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Dunkirk: The Patriotic Myth

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That Dunkirk represented a defeat for the British can surely no longer be doubted by anyone. It is, however, a fact that the saving of in excess of 300,000 British and French troops DID, whatever Mr Harman suggests, allow Britain to continue the war against ... Germany after the fall of France. Only in that context can the rather jaundiced term "miracle" be applied. Nevertheless at this stage the lack of a decisive victory for [Germany's] forces could well be considered a victory in a larger sense.

Mr Harman may well have researched this book thoroughly, but unfortunately he clearly only presented the facts that suited his own case. His constant use of Lidell-Hart, an alarming self publicist, and Fuller, a notorious member of the British Union of Fascists, as major sources stand only to illustrate this point. Equally his one sided presentation of the facts regarding Churchill and Edens' deliberations, in an attempt to promulgate the Petainist myth of "Perfidious Albion", illuminates this as an unsafe revisionist version of the truth. It is notable that works of this nature spring forth when those accused are entirely unable to answer the charges presented.

A significant amount of research wasted...

I liked this version of the evacuation even though the author doesn't have the reverence for the event that some have. The author considers it a successful evacuation but it was within a framework of losing the war. Factually this book is as good as any of the other four books I've read on the topic but this is the only one of the five that is as critical on the British Command, Government or Press for the actions taken during the secretive retreat to the coast, the deceptive evacuation back to England and the subsequent patriotic spin by the press.

The first seven chapters are preliminary to Operation Dynamo which officially started on May 26th. The author begins with a little prewar history describing the situation in Europe, showing Hitler's growing aggression in taking Saarland, Austria and Czechoslovakia while England and France looked on. After Poland was divided by the dictators in Sept 1939, military coverage and readiness of the three main belligerents, the special tactics of Blitzkrieg is covered. It goes on to describe the lack of training and morale, tanks, planes and other weaponry that confronted Great Britain and France. The poor defenses west of Sedan is always mentioned.
The author moves into the war, showing the speed of the Germans to break the Allied front line and how the British from nearly the start had to fall back toward the coast. The tactical coverage of those first two weeks is covered but not in great detail. The fighting on the Dyle line, Lille, Arras, the Aa Canal, Calais etc is covered but only in a general way. I have not found a Dunkirk book yet on the first month of the war that has great tactical detail.

Starting May 26th when Operation Dynamo was activated and for the next nine days, the author increases his depth of detail giving each day its own chapter. The coverage includes the fighting around the Dunkirk perimeter, the clashes in the harbor and the dogfights in the air between the RAF and Luftwaffe. As mentioned before the coverage is as good as any other book on the topic so if you're looking to read about Dunkirk for the first time then this book should be considered. If you have already read about the evacuation and can tolerate the criticism then you might want to read this somewhat righteous book also. I didn't find anything that would radically distort history or was objectionable.
There were only six black and white maps but they were pretty good in showing the axes of attack by the Germans and the shrinking bridgehead the Allies were defending. There were photos which were really good, showing the leading commanders for both sides as well as pictures of men on the beaches, ships off shore and action shots on the ground. There were no aerial photos.

Included in the narrative is an Appendix that tabulates the daily count of evacuated as well as by ship type. Part of the myth of Dunkirk is that hundreds if not thousands of sorties of private boats took part in the evacuation but it was only in the last two days that any of the small private boats took part. The author ends the book with Notes on Sources and an Index. The author doesn't cover the impact on the future prosecution of the war by the British from this successful evacuation which many authors cover and was a little disappointing.
If you can handle the author's irreverence you may see a more worldly view of this short war.

Dunkirk, The Patriotic Myth, Nicholas Harman; Simon & Schuster (1980)

Written with grit & determination & well worth retaining - although a review is problematic, given my previous unfamiliarity with the in-depth details of what had happened on the beaches of Dunkirk in May & June 1940.

Whether or not Belgium had left England & France in the lurch by surrendering to the Germans, allegedly without first warning their allies; or similarly, English soldiers had left France holding the bag at Dunkirk while making their escape - that's for others to debate & decide.

Harmon's "tone," which alienated his colleague Gordon Lee (of The Economist), likely offended countless others in 1980 - creating a lesser statistic as impossible to quantify as the actual number of soldiers rescued from Dunkirk in 1940.

But Harmon was a hard-nosed journalist - not a diplomat. He bluntly stated his opinions & if you disagreed, too bad. This is an eternal asset in a world that rewards endless generations of spineless sycophants, a number of whom systematically desert Harmon's profession each year for the less accountable - & not surprisingly - far more lucrative world of public relations.

DPM is also valuable for Harman's vividly written "Notes On Sources," which lists a remarkable number of books that today probably have been undeservedly forgotten. If the author's positive passion exists anywhere in the book, it is most evident here; & to this location you are directed, if your own passion for history includes undiscovered accounts & memoirs of World War II.

With persistence, we can constantly discover what has not been encountered before, things that truly amaze. On page 70 of the hardcover edition:

"By May 1940, the [British army in France] had only 24 tanks armed with...guns that could make a dent in an enemy tank; its 76 `infantry' tanks carried only a single machine gun.

"Lord Gort [overall British commander in Europe in 1940; later] permitted himself a plaintive note on the tank situation on his report to the [English] War Cabinet:

As for " `Our I [infantry] tanks...perhaps the main defect was the absence of a tank with a gun.' "

Perhaps?

This has got to be THE understatement uttered by anyone during the Second World War.