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Dunkirk... was it that bad a German idea?

Craig B said:
One would think that decisions about what has to be done to enable units to regroup, resupply etc, in the course of an offensive ought to me made directly by the commanders of the operation rather than by the C in C and Head of State. Whatever Hitler's reasons and motives, was he justified in imposing his judgement on his commanders in the field during the climax of an offensive operation?
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Well yes he was, in as much as he was simply ratifying what von Rundstedt had already determined who was ultimately the commander of the operation.

Divisional commanders aren't given complete freedom of command for a reason. They only see what their division is doing, its up to Corps, Army and Army Group commanders to see the big picture and excercise control over their divisions.

Rommel is a classic example of a divsional commander who had no concept of the big picture and he very nearly got his broccoli boiled by an ad hoc and under strength British counter attack.

This is the whole reason for having a high command in the first place......

And it wasn't the only time Hitler got it right - his decision to impose a "no retreat" order on the Wehrmacht in the winter of 41/42 almost certainly saved the Germans from an annihilating defeat.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
In addition the area around Dunkirk was waterlogged. Areas of land were deliberately flooded to hamper the German advance, It was open country with restricted movement for tanks. They would have suffered if they had tried to advance on the beaches and town.
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Yes, and as per my above post, the Germans well knew the land around Dunkirk was unsuitable for tanks, and they had experience of who poorly tanks perform in urban areas from the Polish campaign.

On top of this, fully half of Panzer group Kleist’s tanks were out of action (the unit to the direct west of the Dunkirk perimeter, and so was a third of Hoth’s XV Panzerkorps.

These formations comprised the bulk of Germany’s armoured and motorised divisions.

Throwing your precious and scarce armour into an apparently totally unnecessary battle in an environment it was totally unsuited for who be entirely reckless.

And again, its not that the Nazis didn't have form for recklessness, but this was a rare example of common sense.
 
rjh01 said:
I suggest Hitler did not have many options. He could not use his army for reasons explained above. He would not want to use his navy. So that left his Air Force, which is what he used.

If he had tried to use the Navy the British Navy would have come out and it would be a WW2 version of Jutland.
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That is also true. However, and above all, we have to remember that Hitler was no great strategist. He was probably a political genius, but as a war commander he was emotional and narrow-minded. ... And that was before insanity started to kick in in the last years of the war. ...

We shall never know for sure, but it is entirely possible that, faced with the already mentioned problems, he simply lost initiative and hesitated till it was too late. ... He was certainly not the kind of leader who would tell his generals: "Well you are there, fix this for us!".

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
That is also true. However, and above all, we have to remember that Hitler was no great strategist. He was probably a political genius, but as a war commander he was emotional and narrow-minded. ... And that was before insanity started to kick in in the last years of the war. ...

We shall never know for sure, but it is entirely possible that, faced with the already mentioned problems, he simply lost initiative and hesitated till it was too late. ... He was certainly not the kind of leader who would tell his generals: "Well you are there, fix this for us!".

Hans
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Its been repeatedly highlighted by myself and others that Hitler merely confirmed von Rundstedt's orders.

Not only was Hitler correct in his assessment, by any objective standards, but he was frequently correct in over-ruling his generals, not least at Dunkirk and in the winter of 41/42.

The whole "Hitler didn't listen to his generals" trope is a post war clean Wehrmacht fallacy.
 
If I recall correctly, the only reason the evacuation was succesful was that a doomed French army refused to surrender, delaying the Germans and forced them to fight on several fronts. That, I think, might be where Sun Tzu's adage, and German failure to heed it, comes into play.
 
Hubert Cumberdale said:
Its been repeatedly highlighted by myself and others that Hitler merely confirmed von Rundstedt's orders.

Not only was Hitler correct in his assessment, by any objective standards, but he was frequently correct in over-ruling his generals, not least at Dunkirk and in the winter of 41/42.

The whole "Hitler didn't listen to his generals" trope is a post war clean Wehrmacht fallacy.
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Indeed. Hitler seems to have had decent strategic intuitions. Things really go south when he takes charge following Moscow - but that was a matter of his generals realizing the war was unwinnable.
 
@Hubert Cumberdale
Let me clarify my hypothesis.

IF the Germans COULD just charge in and capture the BEF, of course that would have been clearly the preferable outcome.

My point however is that, as you also note, there were serious problems with that. Basically they couldn't realistically do that.

Whether intentional or not on the part of Germans (and yeah, it probably wasn't intentional) I'm saying that the Brits having an escape route actually worked in Germany's favour in the short run. As in, leaving them to fight only the French and finish taking France.

I'm saying that Germany would have had higher losses for the same short term goal -- taking France -- if they decided to just YOLO charge. Not just because of the logistics problems and the unsuitable terrain, but also because it would have forced the BEF to stand and fight too. So, you know, they'd fight a bigger army there, all the while they'd have a lot of other problems piling up.

So basically, in the short run, if they couldn't realistically take the BEF too (or not without very high losses if they went Leeroy Jenkins all the way on them), this was realistically the best short term outcome. I.e., it kinda worked in Germany's favour. In the short run.

Of course, in the long run, well, that's another question.
 
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TubbaBlubba said:
Indeed. Hitler seems to have had decent strategic intuitions. Things really go south when he takes charge following Moscow - but that was a matter of his generals realizing the war was unwinnable.
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Hitler and his generals were taken by surprise by the Russian counter-attack from Moscow in 1941. I think it's dangerous to underestimate the panzer grenadier, or German heavy tanks. General Alan Brooke was quoted once in his diaries as saying the Germans are wonderful soldiers. As an armchair strategist myself, I think it was a strategic mistake to order his generals not to retreat an inch. Von Paulus, who was in charge of the doomed German sixth army at Stalingrad called Hitler a Bavarian corporal, even though I think he was born in Austria, for not allowing him to make a strategic withdrawal when he still had a chance.
 
Born in Austria but served in WW1 in the Bavarian Army. The German Imperial Army consisted of armies raised by the states but serving the Confederation.
 
Henri McPhee said:
Hitler and his generals were taken by surprise by the Russian counter-attack from Moscow in 194.
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More precisely, they were surprised that there was still such a thing as the Russian army. They realized it was unwinnable because they had grossly underestimated the Russians, lost countless men and materials, and had far too thin a front to stretch further.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Indeed. Hitler seems to have had decent strategic intuitions. Things really go south when he takes charge following Moscow -
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I'd phrase it more as:

Hitler loved making 'positive' double-or-nothing gambles. These paid off while he was on a roll, but became disastrous once Germany was on a losing streak.

(i.e. I'd argue that he didn't ever have great strategic intuition - he just liked pushing his luck, probably due to meglomania)
 
Given all the points raised here I think an argument can be made that throwing the armour into the fighting around Dunkirk would have been the mistake. Without that fast moving armoured spearhead perhaps the French would have had the time to rally and dig in?
 
Giz said:
I'd phrase it more as:

Hitler loved making 'positive' double-or-nothing gambles. These paid off while he was on a roll, but became disastrous once Germany was on a losing streak.

(i.e. I'd argue that he didn't ever have great strategic intuition - he just liked pushing his luck, probably due to meglomania)
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Yeah. Hard to tell when his mental abilities began to decline too.

But anyway, it's not really much to hold against him any more than you'd hold Churchill's idea of the "soft underbelly of Europe" against him. Invading Russia was a suicide mission that his generals were in on. They were enthusiastic as hell about it.
 
Giz said:
I'd phrase it more as:

Hitler loved making 'positive' double-or-nothing gambles. These paid off while he was on a roll, but became disastrous once Germany was on a losing streak.

(i.e. I'd argue that he didn't ever have great strategic intuition - he just liked pushing his luck, probably due to meglomania)
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I hesitate to say something like I have sympathy for Hitler because that isn't the right word, but the common perception of his military leadership is somewhat coloured by the fact that all the surviving generals simply dumped on him after the war, blaming him for all their own shortcomings (and the SS for all their own atrocities).

Up to a point at least, he was very capable of taking advice and making informed and well advised opinions.

His decision to go with Manstein's plan in 1940 is one such example, and as I have mentioned before, his decision to make the army stay put in the winter of 41/42 almost certainly saved it from an annihilating routing.

Unlike with matters pertaining to basic humanity (like not murdering millions of people), his generals were more than willing to argue their points with him on military matters, to which he frequently aquiesced.

Manstein actually mocked Hitlers "obsession" with things like supplies of coal, iron, and steel, frustrated that he didn't give him free reign to prosecute his bewegungskrieg unencumbered by such banalities like where his fuel was going to come from.

Many of the most gratuitous misjudgements were the product of the generals and not just Hitler alone. And I include amongst those Barbarossa (as TubbaBlubba mentions), and Kursk.

Hitler was of course a monstrous person, but his military acumen was often surprisingly sharp.
 
The book "Soldat, reflections of a German Soldier" by Siegfried Knappe has what I feel is an apt observation about Hitler. He was a compulsive gambler who won't stop when he is winning, and can't stop when he's losing.
 
theprestige said:
I still want to know who's saying Dunkirk was a bad German idea.
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That would be me.

Hitler did not want to go to war with the British in the late 1930’s. He knew that such a war would be very difficult and expensive.

Instead, Hitler had the weird expectation that the British would not to fight Germany while he was leading Germany on a fight to destroy the USSR. Hitler did not really expect that the British would help him to fight the USSR, but Hitler did at least expect that the British would not actively do anything to impede his war with the USSR.

But of course, Hitler’s actions wound up forging a serious alliance between the British, the USSR and the USA, and there was no way that Germany could deal with all of those enemies simultaneously.

In my opinion, even if things worked out the way Hitler expected, then he would have gone to war the British after the USSR was knocked down and Hitler had a chance to further expand his military resources.
 
What about the possibility that to give the order to attack in that situation is difficult due to it's tastelessness? Maybe their emotional capital was expended?
 
Crossbow said:
That would be me.

Hitler did not want to go to war with the British in the late 1930’s. He knew that such a war would be very difficult and expensive.

Instead, Hitler had the weird expectation that the British would not to fight Germany while he was leading Germany on a fight to destroy the USSR. Hitler did not really expect that the British would help him to fight the USSR, but Hitler did at least expect that the British would not actively do anything to impede his war with the USSR.

But of course, Hitler’s actions wound up forging a serious alliance between the British, the USSR and the USA, and there was no way that Germany could deal with all of those enemies simultaneously.

In my opinion, even if things worked out the way Hitler expected, then he would have gone to war the British after the USSR was knocked down and Hitler had a chance to further expand his military resources.
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That may be. The problem was to "knock down" the USSR, a much larger and more populous country than Germany. He wagered too high a stake on the notion that once he had kicked in the door, the whole rotten structure would come crashing down, as Göbbels I think put it. Something a bit like that happened in France, and the prospect of a repetition of such a cheap success turned Hitler's head. If it had worked against the USSR, no doubt Hitler would then have gone "third time lucky" against the UK. He was a madman.
 
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