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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
Sir John Keegan receives a knighthood
William
Austin
of Richmond,
Virginia, writes on Saturday, October 6, 2001
What about Hitler and Dunkirk?
THIS semester, I am both working on my thesis and take a class under my advisor, Dr. Joseph Bendersky (author of The Jewish Threat - anti-Semitic Politics of the US Army and Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich) dealing with both European and American aspects of World War Two.
As such, we have been reading John Keegan's The Second World War. My question for you concerns Dunkirk. Keegan completely glosses over the Dunkirk evacuation in three sentences.
Keegan mentions that Hitler had been "assured by Göring that the Luftwaffe would prevent any evacuation from the Dunkirk pocket." This obviously did not occur since approximately 337,000 Allied soldiers escaped with their lives.
Had the Luftwaffe been able to prevent such an escape, and with the advancing German soldiers, a sound whipping could have turned the war for the Nazis right then. My question is about the details of Dunkirk. What happened to the Luftwaffe? Why were they not able to stop this massive evacuation? Were there any repercussions for Göring from Hitler about this massive failure?
Dr. Bendersky did not have an answer for me and Keegan goes around the issue altogether.
David Irving 
answers:
I AM sending you a copy of my Göring biography which will answer part of your questions about Dunkirk; my updated HITLER'S WAR (free download) will probably answer the rest.
I went into the Dunkirk question in some detail, using the German army and other war diaries. Keegan is good, but did of course no original research. Do NOT trust the "diaries" of General Gerhard Engel on this episode, the diaries are partly a post war concoction.
David Irving