were not primed to follow through as with Blitzkrieg doctrine by krauts in WW2, thus proving a further moot point, as this forward elements would in turn be isolated from their own artillery support.

But this is also a microcosmic example I have with Historians like dry heave Indy Nidel and people who watch his shit unquestioningly. It is never what they say which is untruth, but what is left unsaid, which unwittingly can distort truth.

Example: Even for an amateur historian cuck like me, the ever infamous figure of 10 000 German soldiers perishing outright in the initial blast of the Messines Hill 60 was suspect, or at the very least uncertain. After all a blast of such unprecedented magnitude, and ferociousness could only have an initial bodycount of an equally staggering figure. And so History Buff dumbfricks lap it up and repeat it unquestioningly. And only non-english kraut/french sources ever offer disputes against this claim, and Anglophiles ignore it.

https://simonjoneshistorian.com/did-the-messines-mines-really-kill-10000-germans/

====(from simonjoneshistorian article)

Many accounts attest to the shock and panic caused among the Germans by the detonation of the mines. The number actually killed is difficult to quantify but the astonishing claim that 10,000 Germans were killed by the explosions which has begun to appear in popular history sources clearly has to be questioned. The probable recent origin of this figure is a history of the battle published in 1998, which implied that, of 10,000 German soldiers missing after the battle, many 'were undoubtedly vaporised or blown apart by the effects of the mines.'[1]

The figure of 10,000 missing is from the German Official History which states that it covers a 21-day period ending on 10th June 1917. Furthermore, of this figure 7,200, according to British sources, were actually taken prisoner, reducing the number who were killed to 2,800.[2] To this must be taken into consideration that many of the German casualties were caused the massive and highly effective British artillery barrages, rather than by the mine detonations.[3]

Stokes noted that another man, of the 17th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, 'was dying on the south side of the crater.' Were the mine to have fully detonated as most of the others had, and thrown its debris more widely, Stokes believed that it would have buried a third dugout and caused more casualties. He believed that the bunkers were mostly occupied by small posts of four to eight men, which led him to estimate the number of Germans who lost their lives at each of the mines:

Judging from the dead seen around craters & distances between the posts, each of the five southern mines killed 10-20 men.[5]

If Stokes's estimate of 20 men killed at each crater is applied to all 19 mines, the result is just 380 killed, a dramatically lower number than 10,000. Even with the possibility that some parts of the German front line assaulted were more crowded, it is unlikely that the number was more than 500.

The effect of the mines lay their shock value, disorientating the defenders and inducing panic.

=====(end quote)

In summary it could be as unvaguely as possible be argued that approximately 500-1000 Germans were killed outright in the blast, about 1000-2000 Germans mortally wounded or incapacitated, and the further 7000 men whom were captured, even those whom remained unwounded, or without perforated eardrums, were so stunned from the shock of their horrific ordeal, that they put up near zero resistance against the follow up British attack, and were easily apprehended as a direct consequence of the explosio.

It's a long article discussing further from where I quoted, the actual German doctrine involving placing men in trenches and how bunkers were populated. About how Germans would temporarily desert forward trenches to lull unsuspecting british/french troops into pre-sighted artillery chokepoints and so on, thus showing how british mistook the actual casualty figures, when the absence of kraut Brigades brigades were initially interpreted as all of them having been vaporized in the initial blast and so on.

It's long and boring, but a fantastic article showcasing the complicated nature of attributing casualties to causes in the supreme chaos of war, let alone a chaotic event as turbulent as the unprecedented Hill 60 explosion, which literally anialated evidence which in previous events were used to calculated damage and casualties caused unto the enemy.

Before the Hill 60 detonation had taken place, the British had endeavored to deliberately showcase and project their buildup of infantry assault forces to enemy air recon, so that the germans would stack the trenches above Hill 60 with defenders against this assault and thus maximize the effect and death upon the german defenders.

Anyways, the point remains that the majority of the operation's success lied in the stunning factor, rather than the actual fatal degree of the explosion itself. It could

What must be understood is that this Rantpost in no way disputes the tactical success of the Hill 60 Operation - if 1000 or 10 000 germans were killed, the result was the same. The British forces destroyed a problem strongpoint and successfully took the enemy position, with a near zero casualty rate for their assaulting troops, and unprecedented event in WW1 when taking enemy trenches, as even kraut survivors were so discombobulated by the blast wave that they offered zero resistance, being deaf with popped ear drums or blind with popped eyes.

Even if 0 germans were actually killed in the blast, the result would have remained the same - the objective was met with little casualties. A brazen successful operation!

But what people fail to appreciate is the sheer magnitude and scope of WW1. People have a hard time with envisioning statistics, once figures in the millions are involved, and the simple fact remains that even if 10 000 krauts were vaporized instantly/ or killed in the mop-up operation, they were a negligible in the scope of the wider war. The manpower of both the Germans and Frogs/Bongs were just so vast, and the casualty figures of the largest battles on the Western Front like the Somme, alone would range in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.

This in conjunction with the fact that the Bong High Command completely failed to exploit the opening in the front created by the Hill 60 explosion, and the vast VAST amounts of manpower and explosives utilized for a mere 3km front gain, which in itself took nearly a fricking year to build up - combined with the hours spent by crack sapper teams to endeavor this undertaking. This could be seen as a colossal waste of effort, resources and opportunity - but that is hindsight.

Ultimately it would be the German Nation State literally starving to death, which brought them to their knees.

ACTUAL REVIEW OF TEH MOVIE: BENEATH HILL 60 (2010)

Sorry guys I started this longpost trying to review the movie, but my terminal @kaamrev autism let me to spiral out of control.

Summary: the movie is just not very good i think.

It focusses on the story of the real life 1st Australian Tunnelling Company's efforts in mining underneath Hill 60 in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front.

The main problem is that the movie is painfully inefficient with its runtime. I looked and the movie fricking ran for just over two hours, yet it felt like it ran past at the speed of greased lightning and i mean this in the absolute worst way possible.

The fricking company only FINALLY arrives at the titular Hill 60 past 60 minutes into the film. Every time I looked at the timer, I was like: "oh nooo, only 50minutes of the movie is left! Are they actually gonna cover the event?"

Compare this to Greyhound movie which I reviewed a few months back, which ran for 1 hour and 35 minutes, but which in comparison is VERY economical for its runtime.

https://rdrama.net/h/lit/post/284718/the-good-shepherd-greyhound-review-marseyreading

in just 90 minutes, a vast array of events occur, and circumstances change for the protagonist and his crew. In Under Hill 60 instead we have a literal lovestory tapewormed to the fricking film - which ads absolutely nothing to the experience, and wastes runtime. In Greyhound, the captain's love was showcased in the 1st 5 minutes and never again. In Under Hill 60, a total of 30 FRICKING MINUTES (i counted!) is spent in anime flashbacks of the Australian protagonist Woody, being pressured to enlist for the Western Front, and failing in the most mediocre substandard romance drama in film history since fricking Attack of the Clones!

The movie unfortunately also has the habit of trying to string tragedy sequences for minor character deaths, which I believe were undeserved, as the movie had not succeeded for teh audience to get to know them, or for the characters to have have perished and been reminisced about in the most cliche way possible

Lastly, the movie had the MOST CLICHE way possible of showcasing how the underdog Australian sappers and officers were disrespected and discounted by their commanding officers, when offering solutions to obstacles - example, pumping out water from flooded mines, to being discounted upon arrival in the most 1-Dimensional way possible for being lowborn Aussies.

Most of the reviews I could find appear to be Australian in origin

Which doesn't mean they are worthless, but demonstrates how nationalism can blind people to the flaws of media.

And I get it. Just like Bongs/Yanks obtain the lionshare of glory on the Big Screen, and how Polish/Australian/Canadian/Commonwealth efforts in the famous World Wars are sidelined by Hollywood catering towards an Anglo-American audience, so can it be invigorating to see the efforts and glory and accomplishments of one's nation displayed on film for the wider world

But by itself, the film is just so very flawed I never heard of the film's existence until earlier this week, when i happened to see a war-movie clip compilation showcasing the movie. And I was like: wow i never heard of this movie I wonder why?! Then I watched it, and was like, oh, that's why.

I suspect few beyond Australians themselves even know of the film's existence, or have seen it, and likely if it ever were to reach a wider international audience, the Rotten Tomatoes score would likely tank when compared to other contemporary or historic war films.

Also the acting fluctuates from great to not so goood....

Lastly I would not mention this but as the film insists upon itself - the film has this inferiority complex to showcase just how awesome and cool and brave the Australian forces in WW1 was, and how they were historically discounted by their Bong peers.

But the film does the exact same to the Canadian sappers involved with the Hill 60 operation!!! While the Australian sappers were involved for the detonation and end stage mining operations under Hill 60, the initial commencement and 1st half of the operation were endeavored by the 3rd Canadian Tunnelling Company, which was only passably mentioned by the film.

And while the film isn't malicious about misattributing effort of the Canadians, the sheer inferiority complex of the writing instilling upon the audience that Australian contribution to the war efforts of WW1 was looked over, makes this particularly ironic when the film unintentionally does the same to their Canadian compatriots!

WHAT I LIKED ABOUT THE FILM:

Enough negativity, because I did enjoy some aspects of the film. And while I'm being mean to the Australians, this film is certainly better than any fricking war movie movie Boers have ever created, as in ever.

And I do appreciate sincere efforts, despite budget constraints, and the movie was certainly earnest and sincere.

I greatly enjoyed the period from 60:00 - 1:40 when the actual operation of mining beneath the Ypres front was showcased. The earth beneath Hill 60 Belgium was a particularly difficult place to mine for sappers, because it was a massively drenched soaked environment, constantly under rain in the Belgian climate. It was particularly unfortunate that the battle lines had been drawn where they were, as normal Belgian citizens never even heavily built anything under the swampy muds.

All of the most stereotypical visions of WW1 muddy soaked rat-invested trenches were true here, and underground was even worse. The movie was at its best when it showcased the challenges the Australian Sappers faced. How they had to utilize pumps to drain the fricking water out of the mines, drizzling down from the soaked surface above into the tunnels - 1st via hand, then via sophisticated for the time, electric pumps

The film was also at its best when it showcased the dread the Sappers faced when utilizing listening posts to detect enemy sapper tunnels digging into their positions, how they literally had to utilize devices called geophones (like the device doctors use to measure your heart rate) to listen for enemy pickaxe activity!

The movie also brilliantly showcased how they had to fortify the tunnels with extra care against the constantly sinking mud.

It's just a crying fricking shame that all of this real world historically accurate reconstruction portion of the film constitutes a mere 40 minutes of the fricking runtime and is surrounded by another 80 minutes of bullshit

Lastly what I also enjoyed, and is worth recounting, is the film's respectful portrayal of the Opposition/enemy. The Krauts/Huns are portrayed as competent, formidable and human. No shitty propaganda-poster stereotypes or cliches, just straight laced fearsome antagonists, whom needed to be overcome, and whose counter tunneling efforts were a real threat for our heroic protagonists up until the last minute, less the Germans pre-emptively detonate the stockpiled explosives in the Australian's faces.

Conclusion: a 6/10