Dunkirk 1940: Hitler's early wartime mistake that led to Germany's defeat in 1945.

 

The Dunkirk evacuation was a PR disaster for the Allies - 

and turned into a PR splash by the Allies - so who won the PR battle?

The Battle for Dunkirk had winners and losers - ironically both sides won and lost in their own way - so how did this military action end up costing Adolf Hitler's 3rd Reich final victory in 1945?

In 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany after their invasion of Poland on September 3rd. 

A magnanimous action by Chamberlain, but the reality was that Britain then could not actively invade Poland from across the North Sea or sustain a military campaign on Polish lands in that location, due to logistical equipment supply and distance problems. 

Perhaps this is why Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, banking on the premise that Britain would not respond militarily or be able to wage an effective military campaign there.

The spread of German forces against the British and their Allies in France, 1940

In 1940, when Hitler invaded Norway, the British did mount a military campaign but it was sadly doomed to failure due to the difficulties of supply and the fact that the German forces had been able to move through the neutral Sweden, to Norway in number.

Hitler's foreign territory acquisition had started in 1938 with his own country of birth - Austria for one simple reason - that it contained a massive iron ore deposit - which he would need for building the war machinery of the new reich.

The rapid conquering of Belgium, France and Holland in 1940 by the third reich forces was achieved at great speed and for a single purpose. Hitler had plans to invade the Soviet Union and needed more soldiers than he currently possessed in Germany. 

Hitler had seen how Finland with a relatively small army had held off the Soviet Armed Forces - for a few simple reasons, Finland was on home ground and the purges of the intelligentsia and Officer classes by Stalin in 1930's Russia had left the Armed Forces at a great disadvantage.

Erwin Rommel (pictured) along with Heinz Guderian were skilled commanders -

Here Rommel takes the surrender of the Dunkirk BEF troops who were left behind

Hitler's land war attack across Western Europe was made possible because all the countries were joined on one land mass. Thus the German advance moved quickly because it could be resupplied with ease.

Britain had sent an expeditionary force the 'BEF' or British Expeditionary Force to the Western European countries to counter Hitler's forces in France and Belgium. However, they were at a number of disadvantages, firstly the BEF was using much old fashioned equipment, primitive when compared to the modern German equipment. The RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes were withdrawn back to England when it was obvious that the Germans could not be contained or repelled.

Secondly, Germany had a large professional army that had been exposed to combat since the Spanish civil war of 1936, it had equipped in the later 1930's with new and cutting edge military hardware. 

Modern German tanks like this Panzer AUSF were very effective - 

This one is being examined after being captured in the North African desert in 1942

Thirdly, the German supply chain was very efficient and Britain was fighting away from its mainland supply chain and fourth, a lot of the countries that the Germans overran where badly equipped and with obsolete equipment that was no match for the modern German hardware and the German's modern military battle planning.

With many refugees hindering progress on the roads in France, the British and their Allies had their progress compromised. The speed of the German advance and the quality and numbers of tanks, vehicles and troops could not be repelled with the poor supply chain of the BEF.

The jackboot on the other foot - 

British troops with a captured 88mm gun, North Africa 1942

This led to the Allies being forced back towards the French coast and into the sea, their only option was to abandon the French continent and regroup in England.

This then became the plan - a mass evacuation of 338,000 troops from France. This was a success but also a disaster in that they had to leave behind them valuable vehicles and heavy equipment. These were commodities that they could ill afford to lose. It could well have been worse.

Hitler's Generals had pushed to allow them to outflank and cut off the Allied retreat before they reached the French coast, which they could have done, but Hitler did not allow that -  he wanted a peace deal with Britain and perhaps believed by allowing the British a retreat, would be able to start negotiations for peace. It might allay claims that although he had invaded Poland when he said he would not, this time he might be keeping his word.

With the recent memory of broken treaties of the late 1930's in mind Winston Churchill adopted a belligerent stance of no surrender. Had Hitler captured those 328,000 Allied troops, he would have held the trump cards. Churchill would have had little to gamble with.

Then, Britain would have lost most of its ready forces in the Western European sector and would have had to have recalled troops from the far East, perhaps calling on Commonwealth countries to supply troops to assemble any hope of a fighting force to continue the war.

When Hitler started his North African campaign aimed at securing the Arabian oil fields for his own supplies, had he held the 328,000 Dunkirk allies as prisoners of war, Churchill might not have been able to commit enough forces to the desert campaign. 

Hitler then would have had his open goal of almost undefended oil supplies to hand. Which he needed for his Soviet campaign and to maintain industrial production in Germany.

Both Churchill and Hitler gambled with their situations in 1940 - Hitler's gamble ultimately cost him a ceasefire with the Allies instead Hitler then pursued his campaign against the Soviet Union and eventual defeat.

Rudolf Hess wrote before WW2 that 'the Soviet Union if not defeated would provide trouble for the West for decades to come' and he was right, in that the Cold War starting as WW2 faded into history would be the next European wide problem.

Churchill had virtually an empty hand with no cards in to gamble with in 1940 but he was favoured by fortune and history was not written differently. But, if America had not entered the war, and Britain had not been able to realise a landing on the French coast in 1944, then it may have been a stalemate with Germany for sometime, perhaps even the Germans may have conquered the Western parts of Russia and history may have had a different outcome?

One thing is for sure that Dunkirk was Hitler's first mistake, the second was invading Russia.