SPOILERS: Can’t believe it didn’t dawn on me that this photo might not actually be from WW2 (it’s a reconstruction) ..Will just have to chalk it down as another lesson learned. Oh well, at least I found the spot! Well the mountains at least 😅 For the record: I knew that Switzerland was neutral in WW2, I just wasn’t sure whether German troops had been granted access somehow!
It's kind of dark, but interpol have asked for help from the public at times in identifying places found in child abuse imagery. The actual kids are removed from the picture obviously, but the hope is that people can figure out where it is from the surroundings. I remember there was one which was successfully geolocated to some southern Chinese city and one to Madagascar, but there were some that were unlocated too.
lol true, from our perspective the check seems completely unnecessary, he has never been not recording! But for all we know it is actually the exception when he hasn't forgotten to start the recording.
I remembered one video where it started with "oh now we're recording!" Or someone along those lines, where he also still had his recordings software Open. So it does happen that he forgets to record :)
Greeting from Kharkiv, Ukraine just 30 miles away from the Russian border. I'm a 22 year old guy and I don't know if I'll be able to watch your channel, Tom. But I'm glad I was a part of this amazing geo community! Wish me luck guys:)
I hope you’re still ok. Are you unable to leave the city? The news is saying the shelling is bad in Kharkiv. If trains are still running, and you have the means to, leave. Or take to the roads to a place where trains ARE still running, and get out. If trains aren’t an option, just find a means to go west, as far west as you can to get out of that violence! Good luck to you, all my hugs to you! 😭🤗🤗 And f**k Putin and his war mongering dictator mind!
A bit of Context. During WW2, Neuschwanstein Castle was used to store Stolen Nazi Treasure up until 1944, so it would make sense that Waffen SS would be stationed there, in order to defend the treasure. Many of the alpine castles were used as treasure storage, or to house political prisoners, due to their often secluded locations and lavish living conditions. Even if the Painting isn't from WW2, it pictures a scene which should, in theory, be historically accurate.
The SS considered a plan to blow Neuschwanstein castle up too to prevent the allies from gaining the treasures inside and the castle itself. I for one am very glad it never came to fruition. I plan on visiting sometime in the near future
i don’t think the photo is real. the soldier looks to be photoshopped in to the landscape. doing a reverse google image search you can find the same exact picture without the soldier in it. The clouds look the exact same, just no soldier or field in the foreground.
yeah literally just opened the video and have it paused on the start with the picture showing and this was my immediate thought, scrolled down to see what's up lol
SCHOOL! The answer is I don't go! Why go? I am famous. I am famous. I have more fans than fingers multiplied with toes multiplied with teeth multiplied with ears. I am famous. I am famous. SCHOOL? No, thanks. UA-cam FAME? Yes. Good day, dear ba
Tom, the amount of times I've seen you check and say "we are recording" makes me wonder just how many times you've been left chatting to yourself... Another top video mate!
as a layman ww2 historian this was a ton of fun to watch! keep it up! also as a swiss i found it pretty funny how long you thought about switzerland, which i thought was rather famously never occupied by germany... *edit: what few people know and we swiss don't like to admit ist that we allowed both sides to transport troops and material through the swiss railway network.
not true, only the Germans and Italians, this was because the allies never reached northern italy before wars end, not to mention allied aircraft often blew up swiss rail junctions
These are some of the most fascinating videos I've ever watched. Your deduction and reasoning skills are INSANE. Great vids man, keep it up! I also think this opens up an area for a geoguessr-esque game, where it gives you various historical photos, and it collects the locations users select, helping to narrow it down much like your comments do once seeing your videos.
It's really neat to see my hometown beeing flown over in a Geowizard video. When I saw you searching at the Schneeberg and Rax, I already thought you were pretty close, but at 13:09 "Guntramsdorf" is actually visible on the right. That brightens my day ^^
I have done similar searches for the WW2 pictures of my great grandfather and found the exakt spots of where he was standing, but there are a few pictures with him where I can't say where they were taken. Love the Video!
Tom I love this series. In regards to getting the exact location in these wilder areas it would help you to use the eye-line of the camera to plot the altitude. For example this picture appears to be taken at an angle roughly perpendicular to the earth so we know that it's looking from an altitude equal to the centre of the image frame. This can be done using the horizon, even with mountains! Love you Tom
FYI, the 'bag' is a metal food canteen, the camo roll is a tent half, two of which put together would make a two man tent. They also wore them as ponchos in the rain. Good video again!
I love how you can criticize your own weaknesses, not that I would worry about it too much as it is your style, but it's good to know how you tick so when things aren't working out right you might be able to take a look at the situation and think "what could I be doing wrong".
Just came across your channel a few days ago. Love your Geo Detective vids!! Haven't watched much of anything else besides geo bingo. But what I have watched I love. Looking forward to more Geo Detective and and Bingo.
Love all these geodetective vids! Sure, they are stretched out for entertainment sake, but it’s fun to watch the process unfold. It’s a bit like a detective novel: sure, you could skip to the end, but where’s the fun in that. And, like the novels, often the answer was right there from the start.
Oh, man, I recognized those peaks right away. I love that place! I'm fairly certain this is taken specifically at the lookout point on the road behind the castle. There is an open, grassy area there and this is a popular photo spot. That would mean that this is a photo from WWII as there are now trees that would block the left peak from view. Another strong possibility is that this is a little of both old and new; a composite of an old landscape shot and a modern model in costume. The lighting on the "soldier" seems to differ from the surrounding light. It's possible this was done for a video game.
If it was for a video game that would show up in the reverse google search, but you're right there's 3 or 4 layers: landscape - grass - soldier - and potentially the grass in front of his bag but I can't tell if that's a part of the image with the soldier or it's own layer
Funny you mention Darth Vader, because it is actually true that Darth Vaders gear is heavily inspired by nazi uniforms and WW1 trench uniforms. Stormtrooper is also an actual type of German soldier from WW1.
Picture quality could be quite good back in the day, depending of the method used for taking the picture. There are some stunningly sharp pictures even from decades before WW2. But I agree with you, this image looks off. Either it is fake or a heavily modified/colourised original pic.
You could get very high resolution with film in the 1940s. To me the colours don't look right for back then but the colours could've been manipulated or even added more recently. That is assuming it is a photo from the 1940s. I would've guessed it's a more modern photo of a guy in an old uniform but other comments say the image exists without the soldier.
Certain types of film have better "resolution" than your average digital camera even today. And 1080p is a video resolution. And not very good compared to a good quality photograph. There's a lot wrong with this comment. Edit: that said, this photo is almost certainly fake or edited
since 1913 the standard 35mm film was not only used for cinematic purposes - but also for photography now as 24 mm × 36mm. A good film goes beyond 10 Megapixels. (1080p is ~2 MP). Different sources can be found, stating from ~10 MP up to well over 34 MP...
GeoGuessr video idea: you could play with the "Unity Script" by Jupaoqq. This script allows you to play basically every map, but out of a satellite view.
The 4 stages of Geodetective: - "Imma try and find this spot" - Searches for hours on end - Finally finds it - "I don't believe it!" THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT, TOM!!
This round was fun cause I've walked along the whole lake (Alpsee) down there and the Neuschwanstein area in general. I was like - "yep you got it" when you first mentioned it but then disregarded it :D
Hey Tom, you can try to do a straight line mission crossing 3 countries. Top of Czechia you can cross Poland, Germany and Czechia. It is around 50km long trip
Except that trip would be crossing 0 of the countries. It would be lopping off a small part of each of them which Tom has said before is not at all legitimate and doesn't count as crossing a country in a straight line.
@@pex3 Scotland in and of itself is a skinny place and he or I never said you have to cross at the longest line point. He crossed coast to coast, not just a tiny little portion of it.
Pretty sure that's not a real WW2 picture. I have two theories. Firstly, it is a composite, I.e. the german soldier image and the mountains are different pictures, put together in photoshop. Secondly if it is not a composited image but a single photograph, it would definitely be fake due to the huge dynamic range. The picture shows clouds well exposed, but still shows a lot of detail in the shadows of the soldier. That is practically impossible with film from that time (and is why actual photographs from WW2 always look so 'grungy', due to the high contrast). Due to the sheer resolution and detail on the solider, I believe that the image of the soldier at the very least is a reenactment, and not an actual WW2 german soldier. No film at the time would've been able to produce this level of detail, and still show that detail today. Never mind that lenses of the time were not that sharp, and pictures taken during the conflict are often quite blurry because focus was hard to get right (and even when focused properly, not that sharp). Lastly what kind of gives it away, is the shadows. The shadows on the soldier are too harsh to be from clouds. Clouds generally soften shadows quite a lot. Similarly the sun direction doesn't line up with the helmet reflection. I suspect that the german soldier is almost definitely from a reenactment. edit: Having watched the rest of the video, it seems that you have ran into issues as well finding the 'field' the soldier is lying on. I do think that the picture of the lake + mountains is taken from the castle, and the soldier being put in in post. In the meantime I have tried to take the opposite approach of trying to find the image of the soldier online, but so far without luck.
@@yesterdaydream Re-enactors are pretty spot on with their uniforms (after all, it's their hobby to be as accurate as possible). Looking at pictures of actual german troops, they don't often have uniforms this clean, unless for propaganda pictures. At first I thought it was not a re-enactment due to the 'stielhandgranate' tied under the poncho/tarp, but I have found there's plenty of fake M24 and M43's available for the purpose of re-enactment. I also tried dating the picture by having a look at the equipment, but that is quite hard to do. The M24s were supposed to be replaced by M43, but were still supplied up to the end of the war. You might think that the poncho/tarp being camouflage indicates later periods in the war, but splittertarnmuster tarps were standard from the start of the war already. The rest of the equipment is all very standard and generic, and not a single insignia is visible. I tried to look at the full sized picture for rifle markings, but also no luck there. In the full sized picture though, you can see some artifacts around the soldier and the background though. Especially at the tarp's edge you can see sharp edges. The part where the tarp meets the jacket you can actually see some brighter color green sliver (similar in color to the grass). Similarly on the belt on the other side you can see this same green color reflecting on the ammunition pouch. Based on this I am 99% sure that this is at the very least composited. That just leaves the question whether the guy is real or a re-enactor. If you can find this guy in any other image, please tell me!
@@tHaH4x0r The soldier is taken from a stock photo from a 2009 WW2 reenactment in Kiew, Ukraine. Just go on Shutterstock and search for 30297631 and you'll find the original photo where the soldier was extracted from.
The detail on the soldier seems possible when considering there are some amazingly restored photos from the same period. It can't be an original but could've been a genuine remaster. Now I know it's fake tho the grass is a clear comp if you look at the colour bleed on the feathering.
@@tarnvedra9952 Why wouldn't that be neutral? Neutral doesn't mean not involved, it just means not taking sides. If they accepted both Nazi money and allied money during WWII, that would still be neutral. Whether staying neutral in WWII was a good thing is a very different question, of course. Staying neutral in a war where one side is conquering and oppressing half of Europe is questionable at best in my opinion, but as I said: that's a different topic.
dont know why people keep commenting this, he wasn't saying they weren't neutral he was wondering whether or not they let german troops pass through their borders which is a perfectly reasonable question
No matter what, that Paris painting is absolutely stunning.. I kinda want to go out to garage sales or similar and look for paintings for myself now.. and i have never been into stuff like that.
I live in that part of bavaria. It is a quite common thing trhat many of the places that were grasing fields in the mountains are now woodland. It was no longer economical to mantain them for the bigger farms with their bigger machines. Herding the cows in these places was getting much to expensive with the raising costs of labour and the sinking prices of milk and meat.
A little upscaling + colour grading can easily make a photo from the 1930s look like that. There’s nothing unreasonable about thinking the photo is real.
I believe this picture was taken recently and staged with a man in a German or Austrian ww2 uniform Picture seems to be filtered but the quality is rather too good for a portable camera from back then
So I'm just 12 or so minutes into the video and wow, Tom found the correct lake but abandoned it immediately! I'm not from South Germany but I've been there once or twice and the way the mountains tower so dramatically over the foothills is very distinct, so I was pretty confident it must be Bavaria. A quick google search for "bavaria most beautiful mountain lakes" and the lake in the photo was at #3 on the first listicle I opened, and the photo in the article was taken from the exact same angle!
I noticed this too! Had to go back and double check once he actually found it, but those mountains definitely looked the same the first time around (just a different angle). Pretty proud of myself for catching it
Thats friggen crazy I personally have a photo standing in almost this same exact spot of this same place, but never knew it until you discovered this was taken at Neuschwanstein castle! Crazy to be in the same place at a different moment in time!
I absolutely love geo detective. A brilliant concept and nobody else is as good at it. These painting / non patreon ones are a bit too susceptible to artistic interpretation for me. Plus not having someone who can confirm or deny your success is something I miss. Keep up the brilliant content Tom. Xx
Sometimes i like to play geodetective trying to find out if the location is stilll the same after seeing in an old movie or photograph. Of course, when the street signs are visible 😁 Once I found the corner that appeared on a photograph of Cary Grant walking his cat (yes). It is nice to see even via internet, "Oh, cary grant was here!"
@@Guildforsucks Switzerland is a good guess actually. Just because Switzerland were neutral, and Germany didn't 'invade', doesn't mean foreign troops weren't there. Allied and Axis pilots alike regularly landed in Switzerland, often with damaged aircraft or low fuel or sometimes just to avoid being shotdown. There are even incidents of Switzerland being bombed by both sides on mistake. It's not too unreasonable to assume from time to time ground troops would take a wrong turn and end up in Switzerland too.
Great video! The German soldier is dressed in early war style, circa 1939-1941 (or it’s a reenactor portraying that style). My gut feeling was that the photo of the soldier (disregarding the possibly photoshopped mountains) could be from Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1941. The style of uniform, rolled up sleeves (summer), and his rifle, which some people have pointed out looks like a Russian Mosin-Nagant (captured?) as opposed to the standard Kar98k. I have a feeling I’ve seen the photo of the soldier before, but sitting in a field watching tanks in the distance. Or it’s a reenactor! Either way, a fascinating search which gets the grey matter working.
As someone who is an Alps enthusiast, I took 1 look at that photo, opened Google Earth and found the spot instantly. Seeing you look at the lake at the very beginning and then not looking good enough and moving on was kinda painful to watch hahaha. Still though, very well done on finding the spot yourself.
it drives me a little bit crazy that you put this much effort into finding this photo when it is so clearly not an actual historical/old photo. the way it has been edited and the quality of it is way beyond anything you'd see for an actual photo taken in WWII. especially the little bit of 'glow' along the mountains is a telltale sign that the contrast has been bumped up on the photo a lot, same with how dramatic the clouds are.
And isn't that an M1 Garand rifle which would only have been used by exception from captured arms? It's clearly a photoshoot so him looking for bases was leading him astray.
Whether the soldier has been added or not, it does not change the fact that this is a real location on Earth. He is trying to find this particular location, not seeing if the soldier is still laying there 80 years later...
gotten to the end of the video now and still impressive that you managed to find the right mountains! but yeah, not gonna find that grassy hillside because its not real. Looking forward to some actual real people photos up next!
Just few days before you uploaded the painting video, we were talking about something with my husband, about some picture or something and were wondering where could it be located, and I was joking "let's send it to GeoWizard", I didn't know then you were taking these kind of requests. And by now I don't remember, what we were talking about :'D If I get it, I'll send :D
"Tom, that's not a photo" I thought. It seems the comment section agrees with me. Still very impressive you found the spot! Also, always do a google reverse image search at the start. No need to make it harder for yourself than necessary haha
Tom, my man! Why would you think this was a real picture? It really baffles me how you mention it over and over again as if a historical picture from battle. The soldier is clearly just from a modern movie or a reenactment or something. The sharpness, brightness, lighting, it looks like a Battlefield videogame. Maybe just straight up photoshopped, and pasted on to the background.
Tom I can’t believe you didn’t realize this was an artistic modern photo😆😅. The composition, color editing, condition of the uniform etc all give it away, parts of it look as if they may have been compiled from different photos. I couldn’t tell if you were just referring to it as a ‘war time’ photo figuratively until you started searching war time events to locate it. Not trying to insult your efforts at all, it’s just interesting that something so obvious to me, as seemingly quite a few others, could slip by you, yet you’re able to do geo-locating brilliance that most of us could never attempt Edit: Well now you have to do a real WW2 photo! Preferably one from a fan that hasn’t yet touched the internet.
![Can I find the exact location of this 1950s photo of someone's nan? [GEO DETECTIVE #14]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yt_STtlRhB0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Can I find the exact location of this 1950s photo of someone's nan? [GEO DETECTIVE #14]](/img/tr.png)
![Custom Maps - "Dumb test for smart people" [PLAY ALONG]](/img/n.gif)
SPOILERS:
Can’t believe it didn’t dawn on me that this photo might not actually be from WW2 (it’s a reconstruction) ..Will just have to chalk it down as another lesson learned. Oh well, at least I found the spot! Well the mountains at least 😅
For the record: I knew that Switzerland was neutral in WW2, I just wasn’t sure whether German troops had been granted access somehow!
it would be good if you included the google searches, we could learn so much from them!
Well, one might wonder about the color a bit
Where do I submit an image?
Thought it would be. The image was too clear to have been shot on film.
Maybe it's even a wee bit more impressive that, even after being photoshopped, you still found the "right" place.
At this rate he's going to find Malaysia Flight 370 by himself.
I mean that would be Actually useful so ya he should
Some engineer in New Zealand claims to have. A couple of days ago. See the 60 minutes piece on it.
💀
It's kind of dark, but interpol have asked for help from the public at times in identifying places found in child abuse imagery. The actual kids are removed from the picture obviously, but the hope is that people can figure out where it is from the surroundings. I remember there was one which was successfully geolocated to some southern Chinese city and one to Madagascar, but there were some that were unlocated too.
At this rate he's going to find out the missing of D.B. Cooper
Can only imagine all the times Tom went "Are we recording?" and he wasn't
lol true, from our perspective the check seems completely unnecessary, he has never been not recording! But for all we know it is actually the exception when he hasn't forgotten to start the recording.
I remembered one video where it started with "oh now we're recording!" Or someone along those lines, where he also still had his recordings software Open. So it does happen that he forgets to record :)
he actually said somewhere that it only happened once or twice I think
Yeah, I remember a video starting mid-round.
ua-cam.com/video/mVc6cq4oGxY/v-deo.html
Greeting from Kharkiv, Ukraine just 30 miles away from the Russian border. I'm a 22 year old guy and I don't know if I'll be able to watch your channel, Tom. But I'm glad I was a part of this amazing geo community! Wish me luck guys:)
good luck man, stay strong! 👊
The world supports you!
Hope everything is well with you
I hope you’re still ok.
Are you unable to leave the city? The news is saying the shelling is bad in Kharkiv.
If trains are still running, and you have the means to, leave.
Or take to the roads to a place where trains ARE still running, and get out.
If trains aren’t an option, just find a means to go west, as far west as you can to get out of that violence!
Good luck to you, all my hugs to you! 😭🤗🤗
And f**k Putin and his war mongering dictator mind!
A bit of Context. During WW2, Neuschwanstein Castle was used to store Stolen Nazi Treasure up until 1944, so it would make sense that Waffen SS would be stationed there, in order to defend the treasure. Many of the alpine castles were used as treasure storage, or to house political prisoners, due to their often secluded locations and lavish living conditions. Even if the Painting isn't from WW2, it pictures a scene which should, in theory, be historically accurate.
Good context, yes!
And more historically accurate than Switzerland letting through German troops. ; )
Waffen just means weapon
It would be just the SS "Schutz Staffel"
@@TheRodNemisis waffen ss was a branch of the ss with it's own military frontline units
He's clearly not SS and the image is fake anyway
The SS considered a plan to blow Neuschwanstein castle up too to prevent the allies from gaining the treasures inside and the castle itself. I for one am very glad it never came to fruition. I plan on visiting sometime in the near future
one of my favorite parts of this series is watching how weirdly tom phrases google searches
I mean, the word order doesnt matter at all on google
Is it? I've always written them like that
@@MrMakintos Yes it does... of course word order matters
@@appa609 order word you all. matter do doesn't What at mean?
that's a myth that word order doesn't matter
Tom is learning the hard way that paintings and photos can lie, that dedication though!
nice last name
First a painting of quasi-Paris, now a faux WWII scene. Hopefully someone will send him a genuine image sometime soon.
Get it? Because Jackson Pollock?
just not NASA photos tho, right 🤔
i don’t think the photo is real. the soldier looks to be photoshopped in to the landscape. doing a reverse google image search you can find the same exact picture without the soldier in it. The clouds look the exact same, just no soldier or field in the foreground.
Yeah I don't get how he doesn't realise that
Also the quality is way too good for ww2 era
Link pls?
yeah literally just opened the video and have it paused on the start with the picture showing and this was my immediate thought, scrolled down to see what's up lol
Yeah, the solider looks like something from the cover of a videogame
@@ByJxne the quality doesn’t matter as people can change it
"Could you believe it if Hitler helped us beyond the grave" this is why I watch you Tom lol
I laughed so hard
*if
Great to see you back at the geography side of the channel. Cant wait for more!
SCHOOL! The answer is I don't go! Why go? I am famous. I am famous. I have more fans than fingers multiplied with toes multiplied with teeth multiplied with ears. I am famous. I am famous. SCHOOL? No, thanks. UA-cam FAME? Yes. Good day, dear ba
@@AxxLAfriku gucke dich einfach seit jahren alter 🤣
@@AxxLAfriku 10x10x32x2=6400
when you get an A in geography but a F in History
I mean, that's not even history. I knew for neutrality of Switzerland long before I've learned about that in the school, just by watching movies.
@@damyr Yes, but movies will also teach you that USA single handedly won
@@damyr sure you did bud
@@Jeyeyeyey You obviously didn't watch The Great Escape... bud.
Or any other WW2 movie about people trying to escape from Nazi Germany.
@@Jeyeyeyey I did too, actually. It is surface knowledge.
Tom, the amount of times I've seen you check and say "we are recording" makes me wonder just how many times you've been left chatting to yourself...
Another top video mate!
as a layman ww2 historian this was a ton of fun to watch! keep it up! also as a swiss i found it pretty funny how long you thought about switzerland, which i thought was rather famously never occupied by germany...
*edit: what few people know and we swiss don't like to admit ist that we allowed both sides to transport troops and material through the swiss railway network.
not true, only the Germans and Italians, this was because the allies never reached northern italy before wars end, not to mention allied aircraft often blew up swiss rail junctions
These are some of the most fascinating videos I've ever watched. Your deduction and reasoning skills are INSANE. Great vids man, keep it up!
I also think this opens up an area for a geoguessr-esque game, where it gives you various historical photos, and it collects the locations users select, helping to narrow it down much like your comments do once seeing your videos.
Great to have you back at this type of content Tom.
It's really neat to see my hometown beeing flown over in a Geowizard video. When I saw you searching at the Schneeberg and Rax, I already thought you were pretty close, but at 13:09 "Guntramsdorf" is actually visible on the right. That brightens my day ^^
I've binged the capitals series today. Loved it. Hope you continue that series
"Can you imagine that, if Hitler helped us". Best GeoWizard quote right here.
I have done similar searches for the WW2 pictures of my great grandfather and found the exakt spots of where he was standing, but there are a few pictures with him where I can't say where they were taken. Love the Video!
Instantly clocked the osrs shortcut on your desktop background. A man of culture I see.
Tom I love this series. In regards to getting the exact location in these wilder areas it would help you to use the eye-line of the camera to plot the altitude. For example this picture appears to be taken at an angle roughly perpendicular to the earth so we know that it's looking from an altitude equal to the centre of the image frame. This can be done using the horizon, even with mountains! Love you Tom
looks like an reenactment photo. the soldier is just too sharp imo
It could be an old photo but enhanced in lightroom/photoshop
@@linusfotograf it's actually faked
@@Fifsson_ Composite of foreground and background?
@@linusfotograf exactly. Many people posted links to the original mountain scene in other comments
i love how innovative you are with your content, Tom! been watching for years and your videos continue to be fresh and unique.
I can't describe how much better my day gets when I see a new GeoWizard video 😊 you da man Tom
Great content! Hoping for some Geoguessr challenges soon!
FYI, the 'bag' is a metal food canteen, the camo roll is a tent half, two of which put together would make a two man tent. They also wore them as ponchos in the rain. Good video again!
The amount of patience and thoroughness it takes to find that is so impressive. Get in!
Thomas your album takes up like 12 of my top 20 played songs of 2022 so far... it is a smashing record thank you
Always fun when you upload Tom!
I love how you can criticize your own weaknesses, not that I would worry about it too much as it is your style, but it's good to know how you tick so when things aren't working out right you might be able to take a look at the situation and think "what could I be doing wrong".
Unreal, I was running out of geowizard content and this video popped up in my feed. Best feeling ever.
Got cheated on this week but you never fail to cheer me up mate. Thanks for everything
Head up king
Move on mate! You're better than them, I bet they didn't like geowizard either!
I think this is my favorite kind of content here by now.
13:34 hope you didn't spoil anything about upcoming missions there Tom. Although I would love to see a mission from Londen to Budapest 😉
He's doing a series on his Patreon where he talks about a biking trip from London to Budapest he did a long time ago. So that's probably it.
@@raymondbenjamins5884 How the hell do you bike across the sea
@@sneersh9107 It's called a pedalo :-)
Just came across your channel a few days ago. Love your Geo Detective vids!! Haven't watched much of anything else besides geo bingo. But what I have watched I love. Looking forward to more Geo Detective and and Bingo.
Next week’s video: can I find the location of this leaked WW3 Russian military operation photo?
Love all these geodetective vids! Sure, they are stretched out for entertainment sake, but it’s fun to watch the process unfold. It’s a bit like a detective novel: sure, you could skip to the end, but where’s the fun in that. And, like the novels, often the answer was right there from the start.
Oh, man, I recognized those peaks right away. I love that place! I'm fairly certain this is taken specifically at the lookout point on the road behind the castle. There is an open, grassy area there and this is a popular photo spot. That would mean that this is a photo from WWII as there are now trees that would block the left peak from view. Another strong possibility is that this is a little of both old and new; a composite of an old landscape shot and a modern model in costume. The lighting on the "soldier" seems to differ from the surrounding light. It's possible this was done for a video game.
If it was for a video game that would show up in the reverse google search, but you're right there's 3 or 4 layers: landscape - grass - soldier - and potentially the grass in front of his bag but I can't tell if that's a part of the image with the soldier or it's own layer
Funny you mention Darth Vader, because it is actually true that Darth Vaders gear is heavily inspired by nazi uniforms and WW1 trench uniforms. Stormtrooper is also an actual type of German soldier from WW1.
at first glance I'm 95% convinced this image is photoshopped..
unless it was upscaled or they had 1080p cameras in the 1940s...
Picture quality could be quite good back in the day, depending of the method used for taking the picture. There are some stunningly sharp pictures even from decades before WW2. But I agree with you, this image looks off. Either it is fake or a heavily modified/colourised original pic.
You could get very high resolution with film in the 1940s. To me the colours don't look right for back then but the colours could've been manipulated or even added more recently. That is assuming it is a photo from the 1940s. I would've guessed it's a more modern photo of a guy in an old uniform but other comments say the image exists without the soldier.
Certain types of film have better "resolution" than your average digital camera even today.
And 1080p is a video resolution. And not very good compared to a good quality photograph.
There's a lot wrong with this comment.
Edit: that said, this photo is almost certainly fake or edited
Photos taken on film can be scanned at any resolution. I wouldn't be surprised if this image was originally black and white and was colorized later.
since 1913 the standard 35mm film was not only used for cinematic purposes - but also for photography now as 24 mm × 36mm. A good film goes beyond 10 Megapixels. (1080p is ~2 MP). Different sources can be found, stating from ~10 MP up to well over 34 MP...
my boy doing a WW2 painting , next day WW3 incoming , that’s how you do it Tom , get inn
That opening was pure gold
GeoGuessr video idea: you could play with the "Unity Script" by Jupaoqq. This script allows you to play basically every map, but out of a satellite view.
The 4 stages of Geodetective:
- "Imma try and find this spot"
- Searches for hours on end
- Finally finds it
- "I don't believe it!"
THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT, TOM!!
People forget that WW2 was less than 80 years ago. It was basically just the other day, in context of history.
This round was fun cause I've walked along the whole lake (Alpsee) down there and the Neuschwanstein area in general. I was like - "yep you got it" when you first mentioned it but then disregarded it :D
These videos genuinely make my day better, you always manage to flip my mood. Thank you for all of your hard work!
Hey Tom, you can try to do a straight line mission crossing 3 countries. Top of Czechia you can cross Poland, Germany and Czechia. It is around 50km long trip
Except that trip would be crossing 0 of the countries. It would be lopping off a small part of each of them which Tom has said before is not at all legitimate and doesn't count as crossing a country in a straight line.
@@Lord7979 Yeah but he crossed a skinny part of Scotland
@@pex3 Scotland in and of itself is a skinny place and he or I never said you have to cross at the longest line point. He crossed coast to coast, not just a tiny little portion of it.
Impeccable intro, mate. Brilliant! Completely caught me off guard.
Pretty sure that's not a real WW2 picture. I have two theories.
Firstly, it is a composite, I.e. the german soldier image and the mountains are different pictures, put together in photoshop. Secondly if it is not a composited image but a single photograph, it would definitely be fake due to the huge dynamic range. The picture shows clouds well exposed, but still shows a lot of detail in the shadows of the soldier. That is practically impossible with film from that time (and is why actual photographs from WW2 always look so 'grungy', due to the high contrast).
Due to the sheer resolution and detail on the solider, I believe that the image of the soldier at the very least is a reenactment, and not an actual WW2 german soldier. No film at the time would've been able to produce this level of detail, and still show that detail today. Never mind that lenses of the time were not that sharp, and pictures taken during the conflict are often quite blurry because focus was hard to get right (and even when focused properly, not that sharp).
Lastly what kind of gives it away, is the shadows. The shadows on the soldier are too harsh to be from clouds. Clouds generally soften shadows quite a lot. Similarly the sun direction doesn't line up with the helmet reflection.
I suspect that the german soldier is almost definitely from a reenactment.
edit: Having watched the rest of the video, it seems that you have ran into issues as well finding the 'field' the soldier is lying on. I do think that the picture of the lake + mountains is taken from the castle, and the soldier being put in in post. In the meantime I have tried to take the opposite approach of trying to find the image of the soldier online, but so far without luck.
At first I thought image was heavily post processed and colored in PS, but what you said makes lot more sense ;)
I don't know how uniform their uniforms were, but the spot-on placement of the comparison at 4:30 made me wonder if it was a re-enactment.
@@yesterdaydream Re-enactors are pretty spot on with their uniforms (after all, it's their hobby to be as accurate as possible).
Looking at pictures of actual german troops, they don't often have uniforms this clean, unless for propaganda pictures.
At first I thought it was not a re-enactment due to the 'stielhandgranate' tied under the poncho/tarp, but I have found there's plenty of fake M24 and M43's available for the purpose of re-enactment.
I also tried dating the picture by having a look at the equipment, but that is quite hard to do. The M24s were supposed to be replaced by M43, but were still supplied up to the end of the war. You might think that the poncho/tarp being camouflage indicates later periods in the war, but splittertarnmuster tarps were standard from the start of the war already.
The rest of the equipment is all very standard and generic, and not a single insignia is visible. I tried to look at the full sized picture for rifle markings, but also no luck there.
In the full sized picture though, you can see some artifacts around the soldier and the background though. Especially at the tarp's edge you can see sharp edges. The part where the tarp meets the jacket you can actually see some brighter color green sliver (similar in color to the grass). Similarly on the belt on the other side you can see this same green color reflecting on the ammunition pouch. Based on this I am 99% sure that this is at the very least composited.
That just leaves the question whether the guy is real or a re-enactor. If you can find this guy in any other image, please tell me!
@@tHaH4x0r The soldier is taken from a stock photo from a 2009 WW2 reenactment in Kiew, Ukraine. Just go on Shutterstock and search for 30297631 and you'll find the original photo where the soldier was extracted from.
The detail on the soldier seems possible when considering there are some amazingly restored photos from the same period. It can't be an original but could've been a genuine remaster.
Now I know it's fake tho the grass is a clear comp if you look at the colour bleed on the feathering.
Love GeoDetective! Best series on your channel.
Tom: finds a random gas station in a desert country in africa
Also Tom: doesnt know Switzerland was neutral during WW2
I wouldn´t call laundering Jewish dental gold for Nazis being neutral. But there were no German soldiers there, that is correct.
@@tarnvedra9952 Why wouldn't that be neutral? Neutral doesn't mean not involved, it just means not taking sides.
If they accepted both Nazi money and allied money during WWII, that would still be neutral.
Whether staying neutral in WWII was a good thing is a very different question, of course. Staying neutral in a war where one side is conquering and oppressing half of Europe is questionable at best in my opinion, but as I said: that's a different topic.
Yes he does... He was thinking they might've let German soldiers through the country, just like Sweden did.
he obviously knows...
dont know why people keep commenting this, he wasn't saying they weren't neutral he was wondering whether or not they let german troops pass through their borders which is a perfectly reasonable question
It blew my mind how once you mentioned that castle in germany I realized I had taken a picture of that same lake a couple of years ago!
Opening made my heart drop for ya mate
No matter what, that Paris painting is absolutely stunning.. I kinda want to go out to garage sales or similar and look for paintings for myself now.. and i have never been into stuff like that.
25:10 had me dying lmao
Whoever kicked that painter out of art school should be very ashamed. That painter could have had a wonderful art career.
You invent new skills and hobbies for thousands of people to try at home. ur impact is much bigger than u think mate keep this heat comin
I live in that part of bavaria. It is a quite common thing trhat many of the places that were grasing fields in the mountains are now woodland. It was no longer economical to mantain them for the bigger farms with their bigger machines. Herding the cows in these places was getting much to expensive with the raising costs of labour and the sinking prices of milk and meat.
my favourite youtube covering my favourite period in history, cracking content
I'm blown away by the fact that he thinks this is a real photo
Yup
I know, it's like a paradox. Maybe all his smartness goes to geography and not the most obvious stuff
A little upscaling + colour grading can easily make a photo from the 1930s look like that. There’s nothing unreasonable about thinking the photo is real.
I mainly watch your channel for your challenges but this is absolutely wild! Some serious skills mate! 👌👌👌
I believe this picture was taken recently and staged with a man in a German or Austrian ww2 uniform
Picture seems to be filtered but the quality is rather too good for a portable camera from back then
Film can be remastered quite well nowadays. It could quite well be an old photo
agreed, the soldier's holding a Russian Mosin Nagant, could very well be staged.
So I'm just 12 or so minutes into the video and wow, Tom found the correct lake but abandoned it immediately!
I'm not from South Germany but I've been there once or twice and the way the mountains tower so dramatically over the foothills is very distinct, so I was pretty confident it must be Bavaria. A quick google search for "bavaria most beautiful mountain lakes" and the lake in the photo was at #3 on the first listicle I opened, and the photo in the article was taken from the exact same angle!
I noticed this too! Had to go back and double check once he actually found it, but those mountains definitely looked the same the first time around (just a different angle). Pretty proud of myself for catching it
Thats friggen crazy I personally have a photo standing in almost this same exact spot of this same place, but never knew it until you discovered this was taken at Neuschwanstein castle! Crazy to be in the same place at a different moment in time!
when I first saw the photo I was literally like damn those rolling hills look very similar to the ones near Neuschwanstein
An episode without the question "are we recording?" is not a real GeoWizard episode😂. Love your work, mate!
I absolutely love geo detective. A brilliant concept and nobody else is as good at it. These painting / non patreon ones are a bit too susceptible to artistic interpretation for me. Plus not having someone who can confirm or deny your success is something I miss. Keep up the brilliant content Tom. Xx
One of the best intros to any UA-cam video I've seen
I was inmediatly screaming: Switzerland was neutral in both WO's. So dont even be bothered with it as that would be very strange.
Good fricking job man.... So imoressive the way you find stuff ..
Sometimes i like to play geodetective trying to find out if the location is stilll the same after seeing in an old movie or photograph. Of course, when the street signs are visible 😁 Once I found the corner that appeared on a photograph of Cary Grant walking his cat (yes). It is nice to see even via internet, "Oh, cary grant was here!"
my wife and I play this game when watching old movies, we pick a location shot and try to find it, it's a lot of fun.
I would have never imagined that you could find it. Its crazy honestly knowing that it was taken right behind Neuschwanstein Castle
The beginning did get me
14:55 Hahaha gave me a good laugh when Google Earth did the classic random pan away 😂 I've had the same reaction many times
Seriously Tom... Switzerland... during WW2...
he didnt go to school
@@Guildforsucks Switzerland is a good guess actually.
Just because Switzerland were neutral, and Germany didn't 'invade', doesn't mean foreign troops weren't there.
Allied and Axis pilots alike regularly landed in Switzerland, often with damaged aircraft or low fuel or sometimes just to avoid being shotdown. There are even incidents of Switzerland being bombed by both sides on mistake. It's not too unreasonable to assume from time to time ground troops would take a wrong turn and end up in Switzerland too.
Great video! The German soldier is dressed in early war style, circa 1939-1941 (or it’s a reenactor portraying that style). My gut feeling was that the photo of the soldier (disregarding the possibly photoshopped mountains) could be from Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1941. The style of uniform, rolled up sleeves (summer), and his rifle, which some people have pointed out looks like a Russian Mosin-Nagant (captured?) as opposed to the standard Kar98k. I have a feeling I’ve seen the photo of the soldier before, but sitting in a field watching tanks in the distance. Or it’s a reenactor! Either way, a fascinating search which gets the grey matter working.
Fun fact: Darth Vader’s helmet was actually inspired by German nazi helmets so you’re not far off there Tom
I tought that was inspired by japanese samurai helmet.
Such a shame he didnt pursue his art. Was a great painting.
As someone who is an Alps enthusiast, I took 1 look at that photo, opened Google Earth and found the spot instantly. Seeing you look at the lake at the very beginning and then not looking good enough and moving on was kinda painful to watch hahaha. Still though, very well done on finding the spot yourself.
Finding locations of famous pictures could be an awesome challenge series
Let´s all hope you will never have to make a WW3 special
I feel it would be useful to look at where the tree line starts and then limiting yourself to mountains that are significantly higher than that.
Tom: "i can not belive that after two solid..."
Me: oh so it didnt take him so long
"Days"
Me:wtf
"Just kidding"
Me: phew
Good job finding the location! Love the music when you speed up the Google Earth search. 😀
it drives me a little bit crazy that you put this much effort into finding this photo when it is so clearly not an actual historical/old photo. the way it has been edited and the quality of it is way beyond anything you'd see for an actual photo taken in WWII. especially the little bit of 'glow' along the mountains is a telltale sign that the contrast has been bumped up on the photo a lot, same with how dramatic the clouds are.
Also what kind of strategic position is that??
And isn't that an M1 Garand rifle which would only have been used by exception from captured arms? It's clearly a photoshoot so him looking for bases was leading him astray.
I had a bit of a similar thought but the mountains looked real even if there is a superimposed soldier in front.
Whether the soldier has been added or not, it does not change the fact that this is a real location on Earth. He is trying to find this particular location, not seeing if the soldier is still laying there 80 years later...
gotten to the end of the video now and still impressive that you managed to find the right mountains! but yeah, not gonna find that grassy hillside because its not real. Looking forward to some actual real people photos up next!
Just few days before you uploaded the painting video, we were talking about something with my husband, about some picture or something and were wondering where could it be located, and I was joking "let's send it to GeoWizard", I didn't know then you were taking these kind of requests. And by now I don't remember, what we were talking about :'D If I get it, I'll send :D
"Tom, that's not a photo" I thought. It seems the comment section agrees with me. Still very impressive you found the spot! Also, always do a google reverse image search at the start. No need to make it harder for yourself than necessary haha
Google reverse image search kind of defeats the purpose of this. Tom even said it's sort of cheating.
GeoWizard's the reason why I took Advanced Geography in highschool and I love it!
This video is gonna be amazing
"oh.....that was painted by Hitler" crack me up everytime
Prob a photoshop right? 😂
Just started watching and HOLY COW… is that RUNESCAPE in the backround!? You sir got yet another + respect 😃
Oh Tommy boy how had you got it in your head that this was a genuine WW2 era photo? 😭
Guess it didn't matter too much either way in the end though it did do my head in xD
I can’t believe how long you kept scrolling on that sketchy site
Tom, my man! Why would you think this was a real picture? It really baffles me how you mention it over and over again as if a historical picture from battle. The soldier is clearly just from a modern movie or a reenactment or something. The sharpness, brightness, lighting, it looks like a Battlefield videogame. Maybe just straight up photoshopped, and pasted on to the background.
totally randomly found this video... Crazy that you actually was able to find the spot. Serious work and research to find it..... This was legit
Great video. But a short correction: The German army was called the Wehrmacht. And they were not literal nazis.
The German Army was called the Heer. The Werhmacht is just the collective name of the armed forces.
@@Perseus7567 With army I meant everything lol. If I think of an army I don’t just think of the navy or airforce, I mean the whole thing.
Nice detective work, and I had a great laugh towards the end hahaha.
Tom I can’t believe you didn’t realize this was an artistic modern photo😆😅. The composition, color editing, condition of the uniform etc all give it away, parts of it look as if they may have been compiled from different photos. I couldn’t tell if you were just referring to it as a ‘war time’ photo figuratively until you started searching war time events to locate it.
Not trying to insult your efforts at all, it’s just interesting that something so obvious to me, as seemingly quite a few others, could slip by you, yet you’re able to do geo-locating brilliance that most of us could never attempt
Edit: Well now you have to do a real WW2 photo! Preferably one from a fan that hasn’t yet touched the internet.
hahaha... "bit worrying there are so many waffen SS wallpapers" hahahahhahaha fucking killed me.