The 21 mile stretch of water that has changed the course of history (Part II)

The Storm of War -Andrew Roberts
The 21 mile stretch of water that has changed the course of history (Part II)

The British, most definitely in moments of candor, will easily admit that it was the English channel that allowed them with splendid isolation, and permitted them to move to all corners of the globe and build their ‘empire where the sun never set’.

When the home front is secured by a geographical accident, and has stood in wake of rampaging armies, time and again of Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser and finally Hitler, then you can go ahead and carry out the business of subduing the world.

On May 10 ,1940, when Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg, huge swathes of Europe fell into German hands combined with the collapse of the French, Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg armies. Then inexplicably on 24 may, when Kleist’s army was just 18 km short of Dunkirk, came the order by Hitler to halt all advance. This pause in operations enabled the British to evacuate close to half a million troops to their mainland.

This was the turning point of the war. Why Hitler did not allow his Panzers to take on Dunkirk and thereby almost 3/4 th of the British army is still a mystery.

The evacuation at Dunkirk to safety across the English channel is counted amongst the most successful logistical feats in modern history what with the German army and the Luftwaffe breathing down the neck, strafing and bombarding the port at regular intervals.

The serpentine queues that formed up to get into the boats that would get the troops across the channel were not always orderly. In an incident, a soldier unable to take the pressure, broke ranks and made a dash to the gangway. Without a moment’s hesitation, the lieutenant in charge took out his revolver and shot the man through his heart, who lay motionless in the jetty. The young officer then turned to the men and told them calmly that he only wanted fighting men with him. The effect was electric and undoubtedly prevented a stampede by other troops awaiting evacuation.

By 04 june,1940, once the evacuation ended, when the entire world trembled under the might of Hitler and only Britain stood before Germany and the rest of the world, (America had not yet joined the war) Churchill produced his most sublime passage in all his magnificent wartime oratory:

“we shall not flag or fail, we shall go on to the end….. we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

The above passage itself is well known but what is not generally known is Churchill’s comments after he sat down to thundering applause in the House Of Commons. He whispered to his colleague : “ I don’t know what we will fight them with- we shall have to slosh them on the head with bottles-empty ones of course.”

Churchill of course understood the power of oratory. But he also knew its limitations- oratory was for the masses, they do not win wars. You need to get down to brass tacks, get involved in the minutiae of war-making.

Churchill constantly got into the details of conducting the war business. He buggered his staff peppering them with questions like:-

Why has he not received a report on how to counter the 4½-pound projectiles that German tanks could fire?

Would there be brass bands playing when the troops returned home?

Were the men getting their post on time?

Will the troops ‘will get decent cooked bread and meat.’?

Britain, and indeed the world, got the right man at the right time at the right place to see them through the war.

National Character In Trying Times

It is interesting to see how nations fared under duress, when the world trembled under Hitler. We are often critical of our own Maharajas & their cronies who collaborated with foreign forces , subjecting our nation to repeated invasions and reducing us to the status of a ‘colony’.

Turns out that the war record is not very clean for some of the European nations when they were faced with tough choices.

France

The speed with which France collapsed in May–Jun 1940 was a large surprise to everyone – including Hitler. But the state of France needs to be understood prior to the commencement of the war. In the first world war, of the 8 million men mobilised for the war, nearly 5 million causalities occurred. And that meant that “ Patriotism…… had lost much of it magic”, when faced with the brutal attrition of war. In 1939-40, Fascists & communists were trying to take control of France and secretly many upper and middle class French preferred the Nazis to the communists.

There was no other occupied country during the second world war which contributed more to the initial efficiency of Nazi rule in Europe than France. ‘Vichy Frances’ or occupied France under Nazi control, collaborated actively with the Nazis and millions and millions of French made their private accommodation with the occupying Force. The Vichy Government interned 70,000 suspected ‘enemies of the state’ (mainly refugees from the Nazis), dismissed 35,000 civil servants on political grounds and put 135,000 French on trial.

The German soldiers made good their station in France, by courting and charming the French women and as a consequence almost 2,00,000 babies were born. This surely must represent a tiny fraction of the sex that took place without such visible issue, considering the humiliation undergone by the mothers in many communities.

The Vichy Govt was ruthless in transporting scores of Jews to concentration camps of Auschwitz. Also there were no fewer than fourteen military engagements between the allied and vichy France during the war.



Switzerland

There were other countries who by maintaining neutrality tried to preserve their freedom. Chief among them being Switzerland and Sweden.

Churchill summed up the neutral’s position : ‘Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.’

Switzerland declared neutrality, but allowed German and Italian military supply trains to pass through their country. A Swiss state subsidized company also built a concentration camp (at Dachan) for the Germans where Jews were butchered.

It was inexplicable as to why the Swiss refused to accept Jewish refugees into their country, who were fleeing Nazi/Vichy France oppression. Scores of Jews were stranded at the borders by the refusal and some of them who gathered at the Swiss borders, committed suicide in front of the border guards, but to no avail.