Talk:Battle of Dunkirk

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French Commanders
I added the Commanders of the French 1st Army Group and the French 1st Army to the "Commanders and Leaders" section, as their forces were heavily engaged in the battle, it makes sense that they should be there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.215.213.254 (talk) 11:05, January 4, 2011‎ (UTC)

Breakout the French Evacuated
123,000 of the total evacuated seem to be french can that be put in the battle box, seems a significant statistic? https://www.reseau-canope.fr/cnrd/ephemeride/1183 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.97.24.42 (talk) 14:11, July 28, 2017 (UTC)

Flooding: an astounding omission
The article appears to make no mention whatsoever of a key defensive action by the Allies. As it became clear that German forces would be attacking Dunkirk, the sluice gates that controlled the water levels on the low lying ground that virtually surrounds the port city were opened. Within a few days, the open fields were covered with water, leaving only elevated roads as the only route in for attackers. The Allied defensive positions were on the higher ground.

Not only did this confirm the wisdom of the "halt order" for German armour, but it substantially reduced the proportion of the defensive perimeter that could be meaningfully attacked.

A source that explains this well is Dünkirchen 1940 by Robert Kershaw, publ 2022, ISBN 978 1 4728 5437 7. This may be because the account is from the German point of view and it was the Germans who had to deal with attacking across a flooded landscape. There are other useful snippets in this source, such as the removal of many German units (to prepare for action south of the Somme) before Dunkirk had actually fallen. Also there is the huge under-estimate, in the final 24 hours, of the number of remaining French troops made by the French commander – the result being that the mass of non-combatant troops who had been hiding for much of the battle suddenly appeared for the last evacuation of French troops. The result being that many French combat troops never got out. R Kershaw explains how important it was to the British to extract the experienced front line troops as they were the "seed corn" of the expanded British Army that fought the rest of the war. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Old sources
The section Halt order relies on some very old sources - most of them thirty or forty years old. More recent historians seem to have a consensus that von Rundstedt issued the stop order and that Hitler approved it the next day. The stop order was driven by a need to retain armoured units to continue the fight against the French army – it is important to remember that there was a lot more fighting in France after Dunkirk had been evacuated.

Recent sources that take this approach include Antony Beevor's The Second World War (2012), especially page 106; Robert J Kershaw's  Dünkirchen 1940: The German View of Dunkirk (2022), especially page 158; and, to throw in a quote, "It is clear from these extracts from the German war diaries that the decision to halt the armour on the Canal Line was taken by Rundstedt and subsequently endorsed by Hitler." Julian Thompson Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory (2008) (ch 5).

I think that this part of the article would benefit greatly on being based on sources written in the 21st century.

Incidentally, the last-mentioned source above gives an insight into the difference in thinking between the British military leaders and those of the continental armies (i.e. both the French and the Germans). The British saw reaching a sea port as a means of escape whilst the French and Germans considered the sea a barrier to any further retreat. (see, for instance, pg 294: "Hitler, like the French, had a land-centric view of operations."). This difference in thinking offers some explanation for the feeling that the British Army was beaten by the time they were encircled in Dunkirk. The same source also makes clear that many of the regrets for letting the British escape were expressed a number of years after the event. They were much less evident immediately after Dunkirk had been taken. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 12:40, 12 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree that the Germans saw an army with its back to the sea as a cornered enemy, and the French saw leaving French soil as the end of the fight, but the British saw the sea as an escape route. Beevor and Thompson are excellent sources.  I'm not familiar with Kershaw.  What revisions specifically do you propose?—S Marshall T/C 16:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)


 * My inclination would be to completely rewrite the entire section. The justification is that the article content is very different from what one would expect if it had been written earlier this year: a typical Wikipedia evolution that has done its duty and now needs revolution. I appreciate that may be a bit too much for some editors to accept – but all I can do is say it as I see it.
 * I would have to do a bit of re-reading of sources to come up with any precise suggestions.
 * Robert Kershaw is another military historian with actually military experience. A snippet from a review: "As a former [British army] professional soldier who attended the German staff college, spent two years seconded to the Bundeswehr, speaks fluent German and is now a respected historian, there can be no one better qualified to analyse the 1940 campaign from the German perspective than Colonel Robert Kershaw." I believe that the Times's review is what led me to read this book. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:09, 12 September 2023 (UTC)