|
|
In Britain the miracle of Dunkirk is one of the most famous incidents of the entire Second World War, and has been the subject of a huge number of books. However many focus on the British point of view, with some attention paid to issues such as Hitler’s ‘halt order’ that stopped the Panzers for a day. However this is the first one I’ve read that follows the campaign from the German side, looking at how senior German commanders saw it, how the attack was organised, which units took part in it and how they performed etc. We also get good material on how the Germans saw the three armies they faced in this campaign – the French, Belgian and British – all of whom paid
One problem faced by the author was a relative lack of first hand German accounts of the Dunkirk campaign. He suggests two reasons for this. The first was that it was seen as less important by the Germans than the initial breakthrough directly before and the final defeat of France that followed. The second was that many of the Germans who fought at Dunkirk were killed on the Eastern Front, most of them within a year or two of this fighting. However there are plenty of official documents to examine, and the author has managed to find a significant number of German accounts.
Several factors emerge from this study. First is that the Germans had already suffered a repulse on the road to Dunkirk before Hitler’s Halt Order, as they attempted to use tanks in country that favoured the defender. Second is that the Germans didn’t entirely realise what was happening at Dunkirk, and underestimated how many troops were actually being evacuated, so didn’t give the fighting the importance it perhaps deserved. Third, and related to the second, is that the Germans saw the second phase of the campaign against France, Operation Red, as more important than the siege of the Dunkirk pocket, so began to move many troops from the Dunkirk front to the Somme front. As a result the attackers were actually outnumbered by the defenders for significant parts of the battle. Finally the lighting German successes at the start of the campaign had been achieved by finding and exploiting weak points in the Allied line and getting into their rear areas. During the course of the fighting at Dunkirk a number of weak points developed, but they were only fleeting and the Germans were unable to take advantage of them (indeed often didn’t know they even existed). As a result most of the fighting saw German units take part in frontal assaults against dug in Allied troops, often taking advantage of pre-existing fortifications, with consistent air support provided by the RAF. The result was a far more even battle that earlier in the campaign and one that demonstrated that the Allies could indeed cope with the Germans in the right circumstances. On a more general note, the fighting around Dunkirk was unusual for 1940, but this sort of ‘pocket’ battle would become more common later in the war, and it was rare for a well defended pocket to be eliminated quickly.
Hitler’s famous ‘Halt Order’ is examined in some detail, placing it in the context of the fighting on the day before as well. Three things become clear here. First is that the panzers were already struggling as a result of the flooded land they were now fighting in, combined with wear and tear from the rapid advance of the previous two weeks. Second, Hitler was only repeating an order given by the command on the ground, so the idea that it was largely his fault is false. Finally, this only covered one day in a battle that lasted two weeks, and included several days of panzer attacks that failed to achieve the expected breakthrough.
This is a useful addition to the literature on Dunkirk, giving a different perspective on this crucial battle (not least the idea that only one side realised how important it was at the time!).
Chapters
1 – Fuhrer Weather
2 – Landser
3 – The Sea
4 – 24 May, the Day of the Halt Order
5 – Panzers Against Ports
6 – Running the Gauntlet
7 – Sea, Air and Land
8 – The Great Escape, 1 June
9 – Elusive Victory
Author: Robert Kershaw
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 352
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2024