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[mainiac]

Actually the main reason for the BEF to escape at Dunkirk was Hitler deciding to send the Luftwaffe to bomb the evacuation ships and dunkirk instead of sending in his Tank Divisions.

Because sending unsupported tank divisions against the largest massed concentration of anti-tank guns in history so far, with support from battleship bombardment, would have gone fantastically.

German generals liked to blame Hitler for every failure once the dust settled.  He made a convenient scapegoat.

[Kot]

I am pretty sure that Rommel was around the Dunkirk at the time and was actually specifically summoned by Hitler to Berlin to stop him from pushing on. And considering his fame and whatnot, I am going to assume that if left unatended (in the absence of orders, go find something and kill it!), Rommel would perform Sea Lion in 1940 using captured British ships from Dunkirk. Because why the fuck not, it's Techno Rommel, he's better than Disco Hitler!
Also, actually, wouldn't the best idea be sending both Luftwaffe and panzers?

[mainiac]

No I mean the generals insisted that all Hitler's ideas were bad and theirs were brilliant.

That dumb Hitler, he insisted they attack through Sedan... and resulted in the largest encirclement in history.  That dumb Hitler, he broke them away from Moscow... and resulted in the second largest encirclement in history.  A bunch of Generals on the ground could only see what was right in front of their faces and couldn't see the larger picture. Exhaust the panzer divisions fighting the BEF and the French have time to reinforce along the Sienne river.  But these were men like Rommel who always insisted that his mission was of the utmost importance and wasted precious resources on strategically meaningless goals.

It's a lot like the Siberian divisions myth.  The story was told through a series of silver bullet explanation.  The Panzers were unstoppable but then that stupid halt order.  German troops were in sight of Moscow but then those fearsome Siberians arrived.  The Maginot Line was unbreakable but then the Germans surprised the French by going around.  "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

[Kot]

Meanwhile Rommel was praised as a genius for proving an excellent case of how failure inevitably comes to those who ignore the maxim "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics" by repeatedly ignoring direct instructions from Hitler to stop wasting precious oil.

I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF PANZERS ROLLING ALL OVER THE WORLD, I LITERALLY CAN'T HEAR BECAUSE THEY'RE KING TIGERS AND THEY GUZZLE ONE LITER PER 400 METERS, BUT THANKFULLY GERMAN ARMY HAS ENOUGH FUEL BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL OVER BAGHDAD RIGHT NOW THANKS TO ROMMEL NOT GIVING A SHIT ABOUT ORDERS!

[Ghazkull]

Actually the main reason for the BEF to escape at Dunkirk was Hitler deciding to send the Luftwaffe to bomb the evacuation ships and dunkirk instead of sending in his Tank Divisions.

Because sending unsupported tank divisions against the largest massed concentration of anti-tank guns in history so far, with support from battleship bombardment, would have gone fantastically.

German generals liked to blame Hitler for every failure once the dust settled.  He made a convenient scapegoat.

As far as i recall there were no battleships, there was mostly a fleet of fishermen with their boats and trawlers. But that aside, Hitler had some strategic genius every now and then, Dunkirk was not one of them. The fact that he didnt send in troops into Dunkirk is the only reason all those british escaped. Now you can of course argue that fighting them would have held them up,

but a) most of them were basically pretty close to surrendering already and had abandoned their weapons and gear in general,
and b) those tank divisions were sitting around dunkirk the entire time during the cities bombardement. Its not like they were held up. They just sat around on orders of Adolf.

Now as for Rommel, you might argue he thought for strategically useless targets but the fact is that germany should have mabye invested more troops in africa. Having Oil from North Africa and the Iraq would have allowed them a far better outcome in Russia. A Properly supported Africa Campaigns would have led to a safer mediterranean, more oil and a lot of freed up italian support. And while you can argue the competence of said Italian Units they would at least have freed up several Garrisons in Western and Eastern Europe, which could have been deployed eastwards.

[mainiac]

b) those tank divisions were sitting around dunkirk the entire time during the cities bombardement. Its not like they were held up. They just sat around on orders of Adolf.

Tank divisions in 1940 weren't like tank divisions today, or even tank divisions in 1943.  Even successful fighting would rapidly deplete their strength through damaged vehicles.  Yes more British soldiers would have been captured but it means the Germans cant press the attack afterwards.  The Germans need to actually conquer France.  They had a huge stroke of luck in that the Sedan attack succeeded beyond their wildest imagination.  Giving the French time to stabilize the front and they quickly are back to their original problem: they only have a couple weeks of ammunition left.  Remember, in WWI the French were driven back to the banks of the Seine but then held the front.

It's a bit like saying that Germany should have gone for goal 8 in the 2014 world cup.  Well you shouldn't just assume that the first 7 goals are going to happen.  The German airforce had already taken heavy losses at this point, now you want to squander the mobile divisions and artillery ammo reserves and then just assume they can waltz into Paris after giving the French another week to prepare.

Now as for Rommel, you might argue he thought for strategically useless targets but the fact is that germany should have mabye invested more troops in africa.

No the fact is that Germany couldn't put more troops in Africa because of the physical capacity limits of the ports they used and the fact that Rommel wanted his supplies sent two thousand kilometers through desert roads.  Van Crevald has a wonderful account in Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton and it's a book that renders most of the writing on the theatre rubbish.

[Ghazkull]

Meh, i don't think at that point that Dunkirk was even remotely close to holding out for another week. Those troops there weren't orderly retreating anymore they were fleeing the theater headlong.

And we are not talking about a negligible amount of British Soldiers. We are talking about 300,000 of them, at that point thats 1/3rd of the British Army. Thats a crippling blow and would definetly remove Britain from any offensive actions or even directly supporting the French for quite a long time.

Now your argument would stand if we would assume that all those troops around dunkirk had historically abandoned the siege of the city while the airforce continued bombing the town but fact is that those troops sat around for the entire siege around teh city doing exactly fuck all besides sieging it. THey were not fighting the french as you say above but were siegeing the city until finally the last of the british had fled.

Now if they would have moved in with their tanks the time period the siege had taken (i think it was a week?) would have been severly shorter and the french would have had even less time to recover, adding to that the 300.000 losses to the british that would have been more successful than what happened historically.

As for the African Theatre, i will concede the point, i would have to read up on that at the moment and would propably only find that you are right 

[mainiac]

propably only find that you are right 

Meh, i don't think at that point that Dunkirk was even remotely close to holding out for another week.

They held out for 10 days after the German attack started historically.  And it's not like all the German forces were in position to attack on the 24th.

Those troops there weren't orderly retreating anymore they were fleeing the theater headlong.

Dont know where you get that impression from.  They had just launched a counter attack immediately before withdrawing to Dunkirk.  They also had the French 1st and 2nd DLM which were pretty much the most badass troops in the French army.

[Loud Whispers]

MAINIAC GROWS STRONGER ON YOUR CONCESSIONS

[mainiac]

MAINIAC GROWS STRONGER ON YOUR CONCESSIONS

Much like the Wehrmacht, everytime someone surrenders to me it means I have new weapons.

[Ghazkull]

Well as i see it on the 24th all that was defending dunkirk and those three hundred thousand fleeing folks was a single batallion of british troops. Had the ffive divisions under rundstedt attacked then they would have taken the city iwthin the day or maybe two days or something.

However as the Halt Order came from either Rundstedt or Adolf, they sat around two days doing nothing.
Meanwhile the French and British rallied quite a bunch of men and shored up their defenses...which caused the siege to draw out. Now by this point we are not talking about panicked men anymore (although a lot where still hanging around the beach doing their best to get the fuck out of dodge) at least not at the frontlines of Dunkirk. On top of that there were explicit orders to let the Luftwaffe do the Job, afte rall old Goering wanted to stroke his ego...which led to a rather successful evacuation.

[Radio Controlled]

Was gonna type something, realized I could just quote a post I once remembered seeing:

Hitler goes Super Aryan and obliterates them...

Seriously, supposedly the Germans halted the attack because they were concerned about running out of supplies & wanted the logistics to catch up. Plus Goering wanted to be cool and use his Lutwaffe to beat the British and thus they escaped because... Goering (Okay not really). Lets say the German commander on the ground Gerd von Rundstedt was more aggressive and kept up the attack, and managed to make an evacuation too difficult leading the BEF to surrender.

I would say the British would probably keep fighting ,but would be in a worse position with alot of soldiers and experienced officers neutralized. I think Britain would become more paranoid of defending the Home Islands, and could very possibly have lost control of North Africa, because instead of just replacing war material lost they would have to train & equip entirely new units.

Nope. If von Rundstedt kept up the attack, he would have had his face kicked in and failed to stop the evacuation.

The Germans had outrun their logistics; they were low on fuel and ammo, but they were also low on spare parts, and a of of their vehicles were on the verge of becoming mechanical casualties. Early war tanks were not fantastically reliable. On top of that, they didn't have much in the way of things like artillery support, because they'd outrun that as well. The British, in contrast, had fallen back onto their supply lines, so they were well supplied with everything, on top of potential naval support and air support from the other side of the channel if things got dire enough.

Dunkirk itself was terrible tank country, being surrounded by boggy ground and protected along much of the outside of town by a large canal. The British had so many troops trapped there that they could afford to be strong everywhere; there was nowhere to outflank them, the only way in was a direct frontal assault. Dug in around the perimeter were several hundred QF 3.7" AA guns, the British answer to the German FlaK 88. Those weren't suitable for AT use in the field, like the 88, because they were heavier and the carriages weren't really well designed for it, but in a situation where they wouldn't have to be moved, they were just as deadly. Any German armoured attack would have ended up literally bogged down, in the open, right in the sights of all of those guns, and then they would have reached the canal and been unable to cross. It was, really, an incredibly strong defensive position, and the British were evacuating troops from there even before von Rundstedt halted.

The only way to swing it is for the British to surrender on account of the 'hopeless' situation, which isn't exactly inconceivable (they did it at Singapore, for example, despite being in a much stronger position relative to the Japanese invasion force). The BEF actually being destroyed militarily by the German forces facing it at that point is unlikely in the extreme.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Just reading about the whole Dunkirk evacuations and would like to point out that the French actually did a heroic job of keeping the germans at bay.

[Strife26]

Remember, the truth of history is completely and totally dependant on what historian you're reading and whose aar's they're working off of.

[Loud Whispers]

Just reading about the whole Dunkirk evacuations and would like to point out that the French actually did a heroic job of keeping the germans at bay.

Perhaps the roughest ones were the Brits chosen for the rearguard. 1 in 8 were told they'd not be going home... One way or another.