WE may now review up to this point the course of this memorable battle.
Only Hitler was prepared to violate the neutrality of Belgium and Holland. Belgium would not invite the Allies in until she was herself attacked. Therefore the military initiative rested with Hitler. On May 10 he struck his blow. The First Army Group, with the British in the centre, instead of standing behind their fortifications, leaped forward into Belgium on a vain, because belated, mission of rescue, in accordance with General Gamelin’s Plan D.* The French had left the gap opposite the Ardennes ill fortified and weakly guarded. An armoured inroad on a scale never known in war broke the centre of the French line of armies, and in forty-eight hours threatened to cut all the Northern Armies alike from their southern communications and from the sea. By the 14th at the latest the French High Command should have given imperative orders to these armies to make a general retreat at full speed, accepting not only risks but heavy losses of matériel. This issue was not faced in its brutal realism by General Gamelin. The French commander of the northern group, Billotte, was incapable of taking the necessary decisions himself. Confusion reigned throughout the armies of the threatened left wing.
As the superior power of the enemy was felt they fell back. As the turning movement swung round their right they formed a defensive flank. If they had started back on the 14th they could have been on their old line by the 17th and would have had a good chance of fighting their way out. At least three mortal days were lost. From the 17th onwards the British War Cabinet saw clearly that an immediate fighting march southwards would alone save the British Army. They were resolved to press their view upon the French Government and General Gamelin, but their own commander, Lord Gort, was doubtful whether it was possible to disengage the fighting fronts, and still more to break through at the same time. On the 19th General Gamelin was dismissed, and Weygand reigned in his stead. Gamelin’s “Instruction No. 12”, his last order, though five days late, was sound in principle, and also in conformity with the main conclusions of the British War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff. The change in the Supreme Command, or want of command, led to another three days’ delay. The spirited plan which General Weygand proposed after visiting the Northern Armies was never more than a paper scheme. In the main it was the Gamelin plan, rendered still more hopeless by further delay.
In the hideous dilemma which now presented itself we accepted the Weygand plan, and made loyal and persistent, though now ineffectual, efforts to carry it out until the 25th, when, all the communications being cut, our weak counter-attack being repulsed, with the loss of Arras, the Belgian front breaking and King Leopold about to capitulate, all hope of escape to the southward vanished. There remained only the sea. Could we reach it, or must we be surrounded and broken up in the open field? In any case the whole artillery and equipment of our Army, irreplaceable for many months, must be lost. But what was that compared with saving the Army, the nucleus and structure upon which alone Britain could build her armies of the future? Lord Gort, who had from the 25th onwards felt that evacuation by sea was our only chance, now proceeded to form a bridgehead around Dunkirk and to fight his way into it with what strength remained. All the discipline of the British, and the qualities of their commanders, who included Brooke, Alexander, and Montgomery, were to be needed. Much more was to be needed. All that man could do was done. Would it be enough?
A much-disputed episode must now be examined. General Halder, Chief of the German General Staff, has declared that at this moment Hitler made his only effective direct personal intervention in the battle. He became, according to this authority, “alarmed about the armoured formations, because they were in considerable danger in a difficult country, honeycombed with canals, without being able to attain any vital results”. He felt he could not sacrifice armoured formations uselessly, as they were essential to the second stage of the campaign. He believed, no doubt, that his air superiority would be sufficient to prevent a large-scale evacuation by sea. He therefore, according to Halder, sent a message through Brauchitsch ordering “the armoured formations to be stopped, the points even taken back”. Thus, says Halder, the way to Dunkirk was cleared for the British Army. At any rate we intercepted a German message sent in clear at 11.42 a.m. on May 24, to the effect that the attack on the Dunkirk line was to be discontinued for the present. Halder states that he refused, on behalf of Supreme Army Headquarters (O.K.H.), to interfere in the movement of Army Group Rundstedt, which had clear orders to prevent the enemy from reaching the coast. The quicker and more complete the success here, he argued, the easier it would be later to repair the loss of some tanks.
The controversy finished with a definite order by Hitler, to which he added that he would ensure execution of his order by sending personal liaison officers to the front. “I have never been able,” said General Halder, “to figure how Hitler conceived the idea of the useless endangering of the armoured formations. It is most likely that Keitel, who was for a considerable time in Flanders in the First World War, had originated these ideas by his tales.”
Other German generals have told much the same story, and have even suggested that Hitler’s order was inspired by a political motive, to improve the chances of peace with England after France was beaten. Authentic documentary evidence has now come to light in the shape of the actual diary of Rundstedt’s headquarters written at the time. This tells a different tale. At midnight on the 23rd orders came from Brauchitsch at O.K.H., confirming that the Fourth Army was to remain under Rundstedt for “the last act” of “the encirclement battle”. Next morning Hitler visited Rundstedt, who represented to him that his armour, which had come so far and so fast, was much reduced in strength and needed a pause wherein to reorganise and regain its balance for the final blow against an enemy who, his staff diary says, was “fighting with extraordinary tenacity”. Moreover, Rundstedt foresaw the possibility of attacks on his widely-dispersed forces from north and south; in fact, the Weygand Plan, which, if it had been feasible, was the obvious Allied counter-stroke. Hitler “agreed entirely”. He also dwelt on the paramount necessity of conserving the armoured forces for further operations. However, very early on the 25th a fresh directive was sent from Brauchitsch as the Commander-in-Chief ordering the continuation of the advance by the armour. Rundstedt, fortified by Hitler’s verbal agreement, would have none of it. He did not pass on the order to the Fourth Army Commander, Kluge, who was told to continue to husband the Panzer divisions. Kluge protested at the delay, but it was not till next day, the 26th, that Rundstedt released them, although even then he enjoined that Dunkirk was not yet itself to be directly assaulted. The diary records that the Fourth Army protested at this restriction, and its Chief of Staff telephoned on the 27th:
The picture in the Channel ports is as follows. Big ships come up the quayside, boards are put down, and the men crowd on the ships. All material is left behind. But we are not keen on finding these men, newly equipped, up against us later.
It is therefore certain that the armour was halted; that this was done on the initiative not of Hitler but of Rundstedt. Rundstedt no doubt had reasons for his view both in the condition of the armour and in the general battle, but he ought to have obeyed the formal orders of the Army Command, or at least told them what Hitler had said in conversation. There is general agreement among the German commanders that a great opportunity was lost.
There was however a separate cause which affected the movements of the German armour at the decisive point.
After reaching the sea beyond Abbeville on the night of the 20th, the leading German armoured and motorised columns had moved northward along the coast towards Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, with the evident intention of cutting off all escape by sea. This region was lighted in my mind from the previous war, when I had maintained the mobile Marine Brigade operating from Dunkirk against the flanks and rear of the German armies marching on Paris. I did not therefore have to learn about the inundation system between Calais and Dunkirk, or the significance of the Gravelines waterline. The sluices had already been opened, and with every day the floods were spreading, thus giving southerly protection to our line of retreat. The defence of Boulogne, but still more of Calais, to the latest hour, stood forth upon the confused scene, and garrisons were immediately sent there from England. Boulogne, isolated and attacked on May 22, was defended by two battalions of the Guards and one of our few antitank batteries, with some French troops. After thirty-six hours’ resistance it was reported to be untenable, and I consented to the remainder of the garrison, including the French, being taken off by sea. The Guards were embarked by eight destroyers on the night of May 23–24, with a loss of only 200 men. The French continued to fight in the Citadel until the morning of the 25th. I regretted our evacuation.
Some days earlier I had placed the conduct of the defence of the Channel ports directly under the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, with whom I was in constant touch. I now resolved that Calais should be fought to the death, and that no evacuation by sea could be allowed to the garrison, which consisted of one battalion of the Rifle Brigade, one of the 60th Rifles, the Queen Victoria Rifles, the 229th Anti-tank Battery, R.A., and a battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment, with twenty-one light and twenty-seven cruiser tanks, and an equal number of Frenchmen. It was painful thus to sacrifice these splendid, trained troops, of which we had so few, for the doubtful advantage of gaining two or perhaps three days, and the unknown uses that could be made of these days. The Secretary of State for War and the C.I.G.S. agreed to this hard measure.
The final decision not to relieve the garrison was taken on the evening of May 26. Till then the destroyers were held ready. Eden and Ironside were with me at the Admiralty. We three came out from dinner and at 9 p.m. did the deed. It involved Eden’s own regiment, in which he had long served and fought in the previous struggle. One has to eat and drink in war, but I could not help feeling physically sick as we afterwards sat silent at the table.
Calais was the crux. Many other causes might have prevented the deliverance of Dunkirk, but it is certain that the three days gained by the defence of Calais enabled the Gravelines waterline to be held, and that without this, even in spite of Hitler’s vacillations and Rundstedt’s orders, all would have been cut off and lost.
Upon all this there now descended a simplifying catastrophe. The Germans, who had hitherto not pressed the Belgian front severely, on May 24 broke the Belgian line on either side of Courtrai, which is but thirty miles from Ostend and Dunkirk. The King of the Belgians soon considered the situation hopeless, and prepared himself for capitulation.
In the evening of the 25th Lord Gort took a vital decision. His orders still were to pursue the Weygand plan of a southerly attack towards Cambrai, in which the 5th and 50th Divisions, in conjunction with the French, were to be employed. The promised French attack northwards from the Somme showed no sign of reality. The last defenders of Boulogne had been evacuated. Calais still held out. Gort now abandoned the Weygand plan. There was in his view no longer hope of a march to the south and to the Somme. Moreover, at the same time the crumbling of the Belgian defence and the gap opening to the north created a new peril, dominating in itself. Confident in his military virtue, and convinced of the complete breakdown of all control, either by the British and French Governments or by the French Supreme Command, Gort resolved to abandon the attack to the southward, to plug the gap which a Belgian capitulation was about to open in the north, and to march to the sea. At this moment here was the only hope of saving anything from destruction or surrender. At 6 p.m. he ordered the 5th and 50th Divisions to join the Und British Corps to fill the impending Belgian gap. He informed General Blanchard, who had succeeded Billotte in command of the First Army Group, of his action; this officer, acknowledging the force of events, gave orders at 11.30 p.m. to withdraw on the 26th to a line behind the Lys canal west of Lille, with a view to forming a bridgehead around Dunkirk.
Early on May 26 Gort and Blanchard drew up their plan for withdrawal to the coast. As the First French Army had farther to go, the first movements of the B.E.F. on the night of the 26th-27th were to be preparatory, and rearguards of the British 1st and Und Corps remained on the frontier defences till the night of the 27th-28th. In all this Lord Gort had acted upon his own responsibility. But by now we at home, with a somewhat different angle of information, had already reached the same conclusions. On the 26th a telegram from the War Office approved his conduct, and authorised him “to operate towards the coast forthwith in conjunction with the French and Belgian armies”. The emergency gathering on a vast scale of naval vessels of all kinds and sizes was already in full swing.
Meanwhile the organisation of the bridgeheads around Dunkirk was proceeding. The French were to hold from Gravelines to Bergues, and the British thence along the canal by Furnes to Nieuport and the sea. The various groups and parties of all arms which were arriving from both directions were woven into this line. Confirming the orders of the 26th, Lord Gort received from the War Office a telegram, dispatched at 1 p.m. on the 27th, telling him that his task henceforward was “to evacuate the maximum force possible”. I had informed M. Reynaud the day before that the policy was to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force, and had requested him to issue corresponding orders. Such was the breakdown in communications that at 2 p.m. on the 27th the commander of the First French Army issued an order to his corps: “La bataille sera livrée sans esprit de recul sur la position de la Lys.”
Four British divisions and the whole of the First French Army were now in dire peril of being cut off around Lille. The two arms of the German encircling movement strove to close the pincers upon them. This however was one of those rare but decisive moments when mechanical transport exercises its rights. When Gort gave the order all these four divisions came back with surprising rapidity almost in a night. Meanwhile, by fierce battles on either side of the corridor, the rest of the British Army kept the path open to the sea. The pincer-claws, which were delayed by the 2nd Division, and checked for three days by the 5th Division, eventually met on the night of May 29 in a manner similar to the great Russian operation round Stalingrad in 1942. The trap had taken two and a half days to close, and in that time the British divisions and a great part of the First French Army, except the Vth Corps, which was lost, withdrew in good order through the gap, in spite of the French having only horse transport, and the main road to Dunkirk being already cut and the secondary roads filled with retiring troops, long trains of transport, and many thousands of refugees.
The question about our ability to go on alone, which I had asked Mr. Chamberlain to examine with other Ministers ten days before, was now put formally by me to our military advisers. I drafted the reference purposely in terms which, while giving a lead, left freedom to the Chiefs of Staff to express their view, whatever it might be. I knew beforehand that they were absolutely determined; but it is wise to have written records of such decisions. I wished moreover to be able to assure Parliament that our resolve was backed by professional opinion. Here it is, with the answer:
1. We have reviewed our report on “British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality” in the light of the following terms of reference remitted to us by the Prime Minister.
“In the event of France being unable to continue in the war and becoming neutral, with the Germans holding their present position and the Belgian Army being forced to capitulate after assisting the British Expeditionary Force to reach the coast; in the event of terms being offered to Britain which would place her entirely at the mercy of Germany through disarmament, cession of naval bases in the Orkneys, etc.; what are the prospects of our continuing the war alone against Germany and probably Italy? Can the Navy and the Air Force hold out reasonable hopes of preventing serious invasion, and could the forces gathered in this Island cope with raids from the air involving detachments not greater than 10,000 men; it being observed that a prolongation of British resistance might be very dangerous for Germany, engaged in holding down the greater part of Europe?”
2. Our conclusions are contained in the following paragraphs:
3. While our Air Force is in being, our Navy and Air Force together should be able to prevent Germany carrying out a serious sea-borne invasion of this country.
4. Supposing Germany gained complete air superiority, we consider that the Navy could hold up an invasion for a time, but not for an indefinite period.
5. If, with our Navy unable to prevent it, and our Air Force gone, Germany attempted an invasion, our coast and beach defences could not prevent German tanks and infantry getting a firm footing on our shores. In the circumstances envisaged above our land forces would be insufficient to deal with a serious invasion.
6. The crux of the matter is air superiority. Once Germany had attained this she might attempt to subjugate this country by air attack alone.
7. Germany could not gain complete air superiority unless she could knock out our Air Force, and the aircraft industries, some vital portions of which are concentrated at Coventry and Birmingham.
8. Air attacks on the aircraft factories would be made by day or by night. We consider that we should be able to inflict such casualties on the enemy by day as to prevent serious damage. Whatever we do however by way of defensive measures—and we are pressing on with these with all dispatch—we cannot be sure of protecting the large industrial centres, upon which our aircraft industries depend, from serious material damage by night attack. The enemy would not have to employ precision bombing to achieve this effect.
9. Whether the attacks succeed in eliminating the aircraft industry depends not only on the material damage by bombs, but on the moral effect on the workpeople and their determination to carry on in the face of wholesale havoc and destruction.
10. If therefore the enemy presses home night attacks on our aircraft industry, he is likely to achieve such material and moral damage within the industrial area concerned as to bring all work to a standstill.
11. It must be remembered that numerically the Germans have a superiority of four to one. Moreover, the German aircraft factories are well dispersed and relatively inaccessible.
12. On the other hand, so long as we have a counter-offensive bomber force we can carry out similar attacks on German industrial centres and by moral and material effect bring a proportion of them to a standstill.
13. To sum up, our conclusion is that prima facie Germany has most of the cards; but the real test is whether the morale of our fighting personnel and civil population will counterbalance the numerical and material advantages which Germany enjoys. We believe it will.
This report, which of course was written at the darkest moment before the Dunkirk Deliverance, was signed not only by the three Chiefs of Staff, Newall, Pound, and Ironside, but by the three Vice-Chiefs, Dill, Phillips, and Peirse. Reading it in after years, I must admit it was grave and grim. But the War Cabinet and the few other Ministers who saw it were all of one mind. There was no discussion. Heart and soul we were together.
At home I issued the following general injunction:
(Strictly Confidential) 28.V.40
In these dark days the Prime Minister would be grateful if all his colleagues in the Government, as well as important officials, would maintain a high morale in their circles; not minimising the gravity of events, but showing confidence in our ability and inflexible resolve to continue the war till we have broken the will of the enemy to bring all Europe under his domination.
No tolerance should be given to the idea that France will make a separate peace; but whatever may happen on the Continent, we cannot doubt our duty, and we shall certainly use all our power to defend the Island, the Empire, and our Cause.
In the early hours of the 28th the Belgian Army surrendered. Lord Gort received the formal intimation of this only one hour before the event, but the collapse had been foreseen three days earlier, and in one fashion or another the gap was plugged. All that day the escape of the British Army hung in the balance. On the front from Comines to Ypres and thence to the sea, facing east and attempting to fill the Belgian gap, General Brooke and his IInd Corps fought a magnificent battle, but as the Belgians withdrew northwards, and then capitulated, the gap widened beyond repair. The German thrust between the British and Belgian Armies was not to be prevented, but its fatal consequence, an inward turn across the Yser, which would have brought the enemy on to the beaches behind our fighting troops, was foreseen and everywhere forestalled.
The Germans sustained a bloody repulse. All the time, only about four miles behind Brooke’s struggling front, vast masses of transport and troops poured back into the developing bridgehead of Dunkirk, and were fitted with skilful improvisation into its defences. By the 29th a large part of the B.E.F. had arrived within the perimeter, and by this time the naval measures for evacuation were beginning to attain their full effect. On May 30 G.H.Q. reported that all British divisions, or the remains of them, had come in.
More than half the First French Army found their way to Dunkirk where the great majority were safely embarked. But the line of retreat of at least five divisions was cut by the German pincers movement west of Lille. The French in Lille fought on gradually contracting fronts against increasing pressure, until on the evening of the 31st, short of food and with their ammunition exhausted, they were forced to surrender. About fifty thousand men thus fell into German hands. These Frenchmen, under the gallant leadership of General Molinié, had for four critical days contained no less than seven German divisions which otherwise could have joined in the assaults on the Dunkirk perimeter. This was a splendid contribution to the escape of their more fortunate comrades and of the B.E.F.
It was a severe experience for me, bearing so heavy an overall responsibility, to watch during these days in flickering glimpses this drama in which control was impossible, and intervention more likely to do harm than good. There is no doubt that by pressing in all loyalty the Weygand plan of retirement to the Somme as long as we did, our dangers, already so grave, were increased. But Gort’s decision, in which we speedily concurred, to abandon the Weygand plan and march to the sea was executed by him and his staff with masterly skill, and will ever be regarded as a brilliant episode in British military annals.
