The Little Boats that Could

May 26, 2007 10:09 AM

Operation Dynamo, aka The Miracle of Dunkirk, began on this day in 1940. Before it ended, nearly 340,000 British and Allied troops would make it to safety and fight another day. Why would the Germans allow them to escape? Was it fear? Hubris? Or was it, as historian B.H. Liddell Hart wrote after the war, Hitler's appreciation for the British Empire?
posted by SaintCynr (25 comments total)

Goering convinced Hitler that the Luftwaffe could reduce the pocket without requiring a ground assault. It turned out he was wrong, but during the time when the Luftwaffe was making the attempt, a large part of those in the pocket managed to get away.

Certainly it is not the case that the Germans deliberately let the Brits get away. They weren't idiots. But at that time pretty much everyone in the world had overestimated the potential effectiveness of medium and heavy bombers; this wasn't just a German misapprehension.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:18 AM on May 26, 2007

I don't believe they were suggesting it was deliberate, rather a "lack of killer instinct" at the most inopportune time, brought on by admiration.
posted by SaintCynr at 10:27 AM on May 26, 2007

what SCDB said. Plus the panzer guys were outrunning their supplies and needed to police their formations before taking on the rest of the French Army on their flank.

A rather unknown factoid from this time is that many of these troops rescued at Dunkirk were fed right back into France via LeHavre and other French ports.

From a recent BBC news article:

"Mr Churchill tempered his admiration for the success of Operation Dynamo with these words: "Wars are not won by evacuations".

He said there was no doubt in his mind that the last few weeks had been a "colossal military disaster".

. . .

He ended his speech with a defiant message to Hitler's armies.

"We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. 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."

Britain would "ride out the tyranny of war, if necessary for years, if necessary alone."

That Time gave Man of the Century to Einstein and not WSC was bogus, man.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:31 AM on May 26, 2007

“He then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilization that Britain had brought into the world."

Why would that be astonishing? It is well-known that Hitler admired the British.
posted by three blind mice at 10:34 AM on May 26, 2007

Wikipedia on The Battle of Dunkirk.
posted by Brian B. at 10:34 AM on May 26, 2007

And to follow up on Heywood Mogroot's comment, whilst Hitler admired the British he hated Churchill. Most of Hitler's verbal attacks on Britian were personalized on Churchill. The German press referred to Churchill as WC (water closet the term used throughout Europe for toilet.) There are many reasons to believe that Hitler wanted defeat Churchill politically, but leave the British army intact to help him defeat his real enemy - Soviet Russia and Bolshevism.
posted by three blind mice at 10:39 AM on May 26, 2007

It has been my understanding for some time, perhaps wrong, that Hilter a number of times missed opportunities or screwed them up. That he admired the Brits is correct but then why did he send buzz bombs to destroy London? to show his hatred of Churchill by this rather indirect manner?
posted by Postroad at 10:59 AM on May 26, 2007

>>That he admired the Brits is correct but then why did he send buzz bombs to destroy London?

During the Battle of Britain, the RAF accidentally bombed Berlin, and it so infuriated Hitler that the focus went off destroying Fighter Command and onto lashing out at London with no real achievable aim. This shift came at a critical time for FC, and allowed them to regain their footing, and it eventually lost the battle for Germany.
posted by SaintCynr at 11:05 AM on May 26, 2007

from the wikipedia article

The city of Dunkirk was besieged in September 1944 by units of the Second Canadian Division; German units withstood the siege, and as the First Canadian Army moved north into Belgium, the city was "masked" and left to the rear. The German garrison in Dunkirk held out until May 1945, denying the Allies the use of the port facilities.

it's by no means a forgone conclusion that the germans could have overrun the b e f in dunkirk quickly ... and their main goal was to invade france, which they couldn't do with a large, unsurrendered army in the rear as they moved to paris ... or with panzers that could have been beaten up during a possible to the death type battle

so they made the cautious decision - let the british get away while the luftwaffe took out as many of them as possible, rest the panzers, consolidate the position and then move forward with supply lines good and no enemy in the rear to cut them off ... it was more sure and less expensive to let them escape ... and was just as helpful for achieving the main goal of the campaign, which was overrunning france
posted by pyramid termite at 11:08 AM on May 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

OK, let's get this straight.

During the Battle of Britain, a single German bomber on a night raid got lost and dropped its bombs on London. The British government responded by deliberately sending an entire bombing mission to strike Berlin.

Hitler was enraged, and ordered the bombing campaign to change from targeting airfields to attacking British cities.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:09 AM on May 26, 2007

Speaking of "the little boats," from the Wikipedia link on Operation Dynamo:

Though the "Miracle of the Little Ships" is a prominent folk memory in Britain (and a great morale booster for the time), over 80% of the evacuated troops actually embarked from the harbour's protective mole onto the 42 destroyers and other large ships.

Which discounts the psychological impact somewhat: Official recognition of the "little ships" effort that made a huge difference to morale at home -- remember, the Battle of Britain was underway, the US wasn't officially part of the shooting war yet, and there was real fear that the Wehrmacht might try coming across the Channel -- was that the non-RN ships and boats that participated were authorized to fly the Royal Navy's White Ensign in recognition of their service. At least as far as the mid-1990s, I remember reading on sci.military.naval of the odd elderly fishing vessel or ferry still flying this while in port and/or at anchorage.


(It's a naval thang: I could explain, but y'all still gots t' understan'.)

For you movie buffs, the time period's alluded to, from the English home-front perspective, in the Best-Picture-winning movie Mrs. Miniver. It may be somewhat instructive to know that US audiences saw the movie in the aftermath of Midway, the midst of the Solomons campaign, and with operation TORCH against the Germans barely underway. On this side of the Atlantic, from what I've been told and what else I've read, there was this general sense of a vast undertaking barely begun and by no means near any perceptible end: My dad was starting to wonder whether he needed to quit his job at Picatinny Arsenal and raise his right hand or wait and see if he'd get caught up in the draft.

----

On preview, I'm not sure to what extent Hitler himself admired the British, but I've read that individuals in the British and German officer corps got on rather well, a holdover from pre- Big Mistake Number One days most likely.
posted by pax digita at 11:16 AM on May 26, 2007

A good fictional treatment of the evacuation can be found in Ian McEwan's Atonement.
posted by Rangeboy at 11:24 AM on May 26, 2007

Thank you, Mr. Den Beste. I should know better than to post from memory before I've had coffee. :)
posted by SaintCynr at 11:28 AM on May 26, 2007

If you happen to be in Docklands, there's a barge that was among the "little ships" moored at the northern end of Millwall Dock, next to South Quay DLR station. It's now a terrible pub (or at least was when I worked down there four years ago), but still worth a look.

Hitler, and a couple of other senior Nazis, wrote and spoke admiringly about Britain, the British and some British institutions on various occasions - in Mein Kampf for a start. Hitler was baffled as to why the British should resist Nazism so fiercely. Typical cognitive dissonance from a man who could rarely considered the way things were to be any different from the way he wanted them to be.

I understand that the most recent research says that the importance of the Battle of Britain has been overstated, and that Sea Lion was rendered impossible by the Royal Navy, not Fighter Command.
posted by WPW at 11:34 AM on May 26, 2007

In early June 1940 a guard at Waterloo Station almost became the last casualty of the Dunkirk evacuation. In the best traditions of the British jobsworth, he was haranguing my grandfather for travelling without a valid ticket. My grandfather was too exhausted and shell-shocked to put up much of an argument, but his father was there to meet him, witnessed the event and nearly did the guard a serious mischief.

A couple of days earlier poor old granddad was drawing lots in a field on the outskirts of Dunkirk. His crew was amongst the lucky group allowed to smash their field guns, render their trucks unserviceable and make a run for the beaches. Those who drew the short straws were ordered to hold their position and keep firing until the ammunition ran out. Every man of his unit who stayed behind was killed or captured. The few who made it back to England did so without a scrap of kit.

My granddad wasn't a professional soldier. The silly old duffer had joined the territorials shortly before war broke out because they had the best sports facilities. He was a football-mad teenager in the heart of London with nowhere to play. A few months later his unit was shipped out to France with a battery of outdated WW1 surplus 18-pounders. They never stood a chance.

Thanks for the post, SaintCynr. I think I'll give the old boy a call this weekend.
posted by boosh at 11:38 AM on May 26, 2007 [7 favorites]

WWIINerdFilter:

Why would the Germans allow them to escape? Was it fear? Hubris?

- British air superiority over Dunkirk

- Hitler was more interested in securing the coal-producing region of Lorraine
posted by KokuRyu at 11:50 AM on May 26, 2007

The British didn't have air superiority over Dunkirk. They did contest the skies, but didn't dominate the area.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:40 PM on May 26, 2007

During the early stages of the Battle of Britain, the Germans started off by bombing British air bases and radar installations to try to get air superiority (which was a prerequisite for invading England), and their plan worked. The British had trouble replacing their losses in men and airplanes, and the Germans probably would have worn them out if they'd continued their strategy. The Germans didn't fully realize how successful their strategy was, and they switched to bombing cities. The Blitz gets all the press, but strategically the Battle of Britain was decided before it started.

There are many reasons to believe that Hitler wanted defeat Churchill politically, but leave the British army intact to help him defeat his real enemy - Soviet Russia and Bolshevism.

That's kind of like the scene in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid where Steve Martin's getting beat up by a gangster's goons and he says, "What's he payin' you boys? I'll double it and we'll beat the shit out of him."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:53 PM on May 26, 2007

You know who else really admired the British empire?
posted by bonaldi at 2:47 PM on May 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

The British were ahead of the Germans in producing planes and recovering/training their pilots. Further, Dowding had a plan to withdraw fighters north to bases out of range of the Luftwaffe.

Operation Sealion would have been a failure for many reasons, including the presence of the Royal Navy. The Germans could not land artillery or even medium armor. Their arrangements for resupply were practically nonexistent. Google cache of Sealion criticism
posted by Comrade_robot at 3:07 PM on May 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

You know who else really admired the British empire?

aye that mathowie guy.
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:28 PM on May 26, 2007

It isn't necessarily a mistake to let the opposition escape. Sometimes it's better to let your enemies run away in defeat than fight with their backs against the wall and nothing to lose.

I don't know whether that would have been the right decision at Dunkirk, but the Germans could rationally have thought so.
posted by Phanx at 1:11 AM on May 27, 2007

I understand that the most recent research says that the importance of the Battle of Britain has been overstated, and that Sea Lion was rendered impossible by the Royal Navy, not Fighter Command.

A good chunk of it was the means the Germans intended to use to cross the channel. They were going to use the Rhine barges. The channel currents move faster than they do, and the typical channel wave is higher than the typical Rhine barge draft. A destroyer going by at a decent clip could have sunk the invasion fleet without firing a shot.
posted by vbfg at 2:20 AM on May 27, 2007

...not to mention they had zero experience of army / navy co operation and landing on a beach. It took the combined Brit / US experiences of Gallipoli, Dieppe and an island hopping campaign across the Pacific to work out how to do that kind of thing.
posted by vbfg at 2:22 AM on May 27, 2007

tangent - historical miniseries recommendation: A Piece of Cake (1988). From IMDB: "Stories of the men of the RAF Hornet Squadron during the early days of World War II." Wonderfully well done, with lots of restored period aircraft and aerial photography. Nice story too.
posted by crepeMyrtle at 7:44 AM on May 29, 2007