The German armored thrust through the Ardennes had surrounded and isolated hundreds of thousands of French, British, and Belgian soldiers, and soldiers from other Allied nations.
The Royal Navy began a last-ditch attempt to evacuate as many as possible from the French port of Dunkirk.
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Fanfare
Opening War Theme
“Mars, the Bringer of War” from The Planets.
Composed in 1916 by Gustav Holst. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band. Public domain recording. Source.
Closing War Theme
Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.
Two good cinematic depictions of the evacuation are of course the Christopher Nolan movie “Dunkirk” and there was a several minute long tracking shot in the movie “Atonement” where James McAvoy walks along the beach near Dunkirk during the battle.
Great episode as usual.
I am always a bit skeptical when podcasters or historians say ‘General/leader A of country X was too cautious, had he not halted his army X could have completely destroyed the enemy.’ The same podcasters or historians may say on another occasion: ‘General/leader B of country Y achieved some initial success, but then pushed too far which resulted in a defeat for Y. General B should have been more cautious’.
Decision making under uncertainty with incomplete information and delay is very hard, especially when new untested technology is involved.
Second guessing decisions made by leaders of the past is part of what historians do. You are entirely correct that we do this with access to information in hindsight that the decision makers of the time did not have, and we have to take this into account when evaluating them as leaders, but evaluating the leader and evaluating the decision are two separate acts. Identifying mistakes made by leaders of the past helps teach leaders of the future not to make the same mistake.
And even so, in cases when a leader in the past made decisions that today seem exceptionally wise and far-sighted, we give them credit for that. Winston Churchill comes to mind as an example. If we are going to credit those leaders for their remarkable perception, it’s only fair also to take note of leaders who prove less perceptive. Think Neville Chamberlain.
It may be possible to evaluate one’s judgement and dedication, as for instance in Churchill’s case being an implacable opponent of Hitler from early on. However the specific military decisions can be quite hard to judge. I want to illustrate this with chess. Nowadays powerful computer programs are extremely good at finding the best moves, whereas even the best humans make many mistakes in a game. This is well known; what I want to underline is that humans are really bad even with hindsight: the old ‘pre-computer’ era chess books written by the best players contain plenty of mistakes. That is right, even with all the hindsight and with plenty of time to analyze the games even the best chess minds still make objective mistakes.
And while chess is a complex game, I doubt it ever comes close to the complexities of the warfare in the 20th century, with new technology entering the field all the time, imperfect information, and a vast number of moving pieces. We do not have a powerful program which would tell us which decisions were correct or wrong for each side. We cannot know what the outcome would have been had the supposedly ‘correct’ decisions been made. Therefore I think some caution is warranted when talking about ‘missed chances’, for example when talking about Germany’s decision not to immediately push for Dunkirk. Criticizing military decisions of the side that achieved a crushing victory in May and June 1941 because maybe the victory could have been even more complete feels like a narrative created after the war. I am no historian but I doubt many observers at the time would have felt that Hitler missed his chances; surely they would have been completely overwhelmed by the fact that France was being crushed so quickly and decisively, France, a country with a huge army that probably played the main role in beating Germany in WW1, was collapsing within weeks.
Now obviously there is a nuance to the idea of being cautious in judging military decisions, for example it seems pretty safe to say that the incessant insistence on attacking entrenched positions in WW1, or the French troop positioning in May 1941 were just bad calls.