Foothold at Dunkirk

[LongVin]

Most of the conversations revolving around Dunkirk are about What IF the evacuation of the BEF failed and the like. I'm rather curious though what if there is no evacuation. Instead Britain decides they have enough troops on the continent to hold a foothold in Europe and instead orders the BEF to dig in and hold off the German advance towards the city so that they can use area to spring a counteroffensive.

Is this in anyway feasible or possible? Is the port of Dunkirk able to support the amount of supplies needed to keep the BEF going? And, obviously what effect would this all have on the War both short and long term.

 

[French Frog]

The Stukas will have plenty of target practice for a couple of weeks.

 

[Easygg]

Most of the conversations revolving around Dunkirk are about What IF the evacuation of the BEF failed and the like. I'm rather curious though what if there is no evacuation. Instead Britain decides they have enough troops on the continent to hold a foothold in Europe and instead orders the BEF to dig in and hold off the German advance towards the city so that they can use area to spring a counteroffensive.

Is this in anyway feasible or possible? Is the port of Dunkirk able to support the amount of supplies needed to keep the BEF going? And, obviously what effect would this all have on the War both short and long term.

The idea is interesting but just not possible, the british were in dissaray, saved only by some french troops holding the line, Stukas and tactical bombers were making attack practically every 5 minutes and the german army started attacking again in force. There is no possibility that the allies are holding.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

The idea is interesting but just not possible, the british were in dissaray, saved only by some french troops holding the line,

They were also cut off from their sources of supply so rapidly running out of food, ammunition, medical supplies and water needed to sustain 400,000 fighting men and trapped civilians. Even undamaged Dunkirk was not a port able to handle the needed supplies.

 

[CaptainCalvert]

I think the circumstances needed to retain a strong foothold in Dunkirk (at least some loading and stores areas out of artillery range,larger perimeter and more stable defences) tend to require slower German progress or reduced success
That then reduces or eliminates the need to pull forces back to Dunkirk. And any hindrance to rapid progress improves the chances of the allies stabilising their lines and negating (even if only temporarily) the confusion that OTL created so many problems, while requiring way more German troops to contain the allied forces.

 

[Sekhmet_D]

If you've had to retreat as far back as Dunkirk, the battle is already lost. No springing back from that one.

 

[Orcbuster]

Yeah no OP seems to have fundamentally misunderstood the situation at Dunkirk.

 

[Mike D]

To keep Dunkirk as an Allied foothold you're realistically looking at having to keep a perimeter of roughly Etaples-Bethune-Lille-Roeselare-Ostend to keep German artillery far enough away from the ports in the pocket to allow them unload ships in relative safety (assuming the RAF and AdA can keep standing patrols over the area to intercept bombers too) and I just don't think the Allies are able to hold the Germans over that long a line after the frontier battles in 1940.

 

[michael1]

Most of the conversations revolving around Dunkirk are about What IF the evacuation of the BEF failed and the like. I'm rather curious though what if there is no evacuation. Instead Britain decides they have enough troops on the continent to hold a foothold in Europe and instead orders the BEF to dig in and hold off the German advance towards the city so that they can use area to spring a counteroffensive.

Is this in anyway feasible or possible? Is the port of Dunkirk able to support the amount of supplies needed to keep the BEF going? And, obviously what effect would this all have on the War both short and long term.

As others have said there is no way the British can hold Dunkirk after the fall of France. The Germans have over a hundred divisions they can throw against the pocket if needed. The British are outnumbered on the ground more than 10-1.

If you are just talking short term then either the Germans destroy the pocket before turning south (odds of about 4-1 in favour of the Germans as the French army in the south draws off some German troops, the French do not attack from the south and the fall of France is delayed by however long the BEF and French 1st army holds out) or the Germans leave about a dozen divisions to mask the pocket while finishing off the rest of France to the South. The pocket has no significant effect on the attack south both because of insufficient troops and no nearby targets that are critical to the German southern offensive.

This is why the idea of the Breton redoubt never got off the ground

 

[The Red]

The pocket has no significant effect on the attack south both because of insufficient troops and no nearby targets that are critical to the German southern offensive.

If the Germans grind up their armoured divisions on trying to dislodge it then it might help delay Fall Rot but it's debatable to what extent that extra time would help keep France fighting in the long run. It's an incredibly high risk for dubious reward.

 

[michael1]

If the Germans grind up their armoured divisions on trying to dislodge it then it might help delay Fall Rot but it's debatable to what extent that extra time would help keep France fighting in the long run. It's an incredibly high risk for dubious reward.

Big if. More likely they bring up their infantry divisions as there will be no deep breakthrough possibility, and it all just leads to the delay in attacking South I mentioned. This is where the extremely high degree of manpower mobilisation France achieved counts against them. There just isn't much scope for replacing the units lost until they can call up and train a new conscript class, so a delay even of a month or two just wouldn't make much difference to France (not that I'm saying this is how long the delay would be).

 

[Simon Darkshade]

Quite. The port capacity of Dunkirk was insufficient to support the size of force needed to hold an extended perimeter. Even the Breton poets collectively aren’t enough for what would be needed to hold a Brittany Redoubt, which would be a minimum of 15 divisions across the front plus reserves.

If the Allied airpower of 1944 was somehow transported to Southern England, replete with limitless supplies and ammunition, then things might be different. But it wasn’t, so it couldn’t.

That evacuation was possible to the extent that it was from Dunkirk was enough of a miracle. For a sustainable foothold or redoubt on the Continent, what is needed is a different place with the geographical convenience of Dunkirk, several large ports and enough of a hinterland to allow for a reason for a foothold - the only one I can think of is somewhere to build up for an eventual breakout. But a place like that didn’t exist, so it is just academic.

 

[Bougnas]

The Allied commander in chief (Weygand) did order a large foothold around Dunkirk, Boulogne and Calais for a bit but the plan quickly collapsed when the latter two cities were taken on the 25th and 26th of May. This would be supplied with about 3000 tons a day. The idea was to fix as many forces as possible so the French 3rd Army Group could counterattack north from the Somme. After this plan collapsed the idea was to accept the complete destruction of 1st Army Group to fix the Germans as long as possible, and finally on the 28th Weygand accepted Dynamo since even holding until destruction was no longer viable.

The previous plan before all this (22nd-23rd) was to counterattack with both army groups to split the German tank units from the rest of the forces, but a breakdown in coordination with the British and the Belgians and some failures to organize the counterattack in time meant that this plan, which was the only one with any hope to inflict a decisive defeat on the Germans at this point, also ended before it could start. A terrestrial Dynamo in its place was rejected because it would abandon any hope of inflicting a decisive victory on the Germans, even if it saved much more troops and equipment than the historical Dynamo.