Posted on 07/30/2017 6:16:31 AM PDT by Twotone
I liked Christopher Nolan's Interstellar because the bad guy was a fraudulent climate scientist called Dr Mann. So I was hoping Dunkirk might feature a sadistic Gestapo officer called Obergruppenklimatführer Mann. But Dunkirk is not that kind of a war film. Indeed, Christopher Nolan says it's not a war film at all but a survival movie. And in May of 1940 it was not a question merely of individual survival, but of national survival, too.
Nolan belongs to the last generation of Britons for whom the word Dunkirk is of mythic proportions. He's pushing fifty, and I find it hard to believe it means as much to those born in the Nineties. Beyond the Commonwealth, and certainly in America, Dunkirk signifies nothing. But in dear old Blighty it cast, as I wrote the other day, a very long shadow...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
More from Steyn:
>They won the war, and lost their country anyway. Britain’s new invaders arrive at Dover, and Heathrow and Gatwick, every day of the week, annexing territory and incubating therein the men who run you down on London bridges, and stab you in restaurants, and blow you up at pop concerts, and decapitate you in the streets. A little after mid-century, there’ll still be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover, but the “white British” - ie, the men and women seen in this film - will be a minority in their own islands. <
That’s what happens when you go from a Winston Churchill to a Theresa May. We are sorely lacking for men (& women) of great vision & common sense.
~C.S. Lewis
It’s the left. They will always squander the hard work of others.
I was about to post the same exact excerpt...
A sad epilogue of cowardly submission to a story of great courage.
That movie would have been unbelievably powerful if it had included Steyn’s epilogue in its final scenes.
Few people truly understand how just by one ill-timed decision by Hitler, Dunkirk became synonymous with salvation instead of total defeat like Waterloo.
The Abolition of Man should be required reading.
Thankfully had Hitler not been a military dilettante the entire British Army would have been trapped and annihilated.
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Actually, thankfully the people of Briton still served God. Every day during the Evacuation crisis the whole country prayed for deliverance, everyday at noon. God rewarded this devotion to prayer with pouring down rain that kept the German planes out of the sky and the German observers from knowing what artillery the English had at Dunkirk so that Hitler didn’t want to risk his Tanks to the Artillery. On top of that the Chanel was as calm as a pond during the evacuation so that the small boats could get across safely.
Would we today come to know as well as they did and serve Him and be blessed by Him.
The film must be seen on the big screen. Don’t wait for the DVD.
I had never heard of the Schleiffen Plan. Funnily enough, there was a question on Jeopardy about it this week. So, I looked it up. Eerie to see the reference twice this week. Sadly, I believe that much of Europe is on it’s last legs, unless they can throw off the invaders. But that would require that they RECOGNIZE the enemy in their midst and RESPOND accordingly.
Not one mention of prayer in Dunkirk. The film was atheist and therefore, along with the ridiculous up to date and up to the minute perfect shaven 2017 brat close shaven hairdos, factually inaccurate.
You’re mixing up your plans. The Manstein Plan of 1940 completely altered the Schleiffen Plan of 1914. The Brits were very prepared for the 1914 plan and that is why they were positioned where they were positioned.
Schleifen himself warned that the Germans had to use a risky economy-of-force (undermanned force) across the main front in order to make the right wing strong enough. In 1914 it just barely failed because the Germans did not accept enough risk to give the main attack quite enough mass.
Von Schlieffen Plan is WWI! Strong right wing (single envelopment), quote from the German general staff, “ Let the last man (meaning one furthest out on the right wing!) brush the Channel with his sleeve..”
In 1940 the Germans did an armored & motorized infantry assault through the Ardennes. This caught the Allies by surprise! Both right & left flanks (wings) heavily defended by the Allies. One flank the Maginot Line, the other the BEF (minus the 51st Highland Division) the middle was Ardennes and was very lightly defended. It was rough terrain, tanks & vehicles supposedly couldn’t get through it. Guess what? They did! Allies were split in two the BEF plus some French & others retreated to the Channel. That sets up Dunkirk. The rest of the French Army retreats toward Paris as south. Huge hole opens up in the middle exploited by the Germans. The Allies actually had more and better quality tanks then the Germans but poor armor doctrine squandered the advantage. The one French general who understood what to do with armor actually defeated the Germans I think twice in local battles. It wasn’t enough, the general’s name was Charles De Gaulle! The French government was completely demoralized. In a state of panic and as always seems to be the case in French history (with one notable exception!) the leadership betrayed the courage of the rank and file. An honest reading of French military history will show that the French soldier often displayed crazy levels of courage! Unfortunately his national leadership often put him in impossible situations.
bttt
“...The Allies actually had more and better quality tanks then the Germans but poor armor doctrine squandered the advantage...”
Rommel was a relatively unknown Panzer division commander and his unit was largely armed with Czech T38s that were very small as were most of the German tanks in the Ardennes attack. The medium MKIVs were in very limited numbers and even the light MkIIIs were in short supply. The MkIIs were really just scout vehicles with a 20mm cannon and a machine gun. Still the Germans put a whole mess of them at the decisive time and place.
Let the right sleeve of the right-most soldier brush the Channel.
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