Battle of Dunkirk

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Battle of Dunkirk
The course of Fall Gelb from May 21 to June 4, 1940
The course of Fall Gelb from May 21 to June 4, 1940
date May 26 to June 5, 1940
place Dunkirk , France
output German victory, evacuation of allied troops
Parties to the conflict

United KingdomUnited Kingdom United Kingdom France Belgium
Third French RepublicThird French Republic 
BelgiumBelgium 

German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire

Commander

United KingdomUnited Kingdom Lord Gort Maxime Weygand
Third French RepublicThird French Republic

German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) Gerd von Rundstedt Fedor von Bock
German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era)

Troop strength
approx. 400,000
338,226 evacuated 		approx. 800,000
losses

United KingdomUnited Kingdom68,111 killed, wounded and captured, 2,472
guns
63,879 vehicles, including almost all tanks dead and wounded unknown, 115,000 prisoners (80,000 in Dunkirk, 35,000 in the pocket of Lille) around 5,000 dead and around 500,000 prisoners Allied naval and air forces:
Third French RepublicThird French Republic

BelgiumBelgium

approx. 20,000 killed and wounded (estimate)
over 100 tanks (estimate)
132 aircraft

The Battle of Dunkirk took place in May and June 1940 during the western campaign during World War II . During the German western campaign, the northern French city of Dunkirk was the last evacuation port of the British Expeditionary Force , which was deployed in France in 1939/1940 as part of the initially defensive strategy of the Western Allies . It succeeded the British and French, the bridgehead to defend until they over 330,000 of about 370,000 of its soldiers in Operation Dynamo had evacuated. The city was captured by the German Wehrmacht on June 4th.

Starting position

Despite warnings from high officers, Adolf Hitler ordered the attack on the Benelux countries and France on May 10, 1940 ("Fall Gelb") . Army Group B under Colonel General Fedor von Bock went through Belgium and the Netherlands in the north .

After the advance of German Army Group A under Gerd von Rundstedt across the Ardennes and the enforcement of the crossing over the Meuse at Sedan (→  Battle of Sedan ), tank formations under General Ewald von Kleist reached the scene of the battle on May 19 the Somme in the First World War . At the same time, Army Group B continued its advance through Belgium in the north. Due to the German breakthrough in the south, the commander-in-chief of the Allied Northern Group Gaston Billotte , to which the British and Belgian armies were subordinate, ordered a retreat from the Dyle line to the Scheldt on May 16 . Hitler and the Wehrmacht generals were surprised by the speed of their units' advance. Through the advance of the XIX. Army corps of Panzer Group Kleist under Heinz Guderian it became apparent on May 18 that the main thrust of the attack by Army Group A was neither the Maginot Line in the southeast nor Paris in the south: Guderian rolled west, towards the Atlantic coast.

Since the French 3rd Army Group in the south was largely limited to defending the Somme Line, it exposed the southwestern flank of the Allied Northern Army Group. This made it clear that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under Lord Gort , the Belgian Army and the French 1st Army and 7th Army could be separated from the main French forces in the south. The way for the German armored divisions to roll up the rear areas of the Allied Northern Group and to conquer the canal ports of Calais and Boulogne was open. On May 19, the Royal Navy began preparing a rescue operation on behalf of the English War Cabinet under Winston Churchill and following a proposal by Lord Gort. Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay was entrusted with the planning ; in the planning phase, the evacuation of 300,000 soldiers was expected.

Attempts to close the gap between the Somme in the south and the Scarpe in the north, through which the German tank units were advancing, were just as unsuccessful as a British-led counterattack near Arras on May 21, which consumed the last tank reserves of the Northern Army. Already on May 20, the 2nd Panzer Division of the XIX. Army Corps reached the Channel coast at Abbeville . The Allied Northern Group with around 1,200,000 men (63 divisions: 29 French, 22 Belgian and 12 British) was thus enclosed by Army Group A in the south and Army Group B in the east between the Somme and the sea. On the German side, the decision was made to turn north to tighten the containment ring and take the canal ports.

Lord Gort had a choice to make: either to assist the French allies in battle and risk Britain's main force, or to try to escape across the sea. Although he was acting contrary to the interests of the French army command above him , he proposed by telegram to the British War Minister Anthony Eden that he attempt an evacuation. Nevertheless, Gort let the French commander-in-chief Maxime Weygand believe for several days that British troops would take part in a double offensive to reunite the Northern Group with the French main forces, through which the German armored divisions themselves would have been cut off from their connections.

Two million Belgian and eight million French civilians were on the run from the German Wehrmacht and hindered the mobility of the Allied armies.

Stop command

This article or section needs to be revised: Western campaign # “Rätsel” Dunkirk refers here as the “main article”, but presents the circumstances of the “stop order” in more detail - please compare! Affirmed 18:23, Apr 27, 2016 (CEST).
Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

On May 22nd, Guderian's tanks launched the attack in the direction of Calais and on May 24th were only 18 kilometers from Dunkirk. Unexpectedly, von Rundstedt, confirmed by Hitler during a visit to the front on the same day, stopped the tanks. Such stop orders had already been given in the course of the western campaign, most recently on May 17th. They were intended as a break for the Panzerspitze, which often advanced without adequate accompanying measures, in order to consolidate itself with the rest of the troops. There were also fears that coordinated action by the English in the north and the French in the south might include the armored spearhead. Von Rundstedt did not know that the last British battle tanks had long been parked at Arras. Field Marshal General Hermann Göring also announced that the troops would be destroyed by air strikes alone. Von Rundstedt met this suggestion because he wanted to spare the tanks for the upcoming battle for France (" Fall Rot ") and allow the troops, exhausted by the rapid advance, to rest.

The reasons for the halt order from May 24th are still controversial today. Some historians attribute this to the sheer eccentricity of Hitler, who as a leader wanted to assert himself as the highest authority in relation to the army command. But it is unlikely that he would sacrifice certain military triumph as a result. Other attempted explanations or theses (example: the British troops trapped could serve as pledge for possible peace negotiations with the British) are considered unlikely.

To von Rundstedt's astonishment, on an order from Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch , the Army Commander in Chief , the tanks in the south and southwest of the containment ring were placed under the command of Army Group B, in order to put the troops involved in the encirclement of the enemy under a common high command. This army group, which approached from the east and pushed the Belgian army to the north, only had the 9th Panzer Division until then . Army Group A was now to concentrate with its other armies (2nd, 12th and 16th) on securing the Somme-Aisne line, which was a perfectly sensible measure by the OKH , but von Brauchitsch had this order without knowledge or approval granted by Hitler. Hitler immediately revoked this order, which was supposed to come into effect at 8 p.m. that evening: Army Group B would be able to manage this section without tanks. Hitler also snubbed von Brauchitsch by transferring the further management of operations to Army Group A and thus temporarily ousting the OKH. This added to the confusion over the thrust of the German tank units lying west of the river Aa .

procedure

Allied forces included

Belgian Army, General Laurent

  • 18 divisions

Brit. I. Corps, Lieutenant General Michael Barker

  • 1st Infantry Division - Major General HRLG Alexander
  • 2nd Infantry Division - Major General HC Loyd
  • 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division - Major General AFAN Thorne

Brit. II Corps, Lieutenant General Alan Brooke

Brit. III. Corps, Lieutenant General Sir RF Adam

French 1st Army, General Blanchard

  • III., IV. And V Corps
  • French 60th and 68th divisions

Defense ring

Wounded British prisoners of war are evacuated in a German armored car I after the fall of Calais

Lord Gort and the French 1st Army under the command of General Blanchard now had the opportunity to build a defensive ring around Dunkirk from May 24th to 27th. The deteriorating weather made it difficult for the air force to operate and was therefore an advantage for the Allies.

On May 25th, Boulogne was taken over by the 10th Panzer Division , which became the XIX. Army corps belonged to Guderians, captured. Two British divisions had previously escaped there by sea. The French destroyer Chacal sank after an air raid by Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers (Stukas) of the Luftwaffe. British troops were also in Calais and were not evacuated; they should keep the citadel in the harbor as long as possible. On the morning of May 26th, the port was attacked by Stukas and artillery. Around noon, the tanks of the 10th Panzer Division started the attack. At 4:45 p.m., 20,000 Allied soldiers surrendered, around 5,000 of them British.

On the same day, the German tanks were hurriedly set in motion again near Dunkirk, when an extensive rescue operation (→  Operation Dynamo ) became apparent.

The Belgian army in the north was already approaching collapse and on May 26th informed the Allies that it was not able to fill the gap that had formed with the BEF in the Courtrai area on its own .

May 27th and 28th

Men of the Second Royal Ulster Rifles Regiment wait to be evacuated at Bray Dunes, near Dunkirk, May 1940
British troops embarked in Dunkirk arrive at Dover

On May 27, the defensive ring around Dunkirk was fiercely contested. In the west, French units were pushed back over the Aa. The tanks of the XIX. Army corps penetrated the front like spearheads, but had to wait again and again for infantry to advance to secure the flanks. The front line was irregular.

In the south-west, the 2nd Division of the BEF was able to hold the Bassée Canal against General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division until May 28 . The Allies had no armor-piercing weapons here, but 22 of Rommel's 400 tanks were lost. Then the British retreated north to the Lys .

In the east, the Ypres -Komen Canal was held against the advancing infantry of Army Group B until May 28. The canal was crossed by German grenadiers for the first time on May 27, but was recaptured the following night; both sides suffered heavy losses. These measures made it possible to move the poorly armed and insufficiently trained troops of the British 23rd and 46th Divisions from the corridor to Dunkirk.

On May 28th at 00:00 o'clock on the orders of the Belgian King Leopold III. the Belgian army (22 divisions with approx. 500,000 men) enclosed in the Dunkirk pocket. The eastern flank was thus exposed to Army Group B. The line of defense fell back on a canal some 15 kilometers south of Dunkirk by May 29. This prevented the eastern section from collapsing.

On the afternoon of May 28th, General Blanchard learned personally from Lord Gort of Eden's instructions to evacuate British troops from Dunkirk. Blanchard wanted to hold a bridgehead and expand to Lille . Large parts of the French 1st Army were enclosed in the Lille area and offered resistance until May 31 (there then 35,000 French surrendered), which tied up parts of the German troops. The III. 1st Army Corps made its way to Dunkirk and took part in the evacuation.

May 29th and 30th

British troops and remnants of the French 1st Army were able to stabilize a section west of Dunkirk near Mardyck along a canal to just before Nieuport and hold it for two days. The German tanks were expected in the port of Dunkirk, which had been bombed by the Luftwaffe. Instead, they bypassed the city to the south so as not to obstruct the Air Force's actions.

Lord Gort was summoned to England by direct order from Winston Churchill in order not to fall into German captivity. As his successor as commander in chief of the BEF, Gort appointed Major General Harold Alexander , who, together with Admiral Jean Abrial, the French city commander of Dunkirk, was to hold the defensive ring around Dunkirk for as long as possible. In the meantime the tanks of Army Group A had united with the infantry of Army Group B on the south side of the canal.

May 31st to June 3rd

On May 31, the penultimate line of defense was presumably crossed in several places. The tanks did not take part in this advance, they were already withdrawn to the south for the battle for France.

The German artillery had now captured the heavy artillery at Gravelines in the west and Nieuwpoort in the east and from there occupied the port entrance and large parts of the arrival and departure routes with interference. The port and the city of Dunkirk were also under artillery fire. French and English troops withdrew to the last line of defense, a five-kilometer strip between La Panne and Dunkirk. The British rearguard was replaced more and more by French who did not think about leaving their country. The majority of this rearguard was captured by Germany as a prisoner of war on June 3rd.

Allied soldiers boarded all kinds of ships until the morning of June 4th. Only then was Dunkirk conquered by the 54th Infantry Regiment under Colonel Hermann Recknagel , who received the Knight's Cross two months later . The Army Chief of Staff, General Franz Halder , wrote in his diary: “City and coast in our hands. The French and the English have left. ”In fact, around 80,000 Allied soldiers, mostly French, were taken prisoner by Germany. 50,000 vehicles of all kinds and other heavy military equipment were captured.

Among the British troops last evacuated from Dunkirk were some of the 300 women who served as operator in France with the Auxiliary Territorial Service .

Aircraft missions

Supermarine Spitfire
Junkers Ju 88

The port of Dunkirk suffered severe damage from the German air raids, but it was still usable for the evacuation of the soldiers, especially at night. The bombing of the troops evacuated from the beaches was unsuccessful, as the bombs penetrated deep into the soft sand and their explosions were heavily dampened by the sand. However, many successful attacks on transport ships and warships have also been flown. Had all the air strikes been concentrated on the transport ships, the evacuation of Dunkirk would have been far more lossy. Thousands were probably killed in the bombing. The German bombers suffered many casualties from the warships' flak during their attacks on the ships .

Allied ship losses during the evacuation amounted to 226 sea ​​vessels of all kinds. Most of the ships were lost in air raids.

The Royal Air Force did what it could to secure the evacuation, but it had the disadvantage of the long approach route over the North Sea , which limited the flight time of its fighter planes , which at the time had only a short range, over the combat area. and she was outnumbered. Some Royal Navy Skua and Roc fighter planes that flew over Dunkirk air raids were accidentally shot down by Royal Air Force Spitfires and Hurricanes because they mistook the unknown planes for German machines. The Royal Air Force lost 106 fighters and the Royal Navy also lost fighters when they were deployed over Dunkirk, while the German losses of all aircraft types amounted to 132. Of these, about 50-60 machines were shot down by the flak of the Allied ground forces and the flak of the French and English warships.

The number of German fighter missions over Dunkirk was exactly 2000, with a loss of 37 fighters, the Royal Air Force flew 1764 fighter missions over the combat area.

Result

A total of 338,226 Allied soldiers were transferred to England near Dunkirk, including 85 percent of the British Expeditionary Force, albeit with almost all of the material left behind. On the mainland, the evacuation left a feeling of "abandonment". War fatigue and the desire for an early laying down of arms among the civilian population and the military were the result.

The battle for France ("Fall Rot") continued after the capture of Dunkirk and ended on June 22, 1940 with the surrender of France . By then the French Navy had transported thousands of French soldiers who had been rescued from Dunkirk back to France for further combat from Southampton , and so these soldiers ended up in German captivity.

Memorial plaque in Dunkirk

In Great Britain, the increased risk of invasion initially led to a tightening of Defense Regulation 18B , in the implementation of which politically right-wing people were arrested as sympathizers of the enemy. Archibald Maule Ramsay , other MPs, and the US cipher Tyler Kent were arrested.

The operation, which was unexpectedly successful, brought enormous relief. The lost battle was celebrated like a victory under the state of emergency by the press directed by the Ministry of Information . There was talk of the “miracle of Dunkirk”. Winston Churchill emphasized in his famous speech We Shall Fight on the Beaches before the House of Commons that one could not win a war with an evacuation.

The halt order from May 24th to 26th is viewed by some publicists as a capital tactical mistake, and by others as a military routine. The capture of the entire British expeditionary force would have had a decisive impact on Britain's ability to continue the war against the German Empire, as the loss of this well-trained professional army could not have been compensated at the time. The Luftwaffe could not meet Goering's announcement that it would destroy the encircled troops by air raids alone. The reasons for this are an overestimation of the possibilities of air warfare compared to the level of weapon technology at the time, a mostly low cloud cover over Dunkirk and the resistance of the Royal Air Force.

During the Battle of Dunkirk there were three massacres in the surrounding area on May 27 and 28, 1940, perpetrated by German troops on prisoners of war and civilians: the Le Paradis massacre by a battalion of the 2nd SS Totenkopf Regiment (mot). under Fritz Knöchlein , the Vinkt massacre of the 225th Infantry Division of residents of sub-communities of Deinze , and the Wormhout massacre by a battalion of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler under Wilhelm Mohnke .

See also

Films about the Battle of Dunkirk

literature

Web links

Commons : Operation Dynamo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk, May 27-June 4, 1940. Retrieved April 16, 2010 .
  2. ↑ World War II: Battle and Evacuation of Dunkirk. Retrieved April 17, 2010 .
  3. ^ David Divine: The Nine Days of Dunkirk. Ballantine Books, New York 1959, DNB 1036369528 , p. 265.
  4. ↑ Frieser: Blitzkrieg-Legende , p. 377 in the Google book search.
  5. ↑ Frieser: Blitzkrieg-Legende , p. 377 in the Google book search.
  6. ^ Edward Hooton : Luftwaffe at War, Volume 2: Blitzkrieg in the West 1939-1940 . Midland Publishing, 2008, ISBN 978-1-85780-272-6 , pp. 74 (English).
  7. ^ David Divine: The Nine Days of Dunkirk. Ballantine Books, New York 1959, DNB 1036369528 , p. 265.
  8. ↑ a b Liddell Hart , BH: History of the Second World War . GP Putnam, New York 1970, ISBN 0-306-80912-5 , pp. 46 (English).
  9. ^ Alan JP Taylor , SL Mayer (Ed.): A History Of World War Two . Octopus Books, London 1974, ISBN 0-7064-0399-1 , pp. 60 (English).
  10. ^ Ian Kershaw , Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 . Penguin Books, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-14-101418-0 , pp. 27 .
  11. ^ Unit History: Auxiliary Territorial Service. In: Forces War Records. Clever Digit Media, accessed on June 9, 2019 .
  12. ↑ David Cox: Bloodless, boring and empty: Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk left me cold. In: The Guardian. Guardian News & Media Limited, July 26, 2017, accessed June 9, 2019 .
  13. ↑ www.raf.mod.uk Campaign Diary. The Battle of France (May-June 1940) ( Memento of December 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ John Wellham: With Naval Wings. The Autobiography of a Fleet Air Arm Pilot in World War II. Spellmount Verlag, Chalford (England) 2007, ISBN 978-1-86227-379-5 , pp. 55, 72.
  15. ^ David Divine: The Nine Days of Dunkirk. Ballantine Books, New York 1959, DNB 1036369528 , pp. 260-267.
  16. ↑ Mike Spick: Luftwaffe Fighter Aces. The Jagdflieger and Their Combat Tactics and Techniques. Ballantine Books, New York (USA) 1997, ISBN 0-8041-1696-2 , pp. 37, 39.
  17. ^ David Divine: The Nine Days of Dunkirk. Ballantine Books, New York 1959, DNB 1036369528 , pp. 139, 247.
  18. ↑ Frieser: Blitzkrieg-Legende , p. 377 in the Google book search
  19. ↑ Christopher Nolan: Dunkirk. July 21, 2017. Retrieved November 3, 2016 .
  20. ↑ books.google.de (extract)
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 13, 2005 .