• Hard to imagine the entire bag of British BEF would have been captured with the German attacking, the British would have air cover and the guns of the Royal Navy. What happens if half the force falls into enemy hands?


  • I think the loss of 100,000 or so extra British troops at Dunkirk would have weakened Britain’s ability to fight on the periphery (such as in North Africa), but it wouldn’t have made it any easier for Germany to cross the Channel; it simply would have changed what Germany would have faced in Britain had it been able to land there.  What would really have put Britain in a critical position at Dunkirk (and during the Battle of France in general) would have been if Fighter Command had committed (and lost) most of its fighters there.  That might have led to Britain losing rather than winning the Battle of Britain.


  • I think you are right Marc. The RAF was intact and needed to be eliminated before an amphibious attack could take place. Even fewer British ground troops would have not made the difference, if there was air superiority. 
    The Germans did not have sufficient Fighters.
    Russia would still have been attacked and, with Hitler calling the shots, the war lost.


  • I believe a prolonged struggle at Dunkirk which the BEF fighting for its survival would have put up would only have helped the Germans. The RAF lost 300 planes protecting Dunkirk retreat. How would the RAF faired in the upcoming air combat over England, had the RAF lost 600-800 planes over the Channel and Dunkirk?

    Then on the Germans side, how heavy of panzer losses would an armor attack on the BEF at Dunkirk have been? The RAF and RN gunfire would have taken a heavy toll on the attackers.


  • I didn’t know they lost 300 planes in that one week, covering the retreat. (Thanks for the figure.) It was the experienced fighter pilots, not lack of Fighters, that nearly broke RAF Command in the Battle of Britain, so I don’t think that would have made things too bad later on. I really think the failure was in German planning for its losses in precious Fighters.

    I am not sure that the losses ( mostly breakdowns) would have made much difference to the Panzer arm, Worsham. The tanks were not needed for another year.


  • @wittmann:

    I didn’t know they lost 300 planes in that one week, covering the retreat. (Thanks for the figure.) It was the experienced fighter pilots, not lack of Fighters, that nearly broke RAF Command in the Battle of Britain, so I don’t think that would have made things too bad later on. I really think the failure was in German planning for its losses in precious Fighters.

    I am not sure that the losses ( mostly breakdowns) would have made much difference to the Panzer arm, Worsham. The tanks were not needed for another year.

    I need to make a correction, RAF losses at Dunkirk were 195. The 300 number is the losses the RAF suffered before “Eagle Day”. These losses were the result of protecting channel convoys.


  • Interesting question.

    England lost a ton of material at Dunkirk but kept the men.  Had they lost the men it is hard to say how Germany would have reacted.  After Crete Hitler never wanted to do another airborne operation because the cost was too high.  England being a softer target having 100k less men may have made an airborne invasion more viable (and Hitler may have allowed it).  All they would have to do is seize one port and they could have funneled in the rest of the Wermarcht.

    But it does come down to the air war.  Even having a very weak army on the ground Germany could not pull it off w/o control of the air.

    Something I never really understood is why the Germans didn’t do small attacks on radar stations across the channel.  Prime target that could be easily gotten to.  Hell, they landed a dozen or so guys in America, why not cross the English Channel and knock out England’s eyes when it really counted.


  • I think, as mentioned earlier in this thread, that Britain could have sustained more infantry and fighter casualties and survived. The number of pilots lost would not equal the number of planes due to the proximity to the channel and that would have allowed the British to keep fighting ala the Battle of Britain. The number of planes being manufactured around the time of the Battle of Britain was staggering, as long as the pilots were picked up and brought back home, defeat for Germany in the air would be almost inevitable.

    Of course, Hitler’s attack on Russia sealed Germany’s fate, but it would have taken an invasion of absolutely massive proportions for Operation Sea Lion to be successful so I don’t think that more casualties at Dunkirk would have swung the war, would have delayed it though.


  • @Zooey72:

    Something I never really understood is why the Germans didn’t do small attacks on radar stations across the channel.  Prime target that could be easily gotten to.  Hell, they landed a dozen or so guys in America, why not cross the English Channel and knock out England’s eyes when it really counted.

    I think that Germany actually did attack some of the Chain Home radar stations, but didn’t persist in doing so.  Partly it was because Goering kept flip-flopping on the focus of his air campaign against Britain (another example being his switch to London as a target, at the moment when his strategy of attacking Fighter Command’s airfields was bringing the RAF to the breaking point).  And partly it was because Germany didn’t seem to grasp how much the efficiency of Britain’s air defenses depended on the centralized control of air operations based on the information provided by the radar stations.

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