No Miracle of Dunkrik

What's the scenario here? If it's that only 20-30,000 men actually get evacuated, surely the military are going to place a high priority on getting essential personnel out of the pocket. I can't see no-one getting out because the BEF was never in danger of being completely encircled without access to the Channel ports.

The British actually did enforce the evacuation of senior officers and staff through the evacuation (to stop the understandable desire of officers wanting to stay till their men were all out, this was not optional, it was an order) precisely to make sure they had a viable core for building a new army from.
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
Ultra was a high (general) staff level secret. You might see one or two 'in the know' captured. I seem to remember an air general getting into trouble for flying on overseas bombing missions that risk capture of the ULTRA secret. There was someone who held the secret to himself for a few years as a POW. I think it unlikely that the Germans would find out.
 
What's the scenario here? If it's that only 20-30,000 men actually get evacuated, surely the military are going to place a high priority on getting essential personnel out of the pocket. I can't see no-one getting out because the BEF was never in danger of being completely encircled without access to the Channel ports.

If Guderian had properly recon'ed the area and concentrated his entire corps instead of spreading them out, he had a fair chance of inserting his tanks between the British and the sea, and then forces from AG B would have formed up on the other side of the pocket as otl

this could see most of the bef captured at dunkirk, although the troops at bolonge and calais are not lost, so there would be something

Losing the core of the field army though is devastating... equipment can be replaced, men cannot... the peace faction would have serious ammuniton
 
Psychology of Defeat..

I think the focus should be on the psychological as much as the military. The phrase "Dunkirk Spirit" entered the British vocabulary and psyche as an expression of heroic defence against insuperable odds and Dunkirk was as much about the battle for the town as it was the evacuation.

The second point is that Winston Churchill is viewed through the prism of 1940-45, the speeches following the evacuation - he embodies the spirit of uncompromising defiance. Yet, Churchill was far from being a universally liked or respected figure even after becoming Prime Minister. Many in the Tory Party distrusted him - he had nearly been deselected in 1939 and other aspects of his record both in peace and war - Sidney Street and Gallipoli - were undistinguished.

It's likely that the traditional recriminations against Churchill would have been loudly voiced in the aftermath of the Dunkirk debacle and the loss of the BEF.

The British are not used to defeat - indeed, a disaster at Dunkirk would have been the most serious military catastrophe since Yorktown. For the French, who had suffered military disaster in 1815 and 1870, it would have been a less traumatic experience.

In this atmosphere of recrimination, confusion and despair mixed with a growing realisation of what seemed the impotence of the Government and armed forces in the face of an overwhelming military presence (and the losses of the RAF and RN at Dunkirk shouldn't be forgotten), we don't need to think the unthinkable. Instead, we see a smarter Hitler and wilier Goebbels offering the sort of "peace with honour" which might find a more receptive hearing than would otherwise have been the case.
 
stodge, whenever the idea comes up of Hitler(Goebbels being irrelevant) suddenly offering terms remotely resembling peace with honor we have entered ASB territory.

Since he shredded Munich Hitler's credibility is seen as nil in London and yet another proof of this is about to be added by his negotiating in extremely bad faith with France, leaving the French delighted because the treaty did not mention Alsace-Lorraine...because Hitler was simply taking the provinces without informing the soon-to-be Vichy French.




DaleCoz, the likely result might be a slight delay in the (largely) outdated weapons that the US shipped to the UK at this time. Certainly the destroyers will go as the arrangement very much favored the US.
 
stodge, whenever the idea comes up of Hitler(Goebbels being irrelevant) suddenly offering terms remotely resembling peace with honor we have entered ASB territory.

I have this crazy idea: Why don't we reserve the term ASB for things that really are ASB--that require modifications to the laws of physics or that are mathematically impossible. I know that on this board it's often used to say something on the order of 'I really disagree', and nothing personal--I actually agree with your argument, but using ASB like that trivializes the term so much that it's becoming meaningless.

The issue isn't that Hitler wouldn't offer reasonable terms. He probably would. He wasn't really interested in destroying the British empire, at least not in the short term. The issue is whether or not the British would trust any terms Hitler offered.

Since he shredded Munich Hitler's credibility is seen as nil in London and yet another proof of this is about to be added by his negotiating in extremely bad faith with France, leaving the French delighted because the treaty did not mention Alsace-Lorraine...because Hitler was simply taking the provinces without informing the soon-to-be Vichy French.

Yeah. Hitler pretty much ensured that if war came it was going to end in either total German victory or total German defeat when he ignored Munich and grabbed the rest of Czechoslovakia. After that nobody but Stalin was stupid enough to enter into a pact with Hitler if they didn't have to. The only way the Brits would accept a peace with Hitler is as a temporary expedient because they felt that not doing it would lead to an invasion or more likely an unstoppable partitioning of their empire.




DaleCoz, the likely result might be a slight delay in the (largely) outdated weapons that the US shipped to the UK at this time. Certainly the destroyers will go as the arrangement very much favored the US.

True, the small arms were mostly World War I surplus, but they were serviceable and would have been useful in places like the Philippines or China, or even in training and equipping the US army through early 1942. The French plane orders that got reassigned to the Brits were actually a mixed bag, but did make some difference.

On the destroyers, I don't know. The US might well have figured that they could simply take the bases the British leased as payment if, as expected, the Brits folded and became 'Vichy Britain', which a lot of Americans expected. If the British situation was perceived as desperate enough the US might have given the destroyers, but made even more extensive demands.

It really depends on US perceptions. In retrospect we can find a lot to admire about the fighting spirit of the Brits, but what indicators of British fighting spirit did Americans have in the summer of 1940? Well, there was appeasement, Munich, what was widely perceived as half-hearted responses to the invasions of Poland and Norway, the rapid fall of France, and in this scenario a surrender of the bulk of the BEF. Not much there to indicate that the Brits had the will to fight. Why ship perfectly good weapons to somebody without the will to use them? Again, this was a matter of perceptions. The Brits needed to demonstrate fighting spirit. The Dunkirk evacuation didn't exactly do that, but they were enough to convince the US to give Britain the benefit of the doubt.
 
The US nightmare scenario was facing Germany and Japan with the British fleet neutralized or worse yet in German hands before the US trained its army and expanded its navy. The US had a window of vulnerability from the summer of 1940 to the fall of 1941. After that we rapidly rearmed to the point that by late 1943/1944 we could have probably taken on both powers in the air and the seas even without allies, though without the Soviets taking the edge off of the Germans and without British bases I can't imagine any way we could have conquered them.
 
If Guderian had properly recon'ed the area and concentrated his entire corps instead of spreading them out, he had a fair chance of inserting his tanks between the British and the sea, and then forces from AG B would have formed up on the other side of the pocket as otl

Or if Hitler hadn't ordered him to stop when he had the chance.
 
Or if Hitler hadn't ordered him to stop when he had the chance.

that didn't matter, Guderian had spent the previous week and a half disregarding orders or threatening his resignation to get around them... and suddenly he is duty bound to stop because hitler or rundstedt say so>

lying blow hard
 
stodge, whenever the idea comes up of Hitler(Goebbels being irrelevant) suddenly offering terms remotely resembling peace with honor we have entered ASB territory.

Since he shredded Munich Hitler's credibility is seen as nil in London and yet another proof of this is about to be added by his negotiating in extremely bad faith with France, leaving the French delighted because the treaty did not mention Alsace-Lorraine...because Hitler was simply taking the provinces without informing the soon-to-be Vichy French.

Well, as Dunkirk happened before the French Surrender in OTL, we have to consider what the impact of a mass Anglo-French capitulation would have been on the French side. The surrender at Sedan in 1870 including the capture of Napoleon III was a blow from which France never recovered and while there would still have been some resistance to the renewed German assault (which might have been delayed a few days given the large number of POWs to be assembled and sent eastwards).

Would Hitler have taken the opportunity of the Dunkirk capitulation to offer terms to BOTH Britain and France in early June 1940? Why would these terms have not looked "generous" - indeed, they might not have looked very different to those offered by a victorious Germany in 1914.

The key for Hitler would have been to ensure peace in the West before the real battle in the East - neutralising France and Britain militarily without the cost of occupation would have looked a sound option.
 
stodge, Hitler was so disinterested in ensuring peace in the west before attacking the USSR that he stole Alsace-Lorraine without even including that fact in the armistice agreement or otherwise letting the French know it, even as at least a few British were surely looking at those terms to determine if peace terms offered to Great Britain might be something London could accept.

To be honest, no one is going to be able to establish as credible the idea that Hitler, with an even larger victory, will suddenly show a level of generosity which he never showed at any point in his career. It's like suggesting that suddenly, with the outcome of the ACW appearing to favor the south, Jefferson Davis offers to surrender the CSA in return for nothing more than a phased end to slavery.
 
Well, as Dunkirk happened before the French Surrender in OTL, we have to consider what the impact of a mass Anglo-French capitulation would have been on the French side. The surrender at Sedan in 1870 including the capture of Napoleon III was a blow from which France never recovered and while there would still have been some resistance to the renewed German assault (which might have been delayed a few days given the large number of POWs to be assembled and sent eastwards).

Would Hitler have taken the opportunity of the Dunkirk capitulation to offer terms to BOTH Britain and France in early June 1940? Why would these terms have not looked "generous" - indeed, they might not have looked very different to those offered by a victorious Germany in 1914.

The key for Hitler would have been to ensure peace in the West before the real battle in the East - neutralising France and Britain militarily without the cost of occupation would have looked a sound option.

The 200 000 Brits, 300 000 Belgians and 100 000 French will not just be surrendering without a fight when the Germans are coming for them - they will most likely fight to get to the sea, at least, which WILL rough up the German formations, which WILL delay Fall Rot quite a bit (several weeks, at least), which WILL give the French a bit of a breather - the Armee d'l'Air might even be back in action by that time, making things harder for the Germans.

And as I have aid before, the British evacuated about 330 000 men from Dunkirk, but almost 270 000 men from other locations (Operation Ariel even brought back 310 artillery pieces, 1500 tons of supplies and more than 2200 vehicles, including quite a few tanks).
 
Operation Cycle did not go as well, but most of 51. Highland Division and some French troops made it out.
No it didn't. One brigade was evacuated from Le Havre but other two brigades and their support elements were still fighting alongside the French. tHey surrendered at Saint Valery-en-Caux on the 11th/12th of June....

Effectively, the British High Command abandoned them.
 
No it didn't. One brigade was evacuated from Le Havre but other two brigades and their support elements were still fighting alongside the French. tHey surrendered at Saint Valery-en-Caux on the 11th/12th of June....

Effectively, the British High Command abandoned them.

An attempt was made to rescue the 152nd and 153rd brigades of the Highland Division from St Valery but heavy fog in the channel and the fact that St Valery is only a small fishing port with unscalable cliffs either side meant only a small number of men could be rescued. If the Royal Navy cold have done it then they would have never mind the cost.

http://www.gengriz.co.uk/lothians.htm This website gives a clear picture of what happened nobody abandoned the 51st.
 
Wouldnt this sap the Heer's efforts against the French? The BEA can be supplied by sea, could have decent air-cover and can hold out for some time assuming their morale dosnt crack.

With aajor battle against local French forces and the BEF the German campign in France will be quite a bit longer with greater losses. Also we can assume large numbers of the BEF can escape anyway as the RN has near-total control of the sea.
 
There might be a point he would regard as pushing his luck, though.

He never seemed to know that point considering he did such things to Hitler himself let alone his military superiors

he didn't threaten his resignation because he agreed with the policy at the time

same thing with the Moscow-Kiev thing
 
Something else to consider. If the Army has to be rebuilt, Bomber Command has to be more careful about casualties, which could impact Winston & Portal's willingness to accept city bombing. Could be BC is compelled to adopt a different approach: attacks on canals & railyards, say. This actually hits Germany harder, & leaves her in a stronger position postwar v the SU, with her factories not smashed. (This also impacts the U.S. postwar: if Germany is still using prewar tooling, her manufacturing advantage is less than OTL.)
 
assuming Britain doesn't seek a cease fire and the Americans still enter the war in late '41... the repercussions from heavy losses at Dunkirk might not be so 'end of the world' horrible. I wonder if the Brits might not go into a siege mentality for a while, hunkering down and preparing for the worst while they rebuild their forces. No attack into Libya maybe (since there would be few reinforcements available to replace combat losses). And I can't see that the Brits would send men to Greece/Crete when the home islands are damn near bare. The USA would likely have to draft more men into service, and play a bigger part in D-Day (if they can... not sure we had the capacity to do more than we did back then). It all boils down if the Brits seek a cease fire or not. If they don't, I think they can hang on because the Germans still don't have the oomph to invade. No attack into Libya may mean no Rommel/Afrika Korps. No Brits in Crete means the Germans try out their shiny new paratroopers somewhere else (Russia?)...
 

Cook

Banned
The USA would likely have to draft more men into service, and play a bigger part in D-Day (if they can... not sure we had the capacity to do more than we did back then).

American troop numbers in Britain and the European theatre were not restricted by recruitment limits but by the required shipping to move them across the Atlantic. When in a joint chiefs meeting in ’44 Roosevelt and Marshall promised to recruit a million more soldiers Brooke was dismissive, knowing that troops could not be transferred to Europe at a rate higher than they already were being sent.
 
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