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WORLD WAR II DUNKIRK: A HISTORY
FROM BEGINNING TO END
(WORLD WAR 2 BATTLES),
by HOURLY HISTORY.
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Not bad writing although there are serious mistakes of fact in more than one place.
Why Hourly History would assign writing or compiling these volumes to ignorant and incapable persons (middle school dropouts?), is a good question.
This volume, moreover, although not as badly written as the one on D-Day, uses the same strategy - of going back far into history, beginning with beginning of English Navy’s formation.
Dunkirk doesn't come until chapter four, and that's only the retreat part.
So anyone looking to read the thrilling bit about the subject - the successful rescue of forces at Dunkirk - can straightaway skip to fifth chapter.
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"Germany had taken to rearmament with zeal. In 1933, the generals had been told to increase the army to number 300,000 soldiers; the Air Ministry was to build 1,000 warplanes. These plans were undertaken in secrecy, but by 1935, Hitler was no longer concerned with the consequences of his actions, and he publicly announced that the German Luftwaffe had 2,500 warplanes and the Wehrmacht had an army of 300,000. With compulsory conscription, the German Army would number more than half a million."
That's all very well, but the supposedly bankrupt Germany who refused to pay the French reparations agreed upon on the plea that German nbabies were starving to death because Germany couldn't afford feeding them, had to have some finance to be able to do the 1,000 planes and the other military equipment, not to mention paying soldiers - and, of course, the nazi cadre!
One notices thst while Versailles treaty is mentioned in every book or discussion on the topic as cause for rise of nazis, no mention much less discussion ever takes place regarding sources of finances for nazi military build-up.
Who bankrolled the WWII perpetrator? Who financed him?
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"Adolf Hitler had a long memory. During the years after the ignominious defeat of Germany at the hands of the Allied nations, Hitler had fumed at the manner in which the Treaty of Versailles had curtailed what he regarded as Germany’s sacred destiny. Not only, he vowed, must the past be rewritten so that Germany could restore its future, but those responsible for the defeat must pay. After becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933, he immediately set about orchestrating his nation’s rise. Germany needed land, he declared, and living space, or Lebensraum, became the reason why the military would capture other nations."
That whole paragraph is wrong. First and foremost, lebensraum had nothing to do with WWI and defeat of Germany.
When crusaders from France and England had gone to Jerusalem to war, German crusaders had reasoned that crusading in East Europe was easier, not too far, and much more profitable - and proceeded yo kill everyone in Prussia, taking over the land. There was a Prussian language, completely different from German which died as a consequence.
History of Germany published by Cambridge University Press has this in detail.
And also, to say he had a long memory because he made a fetish and an excuse of Germany whining about reparations for the havoc wreaked by Germany on France, is plain incorrect. Megalomania would be closer to fact. But when he became a member of nazi party, took over leadership or wrote his book in jail, WWI wasn't that old, and he'd fought, so no, it doesn't show a feat of memory.
As for Germany whining about payment, they lied about paucity of funds - there were plenty of German funds to finance unrest in France and it was paid in gold marks, too.
And when nazis fought street gang wars, weapons and ammunition came from monasteries in Germany for the nazis. So Germany had not disarmed, either.
So Germany planning and inflicting WWII on the world was no different from Germany doing WWI, except it was not Keiser Wilhelm or Cousin Willie and his revenge for being denied the top position at royal table at royal occasions in England, but another man just as egoistic, who perpetrated a WWII he'd planned months ahead in detail, even briefed his top generals at a top secret conference before New Year of 1939.
And invasions were executed to date, as far as East Europe went.
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"Germany’s past plight was the fault, Hitler preached, of the inferior races who had undermined German superiority. The cabal of international Jewry, he claimed, had proven hostile to German economical development. Armed with enough prejudice to blame all of Germany’s prior misfortune on others, Hitler was able to convince the German people that they were entitled to prove the superiority of the Aryan race by decimating the obstacles—human and geographical—in their way."
One, Aarya is a word of Sanskrit and belongs to India. Two, it literally is about inner Enlightenment and is about civilized culture inculcated in breeding. Three, European invaders looted it amongst other things and misused it yo mean race, which it never did. Four, epitome of Aarya is Raama, worshipped universally in India, which proves that Aarya is NOT about physical hues. And most importantly, Germany misusing either the term Aarya or the symbol Swastika after stealing the nomenclature from India, has thrown tar on them, but they don't belong to Germany or mean what Germany forced on them falsely.
To identify those words with German or European connotations falsely associated with them is racism.
And blaming German defeat or anything else on jews was fraudulent.
That was just racism, always ready just below surface if not out in open, in Germany and most of Europe. And the further developments attest to what German people are capable of when told it was their duty.
Was inquisition any different? If people were aghast at others being burnt at stake, no pope could have perpetrated it.
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"As soon as he became the leader of Germany, Hitler covertly worked to defy the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In truth, the Germans had already been disregarding the Treaty for some time as they built their military strength, but under Hitler, the practice became a crusade. By 1936, he had claimed the Rhineland and Austria’s Sudetenland. Germany’s living space was undergoing expansion at the expense of the boundaries of other nations."
Obviously mistakes galore there.
Sudetenland was renamed part of, not Austria but Czechoslovakia. Austria had been claimed as a whole, and renamed Oesterreich, literally Eastern Kingdom or Eastern State.
And "Germany’s living space was undergoing expansion at the expense of the" other nations, not "boundaries of other nations".
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"Aware that militarism was casting a long shadow over the continents, the world powers chose to ignore the darkness. World War I’s legacy was still recent memory, and the world was consumed by an economic crisis, the Great Depression, which dominated the stage. As Germany, Japan, and Italy sharpened their swords and set their sights on conquest, they quickly realized that Great Britain, France, and the United States would do nothing."
Again, nothing "quickly" there. League of Nations did argue about Italy inflicting war on Abyssinnia - since renamed Ethiopia - but lacked teeth. Between France doing nothing about Rhineland and England giving away Czechoslovakia there were a few years when Axis nations of Europe proceeded with caution and uncertainty. Munich took a lot of wily drama by the guy who fooled sincere and elderly Neville Chamberlain.
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"In fairness, the Allies were dealing not only with the economic plague that had increased unemployment at home and diminished productivity, but for the French and British, their colonial possessions were also becoming restless. The French and British flags flew over countries that did not necessarily want to be French or British colonies. Communism, fascism, and Nazism were on the rise, but for the Old World leaders, democracy was not, at that point, a rallying cry. These nations had become empires because they had the superior military forces and they wore their colonial acquisitions as part of their heritage. They had emerged from the nineteenth century as the masters over other peoples, and they had no intention of surrendering their power. Convinced that their colonies benefitted because the dominant nations had taken up what Kipling called “the white man’s burden,” Europe’s masters turned a blind eye to the fact that the people living under the British and French flags did not have the rights and privileges of the people who lived in England and France."
In short the empires were thugs, looters and slavers in everything but name.
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"Poland could not afford to be so self-confident. On March 31, 1939, the Poles forged a military alliance with the British and French in order to safeguard their independence and their borders. Germany wanted Danzig, and many ethnic Germans living in the city favored annexation. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain held the forlorn hope that if Hitler had Danzig, he would leave the rest of Europe alone. When he met with Hitler in Munich after the German annexation of the Sudetenland, Chamberlain’s announcement that peace had been achieved was not as naive as it seemed. Chamberlain knew that his nation was not yet ready for war; peace meant buying time for Great Britain to catch up with German military strides."
He was the hero in England for the moment, people in tears cheering him in streets as much as in parliament.
"Then, on September 3, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The week before, Germany and the Soviet Union had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which set the stage for Poland to be served on the menu for the two nations who, although not allies, had mutual interests, one of which was the acquisition of land. By October 6, the Germans and Russians had achieved their ends and had divided Poland between them. Although France and Great Britain declared war against Germany on September 3, they did not retaliate against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Poland."
They couldn't, at that moment. But war had been declared, and although French leaders capitulated fast when invaded, neither French people nor England did.
Without England standing up to nazi onslaught, world civilisation wouldn't have stood. Without French Resistance, allies couldn't have won as easily. Without Russia fighting with grim determination despite being literally butchered - 20 million including millions of civilians burnt alive in whole villages through Belarus and east thereof upto Moscow - Europe wouldn't have regained freedom except with far more annihilation.
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"“The battlefield disappeared, and with it, the illusion that there had ever been a battlefield. For this was no war of occupation, but a war of quick penetration and obliteration.”
"—Time Magazine"
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"“Without Dunkirk, Britain doesn't have an army and it’s extremely questionable whether Britain could have fought the war.”
"— Second World War historian Nick Hewitt"
Perhaps not much after D-Day, but until then British role was stoic standing up to blitz, refusing to surrender and fighting off Luftwaffe, last of which was mostly RAF.
It was the spirit that counted, at Dunkirk and until D-Day.
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"On May 25, the British War Office reached the decision to evacuate its forces. Ultimately, nearly 340,000 British, French, Polish, and Belgian troops would be rescued by 861 vessels. Most of those vessels were captained by the men who owned them. But not all. Agents of the Ministry of Shipping searched along the Thames for vessels that could be used for the rescue and placed naval crews on board to sail them. Of those 861 vessels, 243 ultimately sank. Fighter Command would lose 106 aircraft, and the Luftwaffe would lose 135, some of them shot down by the navies of France and Great Britain.
"The Navy was present at Dunkirk, but because the beach was so shallow, the big ships couldn’t reach the soldiers who were waiting to be rescued.
"The British public learned that its army was being evacuated from Dunkirk and that citizens with boats were needed to save the troops. In response came yachts, fishing boats, motorboats, barges, ferries, sloops, and other vessels, ready to venture forth from the Thames River and the ports along the English Channel. Some of the ships came from the Isle of Man and Glasgow to participate in the rescue. The small vessels were guided by naval craft from the Thames Estuary and Dover. Their size made it possible for them to move closer as they shuttled back and forth from the bigger vessels, picking up the soldiers who were lined up, some of them waiting for hours, in the water, some of them in water up to their shoulders.
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"The “Little Ships” might have been manned by civilians, but the German military didn’t distinguish between professionals and amateurs as it sent artillery, bombers, and fighter planes to attack. For the fishermen, longshoremen, cab drivers and yachtsmen, bankers, dentists, youths, engineers, and civil servants who were manning the boats, often only one man in a boat and never more than two, the enterprise was carried out beneath a sky illuminated by the flames over Dunkirk. The background of the sky remained red as the city burned. With no water to put out the fires and no men who could be scared to fight them, the flames blazed on.
"It was the light of the battle that helped the ships to steer and distinguish the ships that had loaded up with soldiers and were heading back to England. The light from the flames also made it easier to spot the shadows that were the motor torpedo boats of the Germans. As they got nearer to the port, the noise of the firing and bombing increased. One of the rescuers described the flames: “From a glow they rose up to enormous plumes of fire that roared high into the everlasting pall of smoke.” When an attack was in progress, the sky was bright with the bombs. The beach was crowded with men waiting to board the ships, but the thick clouds of smoke helped to conceal them from the German aircraft overhead.
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"For the smaller boats, the peril of the voyage was increased when the destroyers went by, as the wash from their passage forced the small ships to try to head into the waves and hope for the best.
"One rescuer described the scene. “The picture will always remain sharp-etched in my memory . . . the lines of men wearily and sleepily staggering across the beach from the dunes to the shallows, falling into little boats . . . The foremost ranks were shoulder deep, moving forward under the command of young subalterns, themselves with their heads just above the little waves that rode in to the sand. As the front ranks were dragged aboard the boats, the rear ranks moved up, from ankle deep to knee deep, from knee deep to waist deep, until they, too, came to shoulder depth and their turn. I will remember, too, the astonishing discipline of the men. They had fought through three weeks of retreat, always falling back without orders, often without support. Transport had failed. They had gone sleepless. They had been without food and water. Yet they kept ranks as they came down the beaches, and they obeyed commands.”
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"When it began on May 27, the hope was that Operation Dynamo would rescue at the most 50,000 troops. But this makeshift fleet of British civilians, known as the “Little Ships” ended up rescuing 340,000 British, French, and Belgian troops from Dunkirk by June 4, when the evacuation ended.
"The British were quick to see the evacuation as a triumph and the will of God. The Dean of St. Paul’s described the evacuation as “the miracle of Dunkirk.” The Archbishop of Canterbury had announced the Day of National Prayer which was regarded as proof that God had intervened in the form of calm waters which aided the rescuers and the mist which obstructed the German bombers from hitting more targets. The evacuation was seen in terms of the efforts of the ships that had taken the soldiers from Dunkirk back to Great Britain, but the Royal Air Force was also at work in the effort.
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"Standing alone, its military resources depleted, Great Britain could hardly have been in worse shape for what was next. On July 16, Hitler outlined a plan for the invasion of Great Britain, an amphibious assault which depended upon the Luftwaffe gaining control of the air in order to nullify the strength of the British Navy. Göring, who had predicted that his Luftwaffe would easily defeat the British at Dunkirk, developed a plan for German aircraft to destroy the British Air Force so that the invasion could take place.
"Pragmatic Winston Churchill reminded his nation that wars are not won by evacuations. “We must be very careful,” he said in a speech before the House of Commons, “not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.” But, he went on, there had been a victory inside the deliverance, and that victory was gained by the air force.
"Aware that Hitler planned to invade Great Britain, Churchill’s scorn was stirring. “We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before . . . We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
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"The British Isles were not subjugated. The New World did step in to the rescue. Germany was defeated, not without travail and hardship, and World War II ended.
"In 2015, veterans of the Dunkirk evacuation gathered to commemorate the 75 th anniversary of the miracle. A 94-year-old veteran recalled that period when he was a young soldier who had to march 120 miles to the beach where he found a rowboat that delivered him to a naval ship. He said: “I didn’t come here because I was feeling I had to come because of myself, it was for the chaps that I was with. It was fate. I don’t know how I escaped. It was a miracle, and today I really don’t believe I am here.”
" ... “Prior to Dunkirk, Britain remained a divided nation. Many Britons were unsure what to make of the Phoney War or ‘Sitzkrieg’ that endured from the fall of Warsaw in September 1939 until the invasion of France and the Low Countries in May of 1940. Dunkirk brought Britain together in much the same way that Pearl Harbor brought Americans together.” ... Although it’s the job of the military to protect the civilian population, the evacuation of Dunkirk spurred the ordinary people of Great Britain to risk danger in order to rescue their soldiers. ... "
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"Movies like Dunkirk have the power to evoke a sense of recognition with historical events that happened long ago. Mrs. Miniver, a 1942 drama, told the story of Great Britain’s war effort as it affected the life of a British family. The film, which won six Academy Awards, is number 40 on the list of the American Film Institute’s most inspirational films ever made and in 2009, the Library of Congress named the film to the National Film Registry, guaranteeing that its merit means it will be preserved.
"From their participation in the Dunkirk evacuation to the Battle of Britain, the Minivers represent the civilians of Britain who do their part to preserve their way of life, suffering as civilians always do in times of war. At the funeral of the Miniver daughter-in-law who dies during an air raid, the vicar explains the inexplicability of death. “Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is the war of the people, of all the people. And it must be fought not only on the battlefield but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom. Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves, and those who come after us, from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the People’s War. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it then. Fight it with all that is in us. And may God defend the right.”"
Author leaves it unmentioned why the film is relevant to Dunkirk - its because Miniver is part of the rescuers, informing his wife only after he's returned safely with his little fishing boat from Dunkirk, of where he's been. She, meanwhile, has dealt with a German pilot who crashed and hid in her home.
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"When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, Winston Churchill remarked, “Thank God for the French Army.” Churchill and many others as well believed that the French military, relying upon the strength of the highly regarded Maginot Line which had established fortifications along the border with Germany, would be able to prevent the Germans from returning to their conquering habits of the past.
"But 1940 told a different tale, and after Hitler launched his blitzkrieg on May 10, Paris had fallen by June 14, joining Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg as the nations which had already been defeated by the forces of the Third Reich. As German forces encircled the trapped British Expeditionary Force in France, it looked as though the Nazi regime would quickly conquer the Allies. The British, along with remnants of the French and Belgian forces, fought desperately, knowing that they had no hope of winning. Their goal was to make their way to Dunkirk and from there, evacuate to safety across the English Channel."
To say that they "fought desperately, knowing that they had no hope of winning" is perhaps going too far. It may have looked somewhere between bleak, hard and uncertain, but Britain had certainly made up their minds. So had French people - it's the political leadership that caved, not even military!
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"As the Allies were beaten back to the port at Dunkirk, the British faced a life-and-death dilemma. Annihilation seemed certain and imminent. Then, for reasons that historians have still not figured out, Hitler issued a Halt Order on the attack, giving the Allies the breathing room that they desperately needed. ... "
If only racism hadn't blinded them with arrogance, they might have had a clue. As it is, even those who you'd expect ought to have had a clue, had their blinkers firmly in place, and they held on to the blinkers desperately - as evidenced through their writings. W. Somerset Maugham, James Hilton, even someone supposedly moral like George Eliot, were all victims of this church enforced colonial mindset blinding them, and few escaped it.
Did George Bernard Shaw? It's possible he escaped colonial racism, judging from his writings. Would he have known, had he lived in those times?
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" ... The British War Office sent out notice to the British public that seafaring vessels were needed to rescue the soldiers. And the Brits responded, crossing the English Channel in everything from ferries to fishing boats to yachts as the skies over Dunkirk were alight with flames from the bombing. While the Luftwaffe attacked from the skies, the “Little Ships” made their way to the beaches, picking up troops patiently waiting in line in water up to their shoulders. The War Office hoped that the civilian fleet would be able to rescue 50,000 soldiers, but in a heroic feat of daring and endurance, over 300,000 troops were brought safely to British shores."
That included a few thousand of others, too, apart from the British forces.
"For the British, living on an island meant coming to terms with the water that surrounded them. Naval power would play an important role in the world-wide war that erupted across the continents beginning in 1939. But if not for the seafaring skills and courage of ordinary British citizens who were called upon to rescue their trapped soldiers at the port of Dunkirk, naval power would have counted for naught. The patriotic response of the British civilians who took their boats to the water in response to their country’s call did not signify a victory, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill pointed out when he said that wars are not won by evacuations. But it provided to be a badly needed morale boost for a nation that was about to face, on their own, the Battle of Britain and the fury of the Nazi military."
It provided, too, the rescued men, not an insignificant number! WWI had decimated a generation and restricted thereby growth of another, as it is.
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"Hitler unleashed months of air raids against the country. In response, the British demonstrated what was termed the “Dunkirk spirit,” as they endured the destruction, the bombing, and the ever-present fear that they were on their own against a terrible, powerful enemy. The unity of the British people in the face of adversity evokes a time and a mood that seems to be absent in our modern world. In a time when heroes seem to be in short supply, and division seems to be all too common among citizens of the same nation, it’s heartening to look back upon a time of grave danger and recall that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when the need arises."
As to the last bit, aren't they, always?
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"“The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of our island.”
"—William Blackstone"
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"In the summer of 1939, the song “There’ll Always Be An England” was released, a tune that expressed the patriotic fervor of a nation that was about to find itself in a second global conflict against Germany. The British strength, its Royal Navy, was formally established in the seventeenth century, but it must have seemed as though there had never been a time when the island nation did not rely on its maritime prowess.
"As far back as the Anglo-Saxon days, the English had the need of a naval force, particularly when Vikings, whose invasions became a constant threat to the stability of the realm, controlled approximately half of the island by the middle of the ninth century. King Alfred the Great led his fleet into battle in 884, capturing a squadron of 16 ships before suffering defeat upon the return home. King Alfred designed new ships that were almost twice as long as the previous ships, with 60 oars, in order to be able to fight back against the Viking raiders menacing the coast. The enterprise was successful, as nine of the new ships were able to defeat six of the famed Viking vessels.
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"The Henry Tudors, VII and VIII, were committed to the reinforcing and building of their country’s naval power, and under Elizabeth I, the English were able to defeat the mighty Spanish Armada which sailed in 1588. The Spanish had the mightier empire, but the English had faster ships. The English sailors had also learned much of their craft using the techniques of pirates, as sea captains such as Francis Drake plundered the ships of Spain that were sailing from the New World laden with rich treasure. As an island nation, the English knew the ways of the waters; the sea was in their blood. They were building a reputation as intrepid and daring sailors who, born in a nation that was surrounded by water, had turned their environment to their advantage.
"While Great Britain expanded its presence in the New World and the powers of Europe fought for primacy, the British also expanded its naval might. As the war against the French and Napoleon’s quest for conquest consumed Europe, the British honed their talents. The Battle of Trafalgar established British superiority on the seas as, led by Admiral Lord Nelson, the British defeated the joint forces of France and Spain, demonstrating that the island kingdom owned no equals in its control of the waters.
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"The nineteenth century was the era of empire for the British as its fleets sailed across the globe, planting the Union Jack across the continents. But the new era that dawned with the twentieth century brought with it new advances that saw the British scrapping 154 ships in order to make room for new ones. In 1901, the Royal Navy began to develop submarines. The new century was witnessing a variety of innovations in technology which would soon be put to deadly use as, by 1914, Great Britain and France found themselves at war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Royal Navy employed itself in blockading Germany, and when there were naval conflicts, the British demonstrated that they were still masters of the sea.
"After the war ended, the victorious British found that, while they were not quite in the devastating situation that Germany was, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 meant that national economies had to slash expenses. The post-World War I environment was challenging for countries like Great Britain, which had fought and won the War to End All Wars only to find that British society had been irrevocably altered by the conflict. The stable and traditional hierarchy of the social classes was shaken; grand estates which had been the time-honored inheritance of England’s ruling families now found themselves burdened by tax obligations. The servant class had discovered its freedom—and better wages—and realized that working in a factory offered more independence than they’d had as a kitchen maid or a footman. Monarchies had toppled in Russia and Austria, leaving the British to wonder if they had won the war only to lose the peace. The new century appeared to be a dangerous one, and an expensive one as well.
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"Plans to build new battlecruisers and battleships were cancelled. Limits were placed upon the construction of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. No one doubted that Great Britain still needed a navy; the question was, could the country afford a navy that was capable of keeping pace with the changing technology of the new century? The shadow of war loomed large upon the horizon, alerting governments that enemies continued to prowl across Europe, making the need for a powerful navy as great as it had ever been.
"Germany, seething under the punitive conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, knew that it had lost the war; the Allied Powers had made sure of that. In 1931, the German and Austrian banks had failed. But as the financial hardship caused by the global Great Depression cast the German economy asunder, new, raucous voices were being heard. They were the voices of leaders who called for mighty, powerful Germany, one which could restore the luster of its heritage and vanquish those enemies who had sought to destroy it. A charismatic Austrian political leader, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party, vowed that a new Germany would arise from the ashes of the old. The Third Reich, which was destined to last 1,000 years, would be the masters of Europe he promised. The Germans were listening, and in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany."
He was never an "Austrian political leader" but only an "Austrian" who became a "political leader" in Germany and of Germany. He was never elected chancellor, it was a political sleight perpetrated.
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"The rest of the world was too busy with its economic woes to pay much attention to what was going on in Germany. By 1932, more than 20% of the British workforce was unemployed. The British also had imperial fissures to deal with: India was working toward its independence. The Irish were also vigorously pursuing separation from the English; that was nothing new, the Irish had sought liberation from Great Britain for hundreds of years, but this time there seemed to be a renewed determination. In addition to that, the trade war between Ireland and Great Britain cost the British its Irish market. Imperially and financially, Great Britain was experiencing hard times.
"There were attentive ears in the British government who recognized the martial threat that a resurgent Germany posed to the world, and they began to plan for another war. Hitler had made no secret of his intentions. Germany, he told his eager audiences, was destined to be the dominant power in Europe, and for that to happen, the country needed to invest in its military. The Treaty of Versailles allowed the German Navy to have only six warships over 10,000 tons and no submarines. But although the Treaty denied Germany the right to build its military, the Germans had covertly been training Air Force pilots on civilian planes and training submarine crews abroad.
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"When Hitler attended the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1933 and France refused to disarm to the levels that were imposed upon Germany, he withdrew from the conference. Great Britain, France, and Italy formed the Stresa Front and protested the German military policy, but no official action was taken. The British were alert to the rising threat, but in 1935, an agreement signed by the British and the Germans permitted Germany to have one-third the tonnage of the British Royal Navy’s surface fleet; at this time, the British navy was the largest in the world. Germany was also allowed to have equal tonnage in submarines.
"Some people came to regard this as appeasement, a concept which would reach its peak when Prime Minister Chamberlain met with Hitler after the Nazis annexed portions of Czechoslovakia, renamed the Sudetenland. Hitler was permitted to keep the land he had taken, a signal to the Nazi leader that the powers of Europe would not be willing or able to stop him in his quest for power and land. Chamberlain’s appeasement would bring scorn upon his political career as it sent a signal to Hitler that no one, not even the British, would try to stop him.
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"However, others felt that the British response was merely pragmatism in trying to deal with a peace treaty which had been unrealistically harsh. Germany would, the thinking went, develop its navy whether the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles agreed or not. Others felt that it was important to remain on civil terms with the Germans. Satisfying Hitler and his goals for a German restoration would, the view held, stabilize Germany and mollify German rage at the way it had been punished after World War I.
"Germany had taken to rearmament with zeal. In 1933, the generals had been told to increase the army to number 300,000 soldiers; the Air Ministry was to build 1,000 warplanes. These plans were undertaken in secrecy, but by 1935, Hitler was no longer concerned with the consequences of his actions, and he publicly announced that the German Luftwaffe had 2,500 warplanes and the Wehrmacht had an army of 300,000. With compulsory conscription, the German Army would number more than half a million."
That's all very well, but the supposedly bankrupt Germany who refused to pay the French reparations agreed upon on the plea that German nbabies were starving to death because Germany couldn't afford feeding them, had to have some finance to be able to do the 1,000 planes and the other military equipment, not to mention paying soldiers - and, of course, the nazi cadre!
One notices thst while Versailles treaty is mentioned in every book or discussion on the topic as cause for rise of nazis, no mention much less discussion ever takes place regarding sources of finances for nazi military build-up.
Who bankrolled the WWII perpetrator? Who financed him?
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"France countered the German threat by spending to build up the vaunted Maginot Line that would, the French were confident, keep the German enemy at bay by building a system of forts along the border between the two countries. By 1936, the British Royal Navy, responding to the rising threat of Adolf Hitler’s leadership, was undergoing re-armament. A White Paper agreed that in order to provide adequate defense of the realm, additional expenditures on armaments were necessary. In addition to national safety, the British relied on a strong navy to protect its trade in the Far East. The late 1930s saw hostile actions by Germany and Italy; the Royal Navy evacuated British citizens in China who were endangered when the Japanese attacked.
"The British people had confidence in their naval fleet and their army. But no one could have predicted that the day was soon approaching when the survival of the British would depend upon the patriotic spirit of the civilians of an island nation who would be called upon to rescue their troops from the superiority of the German military."
First half of twentieth century was rising power of people of the world.
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"Adolf Hitler had a long memory. During the years after the ignominious defeat of Germany at the hands of the Allied nations, Hitler had fumed at the manner in which the Treaty of Versailles had curtailed what he regarded as Germany’s sacred destiny. Not only, he vowed, must the past be rewritten so that Germany could restore its future, but those responsible for the defeat must pay. After becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933, he immediately set about orchestrating his nation’s rise. Germany needed land, he declared, and living space, or Lebensraum, became the reason why the military would capture other nations."
That whole paragraph is wrong. First and foremost, lebensraum had nothing to do with WWI and defeat of Germany.
When crusaders from France and England had gone to Jerusalem to war, German crusaders had reasoned that crusading in East Europe was easier, not too far, and much more profitable - and proceeded yo kill everyone in Prussia, taking over the land. There was a Prussian language, completely different from German which died as a consequence.
History of Germany published by Cambridge University Press has this in detail.
And also, to say he had a long memory because he made a fetish and an excuse of Germany whining about reparations for the havoc wreaked by Germany on France, is plain incorrect. Megalomania would be closer to fact. But when he became a member of nazi party, took over leadership or wrote his book in jail, WWI wasn't that old, and he'd fought, so no, it doesn't show a feat of memory.
As for Germany whining about payment, they lied about paucity of funds - there were plenty of German funds to finance unrest in France and it was paid in gold marks, too.
And when nazis fought street gang wars, weapons and ammunition came from monasteries in Germany for the nazis. So Germany had not disarmed, either.
So Germany planning and inflicting WWII on the world was no different from Germany doing WWI, except it was not Keiser Wilhelm or Cousin Willie and his revenge for being denied the top position at royal table at royal occasions in England, but another man just as egoistic, who perpetrated a WWII he'd planned months ahead in detail, even briefed his top generals at a top secret conference before New Year of 1939.
And invasions were executed to date, as far as East Europe went.
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"Germany’s past plight was the fault, Hitler preached, of the inferior races who had undermined German superiority. The cabal of international Jewry, he claimed, had proven hostile to German economical development. Armed with enough prejudice to blame all of Germany’s prior misfortune on others, Hitler was able to convince the German people that they were entitled to prove the superiority of the Aryan race by decimating the obstacles—human and geographical—in their way."
One, Aarya is a word of Sanskrit and belongs to India. Two, it literally is about inner Enlightenment and is about civilized culture inculcated in breeding. Three, European invaders looted it amongst other things and misused it yo mean race, which it never did. Four, epitome of Aarya is Raama, worshipped universally in India, which proves that Aarya is NOT about physical hues. And most importantly, Germany misusing either the term Aarya or the symbol Swastika after stealing the nomenclature from India, has thrown tar on them, but they don't belong to Germany or mean what Germany forced on them falsely.
To identify those words with German or European connotations falsely associated with them is racism.
And blaming German defeat or anything else on jews was fraudulent.
That was just racism, always ready just below surface if not out in open, in Germany and most of Europe. And the further developments attest to what German people are capable of when told it was their duty.
Was inquisition any different? If people were aghast at others being burnt at stake, no pope could have perpetrated it.
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"As soon as he became the leader of Germany, Hitler covertly worked to defy the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In truth, the Germans had already been disregarding the Treaty for some time as they built their military strength, but under Hitler, the practice became a crusade. By 1936, he had claimed the Rhineland and Austria’s Sudetenland. Germany’s living space was undergoing expansion at the expense of the boundaries of other nations."
Obviously mistakes galore there.
Sudetenland was renamed part of, not Austria but Czechoslovakia. Austria had been claimed as a whole, and renamed Oesterreich, literally Eastern Kingdom or Eastern State.
And "Germany’s living space was undergoing expansion at the expense of the" other nations, not "boundaries of other nations"
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"Aware that militarism was casting a long shadow over the continents, the world powers chose to ignore the darkness. World War I’s legacy was still recent memory, and the world was consumed by an economic crisis, the Great Depression, which dominated the stage. As Germany, Japan, and Italy sharpened their swords and set their sights on conquest, they quickly realized that Great Britain, France, and the United States would do nothing."
Again, nothing "quickly" there. League of Nations did argue about Italy inflicting war on Abyssinnia - since renamed Ethiopia - but lacked teeth. Between France doing nothing about Rhineland and England giving away Czechoslovakia there were a few years when Axis nations of Europe proceeded with caution and uncertainty. Munich took a lot of wily drama by the guy who fooled sincere and elderly Neville Chamberlain.
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"In fairness, the Allies were dealing not only with the economic plague that had increased unemployment at home and diminished productivity, but for the French and British, their colonial possessions were also becoming restless. The French and British flags flew over countries that did not necessarily want to be French or British colonies. Communism, fascism, and Nazism were on the rise, but for the Old World leaders, democracy was not, at that point, a rallying cry. These nations had become empires because they had the superior military forces and they wore their colonial acquisitions as part of their heritage. They had emerged from the nineteenth century as the masters over other peoples, and they had no intention of surrendering their power. Convinced that their colonies benefitted because the dominant nations had taken up what Kipling called “the white man’s burden,” Europe’s masters turned a blind eye to the fact that the people living under the British and French flags did not have the rights and privileges of the people who lived in England and France."
In short the empires were thugs, looters and slavers in everything but name.
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"Poland could not afford to be so self-confident. On March 31, 1939, the Poles forged a military alliance with the British and French in order to safeguard their independence and their borders. Germany wanted Danzig, and many ethnic Germans living in the city favored annexation. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain held the forlorn hope that if Hitler had Danzig, he would leave the rest of Europe alone. When he met with Hitler in Munich after the German annexation of the Sudetenland, Chamberlain’s announcement that peace had been achieved was not as naive as it seemed. Chamberlain knew that his nation was not yet ready for war; peace meant buying time for Great Britain to catch up with German military strides."
He was the hero in England for the moment, people in tears cheering him in streets as much as in parliament.
"Then, on September 3, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The week before, Germany and the Soviet Union had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which set the stage for Poland to be served on the menu for the two nations who, although not allies, had mutual interests, one of which was the acquisition of land. By October 6, the Germans and Russians had achieved their ends and had divided Poland between them. Although France and Great Britain declared war against Germany on September 3, they did not retaliate against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Poland."
They couldn't, at that moment. But war had been declared, and although French leaders capitulated fast when invaded, neither French people nor England did.
Without England standing up to nazi onslaught, world civilisation wouldn't have stood. Without French Resistance, allies couldn't have won as easily. Without Russia fighting with grim determination despite being literally butchered - 20 million including millions of civilians burnt alive in whole villages through Belarus and east thereof upto Moscow - Europe wouldn't have regained freedom except with far more annihilation.
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"Five weeks later, Poland was an occupied nation. Despite the declaration of war on the part of Great Britain and France, what ensued for the next eight months would be called the “Phoney War.”
"But the tense, fragile peace meant that nothing conclusive was attempted. The British expected attacks, and their hospitals in London were prepared for 30,000 casualties in the first week after war was declared, but the Germans were hoping to persuade the British to agree to peace terms. Occasional dogfights between the opposing forces were not sufficient to break the tenuous peace. The public was not yet at war fever, and when a German bomber crashed in Essex, killing the crew and 160 civilians, all the dead, British and German alike, were buried in the local cemetery. When the suggestion was made to bomb the Black Forest, the British Secretary of State for Air replied that the forest was private property and not a target for attack."
Private property wasn't relevant, but it wasn't a military target any more than Yorkshire Moor. Or Yellowstone.
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"The Germans had no such qualms about engaging in war. During the fall and winter of 1939-1940, they engaged in naval attacks against the British, striking destroyers and aircraft carriers resulting in the loss of over 500 lives. During the autumn, the German Luftwaffe was battling British warships as well. The “Phoney War” meant that the combatants were waiting like spectators for the outbreak of the real conflict to burst. Haunted by the memory of trench warfare in World War I, the French had designed their Maginot Line to be impregnable. The series of fortifications did not, however, cover the border between France and Belgium.
"Along the Maginot Line, British and French soldiers faced the Germans who were mounted along their own Siegfried Line. When British planes flew overhead to map the defensive fortifications along the Siegfried Line, the German soldiers waved at them. British planes dropped propaganda leaflets and pamphlets on the Germans below in what the British press termed the “Confetti War.”
................................................................................................
"The Allies imposed a blockade of Germany after the invasion of Poland got underway in the hopes that the Germans, unable to import raw materials and food, would falter. The Allies did not launch an offensive in response to the German invasion of Poland despite the treaties they had individually signed with Poland, agreeing to assist the nation in the event of an attack. A September attack by France against Germany came to nothing within a few days, and the French withdrew. When the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway in April, the Allies went there, but they evacuated in June. The two Scandinavian countries were now under the control of Germany.
"Had the Allies known the truth of German preparedness, they might have been bolder. It was the opinion of German General Alfred Jodi, voiced after the war, that the failure of the Germans to collapse in 1939 was because the 110 French and British divisions in the west did nothing against the 23 German divisions opposing them. General Siegfried Westphal further asserted, after the war ended, that had the French attacked in full force in September, the Germans would have been forced to surrender after two weeks at the most. Such speculation is heartbreaking, given the terrible carnage that was about to take place, but the Allied forces felt themselves to be at a disadvantage compared to the Germans and their leaders, who saw themselves as superior to other ethnic groups."
Its simpler - bullies get away with bluff in becoming larger than life.
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"On October 6, his victory against Poland accomplished, Hitler extended an overture of peace to Great Britain and France, but the matter of Poland was not open to discussion. Poland’s future, he said, was to be decided by Germany and the Soviet Union. On October 6, Prime Minister Chamberlain responded with a rejection. “Past experience has shown that no reliance can be placed upon the promises of the present German Government.”
"Chamberlain had learned that there would not be peace for his time. The prime minister would die of cancer in November 1940 and would not live to witness the outcome of his nation’s fight against tyranny. When he died, England was fighting a solitary war against an enemy that seemed unbeatable. But perhaps the dying Chamberlain took comfort from the events earlier that year when the stalwart civilian defenders of Britain took to their ships to bring their soldiers home from Dunkirk."
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"“The battlefield disappeared, and with it, the illusion that there had ever been a battlefield. For this was no war of occupation, but a war of quick penetration and obliteration.”
"—Time Magazine"
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"After the German conquest of Poland, the British Expeditionary Force was sent to France to defend the French. The troops who landed at Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, and Cherbourg joined the Belgian Army, and the French First, Seventh, and Ninth Armies. When the offer of peace that Hitler made to Great Britain and France in October 1939 was rejected, Hitler’s intention was to immediately mount his offensive against the French but inclement weather forced him to alter his timeline. Then, after a German plane carrying his military plans against the French crashed in Belgium in January 1940, Hitler decided that he needed to come up with a new line of attack.
"German military leaders respected the Maginot Line, the defensive line of concrete fortifications, weapons installations, and obstacles extending from Switzerland to Luxembourg which France had built along its border with Germany. Because the French expected that, in the event of a German assault, their military forces would move into Belgium, the Maginot Line did not extend to the English Channel, a decision which would come into play when the Allied forces were trapped at the port of Dunkirk.
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"But the Germans had a plan as well. Instead of challenging the Maginot Line, the Germans decided that it would be better to fool the Allies and attack by going through the Ardennes, a hilly, forested area along the border that was shared by Germany, Belgium, and France. By going through the Low Countries, they would catch the Allies off guard. The German blitzkrieg would do the rest.
"Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, was a Prussian military concept that dated back to the early nineteenth century. The premise was that any country lacking sufficient economic resources could rely upon quick, powerful attacks to achieve victory. The attack, which utilized mobility and surprise, would allow the Germans to prevent the enemy from organizing their own defenses instead of trying to overcome already established defenses. Surprise would be an offensive weapon nearly as powerful as artillery fire or aerial bombs. By penetrating to the rear of the enemy and nullifying its communications, the Germans were able to use their tanks, dive bombers, and artillery to immobilize their foes. Germany, the only power in the twentieth century that had combined its military force with radio communication, had an advantage that—when combined with the philosophy of blitzkrieg—was able to render its enemy virtually powerless.
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"The Germans would emerge as the masters of the battlefield. It had worked in Poland, and they would try it on a more powerful foe for their next foray. Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940; Denmark lasted a few hours and Norway two months, as the nations of Europe began to crumble in the face of the Nazi blitzkrieg.
"The British government was beginning to realize that tackling the moving parts of the German war machine would require the proper leadership, which was not being displayed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. On May 10, Chamberlain resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Winston Churchill, who possessed an indomitable belief in the British Empire.
"That same day, Germany attacked Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg from the air. The Germans had fewer tanks than the Allies, but the Germans concentrated their 2,500 tanks into armored, or Panzer, formations. The Germans feared that World War I would be repeated a second time, and their operation would not destroy the enemy forces. The French and British had 3,500 tanks, but they weren’t concentrated. Chief of Staff of German Army Group A Erich von Manstein proposed sending the Panzer divisions through the wooded Ardennes to attack. The Allied forces would not expect the Germans to take that route. The German plan would send the Panzer divisions ahead of the main army in order to confuse the allies. The Germans would establish bridgeheads on the Meuse River and from there, move quickly to the English Channel, cutting off the Allies in Belgium and Flanders.
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"It was a risky move, and Hitler was not entirely convinced of its efficacy, but he gave his approval. Army Group B hit Belgium as three of its Panzer corps swerved south for the English Channel. The British Expeditionary Force encountered Army Group B inside Belgium, but when the French and Belgian troops on the British flank failed to hold, the British were ordered to begin a fighting withdrawal. The Allies had unwittingly done exactly what the Germans had hoped they would do; von Manstein’s plan, risky though it was, had achieved its intention.
"Overwhelmed by the German parachute drops and attack, the Dutch surrendered by May 14. Churchill went to Paris on May 17, where to his dismay he found out that the French had sent all of their forces to the fight and had none in reserve. Nor were there any French troops positioned between the Germans and the sea. Meanwhile, the Germans Panzers had no difficulty in reaching the coast of the English Channel by May 20 because most of the Allied forces were in Belgium.
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"General Viscount Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France, was already pondering the withdrawal of the force by sea because it was apparent that the Germans were going to win the battle. Lord Gort, more formally known as John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, sixth Viscount Gort, was a graduate of Sandhurst who had served as aide-de-camp to General Douglas Haig during World War I. Gort had earned a reputation as a man who was capable and focused on detail. Those traits would soon be needed for this second war against Germany.
"After the lines of communication were cut on May 19, Gort had been aware of the fact that he would need to plan to retreat to the coast. Dunkirk, with the longest sand beach in Europe, was the closest spot with reliable port facilities. Large numbers would be able to assemble there. But if the corridor that led to the coast was severed, the route of escape would be cut off.
"Gort, while trying to discern the best way to save the British Expeditionary Force, was also dealing with the British government, which wanted to see action. Gort received orders to do something against the Germans and decided to attack Arras on May 21 in order to cut through the German spearhead, but he lacked the armor to make his attack meaningful.
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"Along with French and Belgian forces, the British were trapped along the northern coast of France. The French Army needed the British to join them in a defensive position to the south, but Gort perceived the futility of this move. The Allied forces to the north were being surrounded by the Germans; France was falling; the German advance from the Ardennes was separating the Allied northern and southern forces. Upon reaching the English Channel, the Germans headed north with the intention of capturing the coastal ports and trapping the Allies in order to prevent them from evacuating across the Channel to Great Britain.
"Codenamed Operation Dynamo for the dynamo room that provided the electricity at Dover Castle’s naval headquarters, the British plan was not divulged to the French. Brigadier Gerald Whitfield, sent to begin the evacuation of nonessential personnel, found that he could not control the swarm of both officers and soldiers seeking to evacuate. There were too many men and too little time and too few boats for him to be able to stop the human tide.
"Knowing that he needed to save his forces in order to defend his own country, Gort ordered his troops on May 23 to retreat to Dunkirk, the only nearby port left for the Allies to use if they would have a chance of escaping from mainland Europe.
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"Realizing their desperate circumstances, the French command replaced General Maurice Gamelin with General Maxime Weygand on May 18, but it was too late. Churchill had given his order that the British were to coordinate a southward attack with the French First Army in order to connect once again with what remained of the French forces. But Gort, knowing that if the British would have any chance of prevailing, they would have to evacuate. He decided against joining the plans for a combined British-French counterattack, a decision which the French would regard as a betrayal of their alliance.
"Confident of victory, Hitler went to visit his military leaders at Charleville on May 24. General Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, who held the belief that armored vehicles would have too much trouble on the marshy terrain near Dunkirk, told Hitler that he felt the Germans should attack the British at Arras while the armored forces were positioned west and south of Dunkirk in order to trap the retreating Allied forces. This tactic would permit the Germans to get ready for an advance from the south against the remaining French forces. Herman Göring requested permission to be allowed to destroy the Allied forces in Dunkirk, confident that the German Air Force was all that was needed to finish the job and trap the Allies. Ground troops, he told Hitler, would not be needed.
"In a decision that still confounds historians, Hitler agreed. On May 24, the German Army was ordered to halt its advance upon Dunkirk and wait for three days. The delay would allow the armored divisions to be used in the military undertakings to the south where the prize of France awaited.
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"Possibly, Hitler was awarding Göring for his loyalty as a Nazi. After the war, von Rundstedt voiced his view that Hitler, by issuing the Halt Order, wanted to offer the British a less humiliating defeat so that they would be more receptive to a peace offer, but historians are dubious about this claim. Hitler had made it clear, in Directive Number 13, that the goal was to annihilate the military forces of the French, British, and Belgians around Dunkirk and to employ the mighty Luftwaffe to make sure that an evacuation to British soil would fail.
"That opinion was shared by many others, including some British. Lord Gort wrote to Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden that “a great part of the BEF and its equipment would inevitably be lost in the best of circumstances” because the army was trapped and if they evacuated, they could count on heavy losses of men and materiel.
"On May 26, a national day of prayer was observed, with a service at Westminster Abbey that was attended by King George VI. The Archbishop of Canterbury led the nation in prayers for the soldiers who were, he said, “in dire peril in France.” Buoyed by confidence, the Germans felt assured of victory, convinced that, as journalist and historian William Shirer reported, “The fate of the great Allied army bottled up in Flanders is sealed.”"
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"Three days. It wasn’t much time to rescue an army and halt a deadly avalanche of war, but it was all the Allies had after Hitler’s Halt Order, issued on May 24, paused the Germans from advancing. On the other side of the English Channel, Prime Minister Churchill had already assessed the potential for disaster and had ordered preparation to begin for the evacuation of the BEF.
"The success of the mission seemed highly unlikely. The British Army, joined by some French and Belgian forces, would have to fight their way to Dunkirk, defend the town from German attack, and hope that they could hold on long enough for ships from England to get them as they waited on the beach. Refugees and abandoned vehicles crowded the roads around Dunkirk, contributing to the chaos.
"The Germans were confident that the three days of rest would only enhance their superiority over the doomed Allies. That belief was shared by some across the Channel, where there was talk of consenting to a conditional surrender to Germany.
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"On May 26, the Halt Order was rescinded after the Germany commander-in-chief convinced Hitler that it was time to move. The Luftwaffe, leaving Dunkirk alone for the time being, attacked Lille, Amiens, and Calais. Calais, which was held by the BEF, surrendered the same day.
"The tanks were already on their way to Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe, which had been attacking whenever the weather permitted, had destroyed the harbor and reduced the city to rubble from heavy bombing. More than a thousand civilians had been killed by the bombs and artillery. The Luftwaffe was also engaged in a war of propaganda, dropping leaflets in English and French that showed maps revealing that the Allies were trapped. The leaflets read: “British soldiers! Look at the map: it gives your true situation! Your troops are entirely surrounded! Stop fighting! Put down your arms.” But while the Germans saw the Channel as a barrier, the British regarded it as an escape route and their only hope of survival. The thousands of men cramming the beaches were hoping to be rescued. The sons of an island nation looked to the sea for their deliverance.
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"Gort, instructed to prepare for evacuation without informing the French or the Belgians, had already begun the preliminary steps for this move, first by preparing a defense along the Lys Canal. The sluice gates had been opened so that excess water would flood the canal system and create a barrier against the advancing Germans.
"But the German advance that began on May 26 left the First, Fifth, and Forty-Eighth Divisions under fierce attack. Suffering such heavy casualties that it was reduced to the level of a brigade in strength, the Second Division somehow managed to maintain an open corridor so that the First, Third, Fourth, and Forty-Second Divisions could escape, along with one-third of the French First Army. As they fell back, the soldiers destroyed their ammunition and disabled their artillery and vehicles so that their supplies would be of no use to the Germans.
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"The commander of the Third Corps had been instructed by Gort to build a defensive, semicircular perimeter around Dunkirk that ran along the coastline of Belgium from Nieuport to Gravelines. French troops would be at the western end and British troops at the eastern end. While the rest of the BEF fell back, the Second Corps was to mount a holding action along the Ypres-Comines canal. Three divisions of German troops launched an attack on May 27 south of Ypres, a region that had seen bloody fighting during the First World War. The British, lacking radios for communication below the level of battalion and without telephone service because the wires had been cut, suffered from the confusion and were beaten back by the Germans.
"Major-General Bernard Montgomery was ordered to extend his Third Division to the left so that brigades of the Fourth Division could join the Fifth Division at Messines Ridge. When one of the brigades arrived, they discovered that the Germans were already advancing on the British field artillery. They were able to remove the Germans from Messines Ridge and dig in east of Wytschaete by May 28. A counterattack advanced British forces, but they could not hold their position, although the action held the Germans back while the BEF was able to retreat.
"On May 28, the Belgian Army surrendered to the overwhelming numbers of the German forces. The surrender created a gap in the eastern flank between the British forces and the sea. In order to fill in the ominous gap, Gort sent in the Third, Fourth, and Fiftieth Divisions, whose soldiers were already weary from battle. The soldiers, still moving into their battle position, ran into a German division that was attempting to outflank the Allies. The perimeter was gradually being pushed inward to Dunkirk. An overnight raid by the Luftwaffe on May 28 at Poperinge forced the British to abandon weapons and trucks.
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"By May 30, the perimeter was positioned along a series of canals seven miles from the coast. There was an advantage in the marshlands of Dunkirk, as the terrain was not conducive to mobility for tanks. Slowly and inexorably, however, the Germans were forcing the perimeter back and nearly broke through at Nieuport on May 31. When British troops were fleeing, the Coldstream Guards of the Third Division reinforced the line and, by shooting some of the soldiers and forcing others to return with the persuasive efforts of their bayonets, managed to push back the Germans.
"Near Lille, five divisions of the French First Army were surrounded by seven divisions under the command of Erwin Rommel. Despite overwhelming odds, they were able to keep the Germans occupied at Lille and unable to join the attack on Dunkirk, an action that saved the fate of as many as 100,000 Allied troops. But on May 31, out of food and ammunition, the 35,000 remaining soldiers of the French First Army were forced to surrender.
"The Germans wanted to finish off the British. General Von Kuechler, oblivious to the information that the British were falling back to Dunkirk and abandoning the eastern end of the perimeter line, assumed command of all the German troops at Dunkirk. His strategy was to launch an attack on the entire Allied front on the following day.
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"Prime Minister Churchill had promised the French allies that the British would provide cover for their evacuation, but the French were the ones who stood steadfast under German artillery fire and Luftwaffe bombing while the British evacuated. They could not withstand the assault, however, and began to fall back.
"The Germans mounted artillery fire, the Luftwaffe bombed, but the French forces held the line as the remaining British troops evacuated until, on the following day, the French began to fall back. Evacuations ended on the night of June 3 when the Germans were two miles from Dunkirk.
"Most of the 35,000 soldiers who were captured were French. They had fought with desperate courage, safeguarding the evacuation effort as long as possible, even though it meant that others would be rescued and they would be left behind. The French Twelfth Motorized Infantry Division burned their flag so that, when they were taken prisoner on June 4, the flag would not fall into the hands of the Germans.
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"The fate of the French troops who were captured by the Germans was grim. For five years, they, along with the 40,000 British soldiers who had not been evacuated, spent their days as prisoners of war in German camps which did not adhere to the Geneva Convention guidelines. Some of the soldiers were summarily executed. British officers were told that their rank would not protect them and they would be sentenced to work in the salt mines. The soldiers were refused medical treatment and denied food. The soldiers who had been evacuated returned home as heroes, but the ones who were left behind felt as if they had been forgotten.
"For the Germans, it was onward to Paris, which fell on June 14. The country of France, without any options, had no choice but to submit to an armistice on June 22.
"The British were alone. But miraculously, they still had an army with which to fight."
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"“Without Dunkirk, Britain doesn't have an army and it’s extremely questionable whether Britain could have fought the war.”
"— Second World War historian Nick Hewitt"
Perhaps not much after D-Day, but until then British role was stoic standing up to blitz, refusing to surrender and fighting off Luftwaffe, last of which was mostly RAF.
It was the spirit that counted, at Dunkirk and until D-Day.
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"On May 25, the British War Office reached the decision to evacuate its forces. Ultimately, nearly 340,000 British, French, Polish, and Belgian troops would be rescued by 861 vessels. Most of those vessels were captained by the men who owned them. But not all. Agents of the Ministry of Shipping searched along the Thames for vessels that could be used for the rescue and placed naval crews on board to sail them. Of those 861 vessels, 243 ultimately sank. Fighter Command would lose 106 aircraft, and the Luftwaffe would lose 135, some of them shot down by the navies of France and Great Britain.
"The Navy was present at Dunkirk, but because the beach was so shallow, the big ships couldn’t reach the soldiers who were waiting to be rescued.
"The British public learned that its army was being evacuated from Dunkirk and that citizens with boats were needed to save the troops. In response came yachts, fishing boats, motorboats, barges, ferries, sloops, and other vessels, ready to venture forth from the Thames River and the ports along the English Channel. Some of the ships came from the Isle of Man and Glasgow to participate in the rescue. The small vessels were guided by naval craft from the Thames Estuary and Dover. Their size made it possible for them to move closer as they shuttled back and forth from the bigger vessels, picking up the soldiers who were lined up, some of them waiting for hours, in the water, some of them in water up to their shoulders.
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"The “Little Ships” might have been manned by civilians, but the German military didn’t distinguish between professionals and amateurs as it sent artillery, bombers, and fighter planes to attack. For the fishermen, longshoremen, cab drivers and yachtsmen, bankers, dentists, youths, engineers, and civil servants who were manning the boats, often only one man in a boat and never more than two, the enterprise was carried out beneath a sky illuminated by the flames over Dunkirk. The background of the sky remained red as the city burned. With no water to put out the fires and no men who could be scared to fight them, the flames blazed on.
"It was the light of the battle that helped the ships to steer and distinguish the ships that had loaded up with soldiers and were heading back to England. The light from the flames also made it easier to spot the shadows that were the motor torpedo boats of the Germans. As they got nearer to the port, the noise of the firing and bombing increased. One of the rescuers described the flames: “From a glow they rose up to enormous plumes of fire that roared high into the everlasting pall of smoke.” When an attack was in progress, the sky was bright with the bombs. The beach was crowded with men waiting to board the ships, but the thick clouds of smoke helped to conceal them from the German aircraft overhead.
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"For the smaller boats, the peril of the voyage was increased when the destroyers went by, as the wash from their passage forced the small ships to try to head into the waves and hope for the best.
"One rescuer described the scene. “The picture will always remain sharp-etched in my memory . . . the lines of men wearily and sleepily staggering across the beach from the dunes to the shallows, falling into little boats . . . The foremost ranks were shoulder deep, moving forward under the command of young subalterns, themselves with their heads just above the little waves that rode in to the sand. As the front ranks were dragged aboard the boats, the rear ranks moved up, from ankle deep to knee deep, from knee deep to waist deep, until they, too, came to shoulder depth and their turn. I will remember, too, the astonishing discipline of the men. They had fought through three weeks of retreat, always falling back without orders, often without support. Transport had failed. They had gone sleepless. They had been without food and water. Yet they kept ranks as they came down the beaches, and they obeyed commands.”
................................................................................................
"The weight of the men caused the little boats ferrying from the beach to the bigger ships to list; as the bigger ships took on more soldiers, they too began to list. The lines of men waiting to board ships was endless, a long human column stretching across the sand.
"Just as the red sky remained bright and flaming, the noise was constant. Shells whistled overhead, and falling bombs screamed. The sky was a riot of sound with anti-aircraft shells, machine-gun fire, dive bombers, and falling planes. With that soundtrack and the noise from the ships, it was impossible to be heard. The men who sailed that perilous rescue mission would end up with what they called “Dunkirk throat,” their voices hoarse from the yelling and the smoke of the bombing.
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"When it began on May 27, the hope was that Operation Dynamo would rescue at the most 50,000 troops. But this makeshift fleet of British civilians, known as the “Little Ships” ended up rescuing 340,000 British, French, and Belgian troops from Dunkirk by June 4, when the evacuation ended.
"The British were quick to see the evacuation as a triumph and the will of God. The Dean of St. Paul’s described the evacuation as “the miracle of Dunkirk.” The Archbishop of Canterbury had announced the Day of National Prayer which was regarded as proof that God had intervened in the form of calm waters which aided the rescuers and the mist which obstructed the German bombers from hitting more targets. The evacuation was seen in terms of the efforts of the ships that had taken the soldiers from Dunkirk back to Great Britain, but the Royal Air Force was also at work in the effort.
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"The survival of Great Britain would depend upon the endurance of the British civilians and the skill of the Royal Air Force. When the BEF first went to France in September 1939, they were accompanied by RAF bomber, reconnaissance, and fighter squadrons who trained by going on patrols and reconnaissance missions and dropping leaflets. They seemed an unlikely match, with their inexperience and outdated aircraft, for the sleek, lethal skill of the German pilots and planes. Losses in the early battles were sometimes as high as 75%. Dunkirk was a painful revelation, as the Luftwaffe quickly dominated the skies of eastern France, forcing the RAF farther to the west.
"During the evacuation, the RAF flew 2,739 fighter sorties, along with 651 bombing missions and 171 reconnaissance missions. But still, the Luftwaffe dominated. One day, German aircraft dropped 30,000 incendiary and 15,000 high explosive bombs upon Dunkirk and the rescuing ships. The contrast was somewhat like a competition between amateurs and professionals; the British pilots were using tactics that were as outdated as their aircraft, and their practice of flying in formation made engaging the German pilots difficult. When the formations broke apart, the inexperienced pilots were isolated and on their own against a well-trained unit. How, the British must have wondered, would the island nation survive when they stood alone against the might of the German Luftwaffe?
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"Winston Churchill would soon remind his people that an evacuation was not a victory, and that was a correct assessment. But the miracle at Dunkirk restored to the British people their faith that they could overcome trials and tribulations and emerge victoriously. The success of the evacuation also affected the morale of the German soldiers. Elizabeth Haden-Guest, who was a captive of the Gestapo in the early years of the war, recalled that the Germans were terrified that they would be ordered to invade Great Britain. During her captivity, German officers and soldiers told her that Dunkirk was the worst thing they had endured. “Wherever you found a dead Tommy, there was one of ours next to him. If we are ordered to invade England, none of us will ever come back alive.”
"But even if British morale was surging, the losses at Dunkirk were significant. The military equipment that the soldiers used could not be evacuated. The soldiers left behind 45,000 cars and trucks, 20,000 motorcycles, 11,000 machine guns, 880 field guns, 850 anti-tank guns, nearly 700 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft guns, 310 large caliber guns, enormous supplies of ammunition—in other words, enough equipment to supply eight to ten divisions. In England, there was only enough equipment to supply two divisions; it would take months for re-supplying to be effective.
"New equipment that was to be introduced had to be put on pause while the lost items were re-supplied, a process that would take months. Because the British war effort was not ready when war broke out in 1939, it had not been able to meet the War Office requirement to equip 55 divisions as soon as possible. It had managed to catch up; by June 1940, the nation’s industries had switched to war production, doubling what had been produced during the first six months of the war.
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"Standing alone, its military resources depleted, Great Britain could hardly have been in worse shape for what was next. On July 16, Hitler outlined a plan for the invasion of Great Britain, an amphibious assault which depended upon the Luftwaffe gaining control of the air in order to nullify the strength of the British Navy. Göring, who had predicted that his Luftwaffe would easily defeat the British at Dunkirk, developed a plan for German aircraft to destroy the British Air Force so that the invasion could take place.
"Pragmatic Winston Churchill reminded his nation that wars are not won by evacuations. “We must be very careful,” he said in a speech before the House of Commons, “not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.” But, he went on, there had been a victory inside the deliverance, and that victory was gained by the air force.
"Aware that Hitler planned to invade Great Britain, Churchill’s scorn was stirring. “We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before . . . We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
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"The British Isles were not subjugated. The New World did step in to the rescue. Germany was defeated, not without travail and hardship, and World War II ended.
"In 2015, veterans of the Dunkirk evacuation gathered to commemorate the 75 th anniversary of the miracle. A 94-year-old veteran recalled that period when he was a young soldier who had to march 120 miles to the beach where he found a rowboat that delivered him to a naval ship. He said: “I didn’t come here because I was feeling I had to come because of myself, it was for the chaps that I was with. It was fate. I don’t know how I escaped. It was a miracle, and today I really don’t believe I am here.”
" ... “Prior to Dunkirk, Britain remained a divided nation. Many Britons were unsure what to make of the Phoney War or ‘Sitzkrieg’ that endured from the fall of Warsaw in September 1939 until the invasion of France and the Low Countries in May of 1940. Dunkirk brought Britain together in much the same way that Pearl Harbor brought Americans together.” ... Although it’s the job of the military to protect the civilian population, the evacuation of Dunkirk spurred the ordinary people of Great Britain to risk danger in order to rescue their soldiers. ... "
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"Movies like Dunkirk have the power to evoke a sense of recognition with historical events that happened long ago. Mrs. Miniver, a 1942 drama, told the story of Great Britain’s war effort as it affected the life of a British family. The film, which won six Academy Awards, is number 40 on the list of the American Film Institute’s most inspirational films ever made and in 2009, the Library of Congress named the film to the National Film Registry, guaranteeing that its merit means it will be preserved.
"From their participation in the Dunkirk evacuation to the Battle of Britain, the Minivers represent the civilians of Britain who do their part to preserve their way of life, suffering as civilians always do in times of war. At the funeral of the Miniver daughter-in-law who dies during an air raid, the vicar explains the inexplicability of death. “Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is the war of the people, of all the people. And it must be fought not only on the battlefield but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom. Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves, and those who come after us, from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the People’s War. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it then. Fight it with all that is in us. And may God defend the right.”"
Author leaves it unmentioned why the film is relevant to Dunkirk - its because Miniver is part of the rescuers, informing his wife only after he's returned safely with his little fishing boat from Dunkirk, of where he's been. She, meanwhile, has dealt with a German pilot who crashed and hid in her home.
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"The evacuation at Dunkirk and the dramatic rescue of fighting men by the unremarkable civilians who responded to the War Office’s request with an instinctive sense of duty revealed the depth of bravery that the British would display as they faced Hitler’s onslaught of military might.
"A year after the evacuation at Dunkirk, on July 11, 1941, Sir John Wardlaw-Milne delivered a speech to Parliament. His topic was working conditions among British factory employees, specifically the seven-day work week that the laborers were subjected to, not the evacuation. But when he said, “We could not expect the workers to continue indefinitely working in the Dunkirk spirit,” he coined the phrase that has come to define what the evacuation symbolized. Great Britain, against all odds, had rescued its army and had outlasted Hitler in the Battle of Britain. The country had not allowed itself to be cowed by the Nazi menace and it had not broken under the threat of annihilation. Having accomplished what could rightfully be regarded as an impossible feat, the British people were imbued with a conviction that they could, even if they were the only nation left to combat the Germans, endure. Churchill’s oratory provided the text for the Dunkirk spirit that the British people exhibited, but in the end, the war would be won not with words and not with evacuations. But it would be won."
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Table of Contents
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Introduction
Britannia Rules the Waves
The Phoney War
Blitzkrieg
Defending the Perimeter
The Little Ships
The Dunkirk Spirit
Conclusion
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REVIEW
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Introduction
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"When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, Winston Churchill remarked, “Thank God for the French Army.” Churchill and many others as well believed that the French military, relying upon the strength of the highly regarded Maginot Line which had established fortifications along the border with Germany, would be able to prevent the Germans from returning to their conquering habits of the past.
"But 1940 told a different tale, and after Hitler launched his blitzkrieg on May 10, Paris had fallen by June 14, joining Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg as the nations which had already been defeated by the forces of the Third Reich. As German forces encircled the trapped British Expeditionary Force in France, it looked as though the Nazi regime would quickly conquer the Allies. The British, along with remnants of the French and Belgian forces, fought desperately, knowing that they had no hope of winning. Their goal was to make their way to Dunkirk and from there, evacuate to safety across the English Channel."
To say that they "fought desperately, knowing that they had no hope of winning" is perhaps going too far. It may have looked somewhere between bleak, hard and uncertain, but Britain had certainly made up their minds. So had French people - it's the political leadership that caved, not even military!
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"As the Allies were beaten back to the port at Dunkirk, the British faced a life-and-death dilemma. Annihilation seemed certain and imminent. Then, for reasons that historians have still not figured out, Hitler issued a Halt Order on the attack, giving the Allies the breathing room that they desperately needed. ... "
If only racism hadn't blinded them with arrogance, they might have had a clue. As it is, even those who you'd expect ought to have had a clue, had their blinkers firmly in place, and they held on to the blinkers desperately - as evidenced through their writings. W. Somerset Maugham, James Hilton, even someone supposedly moral like George Eliot, were all victims of this church enforced colonial mindset blinding them, and few escaped it.
Did George Bernard Shaw? It's possible he escaped colonial racism, judging from his writings. Would he have known, had he lived in those times?
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" ... The British War Office sent out notice to the British public that seafaring vessels were needed to rescue the soldiers. And the Brits responded, crossing the English Channel in everything from ferries to fishing boats to yachts as the skies over Dunkirk were alight with flames from the bombing. While the Luftwaffe attacked from the skies, the “Little Ships” made their way to the beaches, picking up troops patiently waiting in line in water up to their shoulders. The War Office hoped that the civilian fleet would be able to rescue 50,000 soldiers, but in a heroic feat of daring and endurance, over 300,000 troops were brought safely to British shores."
That included a few thousand of others, too, apart from the British forces.
"For the British, living on an island meant coming to terms with the water that surrounded them. Naval power would play an important role in the world-wide war that erupted across the continents beginning in 1939. But if not for the seafaring skills and courage of ordinary British citizens who were called upon to rescue their trapped soldiers at the port of Dunkirk, naval power would have counted for naught. The patriotic response of the British civilians who took their boats to the water in response to their country’s call did not signify a victory, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill pointed out when he said that wars are not won by evacuations. But it provided to be a badly needed morale boost for a nation that was about to face, on their own, the Battle of Britain and the fury of the Nazi military."
It provided, too, the rescued men, not an insignificant number! WWI had decimated a generation and restricted thereby growth of another, as it is.
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"Hitler unleashed months of air raids against the country. In response, the British demonstrated what was termed the “Dunkirk spirit,” as they endured the destruction, the bombing, and the ever-present fear that they were on their own against a terrible, powerful enemy. The unity of the British people in the face of adversity evokes a time and a mood that seems to be absent in our modern world. In a time when heroes seem to be in short supply, and division seems to be all too common among citizens of the same nation, it’s heartening to look back upon a time of grave danger and recall that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when the need arises."
As to the last bit, aren't they, always?
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November 30, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
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Chapter 1. Britannia Rules the Waves
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"“The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of our island.”
"—William Blackstone"
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"In the summer of 1939, the song “There’ll Always Be An England” was released, a tune that expressed the patriotic fervor of a nation that was about to find itself in a second global conflict against Germany. The British strength, its Royal Navy, was formally established in the seventeenth century, but it must have seemed as though there had never been a time when the island nation did not rely on its maritime prowess.
"As far back as the Anglo-Saxon days, the English had the need of a naval force, particularly when Vikings, whose invasions became a constant threat to the stability of the realm, controlled approximately half of the island by the middle of the ninth century. King Alfred the Great led his fleet into battle in 884, capturing a squadron of 16 ships before suffering defeat upon the return home. King Alfred designed new ships that were almost twice as long as the previous ships, with 60 oars, in order to be able to fight back against the Viking raiders menacing the coast. The enterprise was successful, as nine of the new ships were able to defeat six of the famed Viking vessels.
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"The Henry Tudors, VII and VIII, were committed to the reinforcing and building of their country’s naval power, and under Elizabeth I, the English were able to defeat the mighty Spanish Armada which sailed in 1588. The Spanish had the mightier empire, but the English had faster ships. The English sailors had also learned much of their craft using the techniques of pirates, as sea captains such as Francis Drake plundered the ships of Spain that were sailing from the New World laden with rich treasure. As an island nation, the English knew the ways of the waters; the sea was in their blood. They were building a reputation as intrepid and daring sailors who, born in a nation that was surrounded by water, had turned their environment to their advantage.
"While Great Britain expanded its presence in the New World and the powers of Europe fought for primacy, the British also expanded its naval might. As the war against the French and Napoleon’s quest for conquest consumed Europe, the British honed their talents. The Battle of Trafalgar established British superiority on the seas as, led by Admiral Lord Nelson, the British defeated the joint forces of France and Spain, demonstrating that the island kingdom owned no equals in its control of the waters.
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"The nineteenth century was the era of empire for the British as its fleets sailed across the globe, planting the Union Jack across the continents. But the new era that dawned with the twentieth century brought with it new advances that saw the British scrapping 154 ships in order to make room for new ones. In 1901, the Royal Navy began to develop submarines. The new century was witnessing a variety of innovations in technology which would soon be put to deadly use as, by 1914, Great Britain and France found themselves at war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Royal Navy employed itself in blockading Germany, and when there were naval conflicts, the British demonstrated that they were still masters of the sea.
"After the war ended, the victorious British found that, while they were not quite in the devastating situation that Germany was, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 meant that national economies had to slash expenses. The post-World War I environment was challenging for countries like Great Britain, which had fought and won the War to End All Wars only to find that British society had been irrevocably altered by the conflict. The stable and traditional hierarchy of the social classes was shaken; grand estates which had been the time-honored inheritance of England’s ruling families now found themselves burdened by tax obligations. The servant class had discovered its freedom—and better wages—and realized that working in a factory offered more independence than they’d had as a kitchen maid or a footman. Monarchies had toppled in Russia and Austria, leaving the British to wonder if they had won the war only to lose the peace. The new century appeared to be a dangerous one, and an expensive one as well.
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"Plans to build new battlecruisers and battleships were cancelled. Limits were placed upon the construction of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. No one doubted that Great Britain still needed a navy; the question was, could the country afford a navy that was capable of keeping pace with the changing technology of the new century? The shadow of war loomed large upon the horizon, alerting governments that enemies continued to prowl across Europe, making the need for a powerful navy as great as it had ever been.
"Germany, seething under the punitive conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, knew that it had lost the war; the Allied Powers had made sure of that. In 1931, the German and Austrian banks had failed. But as the financial hardship caused by the global Great Depression cast the German economy asunder, new, raucous voices were being heard. They were the voices of leaders who called for mighty, powerful Germany, one which could restore the luster of its heritage and vanquish those enemies who had sought to destroy it. A charismatic Austrian political leader, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party, vowed that a new Germany would arise from the ashes of the old. The Third Reich, which was destined to last 1,000 years, would be the masters of Europe he promised. The Germans were listening, and in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany."
He was never an "Austrian political leader" but only an "Austrian" who became a "political leader" in Germany and of Germany. He was never elected chancellor, it was a political sleight perpetrated.
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"The rest of the world was too busy with its economic woes to pay much attention to what was going on in Germany. By 1932, more than 20% of the British workforce was unemployed. The British also had imperial fissures to deal with: India was working toward its independence. The Irish were also vigorously pursuing separation from the English; that was nothing new, the Irish had sought liberation from Great Britain for hundreds of years, but this time there seemed to be a renewed determination. In addition to that, the trade war between Ireland and Great Britain cost the British its Irish market. Imperially and financially, Great Britain was experiencing hard times.
"There were attentive ears in the British government who recognized the martial threat that a resurgent Germany posed to the world, and they began to plan for another war. Hitler had made no secret of his intentions. Germany, he told his eager audiences, was destined to be the dominant power in Europe, and for that to happen, the country needed to invest in its military. The Treaty of Versailles allowed the German Navy to have only six warships over 10,000 tons and no submarines. But although the Treaty denied Germany the right to build its military, the Germans had covertly been training Air Force pilots on civilian planes and training submarine crews abroad.
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"When Hitler attended the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1933 and France refused to disarm to the levels that were imposed upon Germany, he withdrew from the conference. Great Britain, France, and Italy formed the Stresa Front and protested the German military policy, but no official action was taken. The British were alert to the rising threat, but in 1935, an agreement signed by the British and the Germans permitted Germany to have one-third the tonnage of the British Royal Navy’s surface fleet; at this time, the British navy was the largest in the world. Germany was also allowed to have equal tonnage in submarines.
"Some people came to regard this as appeasement, a concept which would reach its peak when Prime Minister Chamberlain met with Hitler after the Nazis annexed portions of Czechoslovakia, renamed the Sudetenland. Hitler was permitted to keep the land he had taken, a signal to the Nazi leader that the powers of Europe would not be willing or able to stop him in his quest for power and land. Chamberlain’s appeasement would bring scorn upon his political career as it sent a signal to Hitler that no one, not even the British, would try to stop him.
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"However, others felt that the British response was merely pragmatism in trying to deal with a peace treaty which had been unrealistically harsh. Germany would, the thinking went, develop its navy whether the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles agreed or not. Others felt that it was important to remain on civil terms with the Germans. Satisfying Hitler and his goals for a German restoration would, the view held, stabilize Germany and mollify German rage at the way it had been punished after World War I.
"Germany had taken to rearmament with zeal. In 1933, the generals had been told to increase the army to number 300,000 soldiers; the Air Ministry was to build 1,000 warplanes. These plans were undertaken in secrecy, but by 1935, Hitler was no longer concerned with the consequences of his actions, and he publicly announced that the German Luftwaffe had 2,500 warplanes and the Wehrmacht had an army of 300,000. With compulsory conscription, the German Army would number more than half a million."
That's all very well, but the supposedly bankrupt Germany who refused to pay the French reparations agreed upon on the plea that German nbabies were starving to death because Germany couldn't afford feeding them, had to have some finance to be able to do the 1,000 planes and the other military equipment, not to mention paying soldiers - and, of course, the nazi cadre!
One notices thst while Versailles treaty is mentioned in every book or discussion on the topic as cause for rise of nazis, no mention much less discussion ever takes place regarding sources of finances for nazi military build-up.
Who bankrolled the WWII perpetrator? Who financed him?
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"France countered the German threat by spending to build up the vaunted Maginot Line that would, the French were confident, keep the German enemy at bay by building a system of forts along the border between the two countries. By 1936, the British Royal Navy, responding to the rising threat of Adolf Hitler’s leadership, was undergoing re-armament. A White Paper agreed that in order to provide adequate defense of the realm, additional expenditures on armaments were necessary. In addition to national safety, the British relied on a strong navy to protect its trade in the Far East. The late 1930s saw hostile actions by Germany and Italy; the Royal Navy evacuated British citizens in China who were endangered when the Japanese attacked.
"The British people had confidence in their naval fleet and their army. But no one could have predicted that the day was soon approaching when the survival of the British would depend upon the patriotic spirit of the civilians of an island nation who would be called upon to rescue their troops from the superiority of the German military."
First half of twentieth century was rising power of people of the world.
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December 01, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
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Chapter 2. The Phoney War
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"Adolf Hitler had a long memory. During the years after the ignominious defeat of Germany at the hands of the Allied nations, Hitler had fumed at the manner in which the Treaty of Versailles had curtailed what he regarded as Germany’s sacred destiny. Not only, he vowed, must the past be rewritten so that Germany could restore its future, but those responsible for the defeat must pay. After becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933, he immediately set about orchestrating his nation’s rise. Germany needed land, he declared, and living space, or Lebensraum, became the reason why the military would capture other nations."
That whole paragraph is wrong. First and foremost, lebensraum had nothing to do with WWI and defeat of Germany.
When crusaders from France and England had gone to Jerusalem to war, German crusaders had reasoned that crusading in East Europe was easier, not too far, and much more profitable - and proceeded yo kill everyone in Prussia, taking over the land. There was a Prussian language, completely different from German which died as a consequence.
History of Germany published by Cambridge University Press has this in detail.
And also, to say he had a long memory because he made a fetish and an excuse of Germany whining about reparations for the havoc wreaked by Germany on France, is plain incorrect. Megalomania would be closer to fact. But when he became a member of nazi party, took over leadership or wrote his book in jail, WWI wasn't that old, and he'd fought, so no, it doesn't show a feat of memory.
As for Germany whining about payment, they lied about paucity of funds - there were plenty of German funds to finance unrest in France and it was paid in gold marks, too.
And when nazis fought street gang wars, weapons and ammunition came from monasteries in Germany for the nazis. So Germany had not disarmed, either.
So Germany planning and inflicting WWII on the world was no different from Germany doing WWI, except it was not Keiser Wilhelm or Cousin Willie and his revenge for being denied the top position at royal table at royal occasions in England, but another man just as egoistic, who perpetrated a WWII he'd planned months ahead in detail, even briefed his top generals at a top secret conference before New Year of 1939.
And invasions were executed to date, as far as East Europe went.
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"Germany’s past plight was the fault, Hitler preached, of the inferior races who had undermined German superiority. The cabal of international Jewry, he claimed, had proven hostile to German economical development. Armed with enough prejudice to blame all of Germany’s prior misfortune on others, Hitler was able to convince the German people that they were entitled to prove the superiority of the Aryan race by decimating the obstacles—human and geographical—in their way."
One, Aarya is a word of Sanskrit and belongs to India. Two, it literally is about inner Enlightenment and is about civilized culture inculcated in breeding. Three, European invaders looted it amongst other things and misused it yo mean race, which it never did. Four, epitome of Aarya is Raama, worshipped universally in India, which proves that Aarya is NOT about physical hues. And most importantly, Germany misusing either the term Aarya or the symbol Swastika after stealing the nomenclature from India, has thrown tar on them, but they don't belong to Germany or mean what Germany forced on them falsely.
To identify those words with German or European connotations falsely associated with them is racism.
And blaming German defeat or anything else on jews was fraudulent.
That was just racism, always ready just below surface if not out in open, in Germany and most of Europe. And the further developments attest to what German people are capable of when told it was their duty.
Was inquisition any different? If people were aghast at others being burnt at stake, no pope could have perpetrated it.
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"As soon as he became the leader of Germany, Hitler covertly worked to defy the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In truth, the Germans had already been disregarding the Treaty for some time as they built their military strength, but under Hitler, the practice became a crusade. By 1936, he had claimed the Rhineland and Austria’s Sudetenland. Germany’s living space was undergoing expansion at the expense of the boundaries of other nations."
Obviously mistakes galore there.
Sudetenland was renamed part of, not Austria but Czechoslovakia. Austria had been claimed as a whole, and renamed Oesterreich, literally Eastern Kingdom or Eastern State.
And "Germany’s living space was undergoing expansion at the expense of the" other nations, not "boundaries of other nations"
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"Aware that militarism was casting a long shadow over the continents, the world powers chose to ignore the darkness. World War I’s legacy was still recent memory, and the world was consumed by an economic crisis, the Great Depression, which dominated the stage. As Germany, Japan, and Italy sharpened their swords and set their sights on conquest, they quickly realized that Great Britain, France, and the United States would do nothing."
Again, nothing "quickly" there. League of Nations did argue about Italy inflicting war on Abyssinnia - since renamed Ethiopia - but lacked teeth. Between France doing nothing about Rhineland and England giving away Czechoslovakia there were a few years when Axis nations of Europe proceeded with caution and uncertainty. Munich took a lot of wily drama by the guy who fooled sincere and elderly Neville Chamberlain.
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"In fairness, the Allies were dealing not only with the economic plague that had increased unemployment at home and diminished productivity, but for the French and British, their colonial possessions were also becoming restless. The French and British flags flew over countries that did not necessarily want to be French or British colonies. Communism, fascism, and Nazism were on the rise, but for the Old World leaders, democracy was not, at that point, a rallying cry. These nations had become empires because they had the superior military forces and they wore their colonial acquisitions as part of their heritage. They had emerged from the nineteenth century as the masters over other peoples, and they had no intention of surrendering their power. Convinced that their colonies benefitted because the dominant nations had taken up what Kipling called “the white man’s burden,” Europe’s masters turned a blind eye to the fact that the people living under the British and French flags did not have the rights and privileges of the people who lived in England and France."
In short the empires were thugs, looters and slavers in everything but name.
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"Poland could not afford to be so self-confident. On March 31, 1939, the Poles forged a military alliance with the British and French in order to safeguard their independence and their borders. Germany wanted Danzig, and many ethnic Germans living in the city favored annexation. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain held the forlorn hope that if Hitler had Danzig, he would leave the rest of Europe alone. When he met with Hitler in Munich after the German annexation of the Sudetenland, Chamberlain’s announcement that peace had been achieved was not as naive as it seemed. Chamberlain knew that his nation was not yet ready for war; peace meant buying time for Great Britain to catch up with German military strides."
He was the hero in England for the moment, people in tears cheering him in streets as much as in parliament.
"Then, on September 3, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The week before, Germany and the Soviet Union had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which set the stage for Poland to be served on the menu for the two nations who, although not allies, had mutual interests, one of which was the acquisition of land. By October 6, the Germans and Russians had achieved their ends and had divided Poland between them. Although France and Great Britain declared war against Germany on September 3, they did not retaliate against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Poland."
They couldn't, at that moment. But war had been declared, and although French leaders capitulated fast when invaded, neither French people nor England did.
Without England standing up to nazi onslaught, world civilisation wouldn't have stood. Without French Resistance, allies couldn't have won as easily. Without Russia fighting with grim determination despite being literally butchered - 20 million including millions of civilians burnt alive in whole villages through Belarus and east thereof upto Moscow - Europe wouldn't have regained freedom except with far more annihilation.
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"Five weeks later, Poland was an occupied nation. Despite the declaration of war on the part of Great Britain and France, what ensued for the next eight months would be called the “Phoney War.”
"But the tense, fragile peace meant that nothing conclusive was attempted. The British expected attacks, and their hospitals in London were prepared for 30,000 casualties in the first week after war was declared, but the Germans were hoping to persuade the British to agree to peace terms. Occasional dogfights between the opposing forces were not sufficient to break the tenuous peace. The public was not yet at war fever, and when a German bomber crashed in Essex, killing the crew and 160 civilians, all the dead, British and German alike, were buried in the local cemetery. When the suggestion was made to bomb the Black Forest, the British Secretary of State for Air replied that the forest was private property and not a target for attack."
Private property wasn't relevant, but it wasn't a military target any more than Yorkshire Moor. Or Yellowstone.
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"The Germans had no such qualms about engaging in war. During the fall and winter of 1939-1940, they engaged in naval attacks against the British, striking destroyers and aircraft carriers resulting in the loss of over 500 lives. During the autumn, the German Luftwaffe was battling British warships as well. The “Phoney War” meant that the combatants were waiting like spectators for the outbreak of the real conflict to burst. Haunted by the memory of trench warfare in World War I, the French had designed their Maginot Line to be impregnable. The series of fortifications did not, however, cover the border between France and Belgium.
"Along the Maginot Line, British and French soldiers faced the Germans who were mounted along their own Siegfried Line. When British planes flew overhead to map the defensive fortifications along the Siegfried Line, the German soldiers waved at them. British planes dropped propaganda leaflets and pamphlets on the Germans below in what the British press termed the “Confetti War.”
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"The Allies imposed a blockade of Germany after the invasion of Poland got underway in the hopes that the Germans, unable to import raw materials and food, would falter. The Allies did not launch an offensive in response to the German invasion of Poland despite the treaties they had individually signed with Poland, agreeing to assist the nation in the event of an attack. A September attack by France against Germany came to nothing within a few days, and the French withdrew. When the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway in April, the Allies went there, but they evacuated in June. The two Scandinavian countries were now under the control of Germany.
"Had the Allies known the truth of German preparedness, they might have been bolder. It was the opinion of German General Alfred Jodi, voiced after the war, that the failure of the Germans to collapse in 1939 was because the 110 French and British divisions in the west did nothing against the 23 German divisions opposing them. General Siegfried Westphal further asserted, after the war ended, that had the French attacked in full force in September, the Germans would have been forced to surrender after two weeks at the most. Such speculation is heartbreaking, given the terrible carnage that was about to take place, but the Allied forces felt themselves to be at a disadvantage compared to the Germans and their leaders, who saw themselves as superior to other ethnic groups."
Its simpler - bullies get away with bluff in becoming larger than life.
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"On October 6, his victory against Poland accomplished, Hitler extended an overture of peace to Great Britain and France, but the matter of Poland was not open to discussion. Poland’s future, he said, was to be decided by Germany and the Soviet Union. On October 6, Prime Minister Chamberlain responded with a rejection. “Past experience has shown that no reliance can be placed upon the promises of the present German Government.”
"Chamberlain had learned that there would not be peace for his time. The prime minister would die of cancer in November 1940 and would not live to witness the outcome of his nation’s fight against tyranny. When he died, England was fighting a solitary war against an enemy that seemed unbeatable. But perhaps the dying Chamberlain took comfort from the events earlier that year when the stalwart civilian defenders of Britain took to their ships to bring their soldiers home from Dunkirk."
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December 01, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
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Chapter 3. Blitzkrieg
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"“The battlefield disappeared, and with it, the illusion that there had ever been a battlefield. For this was no war of occupation, but a war of quick penetration and obliteration.”
"—Time Magazine"
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"After the German conquest of Poland, the British Expeditionary Force was sent to France to defend the French. The troops who landed at Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, and Cherbourg joined the Belgian Army, and the French First, Seventh, and Ninth Armies. When the offer of peace that Hitler made to Great Britain and France in October 1939 was rejected, Hitler’s intention was to immediately mount his offensive against the French but inclement weather forced him to alter his timeline. Then, after a German plane carrying his military plans against the French crashed in Belgium in January 1940, Hitler decided that he needed to come up with a new line of attack.
"German military leaders respected the Maginot Line, the defensive line of concrete fortifications, weapons installations, and obstacles extending from Switzerland to Luxembourg which France had built along its border with Germany. Because the French expected that, in the event of a German assault, their military forces would move into Belgium, the Maginot Line did not extend to the English Channel, a decision which would come into play when the Allied forces were trapped at the port of Dunkirk.
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"But the Germans had a plan as well. Instead of challenging the Maginot Line, the Germans decided that it would be better to fool the Allies and attack by going through the Ardennes, a hilly, forested area along the border that was shared by Germany, Belgium, and France. By going through the Low Countries, they would catch the Allies off guard. The German blitzkrieg would do the rest.
"Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, was a Prussian military concept that dated back to the early nineteenth century. The premise was that any country lacking sufficient economic resources could rely upon quick, powerful attacks to achieve victory. The attack, which utilized mobility and surprise, would allow the Germans to prevent the enemy from organizing their own defenses instead of trying to overcome already established defenses. Surprise would be an offensive weapon nearly as powerful as artillery fire or aerial bombs. By penetrating to the rear of the enemy and nullifying its communications, the Germans were able to use their tanks, dive bombers, and artillery to immobilize their foes. Germany, the only power in the twentieth century that had combined its military force with radio communication, had an advantage that—when combined with the philosophy of blitzkrieg—was able to render its enemy virtually powerless.
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"The Germans would emerge as the masters of the battlefield. It had worked in Poland, and they would try it on a more powerful foe for their next foray. Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940; Denmark lasted a few hours and Norway two months, as the nations of Europe began to crumble in the face of the Nazi blitzkrieg.
"The British government was beginning to realize that tackling the moving parts of the German war machine would require the proper leadership, which was not being displayed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. On May 10, Chamberlain resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Winston Churchill, who possessed an indomitable belief in the British Empire.
"That same day, Germany attacked Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg from the air. The Germans had fewer tanks than the Allies, but the Germans concentrated their 2,500 tanks into armored, or Panzer, formations. The Germans feared that World War I would be repeated a second time, and their operation would not destroy the enemy forces. The French and British had 3,500 tanks, but they weren’t concentrated. Chief of Staff of German Army Group A Erich von Manstein proposed sending the Panzer divisions through the wooded Ardennes to attack. The Allied forces would not expect the Germans to take that route. The German plan would send the Panzer divisions ahead of the main army in order to confuse the allies. The Germans would establish bridgeheads on the Meuse River and from there, move quickly to the English Channel, cutting off the Allies in Belgium and Flanders.
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"It was a risky move, and Hitler was not entirely convinced of its efficacy, but he gave his approval. Army Group B hit Belgium as three of its Panzer corps swerved south for the English Channel. The British Expeditionary Force encountered Army Group B inside Belgium, but when the French and Belgian troops on the British flank failed to hold, the British were ordered to begin a fighting withdrawal. The Allies had unwittingly done exactly what the Germans had hoped they would do; von Manstein’s plan, risky though it was, had achieved its intention.
"Overwhelmed by the German parachute drops and attack, the Dutch surrendered by May 14. Churchill went to Paris on May 17, where to his dismay he found out that the French had sent all of their forces to the fight and had none in reserve. Nor were there any French troops positioned between the Germans and the sea. Meanwhile, the Germans Panzers had no difficulty in reaching the coast of the English Channel by May 20 because most of the Allied forces were in Belgium.
................................................................................................
"General Viscount Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France, was already pondering the withdrawal of the force by sea because it was apparent that the Germans were going to win the battle. Lord Gort, more formally known as John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, sixth Viscount Gort, was a graduate of Sandhurst who had served as aide-de-camp to General Douglas Haig during World War I. Gort had earned a reputation as a man who was capable and focused on detail. Those traits would soon be needed for this second war against Germany.
"After the lines of communication were cut on May 19, Gort had been aware of the fact that he would need to plan to retreat to the coast. Dunkirk, with the longest sand beach in Europe, was the closest spot with reliable port facilities. Large numbers would be able to assemble there. But if the corridor that led to the coast was severed, the route of escape would be cut off.
"Gort, while trying to discern the best way to save the British Expeditionary Force, was also dealing with the British government, which wanted to see action. Gort received orders to do something against the Germans and decided to attack Arras on May 21 in order to cut through the German spearhead, but he lacked the armor to make his attack meaningful.
................................................................................................
"Along with French and Belgian forces, the British were trapped along the northern coast of France. The French Army needed the British to join them in a defensive position to the south, but Gort perceived the futility of this move. The Allied forces to the north were being surrounded by the Germans; France was falling; the German advance from the Ardennes was separating the Allied northern and southern forces. Upon reaching the English Channel, the Germans headed north with the intention of capturing the coastal ports and trapping the Allies in order to prevent them from evacuating across the Channel to Great Britain.
"Codenamed Operation Dynamo for the dynamo room that provided the electricity at Dover Castle’s naval headquarters, the British plan was not divulged to the French. Brigadier Gerald Whitfield, sent to begin the evacuation of nonessential personnel, found that he could not control the swarm of both officers and soldiers seeking to evacuate. There were too many men and too little time and too few boats for him to be able to stop the human tide.
"Knowing that he needed to save his forces in order to defend his own country, Gort ordered his troops on May 23 to retreat to Dunkirk, the only nearby port left for the Allies to use if they would have a chance of escaping from mainland Europe.
................................................................................................
"Realizing their desperate circumstances, the French command replaced General Maurice Gamelin with General Maxime Weygand on May 18, but it was too late. Churchill had given his order that the British were to coordinate a southward attack with the French First Army in order to connect once again with what remained of the French forces. But Gort, knowing that if the British would have any chance of prevailing, they would have to evacuate. He decided against joining the plans for a combined British-French counterattack, a decision which the French would regard as a betrayal of their alliance.
"Confident of victory, Hitler went to visit his military leaders at Charleville on May 24. General Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, who held the belief that armored vehicles would have too much trouble on the marshy terrain near Dunkirk, told Hitler that he felt the Germans should attack the British at Arras while the armored forces were positioned west and south of Dunkirk in order to trap the retreating Allied forces. This tactic would permit the Germans to get ready for an advance from the south against the remaining French forces. Herman Göring requested permission to be allowed to destroy the Allied forces in Dunkirk, confident that the German Air Force was all that was needed to finish the job and trap the Allies. Ground troops, he told Hitler, would not be needed.
"In a decision that still confounds historians, Hitler agreed. On May 24, the German Army was ordered to halt its advance upon Dunkirk and wait for three days. The delay would allow the armored divisions to be used in the military undertakings to the south where the prize of France awaited.
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"Possibly, Hitler was awarding Göring for his loyalty as a Nazi. After the war, von Rundstedt voiced his view that Hitler, by issuing the Halt Order, wanted to offer the British a less humiliating defeat so that they would be more receptive to a peace offer, but historians are dubious about this claim. Hitler had made it clear, in Directive Number 13, that the goal was to annihilate the military forces of the French, British, and Belgians around Dunkirk and to employ the mighty Luftwaffe to make sure that an evacuation to British soil would fail.
"That opinion was shared by many others, including some British. Lord Gort wrote to Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden that “a great part of the BEF and its equipment would inevitably be lost in the best of circumstances” because the army was trapped and if they evacuated, they could count on heavy losses of men and materiel.
"On May 26, a national day of prayer was observed, with a service at Westminster Abbey that was attended by King George VI. The Archbishop of Canterbury led the nation in prayers for the soldiers who were, he said, “in dire peril in France.” Buoyed by confidence, the Germans felt assured of victory, convinced that, as journalist and historian William Shirer reported, “The fate of the great Allied army bottled up in Flanders is sealed.”"
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December 01, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
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Chapter 4. Defending the Perimeter
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"Three days. It wasn’t much time to rescue an army and halt a deadly avalanche of war, but it was all the Allies had after Hitler’s Halt Order, issued on May 24, paused the Germans from advancing. On the other side of the English Channel, Prime Minister Churchill had already assessed the potential for disaster and had ordered preparation to begin for the evacuation of the BEF.
"The success of the mission seemed highly unlikely. The British Army, joined by some French and Belgian forces, would have to fight their way to Dunkirk, defend the town from German attack, and hope that they could hold on long enough for ships from England to get them as they waited on the beach. Refugees and abandoned vehicles crowded the roads around Dunkirk, contributing to the chaos.
"The Germans were confident that the three days of rest would only enhance their superiority over the doomed Allies. That belief was shared by some across the Channel, where there was talk of consenting to a conditional surrender to Germany.
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"On May 26, the Halt Order was rescinded after the Germany commander-in-chief convinced Hitler that it was time to move. The Luftwaffe, leaving Dunkirk alone for the time being, attacked Lille, Amiens, and Calais. Calais, which was held by the BEF, surrendered the same day.
"The tanks were already on their way to Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe, which had been attacking whenever the weather permitted, had destroyed the harbor and reduced the city to rubble from heavy bombing. More than a thousand civilians had been killed by the bombs and artillery. The Luftwaffe was also engaged in a war of propaganda, dropping leaflets in English and French that showed maps revealing that the Allies were trapped. The leaflets read: “British soldiers! Look at the map: it gives your true situation! Your troops are entirely surrounded! Stop fighting! Put down your arms.” But while the Germans saw the Channel as a barrier, the British regarded it as an escape route and their only hope of survival. The thousands of men cramming the beaches were hoping to be rescued. The sons of an island nation looked to the sea for their deliverance.
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"Gort, instructed to prepare for evacuation without informing the French or the Belgians, had already begun the preliminary steps for this move, first by preparing a defense along the Lys Canal. The sluice gates had been opened so that excess water would flood the canal system and create a barrier against the advancing Germans.
"But the German advance that began on May 26 left the First, Fifth, and Forty-Eighth Divisions under fierce attack. Suffering such heavy casualties that it was reduced to the level of a brigade in strength, the Second Division somehow managed to maintain an open corridor so that the First, Third, Fourth, and Forty-Second Divisions could escape, along with one-third of the French First Army. As they fell back, the soldiers destroyed their ammunition and disabled their artillery and vehicles so that their supplies would be of no use to the Germans.
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"The commander of the Third Corps had been instructed by Gort to build a defensive, semicircular perimeter around Dunkirk that ran along the coastline of Belgium from Nieuport to Gravelines. French troops would be at the western end and British troops at the eastern end. While the rest of the BEF fell back, the Second Corps was to mount a holding action along the Ypres-Comines canal. Three divisions of German troops launched an attack on May 27 south of Ypres, a region that had seen bloody fighting during the First World War. The British, lacking radios for communication below the level of battalion and without telephone service because the wires had been cut, suffered from the confusion and were beaten back by the Germans.
"Major-General Bernard Montgomery was ordered to extend his Third Division to the left so that brigades of the Fourth Division could join the Fifth Division at Messines Ridge. When one of the brigades arrived, they discovered that the Germans were already advancing on the British field artillery. They were able to remove the Germans from Messines Ridge and dig in east of Wytschaete by May 28. A counterattack advanced British forces, but they could not hold their position, although the action held the Germans back while the BEF was able to retreat.
"On May 28, the Belgian Army surrendered to the overwhelming numbers of the German forces. The surrender created a gap in the eastern flank between the British forces and the sea. In order to fill in the ominous gap, Gort sent in the Third, Fourth, and Fiftieth Divisions, whose soldiers were already weary from battle. The soldiers, still moving into their battle position, ran into a German division that was attempting to outflank the Allies. The perimeter was gradually being pushed inward to Dunkirk. An overnight raid by the Luftwaffe on May 28 at Poperinge forced the British to abandon weapons and trucks.
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"By May 30, the perimeter was positioned along a series of canals seven miles from the coast. There was an advantage in the marshlands of Dunkirk, as the terrain was not conducive to mobility for tanks. Slowly and inexorably, however, the Germans were forcing the perimeter back and nearly broke through at Nieuport on May 31. When British troops were fleeing, the Coldstream Guards of the Third Division reinforced the line and, by shooting some of the soldiers and forcing others to return with the persuasive efforts of their bayonets, managed to push back the Germans.
"Near Lille, five divisions of the French First Army were surrounded by seven divisions under the command of Erwin Rommel. Despite overwhelming odds, they were able to keep the Germans occupied at Lille and unable to join the attack on Dunkirk, an action that saved the fate of as many as 100,000 Allied troops. But on May 31, out of food and ammunition, the 35,000 remaining soldiers of the French First Army were forced to surrender.
"The Germans wanted to finish off the British. General Von Kuechler, oblivious to the information that the British were falling back to Dunkirk and abandoning the eastern end of the perimeter line, assumed command of all the German troops at Dunkirk. His strategy was to launch an attack on the entire Allied front on the following day.
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"Prime Minister Churchill had promised the French allies that the British would provide cover for their evacuation, but the French were the ones who stood steadfast under German artillery fire and Luftwaffe bombing while the British evacuated. They could not withstand the assault, however, and began to fall back.
"The Germans mounted artillery fire, the Luftwaffe bombed, but the French forces held the line as the remaining British troops evacuated until, on the following day, the French began to fall back. Evacuations ended on the night of June 3 when the Germans were two miles from Dunkirk.
"Most of the 35,000 soldiers who were captured were French. They had fought with desperate courage, safeguarding the evacuation effort as long as possible, even though it meant that others would be rescued and they would be left behind. The French Twelfth Motorized Infantry Division burned their flag so that, when they were taken prisoner on June 4, the flag would not fall into the hands of the Germans.
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"The fate of the French troops who were captured by the Germans was grim. For five years, they, along with the 40,000 British soldiers who had not been evacuated, spent their days as prisoners of war in German camps which did not adhere to the Geneva Convention guidelines. Some of the soldiers were summarily executed. British officers were told that their rank would not protect them and they would be sentenced to work in the salt mines. The soldiers were refused medical treatment and denied food. The soldiers who had been evacuated returned home as heroes, but the ones who were left behind felt as if they had been forgotten.
"For the Germans, it was onward to Paris, which fell on June 14. The country of France, without any options, had no choice but to submit to an armistice on June 22.
"The British were alone. But miraculously, they still had an army with which to fight."
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December 01, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
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Chapter 5. The Little Ships
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"“Without Dunkirk, Britain doesn't have an army and it’s extremely questionable whether Britain could have fought the war.”
"— Second World War historian Nick Hewitt"
Perhaps not much after D-Day, but until then British role was stoic standing up to blitz, refusing to surrender and fighting off Luftwaffe, last of which was mostly RAF.
It was the spirit that counted, at Dunkirk and until D-Day.
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"On May 25, the British War Office reached the decision to evacuate its forces. Ultimately, nearly 340,000 British, French, Polish, and Belgian troops would be rescued by 861 vessels. Most of those vessels were captained by the men who owned them. But not all. Agents of the Ministry of Shipping searched along the Thames for vessels that could be used for the rescue and placed naval crews on board to sail them. Of those 861 vessels, 243 ultimately sank. Fighter Command would lose 106 aircraft, and the Luftwaffe would lose 135, some of them shot down by the navies of France and Great Britain.
"The Navy was present at Dunkirk, but because the beach was so shallow, the big ships couldn’t reach the soldiers who were waiting to be rescued.
"The British public learned that its army was being evacuated from Dunkirk and that citizens with boats were needed to save the troops. In response came yachts, fishing boats, motorboats, barges, ferries, sloops, and other vessels, ready to venture forth from the Thames River and the ports along the English Channel. Some of the ships came from the Isle of Man and Glasgow to participate in the rescue. The small vessels were guided by naval craft from the Thames Estuary and Dover. Their size made it possible for them to move closer as they shuttled back and forth from the bigger vessels, picking up the soldiers who were lined up, some of them waiting for hours, in the water, some of them in water up to their shoulders.
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"The “Little Ships” might have been manned by civilians, but the German military didn’t distinguish between professionals and amateurs as it sent artillery, bombers, and fighter planes to attack. For the fishermen, longshoremen, cab drivers and yachtsmen, bankers, dentists, youths, engineers, and civil servants who were manning the boats, often only one man in a boat and never more than two, the enterprise was carried out beneath a sky illuminated by the flames over Dunkirk. The background of the sky remained red as the city burned. With no water to put out the fires and no men who could be scared to fight them, the flames blazed on.
"It was the light of the battle that helped the ships to steer and distinguish the ships that had loaded up with soldiers and were heading back to England. The light from the flames also made it easier to spot the shadows that were the motor torpedo boats of the Germans. As they got nearer to the port, the noise of the firing and bombing increased. One of the rescuers described the flames: “From a glow they rose up to enormous plumes of fire that roared high into the everlasting pall of smoke.” When an attack was in progress, the sky was bright with the bombs. The beach was crowded with men waiting to board the ships, but the thick clouds of smoke helped to conceal them from the German aircraft overhead.
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"For the smaller boats, the peril of the voyage was increased when the destroyers went by, as the wash from their passage forced the small ships to try to head into the waves and hope for the best.
"One rescuer described the scene. “The picture will always remain sharp-etched in my memory . . . the lines of men wearily and sleepily staggering across the beach from the dunes to the shallows, falling into little boats . . . The foremost ranks were shoulder deep, moving forward under the command of young subalterns, themselves with their heads just above the little waves that rode in to the sand. As the front ranks were dragged aboard the boats, the rear ranks moved up, from ankle deep to knee deep, from knee deep to waist deep, until they, too, came to shoulder depth and their turn. I will remember, too, the astonishing discipline of the men. They had fought through three weeks of retreat, always falling back without orders, often without support. Transport had failed. They had gone sleepless. They had been without food and water. Yet they kept ranks as they came down the beaches, and they obeyed commands.”
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"The weight of the men caused the little boats ferrying from the beach to the bigger ships to list; as the bigger ships took on more soldiers, they too began to list. The lines of men waiting to board ships was endless, a long human column stretching across the sand.
"Just as the red sky remained bright and flaming, the noise was constant. Shells whistled overhead, and falling bombs screamed. The sky was a riot of sound with anti-aircraft shells, machine-gun fire, dive bombers, and falling planes. With that soundtrack and the noise from the ships, it was impossible to be heard. The men who sailed that perilous rescue mission would end up with what they called “Dunkirk throat,” their voices hoarse from the yelling and the smoke of the bombing.
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"When it began on May 27, the hope was that Operation Dynamo would rescue at the most 50,000 troops. But this makeshift fleet of British civilians, known as the “Little Ships” ended up rescuing 340,000 British, French, and Belgian troops from Dunkirk by June 4, when the evacuation ended.
"The British were quick to see the evacuation as a triumph and the will of God. The Dean of St. Paul’s described the evacuation as “the miracle of Dunkirk.” The Archbishop of Canterbury had announced the Day of National Prayer which was regarded as proof that God had intervened in the form of calm waters which aided the rescuers and the mist which obstructed the German bombers from hitting more targets. The evacuation was seen in terms of the efforts of the ships that had taken the soldiers from Dunkirk back to Great Britain, but the Royal Air Force was also at work in the effort.
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"The survival of Great Britain would depend upon the endurance of the British civilians and the skill of the Royal Air Force. When the BEF first went to France in September 1939, they were accompanied by RAF bomber, reconnaissance, and fighter squadrons who trained by going on patrols and reconnaissance missions and dropping leaflets. They seemed an unlikely match, with their inexperience and outdated aircraft, for the sleek, lethal skill of the German pilots and planes. Losses in the early battles were sometimes as high as 75%. Dunkirk was a painful revelation, as the Luftwaffe quickly dominated the skies of eastern France, forcing the RAF farther to the west.
"During the evacuation, the RAF flew 2,739 fighter sorties, along with 651 bombing missions and 171 reconnaissance missions. But still, the Luftwaffe dominated. One day, German aircraft dropped 30,000 incendiary and 15,000 high explosive bombs upon Dunkirk and the rescuing ships. The contrast was somewhat like a competition between amateurs and professionals; the British pilots were using tactics that were as outdated as their aircraft, and their practice of flying in formation made engaging the German pilots difficult. When the formations broke apart, the inexperienced pilots were isolated and on their own against a well-trained unit. How, the British must have wondered, would the island nation survive when they stood alone against the might of the German Luftwaffe?
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December 01, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
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Chapter 6. The Dunkirk Spirit
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"Winston Churchill would soon remind his people that an evacuation was not a victory, and that was a correct assessment. But the miracle at Dunkirk restored to the British people their faith that they could overcome trials and tribulations and emerge victoriously. The success of the evacuation also affected the morale of the German soldiers. Elizabeth Haden-Guest, who was a captive of the Gestapo in the early years of the war, recalled that the Germans were terrified that they would be ordered to invade Great Britain. During her captivity, German officers and soldiers told her that Dunkirk was the worst thing they had endured. “Wherever you found a dead Tommy, there was one of ours next to him. If we are ordered to invade England, none of us will ever come back alive.”
"But even if British morale was surging, the losses at Dunkirk were significant. The military equipment that the soldiers used could not be evacuated. The soldiers left behind 45,000 cars and trucks, 20,000 motorcycles, 11,000 machine guns, 880 field guns, 850 anti-tank guns, nearly 700 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft guns, 310 large caliber guns, enormous supplies of ammunition—in other words, enough equipment to supply eight to ten divisions. In England, there was only enough equipment to supply two divisions; it would take months for re-supplying to be effective.
"New equipment that was to be introduced had to be put on pause while the lost items were re-supplied, a process that would take months. Because the British war effort was not ready when war broke out in 1939, it had not been able to meet the War Office requirement to equip 55 divisions as soon as possible. It had managed to catch up; by June 1940, the nation’s industries had switched to war production, doubling what had been produced during the first six months of the war.
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"Standing alone, its military resources depleted, Great Britain could hardly have been in worse shape for what was next. On July 16, Hitler outlined a plan for the invasion of Great Britain, an amphibious assault which depended upon the Luftwaffe gaining control of the air in order to nullify the strength of the British Navy. Göring, who had predicted that his Luftwaffe would easily defeat the British at Dunkirk, developed a plan for German aircraft to destroy the British Air Force so that the invasion could take place.
"Pragmatic Winston Churchill reminded his nation that wars are not won by evacuations. “We must be very careful,” he said in a speech before the House of Commons, “not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.” But, he went on, there had been a victory inside the deliverance, and that victory was gained by the air force.
"Aware that Hitler planned to invade Great Britain, Churchill’s scorn was stirring. “We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before . . . We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
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"The British Isles were not subjugated. The New World did step in to the rescue. Germany was defeated, not without travail and hardship, and World War II ended.
"In 2015, veterans of the Dunkirk evacuation gathered to commemorate the 75 th anniversary of the miracle. A 94-year-old veteran recalled that period when he was a young soldier who had to march 120 miles to the beach where he found a rowboat that delivered him to a naval ship. He said: “I didn’t come here because I was feeling I had to come because of myself, it was for the chaps that I was with. It was fate. I don’t know how I escaped. It was a miracle, and today I really don’t believe I am here.”
" ... “Prior to Dunkirk, Britain remained a divided nation. Many Britons were unsure what to make of the Phoney War or ‘Sitzkrieg’ that endured from the fall of Warsaw in September 1939 until the invasion of France and the Low Countries in May of 1940. Dunkirk brought Britain together in much the same way that Pearl Harbor brought Americans together.” ... Although it’s the job of the military to protect the civilian population, the evacuation of Dunkirk spurred the ordinary people of Great Britain to risk danger in order to rescue their soldiers. ... "
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"Movies like Dunkirk have the power to evoke a sense of recognition with historical events that happened long ago. Mrs. Miniver, a 1942 drama, told the story of Great Britain’s war effort as it affected the life of a British family. The film, which won six Academy Awards, is number 40 on the list of the American Film Institute’s most inspirational films ever made and in 2009, the Library of Congress named the film to the National Film Registry, guaranteeing that its merit means it will be preserved.
"From their participation in the Dunkirk evacuation to the Battle of Britain, the Minivers represent the civilians of Britain who do their part to preserve their way of life, suffering as civilians always do in times of war. At the funeral of the Miniver daughter-in-law who dies during an air raid, the vicar explains the inexplicability of death. “Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is the war of the people, of all the people. And it must be fought not only on the battlefield but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom. Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves, and those who come after us, from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the People’s War. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it then. Fight it with all that is in us. And may God defend the right.”"
Author leaves it unmentioned why the film is relevant to Dunkirk - its because Miniver is part of the rescuers, informing his wife only after he's returned safely with his little fishing boat from Dunkirk, of where he's been. She, meanwhile, has dealt with a German pilot who crashed and hid in her home.
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"The evacuation at Dunkirk and the dramatic rescue of fighting men by the unremarkable civilians who responded to the War Office’s request with an instinctive sense of duty revealed the depth of bravery that the British would display as they faced Hitler’s onslaught of military might.
"A year after the evacuation at Dunkirk, on July 11, 1941, Sir John Wardlaw-Milne delivered a speech to Parliament. His topic was working conditions among British factory employees, specifically the seven-day work week that the laborers were subjected to, not the evacuation. But when he said, “We could not expect the workers to continue indefinitely working in the Dunkirk spirit,” he coined the phrase that has come to define what the evacuation symbolized. Great Britain, against all odds, had rescued its army and had outlasted Hitler in the Battle of Britain. The country had not allowed itself to be cowed by the Nazi menace and it had not broken under the threat of annihilation. Having accomplished what could rightfully be regarded as an impossible feat, the British people were imbued with a conviction that they could, even if they were the only nation left to combat the Germans, endure. Churchill’s oratory provided the text for the Dunkirk spirit that the British people exhibited, but in the end, the war would be won not with words and not with evacuations. But it would be won."
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December 01, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
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World War II Dunkirk: A History
From Beginning to End
(World War 2 Battles),
by Hourly History.
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November 28, 2022 -
December 01, 2022 - December 01, 2022.
Purchased November 28, 2022.
ASIN:- B07B4HPZP2
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5131047770
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