21Dec06

Revisionist History?

Yesterday, while listening to network news, a commentator, who surely shoul d have known better, made reference to the "grand British victory =9D at Dunkirk, France at the end of May in 1940.

"Victory?" Many more =80=9Cvictories=E2=80=9D like Dunki rk, and the British today would all be speaking German! In truth, the commentator's frightful historical ignorance is a grand testimony to Churchill's uncanny ability to spi n Dunkirk, at best an heroic damage-control/salvage operation, into affirmatory and advantageous propaganda. The myth obviously persists, at least among the unenlightened, even today. Of course, at that point in the War, real victo ries were hard to come be, so the "Spirit of Dunkirk" would have to do!

In a surprise invasion in the fall of 1939, German forces smashed Poland's defenses within weeks. Barely seven months later, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium too would fall before Hitler's advance. By the end of June, what remained of the French Army had surrendered, and France would be

overrun also, its legitimate government replaced by the puppet, Vichy regim e.

Immediately following the Polish invasion, a hastily-organized, but well-armed, BEF (British Expeditionary Force), under General Lord Gort, was injected into France, ostensibly to protect her borders from Germans, but otherwise without a well-defined mission. The defense-oriented BEF was augmented by remaining French and Belgian elements. However, by early May 1940, offense-oriented and rapidly-moving German mechanized forces, bursting thro ugh the Ardennes (much as they would all over again during the Battle of the Bulge four year later) and advancing rapidly west, blunted and then surrounded the floundering BEF. So rapid and well organized was the German advance, that the surprised BEF was unable to hold a line, much less mount an effective counter-attack. The British retreat quickly degenerated into a rout.

Surviving British soldiers found themselves isolated on Dunkirk beach in France, surrounded by German mechanized forces. Most were subsequently res cued by an evacuation fleet hastily sent across the Channel from Britain, including many volunteer, civilian vessels. British soldiers barely escape d with their lives but were forced to abandon all their equipment and were effecti vely finished as a fighting force. Some would live to fight again, but only aft er being completely reequipped and reorganized. Conversely, few French and Belgian forces were among the evacuated. Most were abandoned at Dunkirk to be ultimately captured or killed by Germans. So, when, when one hears that " ninety-percent of British Forces were evacuated successfully," he n eeds to remember that French and Belgian forces are conveniently absent from that calculation!

The German high-command elected to pause at Dunkirk's edge, on the b rink of total victory, and, in effect, allow most British soldiers to escape, of not

the French and Belgians. It may have been a subtitle gesture to the Britis h by Hitler, an attempt to persuade them to throw Churchill out of office and

replace him with someone more disposed toward negotiation. In any event, i t didn't work!

England got a reprieve at Dunkirk! Had the entire BEF been destroyed or captured, as nearly happened, history would have been considerably differen t. It was bad enough as it was!

The important lesson is: "Tentative efforts always lead to tentative outcomes."

Military units sent into active conflicts with garbled, ever-changing, ill-defined, politically-sensitive "missions" have little ch ance of any kind of success, much less unconditional victory, particularly when their opposition is single-minded, unencumbered by political concerns, and implacable. Accordingly, military elements sent off on "holding actions,=80 "protective missions," and "police actions" are nearly always doomed, as we have seen time and again in our generation. Orders to "fight only when attacked =9D loosely translate to "fight only when and where the enemy wants to.=80 It's a recipe for disaster, as the BEF discovered. Wars are won by unapologetic, ruthless, audacious, continuous, offensive actions. There is no possibility of victo ry in defense.

/John