Comments by "Not Today" (@nottoday3817) on "The Dunkirk Halt Order: An Alternative Hypothesis" video.
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Never assume that something has 100% or 0% chance of success when you are talking about something on the grand scale. We now know Hitler mopped the floor with France, but at the time, I assure you, nobody, absolutely nobody, expected German troops to even set foot on French soil. RAF and the French air force had superiority over the Luftwaffe. French and Britain had more and better tanks. They had rough parity in terms of soldiers. And they had the Maginot line. And Germany was expecting for a long war in France. And we now know that the French victory was achieved by idiotic French generals, and German officers and generals ignoring the orders and plans to deal even heavier blows which led to a morale collapse. This means that even if someone had prior knowledge of the German plan, they could not have 100% stopped them. So, Sealion? They could have attempted the invasion as a joke and the British surrender as soon as German troops were on their soil. Or at least give in enough land to establish a solid bridgehead. U-Boats could have blocked the Royal Navy from entering the channel and stopping supplies comming in. etc. So no, 100%, doubt it.
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@chrism7969 Well, first of all you assume that the Royal Navy would have been destroyed, or shattered beyond recovery. This is highly unlikely considering how big the Royal Navy was. As for the middle Eastern oil fields, let me answer your question with another question: What means did Germany have to get to those oil fields? They would still have to cross the Mediteranean Sea, which serves under the jursidiction of a whole other military theater. BEF is called like that for a reason. It was an expedition, not the whole British military. Other military districts, like Middle East, Far East etc. had their own garrisons and army effectives. The biggest threat to Britain would actually be Sealion in your scenario, which would put Germany at a disadvantage.
And yes, a peace deal would give Hitler the British crown and a Queen to shag along in theory, the problem is that such an offer was extremly unlikely. And, even more unlikely to hold. As soon as Britain would sense a right moment, they would break the peace and strike Hitler back. I mean, that's what they did with Napoleon
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@xJavelin1 Again, France was seen as impossible to have been defeated. And not only did it fell, it feel like a meteor.
Mind you, invasion of UK does not mean invading the whole islands. Instead of Bombing the British into surrendering like the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, Luftwaffe would be supposed to cover the landing area and then slowly move inland. This meant that the Bombers would not have fighter escorts instead of being thrown wherever Germany wanted to be shot down by Hurricanes. And they would intensively try to sink British capital ships. Furthermore, landing areas would be flanked by minefields and U-Boats to prevent the Royal navy from interfering. No need to block the whole English Chanel, just a corridor to secure supply routes. And don't preach to me the importance of the Royal Navy. They failed to completly halt the inferior Regina Maria from delivering supplies in North Africa. What Guarantees do you have they would actually be able to cut off German supply lines for a signifiant time frame? I mean, sure, Royal Navy is impressive, but here the scenario works completly against them. We are not talking about defending the Middle East where you have the vast expanse of Aegean and Mediteranean sea for the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine to defend in order to secure supply lines. Frankly speaking, the capital ships of the Kriegsmarine would not even be needed aside from some shore bombardment. Torpedo boats, minelayers and submarines would be much more useful.
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Well, I think I can finally say something: THANK YOU. THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART. For years I've been arguing with people that there is absolutely no logical way USSR could have known about about Barbarossa in a way suitable to take action. We know USSR did not see itself fit to take on Germany in such a way that they would win the war, not just the battles. This is why they put themselves into a situation where they got too many strings attached on them. But I'll provide more reasons on why this is the case as an extra read in another comment below. As for my views on Dunkirk?
I do not subscribe to your formulation of the 'Hitler wanted a diversionary war with England theory' since he could have obtained this by other means even after taking Dunkirk. What I believe is that the situation started from practical on- the ground reasons and evolved into a possible political tool. If we look a bit at France around the time of Dunkirk, we notice that the German troops were no mostly running on drugs and were pretty much exhausted. Dashes by the likes of Rommel demolished the French structure on one hand, but also pushed their communication lines to beyond the breaking point a few times. The panzers were mobile, but they needed to be refueled and time for repair. So a few days of rest and consolidation were absolutely needed. Otherwise, they might have eneded up with an earlier version of Crusader. Meanwhile, if we judge from the Franco-British perspective, their lines were stretched thin in the first days, but now they had a good solid line at Dunkirk. And the closer they could draw the Germans to the shoreline, the closer they could get to RAF range and possible intervention of the Royal Navy. Not only that, but the Germans did not know the French would completely collapse. So they were planning of striking deeper towards Paris, which meant they actually had to pull troops from Dunkirk to fight there. And let's assume Germany would indeed go for Dunkirk. As said, this means that more losses were to be expected both in manpower and material, which could hamper further operations, against France or England. And USSR could strike in the back at any moment. So, Hitler took the option which would give him the most positive outcomes or combinations of this. Without hindsight, those possible outcomes would be:
A. The diversionary war and peace. Hitler could pretend he's fighting the British, but, if he allows some troops to evacuate, he could use this as an emotional negociation tool. In the end, those guys, even if kept alive, would serve to nothing more than meatshields without the equipment left behind. Then, he could pretend to fight on, but secretly initiate peace negociations through third-party embassies and us this 'Hey guys, we kinda allowed your boys to return back home, didn't we? Now. If you accept the current status-quo on the continent, we will forget YOU were the ones to declare war on us and we'll return to being your good anti-communist dog we've always been in the past decade'. By doing this 'we strike you, but not with our full force' thing, he could drag on negociations long enough to give the illusion he's fighting on the Western front, but preserve and build up enough strength to crush USSR'
B. Psyops. By allowing the British to evacuate, not only would they preserve their troops, but they would give the French the impression that now they were fighting this war alone. There is nothing more depressing than the feeling of being abandoned. And this did happen and this did turn into a breaking of their morale.
C. Mongolian escape. I use this term because it was usual for the mongols to create a hole in their encirclements, allowing enemy troops to rout, break their own lines, escape through a funnel area and then they would slaughter everyone, but in smaller, less resistant groups. They would preserve their troops, break the enemy morale of the enemy with air raids and some artillery. What if Royal Navy attempts and evacuation? Well, nobody expected the use of civillians vessels and such an effective one. They were probably thinking Royal Navy would send their troop carriers and perhaps even battleships. Now, let's say you want to kill 900 people. On the field, they are dispersed in multiple locations, each having to be bombed with accuracy. But if you let them on a boat? One good placed bomb and everyone's gone. And they could draw in the cruisers or battleships in the minefields as they would try to help with the evacuation. This would give the Luftwaffe and U-Boats or torpedoboats a chance to put them out of action, giving the Kriegsmarine the initiative. Basically, they would let the British kill themselves and give up every advantage they have in order to save their people. If things were escalating beyond control, they could always come in with the tanks and crush them.
In the end, I suspect a combination of those happened. Britain got on with the evacuation, which left the French demoralised, resulting in their collapse as Hitler now had enough troops to create a new push towards Paris. Later on Hitler would use this 'miracle' in an attempt to secure his right flank and focus on crushing USSR. What they did not expect was such an effective evacuation which would allow for a faster rebuild of the British army and this occured with minimum losses to the Royal Navy, so the option of trapping them also failed.
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And, as said, now I will explain why the ideea of Hitler attacking USSR was illogical for anyone AT THE TIME. (In hindsight it makes perfect sense since we have a broader picture). It is not only the war with England that Stalin was looking at. It was the whole European theater. Most likely, when signing the deals with Hitler, he was looking no further than his version of Chamberlains appeasement with extra benefits. In the end, Britain and France were the biggest empires in the world, how could they fail to stop a punny army like Hitler? 1940: Oh well. This most likely triggered some concerns in USSR, but further deals with Germany and promises of boosting their military trade (which the Soviets badly needed due to the poor state of their navy, air force and secondary equipment for their Army), which calmed things down. And then early 1941 came and things turned even more bizzare. Think of yourself as a soviet general. You look at the world map. On one side, you need to support China as a proxy with Japan and Japan still has a few million soldiers at your border (no war with US-UK was forseen at this point) In Europe, Hitler not only denies peace with England, but sends troops in Africa to help Mussolini against the British. Not only that, but then he strikes in the Balkans. And Greece is allied with Britain, they could help there as well. Germany and Italy, the two beacons of ultra-nationalism were already fighting on two fronts. This makes it is clear that the offensive direction is going southwards, not eastwards. And if Hitler attacks us now? He will not have enough oil to fight with these guys. It would make no sense to attack. But wouldn't it be more prudent for us to strike while the offensive is still going? Well, our forces are not properly trained, we've barely finished our forced expansion of the Armed Forces and we still haven't properly restructured our ranks, nor did we finalised our 'Mobile Warfare' doctrine.. Furthermore, we still are to receive warships and equipment from Germany. We are not ready to attack and we might gain if we wait. But what if we attack anyway? Well, Britain and France sat ildly while we tried to stop the fascist expansion in Spain (there were reports that they were actually actively hampering the delivery of supplies to Spain). They betrayed us and Czechoslovakia in favor of Hitler and Poland. They invaded Germany while their troops were in Poland and then turned back behind their Maginot line. They failed to have any initiative on land before France fell. They failed to save Norway. What indications do we have that they'll not do like in 1939-1940 and, since they are not involved in Europe, just watch as our attack on Germany turns into a meatgrinder and, at the end, they'll do like in 1918-1919 and bring the whole world on our weakened nations. (Churchil and Patton actually tried to do that with Unthinkable)
Basically, in early 1941, for USSR, just waiting and consolidating seemed the most logical solution and without hindisght, nothing would suggest that Germany was even capable of invading, even if they wanted to, since they had their troops dispersed in too many places and those troops relied on Soviet oil and other resources. I'm not sure if Hitlers message which TIK showed is real or post-war Soviet propaganda, but if real, it would also suggest why Stavka was late to respond to Barbarossa, as they did not want to destroy a lucrative deal while they were on the backfoot
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