What if the BEF attempted to hold dunkirk to use it as a springboard for operations in 1941?
- France is still going to come to terms with Germany .
Maybe, maybe not. The image of the british troops evacuating thanks to the sacrifice of the French troops and leaving the french to be captured by the Germans, while false, existed and contributed quite a lot to the feeling of defeatism. A drawn-out battle at Dunkirk might have turned the French government around and led to a FTL/FFO scenario. It was that close.
Maybe, maybe not. The image of the british troops evacuating thanks to the sacrifice of the French troops and leaving the french to be captured by the Germans, while false, existed and contributed quite a lot to the feeling of defeatism. A drawn-out battle at Dunkirk might have turned the French government around and led to a FTL/FFO scenario. It was that close.
Fight to the Last.
what is an FTL scenario ?
Maybe, maybe not. The image of the british troops evacuating thanks to the sacrifice of the French troops and leaving the french to be captured by the Germans, while false, existed and contributed quite a lot to the feeling of defeatism. A drawn-out battle at Dunkirk might have turned the French government around and led to a FTL/FFO scenario. It was that close.
The French airforce was gutted
Not entirely true. The French Airforce was avoiding committing its best formations to battle, instead of fighting a war that was perceived to have already been lost.
Read this article and "A Blunted Sickle"
The French airforce was gutted, the cream of the French army destroyed or a disorganised rabble and government ministers in generals in tears.
Adding 300,000 British corpse does nothing but delay the inevitable the French needed a new doctrine and new officer corps not something you can do while fighting for your life against a powerful foe that at best will be delayed a few weeks.
They did put up a pretty decent defense of the Weygand line until overwhelmed! Imagine if they felt the British had put up a great fight for France, how could the French do any less! Certainly a British(with quite a few Frenchmen) FTL battle at Dunkirk would have strengthened the hands of the Generals and Politicians who wanted to fight on albeit from North Africa.
Of course such a battle of attrition would have required several weeks and probably heavy artillery to reduce the ports defenses. That's a lot of time for a very nervous Hitler and OKH. OTL the perimeter defenses held against all attacks until the end. I could see Hitler ordering in the panzers (into the kind of battle they where most unsuited to) and the elite of his army taking significant losses. The gap between the Battle of the North and the Battle of France would be longer helping the French prepare. Therefore the Waygand line might hold due to the pause and as there would be less panzers! After that there would be lots of butterflies!
Its not hard to make the allies do better since OTL they did just about everything they could to lose but a costlier German win seems more plausible than anything else by this point.
A loss of metropolitan France by August or September doesn't mean France is out of the war.