History Lessons

Two Wehrmacht officers posing with a knocked out French Somua S35 tank.
The officer on the right is a tanker, as evidenced by his black uniform and insignia.
(Source)

A friend of mine over on the Book of Faces commented on yesterday's post that -

I have to agree with the wag who said he learned more about what happened at Dunkirk in the last five minutes of The Darkest Hour, than he he did in two hours of Dunkirk.

Which, I am given to understand, is a common complaint concerning the film Dunkirk, the audience sees what happened, they don't see why it happened. Being fairly steeped in the history of the Second World War, especially in Europe, I was rather astounded that people didn't know the "why" of Dunkirk.

Which I should have found no more surprising than why most people have no idea what BIT* 3 on the AN/APQ-109A Weapon Control System on the F-4D Phantom is meant to test. I mean, I know that, why doesn't everyone else? Well of course, if you hadn't studied that, or been taught that, how on Earth could you possibly know?

Back in the day**, if you had asked most Americans when World War II started, they would have answered "December 7th, 1941. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor." Well, the overt participation of the United States in that conflict began that day. I say overt because the U.S. Navy was already escorting convoys destined for Britain before that date. This was not generally known by the American people. USS Reuben James (DD 245) was torpedoed by a German U-Boat on the 31st of October, 1941, a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. She went down with a hundred of her crewmen (including all seven officers), for the men of Reuben James, the war had already begun.

Europe, well parts of Europe, had been at war since September of 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland. After the Soviets had stabbed the Poles in the back, the fighting went silent. Though Britain and France had promised to aid Poland, they sat on their hands. Realistically, there wasn't much they could do. The British Army was small and the French Army was built to defend France, not attack Germany.

Though if France had moved forward when the Germans were involved in Poland, things might have been very different. As it was, the French army moved into the Saarland, cutting off a small piece of Germany. But in the main, the French and British remained in their defenses. The British called it "The Phony War," to the Germans it was "Sitzkrieg," sitting war." With the exception of the expedition to Norway, the Allies were content to wait for the Germans to make the next move.

On the 10th of May, 1940, the Germans made their move. Six weeks later, their was no fighting between major ground formations on the Western Front until D-Day, the 6th of June, 1944. The British had been driven off of the continent, the French had surrendered.

In the winter of 1939 to 1940, the Germans were planning their attack on France. The German generals, like generals in every generation, were planning the attack as if it were August 1914 all over again. Generals always seem to plan for the last war don't they?

However, a liaison aircraft carrying a German officer who was carrying the attack plan for the invasion of France, had to make an emergency landing in Belgium. Though the officer tried to destroy the documents he was carrying, the Belgians quickly stomped out the fire and recovered the documents. (I note that throughout history staff officers don't believe the rules apply to them. "Don't carry secret documents with you near the border. Or flying near the border in bad weather." Staff pukes, what are ya gonna do?)

So the plan had to be changed. A group of officers with more imagination than some, had a plan to drive a lot of German armor through the Ardennes. A rough area which runs through Belgium, Luxembourg and along the German border. Deeply cut with ravines, rivers, and heavily forested in many places. Conventional wisdom was that you couldn't drive armored columns through there. Roads are too damned narrow! (And they are, I've driven on them.) So the place was lightly defended.

Now the British and the French plan was to drive into Belgium to meet the German armies (who were expected to repeat what they did in 1914 and still stick to the plan which the Allies had captured from the downed liaison aircraft). Imaginative of them, wasn't it?

At any rate, when the Germans launched their attack into the Netherlands and the northern part of Belgium, the Allies launched themselves into Belgium.

See the blue lines going into Belgium? Those are the French Seventh, First, and Ninth Armies, along with the entire British Army in France, the British Expeditionary Force, or BEF. Those red lines are the Germans, heading into the Netherlands and northern Belgium. Coming out of Germany and heading into Luxembourg and driving for the Meuse River is Panzergruppe Kleist, an armored group with tanks, motorized infantry, and some very talented generals, one of whom we'll hear about later in the war, fellow named Rommel.

They went through the light forces covering the Ardennes and over the Meuse in mere days. A few days later they had reached the English Channel near Calais, cutting off those Allied troops who had driven headlong into Belgium. Around this same time, the Chamberlain government in Britain fell and a fellow named Churchill became Prime Minister. (This period of the war is nicely covered, and superbly acted, in the film Darkest Hour.)

There were many in Britain who wanted to sue for peace. Churchill and the king were not in that group. A plan was needed, a plan was offered, the BEF would be evacuated from the Channel ports around Dunkirk by the Royal Navy and as many civilian boats as could make the trip. As many French troops as could be gotten off  would be evacuated as well, to be subsequently brought back to France to bolster the front.

The evacuation succeeded, but the army which returned to Britain had none of its heavy equipment. The trucks, the tanks, the artillery were all left on the Continent. All the men had was whatever equipment they carried with them. Many had nothing. But new trucks, tanks, and cannon could be built, the Army, that trained body of men had survived.

As for the French? Quite honestly, the country had never recovered from the bloodletting of the First World War, which had ended only twenty-two years before the Germans invaded France again (for at least the fourth time in 125 years: 1814, 1870, 1914, and 1940, five if you count the Prussian advance after Waterloo). They surrendered, some wanted to fight on, and many did. De Gaulle and the French who went to Britain rather than surrender, the Maquis in the countryside. Not all the French collaborated, in fact the collaborators were probably a minority.

But France did fall to the Germans.

Dunkirk was a defeat, not a victory. But it did rescue the core of the British Army and kept the West alive. For if Britain had fallen, most of Europe would probably still be governed by the Nazis. Or the Soviets. Neither choice would appeal to me.

Abandoned equipment, dead soldiers, Dunkirk, 1940.

The Germans march down the Champs-Élysées, June 1940.
(Source)

The French react to the German parade.
(Source)

And that is the why of Dunkirk. Whereas the film Dunkirk tries to show us what it must have been like to have been on those beaches in 1940, this brief article tries to show how it came to that. I hope that helps explain things.

When the evacuation ended on the 4th of June, some 338,226 French and British soldiers had been evacuated from the area around Dunkirk. It was a defeat, yes, but it allowed the British Army to arise from the ashes of 1940 and return over other beaches south of Dunkirk - Gold, Juno, and Sword. Four years and two days after Dunkirk.

We had our own parade through Paris a couple of months later.

It was much bigger than the German parade. Much happier too.

* BIT = Built In Test
** When schools still taught such things.