Posted on 07/19/2017 6:53:21 AM PDT by naturalman1975
Please don’t take this as pro-Hitler, but didn’t he let the British army escape? I have read several times it was one of his biggest blunders.
General George Patton would agree with you! He saw the Communists in the former USSR for what they really were.
Hitler had more than 3 blunders, he could have taken the Suez canal, but didn't emphasize North Africa. He didn't follow his original timeline nor finish his aircraft carriers. The dude was egotistical and irrational, thank God for that...
Ten million of those Russians were starved by their own government, and Stalin used the war as an excuse for many atrocities against his own.
Allying ourselves with the Sovs was brilliant at the time - and it was really amusing to watch the American Communists do a 180 about entering the war in June '41 - but permitting the Communists to read our secrets and maybe guide our policies was the FDR regime's greatest blunder/maybe treason.
They may have preferred the NAZIs, one of France’s unspoken truths, quite a few French thought the NAZIs were just fine. Obviously more supported the allies, but quite a few enthusiastically supported Hitler.
Thanks for posting. I haven’t been to a movie in years...(Hollywierd and all that) yet this film interests me from a history perspective. I probably won’t go, but thanks for posting.
HOORAY Brits
In the 1980’s I was working in the machine industry for a Swiss company and was in Hanau for a sales meeting with our German rep. Over lunch he began talking about how the Americans destroyed the city towards the end of WWII, which was unnecessary since the war for the Nazis was all but lost. I mentioned to him that my mother was born in London in 1939 and as a young girl had to often scamper into the back yard into their private bomb shelter when the Nazis bombed civilian targets in the nation’s capitol. He shut up after that.
The Germans did not press their attack as strongly as they could have. If they had, it's very likely the evacuation would have been far less successful.
Why they didn't do so is the subject of a massive amount of study over the years. But it really looks like it was mostly a matter of them not wanting to risk their tanks - losses to tank units had been quite heavy, and the ground around Dunkirk was not ideal for tank operations. So they stopped temporarily and that gave time for the evacuation to take place. Hitler and quite a lot of his Generals seemed to have believed at the time, that if Britain was allowed to withdraw across the channel, some sort of peace could have been negotiated - in essence that Britain would have agreed to a peace settlement in exchange for leaving Germany to rule Europe. That was a severe miscalculation in the end, but remember Britain was not capable of returning to Europe until it did so as part of a force combined with the United States. If the United States had remained a non-combatant power, it would have been years, if ever, before Hitler's rule in Europe would have been challenged. Churchill's speeches I quoted earlier show he was well aware that all Britain could do was fight a holding action to survive until the US became involved.
Hitler deep down never really wanted to invade Britain, he merely wanted them neutralized, so he could turn his attention to Russia.
Britain has a sad history of stupid, blundering command. My theory is that their officers tend to be aloof and stuck in pre-set tradition.
Anyway, I’m with you about not getting too excited about Dunkirk. Dumbkirk.
British dumbness was rescued by Hitler’s greater blunder.
Dunkirk was Hitler’s first major blunder-he should have captured the British army.
FedGov under FDR was so heavily saturated with reds that the alignment was a virtual given after Hitler turned on Stalin; however, even if that had not been the case, I suspect we would have still allied with them in opposing Germany. In retrospect it was a mistake, but we have the benefit of 70 years of hindsight. While the war itself was raging the outcome was uncertain and one only need look at the news of the day. We didn't know the full capabilities of the German u-boat fleet. Many in our nuclear program perceived we were in a race against Germany to master the a-bomb and even after Midway, the extent of resources needed to fully crush the Japanese were a huge unknown.
Certainly, aligning with Uncle Joe and conceding eastern Europe to him after the war was a big mistake, but at the time, I suspect the decision made more sense than not.
I always figured that Hitler declared war on the US because he wanted to go after the US convoys supplying both the Brits and the Russians. The U boats took a terrible toll until we got convoys and ASW figured out. Had he been able to cut off that pipeline then things would have been questionable for both.
I’ve always felt that we should have supplied the Soviets just enough to keep them in the war but not enough to let them win. Let the Nazis and the Commies (two peas from the same pod) destroy each other. To borrow a quote from elsewhere “It’s a shame they couldn’t both lose”.
It is sad that the US almost allowed Britain to be defeated and had to be bombed before entering the war.
Our military was in pathetic shape.
Yep, that and his blitzkrieg into France, Belgium and the Netherlands was quickly running out of steam. Buildup for Operation Sea Lion was going to take time and be costly. Enter Goering with a grand plan to bring Britain to its knees while Operation Barbarossa was spinning up.
Yes, the US would have benefited from their ingenious use of tanks on Normandy, but rejected using them.
Of course we're not living up to what that generation accomplished. We're pissing it away little by little every day.
I can never hear or read those quotes by Churchill without getting goosebumps. Sometimes they bring tears to my eyes. He was the right man at the right place at the right time. President Trump is no Churchill but I pray he can stand in the breach and rouse a nation the way Winston once did.
Yes, for some reason he got cold feet and held his units back from finishing the Brits off.
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