Hitler Could Have Won the War at Dunkirk. Why Did He Stop?

On May 24, 1940, German panzers stood about a dozen miles from Dunkirk with almost nothing in front of them, and almost the entire British Expeditionary Force was trapped in the pocket behind them. Then the halt order came, and the tanks sat still for about 52 hours. Why did Hitler stop at Dunkirk, and could he have won World War 2 right there? The famous answer is that Hitler let the British army escape on purpose, hoping Britain would make peace. We put that story on trial with two other suspects: the ground (worn-out tanks, Flanders canals, the scare at Arras, and Case Red still to fight) and the sky (Hermann Göring's promise that the Luftwaffe could finish the job alone). We follow the halt order from Rundstedt's headquarters at Charleville to Hitler's Directive No. 13, from Lord Gort's decision on May 25 to Operation Dynamo and Admiral Ramsay's headquarters beneath Dover Castle, from the bombing of Dunkirk to the East Mole, where most of the 338,226 men actually got away. And we go into the room where the real decision was made: Churchill and Halifax in the British War Cabinet, May 26 to 28, 1940. Our tool is the board in Dover: every number on it is a soldier who didn't end up in a German prison camp. Each time we come back to it, we ask how much of that number the halt order bought. Chapters 0:00 June 5, 1940: "Dunkirk has fallen" 1:30 The Ardennes, Sedan and the knife across France 2:40 Arras: the counterattack that scared the generals 5:04 The Aa Canal and three moves in one night 7:29 Charleville: why the panzers stopped 10:31 Lord Gort, Operation Dynamo and the board in Dover 13:08 Göring's promise: the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk 14:37 The little ships myth and the East Mole 18:36 London: Churchill vs. Halifax in the War Cabinet 22:08 The board at 25,000 and the final count 24:34 The halt order on trial 28:53 Could Hitler have won the war at Dunkirk? If the board in Dover had stopped at 25,000 and the British army had marched into German camps, would Churchill's cabinet still have held when France surrendered three weeks later? Tell us in the comments where you think that cabinet would have landed, and why. Key documents Hitler's Directive No. 13, May 24, 1940 Army Group A war diary, May 24, 1940 (Hitler "agreed entirely" with Rundstedt) Franz Halder's war diary, May 24 and May 30, 1940 British War Cabinet minutes, May 26 to 28, 1940 Hugh Dalton's record of Churchill's speech to the outer cabinet, May 28, 1940 Churchill's "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech, House of Commons, June 4, 1940 Historians and sources Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West L. F. Ellis, The War in France and Flanders 1939-1940 (British official history) Brian Bond Andrew Roberts Basil Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill (1948) Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. II: Their Finest Hour Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader War Unspun weighs the story you know against the evidence and gives you an honest verdict. Subscribe for the next file we open. #Dunkirk #WW2 #History