Sun Tzu was first translated by a French missionary and is considered by some to be one of the secret weapons of the Napoleonic staff. He is also believed to have been respected and recognized within the highest Nazi circles.
Although for similar problems similar geniuses find similar solutions, the possibility that the latter is true cannot at all be dismissed. Besides, if one reads the Chinese classics, one will be surprised to find that British politics in the past and American politics today apply their teachings.
In this particular analysis we will examine a much misunderstood WWII operation, the German inaction before Dunkirk. The Germans themselves (and even the Nazis), with the bitterness of the vanquished, regard the escape of the British Expeditionary Force as a key moment in the course of the war, the eventual destruction of which is said to have forced Britain to capitulate.
And since it is inexpensive, politically correct and easy, the blame is placed on Hitler. And the historians on the other side, out of hatred and empathy, are throwing up bile, attributing him a small-mindedness (something reminiscent of the ancient Greek saying: “Falling oak, every man is wooded”).
But probably all these wise historians and commentators, in their abysmal objectivity, miss another point of view, according to which if there really was a conscious German inaction before Dunkirk, then it is not a historical error (obvious to us with the comfort of retrospective criticism) that rests with whoever made that decision, whether it was Hitler himself or someone else.
And this historical justification comes from a more thorough look at the situation of the days but also at the more classical teachings of the Chinese Sun Tzu.
Sun Tzu’s teaching is about achieving victory, securing it. One of his most important suggestions concerns not causing the opponent the feeling of hopelessness that gives strength to achieve amazing results.
At the time, the Germans were on the verge of a legendary victory. Some of their young commanders, having almost crossed the line of insubordination, risked everything to sweep the enemy’s rear, exposing themselves to enormous danger.
Guderian and Rommel opened the gate to the collapse of France. The French as well as the German staff had made identical calculations for the rates of advance, transfer of reserves and stabilization or blocking of a breach.
But while the French field commanders at best obeyed the orders of old, secure rear-guard law-abiding generals, their radical German counterparts, products of a radical political change and very young in age, defied the orders of their own fossilized old aristocratic system of command. . They played everything. And they achieved the breakthrough of the French front and the victory.
A fragile victory, as shown by the British counterattack at Aras. Everything was balanced on a razor’s edge. The best part of the French army had been defeated – not annihilated. The best, not the biggest. The advance was precarious anyway.
The entire German war machine was absorbed by the developments, as the speed of events was greater than even the Germans themselves expected (and could follow). The Allies were just even more off balance and clearly slower.
If the German forces, tired, exhausted, largely disorganized by losses and speed of movement, managed to arrive first and occupy Dunkirk, what exactly would happen? The whole force converging on it would have no escape by sea. But that doesn’t mean he would surrender.
Desperate officers and men could fight to the last, in a tactical situation where basically no maneuvers fit, only frontal force. This large and well-equipped Allied army force could deal a decisive blow to the incoming East German flank, which, although more stable, was nearing exhaustion.
This is the classic, according to the Chinese, case where victory simply changes sides. Many similar cases have been recorded in ancient Greek history.
Without accounting for the small-but-existent possibility of another amphibious desperation strike by the British, with their heavy guns relentlessly bombarding the German forces of Army Group A, this transformation of the Allied mass into desperate warriors engaged in a battle in which the better command and maneuvers did not matter, if nothing else it would delay the German advance.
It would cause losses. It would inhibit the reconstruction of the moving forces.
With all these conditions, the rest of the French army, which was inside French territory and was being redeployed, could either simply cover the front or strike the other, western, flank of the intruder. The worst case was a new Marnis, the encirclement of the circling Germans.
At best, a difficult double victory against the two allied wings, with huge losses and possibly without the endurance to fully occupy enemy territory and continue operations eastwards against the USSR.
The stoppage of the advance succeeded. The Allies fled. As they rushed to the only refuge, the exit that had been left open, they abandoned their gear. Now they looked like a human herd. If anything, the prospect of escape disarmed the cut-off Allied soldiers to a degree that no German attack would succeed. They ended up abandoning and scrapping their weapons, instead of fighting to the last against the Germans.
The Allies evacuated the area in a short period of time. The problems of feeding and guarding so many prisoners, which would clearly have delayed the German redeployment, were magically solved. With no danger to the German army, Allied casualties mounted as the fugitives were attacked by the Luftwaffe on land and sea, while at the same time the Royal Navy was forced to fight under extremely adverse conditions.
If the German calculations in the air had been carried out, Dunkirk would have been a death trap for the Royal Navy and, instead of the myriads of prisoners, there would have been only hundreds of sunken ships of all sizes and types and several thousand dead in a huge field of fire for the Luftwaffe . Here was applied the Sun Tzu principle of opening a retreat for the enemy, who is slaughtered by walking into it.
It is well known that at this stage the Germans failed. The Royal Navy was not disbanded, the Luftwaffe suffered huge losses, and most Allied men were saved to re-arm and fight, while the Allied media promoted the massive victory. So what did the Germans achieve? Were they defeated because the Luftwaffe suffered significant losses and was unable to destroy the opposing soldiers along with the English fleet?
Whatever we say today, whatever the English and French thought after Dunkirk, the Germans had not suffered a significant defeat.
- Thus, they quickly reorganized and broke up the remaining French defenses that were trying to assemble and cover the bulk of the metropolitan territories.
- The British flight created a wave of anti-Britishism in the French possessions.
- The end of France came quickly.
- In short, despite their failure to annihilate the British, the Germans militarily succeeded in securing victory very quickly, with little loss and minimal risk.
- The RAF was forced to fight the Luftwaffe without the benefit of radar-controlled interception airspace, friendly terrain and fuel, and at a far greater loss, particularly of pilots, than it had suffered fighting over the British Isles.
- In the political sphere, they almost succeeded in “disengaging” the French from the English, resulting in little resistance in occupied France.
- They also achieved a benevolent neutrality in the French colonies, which resisted the Allies on several occasions, even when the Americans entered the war, as the British flight and behavior at Mers-el-Kebir showed the French that the war was no longer about them. .
- In the end they fought again against the Germans, also carrying out acts of “resistance” – when the outcome of the war had already been decided.
Τhe Führer of France: de Gaulle.
If the French were recognized among the victors, it was only for opportunistic reasons and was achieved thanks to the insatiable and insatiable ambition of one man who wanted to become the Führer of France: de Gaulle.
De Gaulle had understood that the Germans intended for the same reason less independent and clearly more respectable personalities – such as Pétain who had fought them passionately in WWΙ.
Although the revanchism of both the Allies and de Gaulle was directed against the old man who tried to save his defeated nation from further calamities (and succeeded, if one compares the French and Greek occupation losses), de Gaulle himself , who after the war was the Führer of France, at heart never condoned English practices and clearly showed it later (e.g. persistently sabotaging English admission to the then EEC – apparently an act of great insight, apart from the revanchism that distinguished it).
The simple, genius decision not to rule out Dunkirk
All of this was set in motion – whether it came to fruition or not – by the simple, genius decision not to rule out Dunkirk. As for the possibility that Hitler did this in order not to cut off the rapprochement with the British, that is possible but unlikely.
The English never appreciated the bravery of the enemy in the slightest, and it is probably a propaganda myth intended both to prove to the Germans that they were defeated because they did not intend to exterminate – politically – Great Britain (possible) and to show the how dangerous, even before their total defeat, the English (and by extension the Americans) are to their opponents. A conclusion that somehow the Vietcong, Ho Chi Minh and Giap simply did not embrace.
The Germans themselves, during the war, did not consider Dunkirk a mistake – it was just that their Air Force failed to annihilate the enemy. But the idea of avoiding cutting off and capturing so many opponents in an area where the German infrastructure did not allow such luxuries was deemed successful.
So much so that they tried to apply the same system to the Angio landing, but there the Allies had vast numerical, gun and air superiority and had not yet been decisively disarmed or defeated.
