Hitler Could Have Won….

Successful evacuation of Allied troops in Dunkirk

The Battle of Dunkirk lasted from around May 25 to June 3, 1940. This time included the Allied Operation Dynamo to evacuate troops from Dunkirk. German troops crushed the main resistance in Dunkirk and captured more than 320 000 men. This onslaught was successful till May 29, when the Panzer armor divisions were ordered to stop their advance. The Allied Forces successfully evacuated more than 337 000 troops because of Hitler’s strategy.

These soldiers were from Belgian, France, a small amount from Dutch and the heart and joy of Britain, the British Expeditionary Force. The rescue of allied troops at Dunkirk might have assisted in repelling a Nazi invasion and thus a more difficult time in fighting England.

If Hitler had ordered the total annihilation of the armies at Dunkirk, he would have paralysed Britain and France with the lack of people to carry out plans. He could have stopped the western front attacks and the Africa resistance. This implies the gaining of fuel in Africa and the ability to concentrate on USSR alone without the interference of Britain and France.

The Battle of Britain

Had Germany won the Battle of Britain, the bulk of the British Royal Air Force would be destroyed. At the start of the Battle, the RAF was outnumbered 3 to 1 in favour for Germany. Although they possessed better planes in dogfights, the RAF was almost always forced to fight at a disadvantage. One example of this is their being forced to engage their opponents from a lower altitude. . The difference in altitude meant a difference in ability to quickly gain speed and in dogfights speed determines life or death.

German victory was almost certain, until 2 turns in events occurred. One was that a group of JU-88 bombers got lost in a cloud cover and accidentally bombed a residential area, causing a reprisal bombing attack on German houses. This outraged Hitler and caused him to order the redirection of attacks against English civilians, away from bombing the airfields and to bombing London. The RAF could then be able to reload and refuel safely and be able to launch a counter-offensive. The second reason was that Herman Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe, felt that the bombers were taking too many preventable losses and ordered the German escort fighters to fly lower with the bombers.

While this did lower the number of bombers lost, it also forced the German fighter pilots to sacrifice much of their altitude advantage. Before this order, the rate of fighters lost was about 3 to 1 in favour of the Germans. After that, it began to even out and eventually turned in favour of the British.