Why did Hitler stop the Dunkirk advance in 1940?

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Total victory seemed within reach.

On May 23, 1940, General Heinz Guderian's armored spearheads were only 25 kilometers apart from Dunkirk.

On the flat beaches around the northern French seaside resort, more than 350,000 men of the British expeditionary force in Europe were crowded together on a few dozen square kilometers, as well as more than twice as many French and Belgian soldiers.

Since the Wehrmacht first reached the mouth of the Somme northwest of Abbeville, then conquered Boulogne a few days later and enclosed Calais, the defeat of the Allies in north-eastern France was obvious.

With more than two-thirds of the active British troops in Europe standing here, it was clear to the General Staff in London that an evacuation must be attempted at all costs.

However, the War Office and Commander-in-Chief Lord John Gort did not think the chances were too great.

Then, on May 24, 1940, Adolf Hitler came to visit the front.

More precisely: to the headquarters of Army Group A under Colonel General Gerd von Rundstedt.

With the authority of the Supreme Commander, the dictator halted the orders already issued for a final, massive tank advance on Dunkirk.

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This instruction gave the British troops in the Dunkirk pocket two and a half days to breathe.

The evacuation operation could begin, and although the stop order was lifted on May 26, the Royal Navy was able to evacuate a third of a million soldiers in ships and boats of all kinds.

These troops became the core of British home defense;

many of the combat experienced soldiers came to North Africa in 1941, where they fought against Erwin Rommel.

There are many different interpretations

Why Hitler gave his order to stop is still controversial today.

There are various explanations: Was it a covert truce offer to Winston Churchill?

A gesture like: We could destroy your troops, but we don't?

Or was it, on the contrary, an attempt to overthrow the British prime minister, who had only been in office for two weeks and a declared opponent of Hitler?

The stop order, as it were, as a form of communication with the Churchill-critical group in London?

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Did Hitler perhaps want to keep the third of a million men locked up as bargaining chips for the coming peace negotiations with Great Britain?

In fact, the dictator had not (yet) wanted to wage war against the naval power of Great Britain in 1939/40.

Or did Hitler simply trust the promise made by his Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring that the boiler could just as easily be fought from the air?

By then, the youngest branch of the Wehrmacht had kept all of its promises, and even exceeded them.

What reason should Hitler have had not to believe his deputy?

No traces in the files

The last attempt at an explanation goes less far: Did Hitler simply want to restore his authority in the highest generals?

The unimagined successes in the campaign against the Netherlands, Belgium and France had clearly shifted the balance within the leadership of the Third Reich.

The victories of bold tank generals and staff strategists had come to the fore, but Hitler's role was beginning to fade.

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There is no unequivocal answer as to which of these attempts at explanation or other variants is the correct one.

However, the most likely solution can be approached by looking at the exact sequence of commands.

Because with that the big political “declarations” are ruled out: Hitler could not and did not want to make peace with Churchill - the propaganda battle against the prime minister was far too massive for that.

A total change of course like three quarters of a year earlier with the Hitler-Stalin pact vis-à-vis the Soviet Union would not even have been mediated by the Goebbels apparatus in the middle of the ongoing struggle.

A covert initiative to overthrow Churchill, on the other hand, is theoretically conceivable.

But while there had been cautious attempts to establish contact with Great Britain in the spring of 1940, before the attacks on Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and again in the following summer, such attempts failed to materialize at the beginning of the third week of May.

Political rapprochement should have been prepared anyway - but there are no traces of this in the files.

The tank losses increased

The attacks by the Luftwaffe, which also bombed the boiler from May 24 to 26, 1940, speak against the assumption that Hitler wanted to use the British soldiers who were trapped inside as bargaining chips.

If the dictator had really wanted to take the expeditionary force hostage, it would have been logical to cut off all communications with Great Britain but leave the soldiers alone on the beaches.

On the contrary, did Hitler believe that the Luftwaffe would solve the problem?

That too is unlikely.

The fact that a ground battle could not be won from the air was the conviction of the Wehrmacht and the political leadership of the Third Reich.

Warsaw, too, had to be conquered and occupied conventionally at the end of September 1939 - despite massive bombing.

Hitler certainly assumed that Goering's Luftwaffe could build up enough pressure for a few days to prevent major evacuations of British soldiers.

The order to hold the armored spearheads might seem comparatively insignificant to him.

But that was not the reason for the instruction.

If one takes a closer look at the order situation on May 24, 1940, there is an explanation for the stop order, although it cannot be proven.

The German tank losses had risen sharply: After 127 losses between May 10 and 20, including only 41 losses of the latest types Panzer III, Panzer IV and Panzer 35/38 (t), in the following four days alone were more than 200 vehicles were lost, including almost 100 of the most powerful models.

General Ewald von Kleist had reported that half of his tanks had failed.

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The reason was clear: after two weeks of constant advance of the armored spearheads without any significant rest, the crews were exhausted and began to make more and more fatal mistakes.

The material was heavily used, the supplies stalled.

Conventionally thinking commanders

In addition, on May 23 and 24, the French Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle led a powerful attack by his 4th Panzer Division on the captured city of Abbeville, which put the German occupation under pressure.

This showed the conventionally thinking German commanders the danger of breaking into their own flank.

In view of this, Colonel-General Gerd von Rundstedt, who was a military traditionalist and shaped in the First World War, recommended that the conquering of the Dunkirk pocket be left to infantry advancing.

Hitler agreed and suspended the attack orders of the unconventionally thinking generals like Guderian and the Waffen SS division commander Sepp Dietrich.

Ultimately, he probably wanted to demonstrate his authority as Supreme Commander.

For the trapped British soldiers, the almost 60-hour break from the attack turned out to be a godsend.

Defensive lines were immediately set up around Dunkirk, which were actually able to slow down the resumed attacks by German tank units from May 27th, and in some cases even to stop them.

At the same time, the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force put all their reserves into the evacuation.

On June 4, the German 54th Infantry Regiment captured the badly shot bathing resort.

The British had left behind more than 50,000 vehicles of all kinds, as well as cannons, fuel and ammunition.

But 338,226 Allied soldiers had been saved.

The Dunkirk pocket was a Pyrrhic victory for Hitler and the Wehrmacht.

This article was first published in 2013.