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I watched Hacksaw Ridge last night as well,,, I was let down, had expected more from all the hype.

I thought it was a good movie and I'm happy to have seen in the theater. Sure parts of it were damned loud, but I felt that helped tell the story. Seeing boat after civilian boat coming in to aid in the retreat must of been a sight. Seeing some of the complaints about the movie reminds me that so many people gotta' find something to gripe about just so they can feel good.

Sorry, my friend, I have to disagree with that version.

Source: Inside the Nazi War Machine: How Three Generals Unleashed Hitler's Blitzkrieg Upon the World by
Bevin Alexander, in many historians' view one of the best books on the Battle of France in 1940, drawn in large part from German documents from the period.

The British armor attack on May 21 at Arras was a tactical defeat for the British (they lost almost all of the 88 tanks sent against the German flank, unsupported by infantry, artillery, or air power... it was a slaughter of good British men), but it scared the bejesus out of the Germans. "Hitler thought it confirmed his fears of a massive offensive on his flank." Hitler conveyed his fears to von Runstedt, who halted his advance to secure the Arras sector, "and only then push Guderian's panzers toward the closest channel ports of Calais and Boulogne... Guderian faced comparatively little opposition. There was nothing to stop the panzers from getting to Dunkirk--as well as Boulogne and Calais along the way--well before the Allies could build a defensive arc around it." (p. 183)

Guderian was finally released by von Runstedt two days later (May 23), and he blitzkrieged swiftly north. His 10th Panzer Division captured Calais, along with 20,000 Allied prisoners, the same day. Meanwhile, "The 1st Panzer Division struck for Gravelines... on May 24 the Division reached the Aa canal and seized bridgeheads... Guderian's forces were now just ten kilometres from Dunkirk." (p. 184-5)

The next day, May 24, von Runstedt ordered the 4th Army (which included Guderian) to stop on the Aa Canal. His order stated that Dunkirk was to be left to the Luftwaffe.

"Guderian was stunned. He thought Hitler had ordered the halt. Although Hitler was ultimately responsible, the original stop order stemmed from Gerd von Runstedt. His decision came after ad day of heated argument within the army command. The panzer divisional and corps commanders [including Guderian and Rommel] wanted to attack as soon as possible, and army chief of staff Halder and army commander Walther von Brauchitsch agreed with them. Rundstedt and Hans Gunther von Kluge, commander of the 4th Army, on the other hand, wanted the panzers to stop long enough for the infantry divisions to catch up. Hitler, his paranoia about a flank attack inflamed by the British attack at Arras, supported them." (p. 185)

"The halt order raised enormous protests from the divisional and corps commaners, especially Guderian. Army Chief of Staff Halder was livid. In his diary, Halder wrote that he and Brauchitsch had planned for Army Group B to hold the Allied armies by frontal attacks, while the panzers cut into the enemy rear and delivered the decisive blow--by cutting off all means of retreat at Dunkirk. But with [von Runstedt's and Hitler's] halt order, he fumed, this movement no longer could be carried out... Guderian was speechless, and wrote that the supreme command's intervention was 'to have a most disastrous influence on the whole future course of the war.' Now the German Army's panzers were lined up neatly along the Aa Canal from the Channel to Arras, and had to watch helplessly as the Allied armies marched unopposed right past them and set up powerful defenses around Dunkirk." (p. 188-9)

Brauchitsch and Halder argued strongly for lifting the halt order on May 24, but Hitler was adamant. Alexander notes: "This demonstrates that Hitler saw the matter as a purely tactical battlefield problem, and had no concept whatsoever of the worldwide, potentially war-winning strategic implications of what could be achieved by capturing the entire British army. Hitler's inability to see the obvious at Dunkirk demonstrated his blindness to strategic possibilities in genreal. He could never see how to achieve his goals by indirect means, and always opted for headlong attacks. This blindness led to one disastrous military decision after another in the months and years ahead. It was the cardinal reason for his destruction." (p. 191)

Now, I realize that Alexander's book is only one source on this historical event, but it's one of the most authoritative, to my knowledge. I simply cite the above in order to explain the reasons behind my earlier post. It was von Runstedt and Hitler who made the disastrous (for the Germans) decision that allowed the miracle at Dunkirt to happen.

On a more personal note, I have tickets for me and The Redhead for the movie this afternoon. I'm not expecting it to be as fully satisfying as it could be, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.

Went to see Dunkirk a couple of days ago, and was mildly disappointed. Jorge's movie review is excellent IMO.

Will add one comment: the format was a cliché in a deeply worn groove.

Some time probably in the 60's writers/communicators decided that the way to tell a story was to give the audience bits of the feeling that characters in the story felt. Beginning, end, sequence, factual context were all irrelevant to giving the audience snips of feeling. It is 50 years since the 60's and Dunkirk is still riding the cliché.

I.e. several years ago at the Smithsonian, the WWII exhibit showed some soldiers with a jeep, told us that Japanese people were interned and mistreated and that is all I recall. At the time I was astounded that the exhibit did not say who was fighting whom, when it happened in history, where in the world it was fought nor who won. Ditto for an exhibit at Grand Coulee Dam: we heard Woody Guthrie but my kids did not learn any of the fascinating facts about the structure that I'd learned from an old black and white movie I'd seen in grade school.

So the movie Dunkirk is a jumble of fabulously filmed vignettes shown in almost chaotic sequence, more like a collection of excellent trailers. It does have a smidge of context, beginning and end.

FWIW, the Brits took off over 338,000 troops in 11 days, close to 120,000 of them French. The Brits used over 800 vessels, and about 1/4 of the rescue ships were sunk.

After all, it IS a movie -- a dramatic representation of a pivotal time in the history of western civilization crammed into two hours, defined by a group of people's perception and with artistic license thrown in. So yeah, us experts and techno-junkies can find all kinds of trivial-to-the-story faux pas.

We are difficult lot to please aren't we? After being attracted for awhile to the genre of WWII movies made both here and on the continent, what I've come away with overall is the untold suffering and the myriad of souls who breathed their last in their late teens and early twenties.

War is hell on earth.

Lots of stuff out in wartime literature on the Miracle at Dunkirk. Your narrative is a good one Doc, however I look at it as a "prefect storm" of small mistakes the Germans made (and I''l have to dig up my "Guderian's Pause" angle, other than Von Runsdstet , pause. Anyway, here's another angle:

The Pause

I'll be looking forward to what you dig up, Jorge. I don't much like relying on a single source, but Bevin Alexander's has the most direct citations from German documentation of anything I've got in my library at present. My copy of Rick Atkinson's book is out on loan at present. IIRC he has a different take on it, but his point of view is decidedly more skewed to the Allied side.

Went to see it yesterday. Other than some good aerial combat scenes, I was underwhelmed. I found the way the story was told, the switching back and forth of perspectives, made it difficult to follow. Popcorn was good though.

Doc: Here you go, a bit more on the pause. Guderian DID want to press, but here's another take:

Regarding your response to his second question, are you referring to, in his exact words, Germany's ability to fully stop the evacuation, or their ability in general to take Dunkirk?
According to Guderian, the Germans received a halt order and weren't even allowed to attack Dunkirk until the afternoon of the 26th, and he seems to write as if taking Dunkirk was a foregone conclusion:
On this day (the 24th) the Supreme Command intervened in the operations in progress, with results which were to have a most disastrous influence on the whole future course of the war. Hitler ordered the left wing to stop on the Aa. It was forbidden to cross that stream. We were not informed of the reasons for this. The order contained the words: 'Dunkirk is to be left to the Luftwaffe. Should the capture of Calais prove difficult, this port too is to be left to the Luftwaffe.' We were utterly speechless. But since we were not informed of the reasons for this order, it was difficult to argue against it.
Granted, Guderian being a German officer, there is definitely reason to take his opinion on the capabilities of the German military with a grain of salt, but I was always under the impression that the Germans had a pretty likely victory on their hands that was ruined by Goering insisting to Hitler that the Luftwaffe had it handled on their own.
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[–]thefourthmaninaboat20th Century Royal Navy 6 points 7 months ago
Both, really. I'd take what Guderian writes about the battle with more than a grain of salt - the memoirs of German officers tend to overstate the abilities of the German Army, and blame its failings not on their actions, but on the actions of Hitler. The Halt Order was primarily driven not by Hitler, but by von Runstedt, the commander of Army Group A. He had sound military reasons for doing so. Dunkirk was terrible terrain for tanks, as it was surrounded by marshland. Army Group A was scattered, weak, and in dire need of rest and replenishment. British and French counterattacks, such as that at Arras, had revealed flaws in the German deployment, and changes needed to be made to rectify this. Additionally, committing extra troops to an attack on Dunkirk would weaken the forces available to stop any counterattack - it wouldn't matter if the German spearhead had taken Dunkirk if the pocket had been opened by cutting through the shaft of the spear. Guderian is also writing with the benefit of hindsight. Nobody, not even the RN, was expecting that the evacuation would be so successful - original British predictions were that only 45,000 men would be evacuated. As such, the German decision to halt is both understandable, and justifiable.
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[–]The_Chieftain_WG 3 points 7 months ago
That, and, frankly, Dunkirk was a bit of a detour from the grand prize of the rest of France. The German commanders had started to look more South as the focus of their tanks, Dunkirk could, so it was thought, be happily taken by the infantry divisions in the area, even with the Luftwaffe failing to act as advertised.

source

Some of us just seek more authenticity, it doesn't take much for a film production with a large budget to spend on all kinds of things
to also acquire the advisory services of a good WW2 historian to advise them. Some would even gladly advise at no cost I imagine.

Jim in Idaho: I drove all the way to Butte, Montana Sunday afternoon to see the movie Dunkirk on the "big screen".
I am VERY glad I did.
The ONLY disappointment was the fact that this first run show was shown on a TINY screen at the multi-plex I attended.
The screen was not even one half the size of the "small" screens at my hometown duplex theater!
I was a bit miffed at this slight - and I was not the only one of the fifty or sixty attendees to that showing (having the movie shown on such a small screen!).
I will simply see the movie again when it comes to my hometown duplex or see it on one of my gun buying travels at a really BIG screen venue.
Some of the scenes were exceptionally well done and transported me and the other viewers to a place we could only have imagined.
I would rate the movie as a 91 on a scale of 1 to 100.
Again I will be seeing the movie in the future on a much bigger screen.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Question: What would Germany have done with 350,000 British POWs? They were certainly not prepared to intern, house and feed that number. They also would not have done a "Bataan Death March" to the Brits. It is my opinion that Hitler/Goring intended to "punish" the Brits severely, allowing them to evacuate a number. They would have been (and were) an Army without any equipment and no longer an effective fighting force and no longer on the Continent. I suspect that Hitler fully anticipated a negotiated armistice, as was the usual in the previous engagements over the preceding 100+ years between the principles.

Certainly food for thought, Jeff. Maybe hold them as a bargaining chip for said Armistice? I've never read anything along those lines though.

Same thing they did with well over a million (estimates of 1.8 million!) French POWs! Send them to camps in Germany. Naturally they didn't keep many Of them all 5 years. But darn near it. Many of the reservist were released back to VIchy due to work shortages. Some sickens wounded Were repatriated and almost 70,000 escaped.

Side not to POWs. Have a book written by a French POW. Said the first MAS 36 he ever saw (with the disappearing bayonet as he called it) was being carried by a German guard that loaded them on train cars for trip to Germany.

My wife and I went to our local IMAX last night and both of us enjoyed the movie. If you choose to see it and have a choice I recommend the IMAX. I'd give it a 6.5 out of 10.

When accosted by a young GI outside of a USO show in Naples, who wanted to know where he could get a pistol that fired 20 times without reloading like the one Bogart used in a movie, Bogie replied "Ain't Hollywood great?!"

I saw Dunkirk last Friday night. I went into it not expecting a documentary that would explain the whole Dunkirk evacuation from all angles, rather I wanted to get a "feel" for it- the feeling of panic, hopelessness (and hope), terror, and psychosis experienced by the guys who lived and died there. So what if there were inconsistencies and confusion? It depicted war, and isn't that what happens in war? I feel that the director captured the essence of the operation from the little guy's viewpoint- the little guy who was scared sh*tless and only saw bits and pieces of the whole thing, and afterward probably remembered those bits in a non-sequential manner.

Don't go if you are only interested in a history lesson. You won't get it- the why's, wherefor's, and analyses one would expect in a seminar, book, or documentary don't exist in this movie. What you will get is a sensory bombardment that gives we non-combatants a little idea of "what it was like to be there." I think that was the true intent of the production staff, and as such I feel that they nailed it.

I liked it so much that we're going to see it on an IMAX screen again this Friday night.

I knew an aged guy who was there, as a young officer in the Royal West Kents whose unit was tasked to the rear guard and who was captured in the end and spent the next five years as a POW. His accounts of what he experienced didn't jibe with a lot of what I had read about it. I chalk that up to "the fog of war"- a fog that clouds the thoughts of those who research it after the fact and those who lived it. (After the war he mustered out in Marseilles, France, took all of his back pay and bought a sail boat. 50 years later he was on his 4th boat and had circumnavigated the world a couple times and bummed around every body of water on the planet, working his way as he went. He had never set foot back home in England during all those years. Everybody reacts differently to horror- but boy could he tell stories over pints of cold beer, as long as you were buying!)

Now if only the director would do a similar treatment of Bataan, Crete, Tobruk, etc. The younger generations (and other mis-informed groups) have no concept of what our fathers lived through back then, and while such epics won't correct their ignorance at least they may come away with a small but better understanding of what came before them.

Having been in several "historical" movie productions, generally speaking, the biggest stumbling block when dealing wit th a certain historical concept or mood, is the directors use of his own "artistic" ability. Sometimes good, but most of the time extremely bad.