What if Germany had taken the British Army hostage in Dunkirk?

Hitler did not deliberately allow the British army to escape. Nobody, including Churchill thought that any appreciable portion of their army could be saved once they were surrounded. The navy thought perhaps 50,000 might be evacuated under favorable conditions. read more

BTW, there were a bit over 200,000 British troops at Dunkirk, of who almost 200,000 were rescued. After the evacuations were complete, the British army had 1,650,000. The rescued troops were about 12% of its strength. read more

The British and French combined forces were somewhere around 400,000 men, during the retreat back to Dunkirk, allied forces had to essentially run with what they could carry and abandoned a incredibly large amount of equipment, weapons and resources and were left up against some 800,000 well equip German soldiers including the Army with Infantry, Tank and Artillery support and the Luftwaffe who provided fighter strafing and bombing. read more

Discussion in 'Issues Around the World' started by Swamp Fox, Apr 19, 2006. read more