Adinnieken said:
KylieDog said:
Adinnieken said:
The only other people were to deal the British any significant blows were the two other superpowers of the time, the French and Spanish, and then the Germans in WWII at Dunkirk. The odd thing is the British consider Dunkirk a highlight of WWII. Nothing more uplifting than retreating with 50,000 soldiers either captured or killed. |
Dunkirk was an allied battle and the intent to evacuate allied forces, most of which they did. It it seen as positive because it was a success against numbers twice the size and a lot of civivlian ships were used to help the evacuation, 'Dunkirk spirit' is the positive phrase used, it was seen as British people all pulling together for success. Nearly all of the captured were French since they were the ones holding the front lines.
It isn't realy seen as a highlight aside from the spirit thing. A lot of supplies were left behind, though mosty sabotaged so not to aid the Germans it took the British a long time to replace them.
As to this topic, typical french devs.
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Dunkirk was a necessity due to poor military planning. Plain and simple.
The failure in this early stage of WWII was thinking the French knew how to fight a war. I mean France's plan for stopping an invasion of their homeland by tanks was to run barbed wire. How a nation can sit between Spain and Germany in the 1930's and not have a better preparation for war is beyond me. I agree that Dunkirk was actually a success. Getting 330,000 soldiers evacuated at such a minimal loss was a success, but getting yourself backed into a corner after having your defenses over run was a failure.
My comment was tongue-in-cheek to be sure. Hyper-critical, but tongue-in-cheek.
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France were pretty well-prepared. They had more and better tanks than the germans, and they had their impenetrable maginot line of bunkers and fortresses. So they did have some strengths. However, they still suffered from manpower loss from WWI and why they didn't count on Hitler attacking through belgium is beyond me.
Also, the germans were really, REALLY far ahead in terms of military tactics. The french spread out their tanks evenly across the front line while the germans massed them in thousands and rushed one spot. And they used combined arms really efficiently dur to their blitzkrieg doctrine. Also, marching through the ardrennes was totally clever, and really caught the allies off guard.
I don't believe the french thought barbed wire would stop tanks. I mean, the main role of tanks in WWI was to run over barbed wire.
