The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  The British also issued orders not to take any German prisoners except to interrogate them. Naturally, the British would then kill any Germans that fell into their hands. British soldiers feared capture by the Germans as they assumed their fate would be similar to how they treated the Germans. They treated the French and Belgian civilians the same as they treated the Germans. They thought nothing of plundering from the civilians or shooting them without benefit of a trial if they suspected the civilians of disloyalty. The British military authorities did not seek justice or discipline the culprits of these war crimes. However, German soldiers who engaged in similar behavior were prosecuted. 838

  On May 23, Churchill informed the House of Commons about the battles in the Channel Ports. Eden formed a 250,000 Volunteer Defence Force. Meanwhile, authorities arrested pacifists and fifth columnists who they considered felons. 839 On that same day, the British passed the Treachery Act, which enabled the prosecution and execution of enemies, including British subjects. After the war, the authorities continued to prosecute people under the Treason Act for disloyalty during the war.

  On May 23, German commanders evaluated the High Command’s orders for Army Group B, led by General Fedor Bock, to maintain its attacks. Army Group A, led by General Rundstedt, was to proceed towards Dunkirk and Ypres. General Kleist protested because half of his tanks were disabled and yet they expected him to guard the Somme front, manage the Channel ports and launch a renewed attack eastwards towards Dunkirk, in northern France, about 6.2 miles from the Belgian border. Meanwhile, Göring pressured Hitler to allow the Luftwaffe to destroy the British Army. For both operations, good weather was important. 840 In Germany’s invasion of Poland, Kleist commanded the XXII Panzer Corps. In the Battle of France, he commanded Panzergruppe Kleist, consisting of two Panzer Corps, under General Guderian, in Germany’s drive to the English Channel.

  On Friday May 24, at 11.30 a.m., Hitler arrived at Rundstedt’s headquarters, now in Charleville-Mezieres. Rundstedt proposed that his army should halt until the infantry arrived at Arras. He also wanted to switch the Fourth Army to the northern command. Hitler approved of the halt proposal and then directed Colonel Franz Halder, Chief of Staff at OKH, to issue the Halt Order at 12:31 p.m. However, Halder tried to maintain a portion of his strategy by issuing permission for the troops to advance up to a line at Dunkirk, Cassel, Estaires, Armentieres, Ypres, and Ostend. Army Group B accepted this direction, but, due to certain order policies, Army Group A did not relay the message to the front. 841

  Harmon addressed the controversy regarding Hitler’s directive of May 24, which halted the German advance towards Dunkirk for two days. A few German officers said they were “shocked” by the order, which allowed the French to defend a position west of Dunkirk. However, General Guderian, in evaluating the military situation at Dunkirk, concluded that General Von Rundstedt had been correct in issuing a halt order. Engineers had reclaimed the area where the tanks would have traveled from the sea and it was damp unstable wet lands. Proceeding would have “involved a useless sacrifice of some of his best troops.” General Von Rundstedt wisely issued the halt order on May 24, which Hitler confirmed. This gave the troops an opportunity to rest and make repairs on their armored vehicles. 842

  Wolf Rudiger Hess, the son of Rudolf Hess, referred to John Costello’s book, Ten Days to Destiny, in which he states that Hitler halted the advance to encourage the British and French governments to accept peace. Churchill’s War Cabinet wanted to trade off Gibraltar and Malta in return for keeping control of the Empire. FDR wanted Canadian officials to convince the British to agree to a “soft peace deal” with Hitler. On May 24, French officials thought that Britain would accept a joint peace deal negotiated by Mussolini. Instead, Churchill sought war rather than R. A. Butler’s peace agreement. With the collapse of France, Butler, Lord Halifax’s Under Secretary, sent a memo to German officials that implied that Britain should negotiate after the French armistice on June 18. 843

  General Rundstedt had disseminated his mechanized Army Group A throughout the countryside, which separated the Allies into two sections. However, most of the army still used horse-drawn transport and the infantry was on foot. On May 25, the slower moving infantry was supposed to replace Kleist’s armored forces on the Somme. Meanwhile, Army Group B controlled the area where the British and Belgian armies might have joined. Now Rundstedt proposed to send the panzers of Army Group A, with little support, into the flatlands. Additionally, Kleist reported that the RAF had gained air superiority. The British radar, unknown to the Germans, now included the Pas de Calais. 844

  Germany also intended to send their forces to the heart of France, which still had substantial forces. Further military action in France required the vital panzer divisions, which had no reserves. According to Kleist, nearly half of them were disabled and they could not use them, especially in that marshy terrain. The infantry of Army Group B was victorious on the eastern side of the advance position in the battle line, while the Luftwaffe, successful in Warsaw and Rotterdam, was prepared to do the same to the Channel ports. For these reasons, the Halt Order was imperative so that Germany could conserve the panzers for their military assault of Paris. 845 General Guderian and others resisted the order regarding Dunkirk and Calais, leaving the assault to the Luftwaffe. He excuses his actions regarding the Halt Order by stating that he thought it meant to continue to Dunkirk instead of creating a line of defense where he was. Instead, he persisted in his plan of creeping towards Dunkirk when the orders forbid him to move at all. 846 Kleist attempted to relieve Guderian of his command after he disobeyed orders to halt their advance toward the Channel despite the evidence that Guderian reported.

  On Saturday, May 25, at 10 pm, Churchill sanctioned an evacuation. Using those destroyers that were already in position, the government began the evacuation the following morning. The British War Office, in collaboration with British military commanders in France and Belgium, began the withdrawal of their forces in what they called Operation Dynamo, without bothering to tell their allies as they counted on France and Belgium to defend their rear. The German Army had the BEF and the French First Army contained in the neutral Low Countries in a corridor leading to the sea, about 60 miles deep and about fifteen to twenty-five miles wide. Most of the British remained near Lille, over forty miles from Dunkirk while the French were further south. Two enormous German armies surrounded them on their disorganized rear, General Bock’s Army, Group B, was on the east and General Rundstedt’s Army, Group A, was on the west.

  The Germans resumed the offensive on May 26 and then targeted Paris, the nucleus of the country where the majority of the French troops lingered. Although the military assigned the German Air Force to bombard Dunkirk, the weather in the vicinity was incompatible with such plans. During the nine-day evacuation, the Luftwaffe was able to obstruct the British movement of troops on three days, May 27, May 29 and June 1, 1940. 847

  The British leaving Dunkirk

  Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of 338,000 from Dunkirk, began on May 26. His superiors told Lord Gort to conceal the start of the evacuation from his French and Belgian colleagues. The British evacuation left seven French divisions at Dunkirk to face the German onslaught alone which they, like the Belgians, did until they had exhausted their ammunition. Meanwhile, Admiral Bertram H. Ramsay organized a sealift to England for the British troops. When the French government discovered this deception, it protested, and the British issued an order to lift the French troops “in equal numbers with the British.” However, when the French attempted to enter the boats, British soldiers with bayonets restrained them. A British platoon also fired on French soldiers who were struggling to embark. The British finally allowed the French to evacuate after all of the British had escaped. 848

  On Sunday, May 26, officials held a special service that day, previously designated as a Day of National Prayer, in Westminster Abbey, attended by the king and the prime minister. The Archbish
op of Canterbury asked God to save the British army. Between Monday, May 27 and Thursday, May 30, the newspapers reported that the RAF had caused the Germans huge air losses but the BEF, the French and the Belgians were still holding firm around Dunkirk. On May 29, the Belgian army had surrendered. By then, the British had already evacuated 126,000 of their troops. Some newspaper headlines reported, “Saved, Disaster Turned to Triumph—Rescued From The Jaws Of Death.” 849 The Low Countries are in the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers and include the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany. The people in that region had reclaimed Dunkirk and the surrounding area from the sea in order to build homes.

  Regarding the terrain, the German handbook said this about the coastal plain and dune belt, “In wet weather wide areas become boggy and impassable on foot. Vehicles can, in general, only move on the roads available which are very numerous and mostly fortified. These and the little railways run throughout on dykes; these form, with the numerous, in general not very wide, waterways, canals and ditches, a dense mesh of sections suitable for delaying defense. At a breach or conscious destruction of the dykes, especially at high or spring tides, it will flood to a depth of 1.5 meters (5 feet) and be impassable, even if, according to the map, the height is between one and three meters. When the ebb tide takes the water away, there remains marsh. Drainage results through the collecting canals, from which the water reaches the sea through the great sluices of Calais, Gravelines and Dunkirk.” 850 This terrain was inappropriate for tanks.

  The war diary of the Kleist Group records that General Guderian inspected the ground, on Wednesday, May 29, and reported to the Chief of Staff as follows:

  (1)After the Belgian capitulation, continuation of operations here is not desirable as it is costing unnecessary sacrifices. The armored divisions have only 50 per cent of their armored strength left . . .

  A tank attack is pointless in the marshy country, which has been completely soaked by rain. The troops are in possession of the high ground south of Dunkirk; they hold the important Cassel-Dunkirk road; and they have favorable artillery positions . . .

  Furthermore, 18 Army (part of Army Group B) is approaching… from the east. The infantry forces of this army are more suitable than tanks for fighting in this kind of country.” Therefore, they were capable of closing the gap on the coast. 851

  The geological handbook and maps are significant which made Hitler prudently cautious. The German military based the Halt Order on several factors and their decision was the logical conclusion after considering the possible consequences in view of their objectives in France. General Guderian minimized the ally’s attacks on the Panzers while Rommel exaggerated them, each for his own purposes. Allied attacks had weakened the German strength on the ground. More importantly, Guderian had warned against an armored attack due to the terrain, which, when it rained, was “beyond their capacity.” It did rain. Martin Marix Evans wrote, “If the tanks had gone in, they would not have come out, and if they had not come out General Weygand’s line north of Paris might have held.” 852

  The British left their weapons

  Despite the odds, the British evacuated 220,000 British soldiers, 110,000 French and a few Belgians across the sea to Britain. The French immediately returned to France and reorganized into combat units just about the time that Germany invaded and France’s national government surrendered. The British army, in its evacuation, left most of its weapons behind in France. Winston Churchill warned the House of Commons not to call the evacuation a victory. Rather, it was “a deliverance,” part of the wartime mythology perpetuated by the British media machine to maintain the moral of the British population. The myth of the “providential rescue” became a legend and the entire nation supported and applauded its soldiers. The survivors especially remember their hunger, fear and the disorganized retreat to the coast, and the urgency to board the boats as the inclement weather abated. They were just grateful for their rescue, felt no pride in some kind of achievement, and gladly relinquished their battle intentions for another day. 853

  On May 30, the government published a telegram that the king had sent to John Vereker, known as Lord Gort, the commander of the BEF, saying, in part, “All your countrymen have been following with pride and admiration the courageous resistance of the British Expeditionary Force during the continuing fighting of the last fortnight. Faced by circumstances outside their control in a position of extreme difficulty, they are displaying a gallantry, which has never been surpassed in the annals of the British Army… By Thursday evening many were expecting that the weekend would bring the worst, the news that the BEF had also been forced to capitulate.” The miracle of Dunkirk myth accelerated thereafter. On Sunday June 2, the Dean of St Paul’s referred to evacuation as the “miracle of Dunkirk.” People then associated the Archbishop’s prayer on the Day of National Prayer and the nation’s collective faith with the “miracle of Dunkirk,” evidence of God’s intercession in their behalf against the Germans. 854

  The BBC and newsreel cameras interviewed and filmed soldiers as they landed. Then reporters began telling of the volunteers and small boats that had helped in the rescue of the brave troops. They told of how the soldiers, “by snatching glory out of defeat,” were then “swept on to victory,” by “little holiday steamers” that “made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.” The newspapers, still under government control, reported the rescue accounts by hundreds of small ships at Dunkirk, those that had never ventured beyond the Thames, carrying men from the beaches to the destroyers. It was an emotional euphoric drama, even sanctioned by God, of the people rescuing their army, which further cemented their support for continued war. 855

  The British have since forged, embellished, and glorified the story of Dunkirk and further claimed that France and Belgium, their badly beaten allies, had betrayed them yet they gallantly fought their way home to safety. Part of the myth included the significant part played by an armada of small boats operated by volunteer civilians who came to the rescue of the soldiers and conveyed them to Britain. However, according to the records and survivors, the “small ships” only participated during the last two days of the British evacuation. The British government kept the entire affair concealed from the public until it had delivered at least three-quarters of the soldiers safely home. Author Nicholas Harman interviewed numerous survivors in addition to reading “a mass of documents—Cabinet papers, war diaries, orders, technical instructions, radio scripts, self-justifying publications by generals and politicians” unexplored and ignored by historians who have focused on other military events. 856

  Between May 27 and June 4, the British evacuated 338,226 men including 139,997 French, Polish and Belgian troops, along with a small number of Dutch soldiers, aboard 861 vessels, of which the Germans sunk 243 during the operation. The British Fighter Command lost 106 aircraft dogfighting over Dunkirk and the Luftwaffe lost about 135, some shot down by the French Navy and the Royal Navy. Others say the British lost 177 aircraft and the Germans lost 240. Despite the fact that the Germans sank a quarter of the British vessels, the BBC, certain court historians and naïve individuals perpetuate the myth that Hitler instructed his military leaders to allow the British to escape.

  Polish Corridor

  Regarding France, Lord Rothschild had a home in Paris on the Avenue de Marigny and with the German invasion of France; he was on the run, along with many other Jews. The Rothschilds left behind most of their material possessions, including their huge art collections, worth millions of dollars. In 1873, following the Paris Commune, Baron Robert Philippe de Rothschild, with typical foresight, in an effort to protect his wealth, secured many of his treasures in specially constructed, portable cases. They were able to hide their treasures, including new acquisitions, during World War I. When Germany entered Paris on June 14, 1940, they confiscated many Rothschild treasures. Rothschild servants saved a
number of paintings. There was a secret room at 23, Avenue de Marigny which the Germans never found. Hermann Göring himself was in that mansion and passed by the bookcase, behind which was the entrance to the secret room. 857

  Moreover, the Germans confiscated the majority of the Rothschild treasures despite all of their precautions. They did turn over some of their important pieces to the Louvre, to receive protection as French national property. Yet, people knew what the family had and Hitler issued a special directive regarding the “nationalized” Rothschild art. Wilhelm Keitel of the German High Command instructed the German Military Government in occupied France as follows, “In supplement to the order of the Fuhrer to search… the occupied territories for material valuable to Germany, the Fuhrer has decided, ownership transfers to the French State or similar transfers completed after September 1, 1939, are irrelevant and invalid. The Führer gave instructions to Reichleiter Rosenberg to govern the right of seizure to transport to Germany valuable cultural goods. Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s specially deputized agent was in charge of pillaging. Rosenberg discovered the Rothschild’s treasures and loaded entire trains with precious Rothschild belongings for transfer to Germany. 858

  Élie de Rothschild and his brother were officers in a French cavalry regiment when Germany invaded France in 1940. The Germans captured both of them close to the Belgian border during World War II. The Germans incarcerated Élie in a prisoner of war camp at Nienberg near Hamburg. The Germans discovered that he was planning to escape and took him to Colditz Castle, then to Lübeck, one of the toughest POW camps. There, he met his brother. Despite being Jewish, the Wehrmacht treated them as captured officers. The Germans released Élie de Rothschild in early 1944. Later, Rothschild stated that, despite the harsh conditions, the Germans treated him well and respectfully throughout.