HistoryExtrahttps://www.historyextra.comHome of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast2023-10-06T11:50:15.000Zhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00Indian soldiers at Dunkirkhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/indian-muslim-soldiers-dunkirk-ghee-bowman-podcast/2020-05-29T14:47:53.000ZHistorian Ghee Bowman, author of The Indian Contingent, tells the stories of a group of Muslims in the British Expeditionary Force who were part of the famous evacuation from the beaches of France in 1940.
]]>9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Dunkirkhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/dunkirk-facts-history-east-mole-hitler-halt-order-douglas-jardine/2020-05-26T14:45:11.000ZDunkirk: what happened?
On 10 May 1940, Adolf Hitler began his long-awaited offensive in the west by invading neutral Holland and Belgium and attacking northern France. Holland capitulated after only five days of fighting, and the Belgians surrendered on 28 May. With the success of the German ‘Blitzkrieg’, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French troops were in danger of being cut off and destroyed.
To save the BEF, an evacuation by sea was organised under the direction of Admiral Bertram Ramsay. Over nine days, between 26 May and 4 June 1940, warships of the Royal and French navies together with civilian craft successfully evacuated more than 338,000 British and Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk, in the remarkable Operation Dynamo.
The success of the evacuation strengthened not only Britain’s defences in the face of a German invasion threat, but also Churchill’s position against those like the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, who favoured discussing peace terms. Seventy years later, Dunkirk is still synonymous with refusing to give up in times of crisis.
But did you know...
Britain had the only 100 per cent mechanised army in 1940
Britain in the early years of the war has often been perceived to have been full of Blimpish commanders, out-of-date equipment and antiquated, stuck-in-the-mud tactics.
In fact, the British Army’s equipment in 1940 was certainly a match for that of the Germans. The Bren light machine-gun did not have the rate of fire of the German MG34, but was solid, accurate, and more dependable than its far friskier German rival. Meanwhile, the new British uniforms were the most modern in the world at the time, and unlike anything any soldier had worn before.
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was also entirely mechanised, which was certainly not the case for the German Army. In fact, of the 135 German divisions used in the attack in the West, only 16 were mechanised; the other 119 used horses and their soldiers' own two feet. British tanks were mostly superior to those of the German Army too, and while they had not invested as heavily in radio as the Germans, the BEF still had proportionally considerably more radio sets than the French.
The reason for defeat in France in 1940 was not a failure in equipment, tactics or training, but the BEF's small size: just 10 divisions. This meant they could only ever play a supporting role in the action. When Belgian and French forces on their flanks collapsed, the BEF had no choice but to fall back in line with their allies. For Britain, an island nation with a large seaborne empire, the Royal Navy was the senior service. Pre-war rearmament had sensibly focussed on naval and air power. After all, France was an ally with a vast army. The idea was that Britain would take the lead at sea, France on land, and both would contribute to air power.
There were no telephones at French Army headquarters
Until he was fired on 19 May (following the catastrophic collapse of the Meuse Front), General Maurice Gamelin was commander-in-chief of all French and British forces in France. He was also the overall architect of plans to defeat any German attack. Gamelin firmly believed any future war would be much like the previous one of 1914-18: long, drawn-out and largely static war of attrition.
He was half-right, or half-wrong, depending on which way one looks at it. The Second World War lasted longer than the First World War. While it was a war of attrition in many ways, it was not static. The German approach was always to try and win battles and wars swiftly and with considerable skill of manoeuvre. This was a strategy forced upon them by their fundamental lack of resources. In this regard, little had changed since the days of Frederick the Great. By the Second World War, however, Germany had harnessed radio technology to these age-old principles to very great effect.
In contrast, the French had largely eschewed radio technology in favour of landline telephones and traditional dispatch riders. At his headquarters on the edge of Paris, Gamelin insisted there should be no telephones at all, such was his paranoia of a security break. This meant he was repeatedly and fatally out of touch with his commanders at a time when swift and rapid decision-making was essential.
With German artillery and the Luftwaffe also repeatedly cutting phone lines, the French were ever more dependent on dispatch riders, who were forced to battle through roads clogged with refugees. Often they became lost, took too long, or failed to return altogether. Inevitably, the French Army ground to a halt, unable to move or respond to the rapidly unfolding situation.
The Luftwaffe suffered its worst day
It is widely accepted that the Germans had it pretty much their own way from the moment they launched Case Yellow (the invasion of France and the Low Countries) on 10 May 1940. Spearheading the attack and apparently ruling the skies was the Luftwaffe, with its mix of screaming Stuka dive-bombers, Messerschmitt fighters and Heinkel and Dornier medium bombers.
However, that first day of the campaign was the worst the Luftwaffe suffered for some three years. A staggering 353 German planes crashed or were shot down. (To put that in perspective, the worst day for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain saw them lose 67 aircraft). Most were transports bringing in airborne troops, but these Junkers 52s had only been brought to bear by scouring training schools and their losses severely set back aircrew training. In fact, the Luftwaffe had still not made good on its losses by the time they invaded the Soviet Union the following June.
The game-changing ‘eastern mole’ was discovered purely by chance
The Senior Naval Officer tasked with overseeing the shore end of the Dunkirk evacuation was Captain Bill Tennant. Tennant arrived on the afternoon 27 May, and had been told they might be able to evacuate 45,000 troops if he were lucky. The harbour facilities had been smashed and the port's quays were unusable, so Tennant signalled back to Dover asking for every available craft, no matter how small, to sail to Dunkirk to help lift men from the beaches.
Getting men onto boats and ships direct from the beaches was an incredibly slow and laborious process. The situation looked bleak. Later that same evening, though, Tennant noticed the Luftwaffe had not hit the two long moles [wooden breakwaters] that extended some 1,600 yards out into the sea. There was no obvious way of reaching the western mole across the harbour's mouth, but the eastern mole began from the harbour wall and was easily accessible.
Made of latticed concrete piles and topped by a narrow wooden walkway, it was a breakwater rather than a jetty. While at first glance it looked as though it was not strong enough to take a moored ship alongside, Tennant felt there was nothing to lose from trying. The cross-Channel steamer, Queen of the Channel, was called to test it and after gently nudging her stern against the concrete piles, managed to drift alongside. The mole withstood this strain without any obvious difficulty.
A lifeline had been discovered and over the next five days and nights, the eastern mole not only remained intact but also undamaged by either the sheer weight of ships mooring alongside or by enemy bombs. Of the 338,226 men lifted from Dunkirk, 239,555 – the vast majority – were taken from the eastern mole.
The Battle of Britain began over Dunkirk
Officially, the Battle of Britain began on 10 July 1940. (This was the date given by Hugh, the commander-in-chief of RAF Fighter Command. Yet as Dowding admitted, as far as he was concerned, it began the day Britain entered the war.)
However, RAF Fighter Command was created to defend Britain and first entered the fray over Dunkirk and the Pas de Calais on 20 May 1940. The Luftwaffe had been given a lead role in preventing the evacuation and Fighter Command more than played their part in ensuring German air forces failed in their task. Few on the ground saw them as the sky was filled with low cloud. Thick, black smoke from burning oil storage tanks rose to some 15,000 feet and spread across the entire area. They were there, nonetheless, and managed to shoot 326 enemy aircraft during the operation, while losing of 121 of their own.
Logical military thinking played no part in Hitler’s decision to issue a halt order
On 24 May, Hitler issued his infamous order for his panzer divisions [armoured tank divisions] to halt, denying them the chance to completely encircle the retreating British Expeditionary Force. Ever since the order, there has been speculation as to Hitler’s motives. It has even been suggested that he wanted to give the British a chance to escape.
The truth is more straightforward, and underlines Hitler’s utter ineptitude as a military leader. After all, he never went to staff college [to train as a military officer] and was ill-qualified to be making high-level military decisions in almost every regard.
The initial halt order was issued by General von Kleist on 23 May. He did not understand new mobile panzer tactics and feared his armoured tank divisions were getting too far ahead of the foot-slogging infantry. This order – which was to be in place for 24 hours – was reinforced by Field Marshal von Rundstedt. When General Halder, army chief of staff, heard about the order, he immediately rescinded it and furthermore transferred all panzer divisions to rapidly close in on Dunkirk from the north. Von Rundstedt, piqued to have been humiliated by Halder, complained to Hitler.
Hitler, who had been told nothing of all this beforehand, exploded with anger. He hated the Prussian military elites, and was deeply suspicious of the army leadership. Clearly, they needed to be taught a lesson. He immediately countermanded all Halder’s decisions and gave the authority to lift the halt order back to von Rundstedt. Logical military thinking played no part in Hitler’s decision, rather, it was motivated by a determination to show who was boss and stamp his authority on his subordinates. But in so doing, Hitler very possibly lost the war.
Britain’s army may have been small in 1940, but on 27 May, the country came its closest to defeat. Foreign secretary Lord Halifax and new prime minister Winston Churchill argued over whether Britain should put out peace feelers. Halifax briefly threatened to resign, which almost certainly would have brought down the government. Churchill insisted that even putting out feelers would be crossing a Rubicon from which there could be no return. He won the day, but had the BEF been lost, the outcome may well have been very different. The halt order was not lifted until late on 26 May, and no panzers began moving again until the following morning – by which time the perimeter at Dunkirk had been secured and the evacuation had begun.
An England cricket captain was among those rescued at Dunkirk
Among those rescued at Dunkirk was former England cricketer, Douglas Jardine, who had captained the national side back in 1932–33. Jardine had retired from cricket in 1934, and although he was a qualified lawyer, made his living from journalism and writing. In August 1939 he joined the Territorial Army and then was commissioned into the Royal Berkshire Regiment on the outbreak of war a few weeks later. He was then sent to France with the BEF.
Jardine served well, but was wounded in fighting near Dunkirk. He became separated from most of his men, making him among the last in his battalion to be lifted. Ironically, the ship that took him home was a destroyer called the HMS Verity. Jardine’s greatest friend during his England cricketing days had been the Yorkshire bowler, Hedley Verity, who had even named his son Douglas after his friend. Verity was less lucky – he was mortally wounded in Sicily in July 1943 leading his company in an assault on German positions.
The last British soldier to leave Dunkirk was a Major-General
The last British soldier to leave Dunkirk was not a member of the rank and file but rather Major-General Harold Alexander. Alexander had taken over as acting commander of the BEF on 31 May. His imperturbability was legendary, and he was given the task of overseeing the last stages of the evacuation.
The last British troops began boarding at around 9pm on Sunday 2 June. By this time, the perimeter had collapsed. Although French troops were still heroically defending the town, German artillery was raining down on the harbour. At 11.30pm, Alexander, along with Captain Bill Tennant, boarded a motor launch and began a last tour of the harbour and then the length of the beaches as far as Bray Dunes, calling out to any last remaining troops. They heard no replies; all that remained were the silhouettes of abandoned vehicles. Satisfied they had fulfilled their task, they signalled, “BEF evacuated. Returning now”. Then they, too, set sail for England.
Many British vehicles abandoned at Dunkirk ended up in Russia
Although not a single British soldier was left on the Dunkirk beaches, some 70,000 troops were left behind in France, either dead, wounded, prisoner or still stuck further south. The British also left behind 76,000 tons of ammunition, 400,000 tons of supplies and 2,500 guns. On top of that, a staggering 64,000 vehicles were abandoned. This was a salivatingly large number for the vehicle-short Germans. Although many of those left at Dunkirk had sand poured into the radiators and fuel tanks, a large proportion were salvageable and were used again.
In fact, many of them went on to provide sterling service to the Wehrmacht and a large number ended up crossing into the Soviet Union a year later as part of the German invasion, Operation Barbarossa. By then, the German Army was using some 2,000 different vehicles, all of which required different parts, from gaskets and distributors to fuel pumps. Needless to say, of those British vehicles that did make their way to the USSR, very few ever headed west again.
James Holland is a historian, writer and broadcaster who has presented and written programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, History and Discovery, and is co-founder of Chalke Valley History Festival
This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2017
]]>Churchill’s days of destinyhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/churchills-days-of-destiny/2018-01-01T12:26:22.000ZIt is 3pm on Monday 13 May 1940. Winston Churchill has just made his first speech as prime minister to the House of Commons. He has announced that he has “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”, and has pledged himself to a policy of waging war “by sea, land and air” with the single aim of victory: “victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however hard and long the road may be”. This short speech is now seen as an iconic moment in British history, one that is commemorated on the reverse of the new £5 note, where the hands of Big Ben are set to reflect the hour of this celebrated address. But our view of that moment is coloured by hindsight, and by our knowledge that victory was achieved. No such luxury was granted to Churchill and his audience at the time. The prime minister’s speech, at six minutes long, was lacking in detail, and his position was far from secure. In the short term, things would only get worse – much worse.
Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940, the very day that Hitler launched his blitzkrieg offensive against France and the Low Countries. He was not elected prime minister – he was there because the Labour party would not serve under Neville Chamberlain in a national coalition; and because Lord Halifax, the Conservative foreign secretary, was not willing to try to lead a wartime government from the House of Lords rather than the Commons. It was a Westminster coup from which he emerged as the only leading Conservative with the popular credibility and political ability to form a government.
True, Churchill’s long record of warning about Nazi Germany – coupled with his obvious determination to take the fight to the enemy – had won him public and press support, but there were many throughout the corridors of power, and even within his own party, who regarded him with suspicion, as an opportunist and a maverick who might lead the country into the most dangerous paths. He had no political powerbase of his own. To form a national coalition he had to offer places in his war cabinet to the Labour leaders, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood. To keep his own Conservative party on side he had to give the two remaining seats to Chamberlain and Halifax. As he looked around that famous cabinet table, he was confronted by his predecessor, his main Conservative rival, and the representatives of a socialist party that he had spent much of his political life attacking.
Nor was he to be given any time to establish himself. The military situation deteriorated faster and further than he could possibly have anticipated. The Dutch were quickly over whelmed, but that was just the first wave. Streams of Panzer tank divisions, supported by a ferocious aerial bombardment, smashed their way through the supposedly impassable Ardennes forest, simply bypassing the static defences of the French Maginot Line. Within a matter of days they had cut a swathe across the French countryside, reaching the coast and cutting off the French northern army and the British Expeditionary Force. Boulogne fell on 25 May and Calais was besieged. Churchill had only been prime minister for two weeks and was suddenly facing the possibility of the destruction of his army and the loss of his main ally.
26 May: The French urge Churchill to seek salvation in Fascist Italy
Sunday 26 May was definitely not a day of rest for Churchill and the British war cabinet. It had become clear that the British Expeditionary Force was at risk of being annihilated, and would have to make a fighting retreat towards the port of Dunkirk. It was feared that this would be seen as an act of desertion by the French, who had overall command of the land campaign. French premier Paul Reynaud flew over to discuss the crisis with Churchill. The news he brought with him could not have been bleaker: the French had only 50 divisions to field against 150 German, and their supreme commander, General Weygand, did not think that resistance could last long against a determined onslaught. “Where then could France look for salvation?” Reynaud asked Churchill.
Reynaud felt that France’s only hope lay in an approach to Fascist Italy, still neutral but expected to declare war against the Allies at any moment. If Italy could be bought off, 10 divisions might be released from France’s eastern borders. But the price Italy might demand for her non-belligerence was expected to include the demilitarisation of Malta and the neutralisation of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. As these territories were all under British control, Reynaud was asking Churchill
Churchill’s personal response to Reynaud was unequivocal: “We would rather go down fighting than be enslaved to Germany.” Yet when he reported this conversation to his war cabinet colleagues at 2pm that afternoon, it was clear that not all of them shared such a black and white view. Lord Halifax favoured making an approach to Italy, arguing that it was not in Mussolini’s interest to allow Hitler to dominate Europe, and that the Italian dictator might be able to persuade Hitler to take a more reasonable attitude. In other words, peace terms with Germany might be explored through Italy. While expressing doubt as to the value of any such approach, Churchill agreed that it should be further considered by the war cabinet. The military situation was simply too uncertain for him to be able to rule it out, and his priority remained getting British troops out of France. Politically he needed to carry his war cabinet with him on such an issue of national survival.
What Churchill could and did do was to control the process. As prime minister it fell to him to convene the meetings and set the agendas. The discussions about an approach to Mussolini were restricted to a very small group: the five members of the war cabinet, supplemented from 27 May by Alexander Cadogan, a senior civil servant at the foreign office, and Archibald Sinclair, in his capacity as leader of the Liberal party (and key coalition partner) rather than secretary of state for air. This inner circle held three separate meetings to thrash out the issue: in Admiralty House mid-afternoon on 26 May, at 4.30pm in Downing Street on 27 May, and at 4pm in the prime minister’s room at the House of Commons on 28 May.
Everything hung on a few men, meeting in smoke-filled rooms, their concentration periodically broken by the latest news from the front, their deliberations occurring against the backdrop of the evacuation from Dunkirk. The levels of stress are unimaginable, and it is not surprising if at times their words became heated and their emotions ran high.
26 May: Halifax nudges Churchill towards the negotiating table
The discussion resumed in earnest later on 26 May. There was no secretary present for the first 15 minutes. Perhaps this was a deliberate ploy to allow the main protagonists to speak off the record; more likely it was a reflection of the sheer pace of events, with civil servants struggling to keep up with their ministers. Battle lines were quickly drawn.
Churchill was clear that Britain was in a different position to France – it still had the power to resist and attack, and France should not be allowed to drag the country into a settlement which involved intolerable terms. Lord Halifax countered with cold logic and diplomatic language: France should be allowed “to try out the possibilities of European equilibrium”. He “was not quite convinced that the prime minister’s diagnosis was correct and that it was in Hitler’s interest to insist on outrageous terms”, and Italian claims might be considered as part of a wider settlement about the balance of power. “At any rate, he could see no harm in trying this line of approach.” Ultimately, said Halifax, if Britain found that it could obtain terms that did not mean sacrificing its independence “we should be foolish if we did not accept them”. He also reported on a preliminary discussion with the Italian ambassador, preparing the ground for a more formal approach.
The other members of the war cabinet were torn between these competing views. Greenwood had no objection to an approach being attempted, but doubted Mussolini’s independence of Hitler and therefore the chances of success. Chamberlain felt “it was right to talk it out from every point of view”. In the end, neither view prevailed. On the one hand, Churchill was adamant that the only thing to do was to show Hitler that he could not conquer this country, but “at the same time, he did not raise objection to some approach being made to Signor Mussolini”.
27 May: Churchill’s fighting talk pushes Halifax to the brink of resignation
When the discussion resumed at 4.30pm the following day in 10 Downing Street, Archibald Sinclair was there to reinforce Churchill. It is tempting to speculate that the prime minister had brought him in especially for this purpose. As leader of the Liberal party, it was appropriate for him to have a voice in a discussion that might affect the future of the coalition, but as secretary of state for air he was not a member of the war cabinet. He was, however, a close friend of Churchill’s. They had served together in the trenches in the First World War and then Sinclair had been Winston’s private secretary (when Churchill was a Liberal minister in Lloyd George’s government). Sinclair argued against any negotiation, on the grounds that it would only undermine British morale and encourage our enemies.
The focus of much that has been written about these events has been the dramatic exchange at the heart of this meeting between Churchill and Halifax. The prime minister, “increasingly oppressed with the futility of the suggested approach”, feared being forced into negotiations from which it would be impossible to turn back, and stated: “Let us therefore avoid being dragged down the slippery slope with France.” His subsequent remarks – including, “If the worst came to the worst, it would not be a bad thing for this country to go down fighting” – prompted Halifax to threaten to resign. He later told Cadogan that he could no longer work with Churchill, and it took a private and unminuted conversation in the garden to ease the immediate tension between the two men.
Reminding the prime minister that just yesterday he had been prepared to consider terms that did not affect British independence, Halifax demanded to know whether, if Hitler were to offer peace terms, Churchill would discuss them. Here was a direct challenge to Churchill’s stated policy of waging war until final victory. Backing away from an open breach with Halifax, and unable to say that he would never negotiate, Churchill replied that “he would not join France in asking for terms; but if he were told what the terms offered were, he would be prepared to consider them”.
It might have seemed like a small victory for Halifax, or even an indication that Churchill was wavering. But look again at the minutes of this debate and you can see signs that the foreign secretary was already losing his colleagues’ support. Attlee and Greenwood joined Sinclair in opposing the suggested approach to Italy, while Chamberlain now argued that it might serve no useful purpose, as Mussolini would simply wait until France had fallen and then enter the game.
Churchill expressed his preference for an approach to Mussolini from President Roosevelt, which would smack less of British weakness. He knew that the Dunkirk evacuations had begun and, that morning, his military chiefs of staff had confirmed that a German invasion could be resisted by the navy and the Royal Air Force, as long as a sufficient air force remained in being, and as long as British morale remained high. He also knew that nothing was more likely to reduce British morale than public knowledge of an approach to Italy for peace terms.
28 May: The PM wins the day by choosing blood over surrender
Churchill had been playing a waiting game, allowing the matter to be talked out at great length, and being careful not to alienate his colleagues. But, on Tuesday 28 May, he made his move. Faced with the need to respond to the latest news of the surrender of Belgium, and to prevent any fall in that all-important public morale, he moved the playing field to parliament. After publicly reaffirming his commitment to fighting on in the chamber of the Commons, he chaired another meeting of the war cabinet in his parliamentary office. Declaring that the chances of Britain receiving decent terms were 1,000 to 1 against, he expressed his view that “nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished”.
The tide may have been ebbing away from Halifax, but the issue was still unresolved. It was at this point that Churchill unveiled his final and most effective ploy: breaking the smaller war cabinet discussion half way through to call his first meeting of all his government ministers outside of the war cabinet. Seizing the moment, he addressed the wider group with a powerful off-the-cuff speech in which he described the serious nature of the crisis, before announcing that he would rather go down choking on his own blood than entertain surrender.
It was a brave and emotional performance, but it won him an ovation from a hardened and usually cynical political audience. More crucially, it won their support for his policy of continuing to wage war. Leo Amery, the secretary of state for India, was present and wrote that it “left all of us tremendously heartened by Winston’s resolution and grip of things. He is a real war leader and one whom it is worth while serving under.”
When the war cabinet meeting resumed at 7pm, immediately after Churchill’s speech, it was clear that he had effectively won the argument against any exploration of negotiations. In this, he was undoubtedly helped by the fact that President Roosevelt’s offer of mediation had been rejected; by sources which were suggesting that Hitler would not allow Mussolini to play the role of mediator; by the resolution of his political colleagues; and by the news that the Dunkirk evacuations were under way. He had judged his moment well.
Did Churchill waver? 1940 has become part and parcel of our national myth, and Churchill’s role in that myth is that of the uncompromising, cigar-chomping war leader. Reality, particularly in the chaos of war, is inevitably more nuanced.
Churchill clearly wanted to fight on, but had to accept that there might be circumstances in which Britain would have to seek terms. Halifax, in contrast, favoured exploring terms, but accepted that if Britain’s independence were threatened the country might have to fight. There was much that united as well as divided these very different characters. Churchill was shrewd enough to know that he could not carry on alone. He had to keep Halifax on side and ensure that his war cabinet colleagues, the chiefs of staff and the wider political establishment were behind their prime minister. The episode shows him in a more consultative and political light, and reveals how he survived the first great test of his wartime leadership, helping to steer Britain away from a negotiated peace.
Allen Packwood is the director of the Churchill Archives Centre and a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge
Film: Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, is released this month
On the Podcast: Anthony McCarten, author of the new book Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought Us Back from the Brink (Viking, 2017), talks about 1940 on our weekly podcast historyextra.com/podcasts
This article was first published in the January 2018 edition of BBC History Magazine
]]>Dunkirk: 6 big questions on a remarkable rescue missionhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/dunkirk-6-big-questions-on-a-remarkable-rescue-mission/2017-07-30T09:21:55.000Z1) Did Hitler let the British get away?
The German order of 23 May to halt the advancing panzers has led to a claim that Hitler deliberately allowed the British to escape – the idea being that avoiding humiliation would make them more willing to accept a peace deal that would free him to turn his attention to the east. This is utter nonsense.
First, it does not make sense. Capturing most of the trained strength of the British Army would have provided a weighty bargaining chip. Second, the claim does not reflect what happened: only one of the two advancing German armies halted (and only for two days, pushing on when it became clear that an evacuation might be under way). The other pressed on and the Luftwaffe continued to attack. If this was an attempt to allow the BEF to escape, it was distinctly half-hearted.
Third, there is a perfectly adequate explanation for the halt order. The German armoured forces were stretched after a long advance and needed a pause to recover, to allow infantry and supplies to catch up, and to prepare for the next stage of the campaign, pushing for Paris and fighting the large French forces to the south. Some German commanders were nervous that their progress had been too good to last, influenced by a minor British counterattack near Arras on 21 May, which raised groundless fears that a larger Allied counterstroke might be imminent. What’s more, Hermann Göring, the commander of the Luftwaffe, insisted that his force could mop up the remnants of the encircled Allied forces.
Given the understandable assumption that their enemies were cornered with nowhere to go, why take a risk pushing on? Even the British did not believe that a large-scale evacuation was feasible, so why would the Germans?
The decision to halt was a grave error that greatly assisted the British, gifting them time to continue their withdrawal and to strengthen the defences around Dunkirk. This does not mean that it can only be explained by a conspiracy theory.
2) Did the RAF let the army down?
Some of the troops who fought in France bitterly criticised the RAF, not least for what they saw as its lack of effort over Dunkirk. Jibes referring to the ‘Royal Absent Force’ stung – and were quite unjustified.
Many of the RAF’s aircraft were obsolescent and, even alongside its French counterpart, it was badly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe. Squadrons from Fighter Command, Bomber Command, Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm did what they could to resist the onslaught, suffering terrible casualties that saw entire squadrons wiped out. But their activities were often out of soldiers’ sight.
The troops’ wish to see friendly aircraft overhead was understandable but misconceived. Supporting aircraft might be better employed striking enemy land forces elsewhere, or intercepting their aircraft some distance from the bridgehead. There was also a need to find a balance between committing squadrons to the Battle of France and keeping enough back to defend Britain.
One legitimate criticism is the charge that the RAF placed far too much emphasis on strategic bombing. At this stage, this was far short of achieving what its proponents claimed, and meant that other areas (particularly aircraft co-operating with the army and navy) were short of resources.
However, despatches written by Lord Gort and Bertram Ramsay – high-ranking officers in the army and navy respectively, who were in a better position to appreciate the full picture than the infantry being bombed at Dunkirk – are striking. Both paid tribute to the sacrifice of the RAF, without which the evacuation would have been impossible.
3) Who were the brains behind the operation?
Two men stand out. General Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, deserves enormous credit for his calmness in a confusing and disastrous situation, in which he displayed a remarkable ability to grasp what was happening. He turned down a series of flawed proposals for counterattacks, which his French allies were quite unable to carry out, in favour of pulling back towards the coast. Then, when news came of the imminent collapse of Belgium, he took swift action to redeploy his forces, filling a gap through which the Germans would otherwise have poured.
Bernard Montgomery, a division commander at Dunkirk and future hero of north Africa, was not generally free with praise for others. But, in his memoir, he wrote of Gort: “He was a man who did not see very far, but as far as he did see he saw very clearly… It was because he saw very clearly, if only for a limited distance, that we all got away at Dunkirk.”
The other key individual was Bertram Ramsay. Despite officially being on the retired list, at the start of the war Ramsay was appointed Vice-Admiral Dover, a critical command given its position on the English Channel. At Dunkirk, Ramsay proved the merits of that appointment, overseeing, with consummate professionalism, what the Dictionary of National Biography calls “the largest seaborne evacuation ever attempted”.
Ramsay showed an ability to put together and lead a team in the most trying circumstances, mastering detail yet also able to delegate. Later in the war, he led the planning for the D-Day landing. Having rescued the army from the continent, it was appropriate that he masterminded its return four years later.
4) How important were the ‘little ships’?
The ‘little ships’ are central to how Dunkirk is remembered and portrayed. They were the more than 700 privately owned vessels that participated in the evacuation, including motor boats, sailing ships and vessels towed across the Channel. They represented the full range of seafaring activities of the nation, including fishing trawlers, cockle boats, yachts, lifeboats, paddle ferries, pleasure cruisers, a fire tender, rubbish barges and vessels owned by the Pickfords removals company. The names tell a story of their own: Lord Collingwood and Lord St Vincent served alongside Yorkshire Lass, Count Dracula and Dumpling.
Their limited capacity for passengers was outweighed by the priceless advantage of a shallow draft, which allowed them to go close inshore to pick up the waiting soldiers.
The image of civilians answering the call to help save the beleaguered army is undeniably a compelling one. It was subsequently exaggerated, just like the contribution of ‘the Few’ in the Battle of Britain. Yet, just like that later example, there was more than a kernel of truth to the story.
The little ships’ contribution needs to be put in context. They carried few men all the way home, rather being used to ferry them out to the larger ships. Many were manned by civilian crews, yet there was also a good sprinkling of naval or naval reserve personnel.
But Churchill’s ‘mosquito armada’ did play an important role. Many men would not have got home without them – and they paid a high price, coming under constant attack from the Luftwaffe and having to brave mines, fast tides, fog, and waters cluttered with ever more wrecks. More than 100 were lost, including many that were unidentified. The little ships deserve their place in history.
5) Was Dunkirk really a miracle?
The events of Dunkirk are often described as miraculous. While the fine weather was a remarkable stroke of luck – especially the calm seas, without which evacuation from the beaches would have been impossible – the explanation is for the most part more mundane. The Germans made a major
mistake in pausing their advance, thereby
easing the pressure on the bridgehead. While the Royal Air Force was not able to provide air superiority, it did enough to prevent the Luftwaffe from making the operation impossible. Ship losses were high but not sufficient to stop the evacuation.
The BEF and the French army deserve far more credit than they usually get, for the determined and disciplined way that they fought their way out of the closing trap – while short of food and ammunition, against an enemy with air supremacy, and through roads choked with refugees – and then defended the ever shrinking perimeter long enough for the evacuation to take place. Most of all, though, the operation depended on the effective use of sea power.
The Royal Navy had inflicted heavy losses on its German counterpart during the Norway campaign a few months earlier. This prevented the Kriegsmarine from interfering with Operation Dynamo (and also denied Germany any real option for invasion in late 1940). The Royal Navy, with great assistance from the merchant navy, then proved able to improvise a remarkably successful evacuation, despite near constant air attack.
Civilian and naval crews (albeit far more of the latter) went back time and again, in difficult circumstances, to bring the defeated army home to fight another day.
6) If the evacuation had failed, would Britain have lost the war?
While the outcome of Operation Dynamo was as great a relief to the government as it was a boost to popular morale, what was its real significance? Some historians have argued that its impact has been exaggerated, that Britain would have fought on regardless. This is plausible; the RAF would have been no less ready to fight the Battle of Britain, while the Royal Navy would have been equally well placed to prevent any German attempt at invasion.
But Britain’s situation in the summer of 1940 was dire. The defeat and occupation of Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium were followed by the collapse of France, Britain’s main ally. Germany was effectively allied with the Soviet Union, Italy now joined their side in the war, and any US entry was a long way off. Worse still, Germany controlled the coastlines of France and Norway, putting it in a far better position to wage war at sea. Britain’s survival was in genuine doubt.
But imagine if Britain had seen another 200,000 troops taken prisoner, losing the bulk of its trained army and the nucleus for its later expansion. This would have represented another heavy blow to its ability – and, crucially, willingness – to face the difficult years to come. At best, the successful campaigns in north Africa and the Mediterranean would have been far more difficult to fight, allowing Germany to invade the Soviet Union earlier, with better prospects for success. Material support from the US would have been slower to come – if it came at all.
We’ve also got to consider that, while Churchill was resolute about fighting on, his position was far from unassailable. It is conceivable that, if Dunkirk had ended in disaster, his administration could have been toppled and replaced by a government willing to seek the best peace it could negotiate. Dunkirk therefore has to be seen as one of the key turning points of the war.
Tim Benbow is reader in strategic studies at King’s College London. He is editor of Operation Dynamo: The Evacuation from Dunkirk, May–June 1940 (Helion, 2016).
Dunkirk, a film about Operation Dynamo, is in cinemas from July
Books: Forgotten Voices: Dunkirk by Joshua Levine (Ebury, 2011); Full Cycle by WS Chalmers (Hodder & Stoughton, 1959); Pillar of Fire by Ronald Atkin (Birlinn, 1990); Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (Penguin, 2007)
You can read more about the Dunkirk evacuation on the BBC Archive website: bbc.co.uk/ archive/dunkirk
This article was first published in the July 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]>In search of the Dunkirk spirithttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/in-search-of-the-dunkirk-spirit/2011-05-19T15:48:38.000ZAmong the files in the National Archives at Kew is a little known chronicle of life on the home front during Britain’s ‘finest hour’. From 18 May to 27 September 1940, the Home Intelligence department of the Ministry of Information compiled daily reports (Sundays excepted) on the morale and opinions of the British public. From Dunkirk, through the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the opening stages of the London Blitz, they monitored the hopes and fears, and the everyday complaints, of a people under threat from invasion and falling bombs.
The reports were a reflection of the increasing dependence of wartime officials on the trust and co-operation of the general public. At the outbreak of war the Chamberlain government had set up a Ministry of Information (MOI) with the task of handling the government’s public relations and, more generally, of sustaining morale.
The MOI, however, was handicapped by the fact that it was trying to communicate with the public without any means of assessing the public's response. Hence the ineptitude of its very first poster, which bore the slogan: "Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory." All too easily misread as an appeal to the many to exert themselves on behalf of the few, it exposed a gulf between the leaders and the led. Home Intelligence was set up with the aim of bridging that gulf.
It was largely the creation of its first director, Mary Adams, who recognised that good intelligence depended on a wide range of sources. She commissioned reports from Mass-Observation (M-O), the social survey organisation already famous for its research into the behaviour of people in pubs and the activities of holidaymakers on the beach at Blackpool. M-O was a controversial organisation whose methods were attacked by academics as being unscientific.
As a counterweight Adams enlisted the services of a statistical unit, the Wartime Social Survey, that employed more orthodox methods of market research. She could also draw on reports from the police, the postal censors, citizens’ advice bureaus and other voluntary organisations. At lunchtime each day information officers in MOI’s 12 regional headquarters would ring up with brief summaries of opinion from across the United Kingdom. These were then circulated around relevant government ministries to assist them in framing policy.
Covert observation
As the main potential target of air attack, London received special attention. A network of doctors, dentists, parsons, publicans, small shopkeepers, newsagents, trade union officials and factory welfare officers was asked to report on the views expressed by members of the public with whom they came into contact.
Though Home Intelligence did make some use of face-to-face interviews it relied heavily on eavesdropping and the covert observation of behaviour. To us it all seems fairly innocent – there was no intention of identifying unpatriotic individuals or reporting them to the authorities. The politicians, however, had decided to keep the existence of Home Intelligence a secret. Inevitably, rumours came to the ears of journalists and in July 1940 the press launched a campaign against the minister of information, Duff Cooper, over the activities of ‘Cooper’s Snoopers’. Cooper fended off the attack with a speech in the House of Commons that was notably economical with the truth, and the agitation died down without the press ever realising the full extent of the ‘snooping’.
Almost from the start the reports, which Adams edited and summarised, managed to strike a reassuring note without ever lapsing into complacency. The majority of the British people, they concluded, were confident of victory – though men were more confident than women, and the working classes more confident than the middle classes.
Morale, however, was an amorphous entity that Home Intelligence struggled to grasp. The earliest of the daily reports, compiled during the calamitous events of May, contain some very curious judgments about the geography of morale. Oxford, reported the Reading office on 27 May, was “optimistic” but there was “defeatist talk in Godalming”. “Horsham,” declared the Tunbridge Wells office on 31 May, “continues ‘smug’”.
Despite such quirky generalisations, the reports leave us in no doubt of the shock inflicted by Hitler's rapid conquest of Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France. Britain was awash with rumours invented or inspired by the Nazi propaganda machine. Home Intelligence, which had the job of detecting false rumours so that the MOI could rebut them, reported on 25 May: "A great many are still being circulated, some of which seem to be put about deliberately. Of this type the following is typical: cinema managers in the Exeter district have been told by some of their regular patrons that the showing of the film Hitler, Beast of Berlin should be abandoned next week as Haw-Haw has threatened that Exeter will be bombed if it is shown. This story is apparently widely believed."
The German offensive in the west had involved the use of parachute troops assisted, according to press reports, by fifth columnists in the countries they were invading. Fictitious tales began to circulate of the landings of German parachutists, often said to be disguised as nuns. From this it was but a short step to chatter about the identity of the ‘enemy within’. Home Intelligence reported rumours that the chief constable of Hartlepool, a professor of French in Newcastle, and one of the MOI’s own regional officers, were all suspected of fifth column activities.
Opinion turned sharply against anyone suspected of unpatriotic behaviour. Chamberlain and the ‘men of Munich’ were accused of failing the nation by appeasing Hitler. Conscientious Objectors were unpopular and many local authorities gave them the sack. “CO milkman chased by angry crowd of housewives in Cannock,” it was reported on 6 June.
Infected by the same anxieties, the government initiated a wave of prosecutions of members of the public for spreading “alarm and despondency” but at this point Home Intelligence began to detect a backlash in favour of civil liberty. In the report for 18 July it was observed that a working man in a tram reading a newspaper had been heard to comment: “If we are not shot by the Germans we are evidently going to be shot by our own people.”
As the summer progressed the sporadic Luftwaffe air raids across the country developed into the massed air battles over the south of England that were soon to be known as the Battle of Britain. As the RAF appeared to gain the upper hand in the aerial contests, fought out in full view of civilians below, Home Intelligence picked up a growing sense of euphoria. “The fact that this region bore the brunt of yesterday’s air attacks,” commented the regional office in Tunbridge Wells on 17 August, “has heightened rather than lowered morale, and people are exhilarated by the feeling that they are now in the front line.”
Yet the feelings of euphoria were far from universal. Saturday 7 September will go down in history as the opening night of the London Blitz – an almost uninterrupted 76-day aerial assault that would kill thousands. As the Luftwaffe pounded the East End, Home Intelligence detailed the immense strain on local communities. “In dockside areas,” it was reported on 9 September, “the population is showing visible signs of nerve cracking from constant ordeals. Old women and mothers are undermining morale of young women and men by their extreme nervousness and lack of resilience.”
Another indication of anxiety was a revival of the anti-Jewish prejudices that Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists had exploited in the 1930s. “A certain amount of anti-semitism in the East End still persists,” noted the report for 11 September, “but this is not so much on account of a marked difference in conduct between Jews and Cockneys, but because the latter, seeking a scapegoat as an outlet for emotional disturbances, pick on the traditional and nearest one.”
Courage under fire
Although the daily reports only cover the initial phase of the Blitz, they do provide an early indication that the morale of Londoners was holding up under the stress of relentless air attacks. Home Intelligence reported on 13 September: “Majority carrying on with calmness and courage even in heavily bombed areas. Most prevalent emotion anger with Germans and irritation over constant raids. Real hatred and savagery flash out at times from those who have come in contact with actual tragedies: ‘we must wipe them off the face of the earth’ is working man’s comment heard today.”
The home front was indeed becoming a battle front. Under the impact of bombing and the invasion threat, the civilian population increasingly thought of themselves as 'in the front line'. As Angus Calder wrote in a classic 1969 book, the war at home was turning into a People's War. And as Churchill had prophesied in a speech to the House of Commons in May 1901: "The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings."
Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang teach in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.
This article was first published in the May 2011 edition of BBC History Magazine
]]>Where history happened: Dunkirkhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/dunkirk-where-history-happened/2010-05-29T08:00:00.000ZThis feature was first published in the May 2010 edition of BBC History Magazine
When the German Blitzkrieg in the west broke over Belgium and Holland, at 05.35 on 10 May 1940, British and French troops who had been assembling during the ‘Phoney War’ period rushed to assist the Belgian army.
While the British were engaged on the river Dyle (in central Belgium), and the French concentrated their efforts on north Belgium, the Germans broke through the Ardennes, which had been considered impassable by the Allies. Spearheaded by armoured formations, Hitler’s forces burst out into a weakly defended eastern France and advanced on Cambrai, and then beyond to the Somme and the coast.
As a result of the lightning German advance, Lord Gort, commanding the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), found his forces not only split in two but cut off from the bulk of his French allies. He therefore ordered troops to fall back to defences along the Lys and La Bassée canals in northern France. On 26 May, as fighting raged both in Flanders and along the thin corridor bordering on the canals, Churchill sanctioned the withdrawal of British forces from the continent.
The British selected Dunkirk as the last remaining port in their hands that could be secured and defended – and quickly formulated ideas for doing just that. Vice Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, flag officer commanding Dover, was appointed to plan and direct the withdrawal. The name he gave the operation was Dynamo.
Operation Dynamo was nothing if not bold. The Germans were now in possession of Calais, and so, in many respects, commanded a whole section of the channel, making all proposed routes to Dunkirk from Dover circuitous. To make matters worse, as the Royal Navy despatched warships to Dunkirk, it soon became clear that there weren’t enough vessels to evacuate all the troops.
This led to the mobilisation of the now famous ‘little ships’. Everything from motor launches to fishing boats to paddle steamers were taken under admiralty control and sent to Dunkirk – the majority with their civilian crew at the helm.
The popular image of Dunkirk is of lines of soldiers queuing patiently on the beach, waiting their turn to board. Yet the truth is that only a third of the men evacuated from Dunkirk were actually taken off the beach. This is because most ships were too large to get near enough to allow soldiers to board safely – and those that did were vulnerable to air attack (several were badly damaged or sunk in the early days of Operation Dynamo).
Instead, it was from the Dunkirk Mole – a long stone and wooden jetty at the mouth of the port – that most soldiers (some 200,000) were evacuated. With deep water on both sides, the Mole was ideal for marshalling and boarding large numbers of men quickly. It may subsequently have been regarded as a less glamorous departure point than the beaches, but it was far more effective.
The navy appointed beach masters to organise the evacuation and ordered impromptu jetties to be made from motor vehicles, parked side by side to assist with boarding. Meanwhile, above the shipping lanes, the Royal Air Force kept the Luftwaffe at bay, a task it would continue to perform until the final day of the evacuation.
Inland, on the front line of the Dunkirk perimeter, Allied forces fought a desperate battle to keep the Germans from breaking through. Infantry units, greatly reduced by the fighting along the Lys and La Bassée canals, struggled to defend ground normally allocated to much larger formations.
As the siege progressed and the situation became more desperate, wounded soldiers with no chance of escape were increasingly used to man the front line. They would be left in France with scores of medical personnel, who volunteered to look after the wounded, offering them care in numerous châteaux and large buildings behind the perimeter.
At 10:30am on 4 June 1940, Operation Dynamo came to an end. The perimeter finally collapsed and the last small ships and Royal Navy vessels departed for England. They left behind them a scene of utter devastation.
The British were unable to evacuate any military hardware, and so support troops sabotaged everything from command cars to tanks so they could not be used by the enemy. The streets around central Dunkirk looked like a huge army equipment park.
The Allies paid a heavy price for their endeavours at Dunkirk: thousands of British and French soldiers went into captivity, while the operation’s official history put casualties at 8,061 British and 1,230 Allied troops.
Yet Dynamo resulted in more than 338,000 men being evacuated from the beaches or from the Mole. Dunkirk had been transformed from disaster to victory, and soon became a byword for the sacrifice and heroism of the 1940 campaign in Belgium and France.
10 related places
Dover Castle, Kent
Where thousands of troops arrived home
Dover was a front line port in two world wars, and in May and June 1940 was an important reception area for troops of the BEF returning from Dunkirk. Many of the ‘small ships’ and larger naval vessels brought men in here, and then made a return journey for more. Part of the evacuation was also commanded from positions in the famous White Cliffs.
Dover Castle, now a National Heritage site and located on the high ground overlooking the harbour, has many of its Second World War features still in place, including anti-aircraft defences. Military exhibits abound in the newly restored main tower and neighbouring Queen’s Regiment museum.
In 2010, the castle will run a special exhibition to commemorate events in the Channel and France during 1940. It’s a good place to start a Dunkirk Trail before heading for the ferry or channel tunnel.
Memorial du Souvenir – Dunkirk War Museum, Dunkirk
Where the whole story is told
Any visit to the Dunkirk battlefield should start at the excellent memorial museum built into one of the port’s casemates (fort gun emplacements). The museum opened in 2000 and has developed extensively in recent times.
It follows the story of the Battle of France, the formation of the Dunkirk Perimeter and the events of Operation Dynamo. It explains the evacuation well with some great models of the Mole and beaches – and the walls are covered with contemporary illustrations.
Artefacts range from small items found on the beaches today, to artillery pieces, tank turrets and aircraft engines; all comprehensively explained and put in their context. The visit starts with a film in English and the helpful staff are always on hand to answer questions. For 2010, a special display will show some of the items featured in the BBC One series Dig 1940.
The Mole, Dunkirk
Where 200,000 men were evacuated
The famous Mole at Dunkirk was the point of evacuation for more than two thirds of those rescued in 1940. The Mole was a stone jetty running out to the harbour entrance. From there, a white painted wooden jetty extended out to sea. It was along this wooden jetty that most ships were moored, and it was from here that some 200,000 men were evacuated.
The wooden section was lost in a great storm in the 1970s, but visitors can still walk the stone section to a metal fence just short of where the last section once stood. It is one of the most evocative locations on the Dunkirk battlefield – on a clear day the whole stretch of the beaches to Bray Dunes and beyond can be seen.
Standing there, recalling the events of June 1940, it is worth pondering that the next time many of those evacuated soldiers would see France was on D-Day, four years later.
Dunkirk War Cemetery & Memorial, Dunkirk
Where the fallen are honoured
The Dunkirk Memorial – located in the British War Graves section of the Dunkirk town cemetery – bears the names of some 4,500 casualties of the British Expeditionary Force who have no known grave. It not only commemorates those who died at Dunkirk but also the missing from the Battle of France, covering actions as far apart as Ypres and Abbeville.
A high proportion of those killed in the campaign have never been recovered – in part, because many of them fell in and around the beaches of northern France. Unusually, corps units such as the Pioneer Corps and Royal Army Service Corps are heavily represented on the memorial, reflecting the losses of complete support units on board ships.
The war cemetery in which the memorial stands is south of the canal on the Veurne road. Of the nearly 800 graves sited here, the majority are casualties from May and June 1940.
Among them is a young gunner, Ralph Macdonald, who died of his wounds in German hands on 14 June, aged 17. The Reverend Geoffrey Hobson Matthews was 36 when he died on 31 May, one of the many non-combatants who volunteered to stay behind. The inscription on his grave reads: “… this monk and priest of Downside Abbey stayed with the wounded at Dunkirk”.
The dead from the fighting in and around Dunkirk were originally buried in isolated field graves in 1940. Some were never properly buried until the British had left. The local civilian population helped prepare several grave sites, and a number of the villages within the perimeter buried some of the fallen in their communal cemeteries.
Because of the siege of Dunkirk (German defenders held out against Allied forces from September 1944 until May 1945), the Imperial War Graves Commission could not gain access to the area until after the war, when work on a main Dunkirk cemetery began. Isolated graves were exhumed and moved in, adding to burials in the town that dated back to the First World War.
The site is always open, and there is limited parking in front of the main entrance on the N1, with the main parking area being within the entrance to the civil cemetery site, which is well-signposted.
Dunkirk Perimeter, Dunkirk
Where the British and French forces dug in and fought
Once Dunkirk was selected as the place from which the BEF would be evacuated, it was necessary to establish a defensive perimeter to keep the Germans at bay while the shipping came in to take men off. Around the town were a series of canals that offered perfect defensive lines, and both British and French units established positions along them.
The French held the ground between Dunkirk and the small fortified town of Bergues, and the British lines went east from Bergues along the Furnes (now Veurne) canal. In most cases, the defenders used hastily prepared slit trenches and foxholes, but occasionally they employed existing French bunkers, including some from the northernmost positions of the Maginot Line.
With a couple of hours to spare, you can explore the perimeter by car, or even on a bike. From Dunkirk, follow the D916 to Bergues. En route, you’ll pass Fort de Vallières, an old Vauban fort used by British and French troops in 1940.
The defensive walls of Bergues are worth a walk, and show signs of shell damage from the fighting. From here follow the Veurne canal through Hoymille to La Brouckstraete – remembering to cross from the north to the south side of the canal to see it from both perspectives.
Beyond that, at Rue des Trois Rois, just short of the Belgian border, is a Maginot Line bunker used by the 2nd West Riding Regiment in May 1940. It can be entered with care and shows signs of the fighting. Crossing into Belgium, the line can be followed via Houtem and Bulskamp to Veurne.
Veurne
Where snipers fought for control
Veurne is an attractive Flemish town, with buildings dating back to medieval times – many of them showing signs of shrapnel damage from 1940. It was defended by the 7th Guards Brigade in May 1940, and held until the final stage of the defence when the perimeter was shortened. The Guards dug in along the canal – one unit even bayonet-charged the Germans in the streets.
The canal to the north along the N39 offers the best views of the area, while the small British cemetery in Oude Vestingstraat contains the graves of Belgian, British and French servicemen who died in the defence of the town.
Among the burials is Lieutenant Colonel John Arthur Lloyd, commanding 2nd Grenadier Guards, who was shot by a German sniper on 29 May while walking the streets of Veurne with his second in command and one of the company commanders. The colonel was killed instantly, and the other two wounded. It wasn’t possible to recover the wounded men until it was dark, by which time they had died.
The entire crew of a Wellington bomber from 38th Squadron is also buried here. It crashed on the edge of the town, returning from a mission on the coast while the battle in the streets was taking place.
Maritime Hospital, Zuydcoote
Where the wounded were cared for
Built in 1910, the Hôpital Maritime was a sanatorium where the sick could come to convalesce and enjoy the benefits of sea air. It was a large building with more than 1,400 beds built in red brick with many outbuildings. When the British established the Dunkirk Perimeter, the hospital was immediately commandeered by the Royal Army Medical Corps for the treatment of the wounded.
By 4 June, far more than 1,400 men were being sheltered here, along with them many RAMC personnel who hadn’t been wounded but who had volunteered to stay behind.
The German army used the building for the same purpose during the siege of 1944/45 and, by the close of the war, it was in ruins.
Today only the central section of the hospital is original, but many of its extensive outbuildings and walls still show signs of battle damage. Nowadays it is still in use as a sanatorium and as such is not open to the public. However, there is public access to the front of the building from the beach at Zuydcoote.
Wrecks, Bray-Dunes
Where the shipwrecks remain
When the British left Dunkirk in June 1940 they abandoned a huge amount of material, including many damaged or destroyed ships, now beached on the sand along the coast. Some were repaired and reused by the Germans, and others cut up for scrap, but incredibly the wrecks of several of them are clearly visible on the beach today. Indeed, some can easily be found using Google Earth.
The most impressive wrecks are the Devonia and Crested Eagle between Zuydcoote and Bray-Dunes. They can be reached on foot from the parking areas close to the seafront apartments at Bray, but can only be seen at low tides. Both were paddle steamers – the Crested Eagle worked the Essex and Kent coast and the Devonia the Bristol Channel.
The Crested Eagle caught fire after coming under German attack, It’s thought that more than 300 soldiers on board perished in the flames. Today both sets of remains and more than a dozen other small ships are largely used as mussel beds.
Nieuwpoort, West Flanders, Belgium
Where the end of the Dunkirk Perimeter was defended
The size of the Dunkirk Perimeter is often overlooked. It was, for example, larger than the Ypres Salient, which was defended by British and empire troops for four years during the First World War. The Dunkirk Perimeter’s eastern edge rested on Nieuwpoort, a Belgian town with a Mole that was used to evacuate soldiers.
The Mole remains intact, offering an insight into what its counterpart in Dunkirk once looked like. British troops from the 4th Division defended the town until the perimeter was reduced on 1 June. Those who died here are buried in the nearby Oostduinkerke communal cemetery.
Nieuwpoort is now a major seaside resort, and you may want to end a day spent exploring the battlefields in one of the bars overlooking its beaches.
Wormhoudt Massacre Site
Where the SS executed British and French prisoners
On 28 MAY 1940, soldiers from the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler massacred British and French prisoners between Esquelbecq and Wormhoudt, south of Dunkirk. This was one of a number of atrocities carried out by German forces during the Allied retreat to the coast.
This particular one was perpetrated against territorials from the Royal Artillery, Royal Warwickshire Regiment and Cheshire Regiment, all from the 48th Division.
You can access the large memorial to the massacre from Esquelbecq (which is also home to a communal cemetery containing the graves of those who died). The original barn in which the men were murdered was demolished some years ago, but veterans’ groups have since built a reconstruction of it, filled with poppy crosses and wreaths all year round.
Paul Reed is a military historian and the author of Walking Arras (Pen and Sword, 2007).
]]>The Battle of Marathon plus Dunkirk and WWII refugeeshttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-battle-of-marathon-plus-dunkirk-and-wwii-refugees/2010-05-19T13:50:25.000ZHow to download the History Extra podcast
]]>The fall of France: Hitler’s greatest gamblehttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-fall-of-france-hitlers-greatest-gamble/2010-05-09T04:00:00.000ZAdolf Hitler was one of the greatest risk takers in history. As he told Hermann Göring, just before the Second World War began: “I always go for broke!” So, in a lifetime of living on the edge, what do you think was the single greatest gamble Adolf Hitler ever took?
Most people, I think, would point to the decision to invade the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 as the craziest of all Hitler’s risks. Not least because it was Red Army troops who would, as a consequence, eventually enter Berlin in victory nearly four years later, after the most destructive single war ever fought – and so this gamble obviously went spectacularly wrong for the Germans.
But that is not how it seemed to most people at the time. Both the British and Americans thought that the Germans would win against the Soviet Union in 1941. So it’s only with hindsight that we see the catastrophic error of Hitler’s ways.
In fact, to contemporaries, the most ridiculously risky decision Hitler ever took was to invade western Europe and try to conquer France in the spring of 1940. “None of the higher headquarters think that the offensive has any prospect of success,” wrote General Franz Halder, chief of the German General Staff, in his diary on 3 November 1939.
One of today’s leading historians of the Second World War confirms that Halder was not alone in thinking Hitler was mad to contemplate invading France. “It’s not for nothing that the commander of the German navy is in a thoroughly suicidal mood in the autumn of 1939,” says Professor Adam Tooze of Yale University, talking of the disquiet in the higher reaches of the German armed forces. “It’s not for nothing one of the key figures in the German army is going to his meetings with Hitler with a loaded pistol in his pocket, and but for his oath of loyalty which ran deep in somebody whose entire family had for generations served in the German army, would have quite happily assassinated Hitler.”
All of these military experts were against Hitler’s decision to mount an offensive against the west, simply because they thought the Germans lacked the capacity to gain victory. As Professor Tooze says, Hitler was proposing an operation that was “phenomenally high risk” and one that could well lead to a “catastrophic defeat” for the Germans.
Not only did Allied forces possess more tanks than the Germans in the spring of 1940, the British and the French tanks were better. Generals in the French high command, in particular, were brimming with confidence about their ability to repulse any German offensive in the spring of 1940. Indeed, the commander in chief of the French army promised that Hitler would “definitely” be beaten.
It’s also a myth that the Germans were contemplating an offensive in May 1940 that would use revolutionary military tactics. In fact, they relied on traditions deep within the German army. “Frederick the Great, back in the 18th century, laid out Prussian tactical doctrine: the Prussian army always attacks,” says Professor Rob Citino, who until recently taught at the US military academy at West Point. “He had a standing order for his cavalry forces that they must always get their charge in first and not wait to be charged by the enemy.
“That notion of a kind of bulldog level of aggression coupled with repeated manoeuvre had been a German tradition for a good long time. I’m not sure it had ever really been a British tradition, it had arguably been a French tradition during the reign of the great Napoleon, but certainly not in other periods or times of French history… what they [the Germans] were really trying to do [in spring 1940] was restore a very old way of war.”
Nor was the original German plan to invade western Europe something new. In fact, it was a variant on the Schlieffen plan which had been used in the First World War – a sweeping attack through Belgium and the Netherlands towards France. And if the Germans had actually put this plan into operation it would almost certainly have led, as it did in the First World War, to a long and bloody stalemate which would eventually have brought German defeat. But the Germans didn’t go with this original idea; partly because the Allies captured a draft of the plan when a German plane crashed over Belgium in January 1940, and partly because Hitler had always been inclined – like the gambler he was – to go for something more spectacular.
That spectacular option was offered by the ambitious General Erich von Manstein (though many others would also later claim authorship of this new plan – as the old saying goes: “Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan”). Manstein – supported by Heinz Guderian, the most brilliant tank commander of the war, and General Gerd von Rundstedt, who would command Army Group A in 1940 – suggested to Hitler that the main offensive against the west should not come through Belgium and the Low Countries, but instead further south, through the forest of the Ardennes, directly into France around Sedan. There would still be an attack through Belgium by German Army Group B, but this would be designed to make the Allies think that the Germans were mounting a conventional attack – as a consequence, the advance of Army Group A would take them by surprise.
“The Panzers of Army Group A would slice through the Ardennes and then make this race west to cut off a large fraction of the French army and the entire British army and then annihilate it,” says Professor Geoffrey Wawro, director of the Military History Centre at the University of North Texas. “But the risks were tremendous. You’re talking about seven armoured divisions against this large French army and this large British army, racing to the coast, exposing a flank 300 kilometres long with no supporting infantry behind them; a tremendous risk. But the German generals, Manstein, Rundstedt and Guderian, were confident that the shock and awe of that kind of approach would so disable the French and the British that they’d win.”
“This is an operation of unprecedented logistical risk,” confirms Professor Adam Tooze, “and gives the opponents of Germany – Britain, France, Belgium and Holland – the chance, if they’re sufficiently well organised, to mount a devastating counterattack on Germany and on the pincer moving across northern France. And for this reason the Germans fully understand that if this plan fails they’ve lost the war.”
The power of deception
On 10 May the Germans attacked. And to begin with, as the Germans had hoped, the Allies were totally deceived about the true location of the Wehrmacht’s main attack. At French military headquarters one officer heard the remark: “See how the general was right to attach no importance to anything except the north-eastern front!”
The overconfidence – almost arrogance – of the Allies was one of the key reasons why they would be defeated so quickly and so comprehensively in the battle for France. Because even when reports began to come from the southern sector that there were German troop movements around the Ardennes, there was little urgency to react. Since the British and French appeared to be holding the Germans in Belgium and the Netherlands, along the northern front, what damage could a ‘diversionary’ attack through the rough terrain of the Ardennes do?
The answer was plenty. In one of the most astonishing feats of modern warfare, German armoured units managed to move through the Ardennes and then cross the river Meuse in France by 13 May – within three days of the battle starting. The Allies had planned that their defensive forces in this area would gradually retreat in the face of a German attack to the line of the Meuse, and then hold at the river and wait for reinforcements. But that plan was now blown to pieces.
“They [the Allies] were absolutely unprepared,” says Professor Wawro. “I mean the irony is that Colonel JFC Fuller and Liddell Hart and other Brits during the inter-war period had been talking about tanks and armoured warfare and the need to administer a ‘shock to the brain’ instead of getting into these attritional slugging matches from trench lines in the sort of ‘French style’ methodical battle. Yet a ‘shock to the brain’ is exactly what the Germans administered when they broke through and cut behind the French and the British; they paralysed and demoralised them. They didn’t destroy the fighting effectiveness of those units, they just completely discombobulated them.”
Discombobulated and defeated
When, on 14 May, Sedan fell to the Germans, the French political leadership were certainly discombobulated. In the early hours of 15 May, Paul Reynaud, the French prime minister, rang Winston Churchill, who had been prime minister for less than a week. Reynaud opened the conversation with the words: “We have been defeated!”
And the spirit of many of the generals commanding the French army was just as shattered. Captain Beaufre of the French High Command, wrote: “I must confess that the morale of the French High Command was very quickly broken. In fact, the night when we happened to know that the front had been broken through at Sedan, at that time the feeling was that everything was lost. I saw General Georges, who was commanding the north-eastern front. I saw him sobbing and saying: ‘There have been some deficiencies’’.’
German Army Group A now dashed towards the French coast, reaching the mouth of the river Somme on the English channel by 20 May. The main British and French fighting force was now trapped north of them, between the twin spearheads of Army Group B and Army Group A. The British, as a consequence, had no alternative but to fall back to the French coast themselves – at Dunkirk.
But then something very strange happened. Something that has been debated ever since. On 24 May the Germans decided to halt their advance and not move forward to crush the Allied troops in Dunkirk. Various theories have been advanced as to why this delay was agreed. Was Hitler deliberately allowing the British to escape because he wanted to make peace with Great Britain? Or were the German troops simply exhausted? What exactly happened in that vital meeting on 24 May, attended by Adolf Hitler and the German commander, General Gerd von Rundstedt?
Professor Sir Ian Kershaw has made a careful study of that decisive conference, and he is in no doubt about the reason for the halt order: “What Hitler was doing there on the 24 May 1940, that crucial day, was actually agreeing to the suggestion put forward by the commander of the German forces in the west, General von Rundstedt, who then wanted to preserve the tanks for what they saw as a greater need, which was to destroy the French troops by moving south against them. And Göring had promised Hitler that the British troops would be bombed to bits from the air anyway.”
For the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force who had retreated to Dunkirk, this delay was a godsend. It meant that they had time to prepare the defence of the town, and the British navy had time to organise an evacuation. And though Luftwaffe planes did indeed bomb Dunkirk, they didn’t manage to destroy the armies sheltering there. So as a result, at dawn on 27 May, the halt order was reversed and the German army began to advance.
As the Germans attacked, several hundred thousand Allied troops on the beaches around Dunkirk still waited patiently to be rescued. “It was just queues,” says Edward Oates, one of the British soldiers who was trapped at Dunkirk, “queues of men… and people going out into the water. And, of course, the Germans kept coming over, planes, we had to keep dashing up to the dunes to stop being hit”.
More than 800 civilian vessels – fishing boats, pleasure steamers, tugs – arrived to help ferry the troops across the channel to England. But contrary to later myth, the majority of soldiers were rescued not from the beaches, but from inside Dunkirk’s port – taken on board larger ships, moored to the quayside. In all, more than 330,000 Allied soldiers were rescued from Dunkirk. The British government had initially thought little more than 40,000 could be saved. But a combination of the German’s halt order and the good fortune of relative calm in the channel had made what Churchill called this “miracle of deliverance” possible.
Effective evacuation, but no victory
But despite the successful evacuation at Dunkirk, there was no denying that the Germans had won an astonishing victory. One made all the more memorable because it had been won without superior weaponry, but rather, as Professor Adam Tooze puts it, by the “uncanny élan of the German troops who displayed truly remarkable fighting capacity in that offensive: the extraordinary marching achievements by the infantry, continuous fighting over days and days and days, essentially without sleep”. But it was also a victory, as he reminds us, which had only been made possible by “the incapacity of the British and the French military leaderships to respond with the necessary speed to the German offensive.”
Indeed, once the Germans saw what the British had left behind, they could scarcely believe that victory against such a modern army had been possible. Says Professor Tooze: “They’re completely overwhelmed by the extraordinary depth of British motorisation and the number of trucks the British have just abandoned by the side of the road.”
“All their vehicles have been left on the beach,” says Professor Wawro. “Most of their field artillery, anti-tank guns, ammunition, fuel stocks, all have been left to the Germans. So it’s going to take an awful long time to build them up, and in fact you’re going to see old, antiquated vehicles running around in the western desert because the good stuff was all left behind at Dunkirk.”
And though more than 330,000 soldiers had been saved, there were many British who did not come home in 1940. Around 68,000 of the BEF were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Hitler and the German army had, together, routed the British and conquered France. “In some sense, for that brief moment, they found themselves with a kind of tactical battlefield superiority to the British and French,” says Professor Rob Citino. “Now, that did not lead to a happy ending. It led to a reasonably happy ending in 1940. But a sense of tactical and operational superiority just leads you on to more and more campaigns.”
And Hitler’s next major campaign would be the one that would break him – Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The offensive which many still think – incorrectly – was his biggest gamble of all.
Timeline: the western front
3 November 1939
After a tour of German forces on the western front, General Franz Halder (right) writes in his diary that “None of the higher headquarters think that the offensive [against France] has any prospect of success”. A number of German generals even consider a coup against Hitler to try and stop the attack ever happening.
10 January 1940
A German Me-108 plane crashes near Mechelen-sur-Meuse in Belgium. On board is Major Hellmuth Reinberger, a German paratroop officer, who carries the original details of ‘Plan Yellow’ (code name for the attack on France). The capture of these plans becomes one of the crucial reasons the Germans later change the main thrust of the offensive.
10 May 1940
German ‘Plan Yellow’ begins. Two thrusts – Army Group A and Army Group B – advance on the Allies. The Germans have carefully planned the offensive so that the Allies think Army Group B – attacking through Belgium and the Low Countries – constitutes the main focus of the attack. The German plan works – the Allies are completely deceived for long enough for Army Group A to travel through the Ardennes into France.
14 May 1940
In one of the most decisive battles of the whole war, the soldiers of Army Group A capture Sedan in eastern France. On 13 May the Germans had mounted a huge bombardment, in an attempt to cross the river Meuse which ran through the city. By early on 14 May some of Heinz Guderian’s tanks were across the river. This successful German action did much to break the morale of the French leadership.
15 May 1940
Paul Reynaud, the French prime minister, rings Winston Churchill, who has been prime minister of Britain for just five days. Reynaud, in the wake of the fall of Sedan, announces: “We have been defeated”. Churchill tries to calm him and says he will come to France to talk to the French leadership in person.
24 May 1940
The German army is ordered to halt short of Dunkirk, and not advance into the town and across the nearby beaches to destroy the Allied troops who are now waiting to be rescued. The request to halt comes from General Rundstedt (right), the German commander, but is accepted by Hitler. Hermann Göring promises that his Luftwaffe will destroy the Allies from the air.
27 May 1940
The Germans rescind the halt order after it becomes clear that the Luftwaffe is not preventing the Allies from escaping from Dunkirk. The Germans advance on the town, but the British and France make a spirited defence, and the evacuations continue.
4 June 1940
The rescue of the troops at Dunkirk is finally completed after over 330,000 British and French soldiers have been taken from France by a myriad of vessels. Churchill calls the action a “miracle of deliverance” but warns that “wars are not won by evacuations”.
Laurence Rees is a former BBC filmmaker who specialises in the Second World War. He recently launched a Second World War multimedia website: www.WW2History.com.
This article was first published in the May 2010 issue of BBC History Magazine
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