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40 Historical Facts Accepted as Real For Many Years

Khalid Elhassan February 14, 2020 34 min

Albrecht Gessler - William Tell — William Tell. Learn Swiss-German

11. Hitler Deliberately Allowed the Encircled British to Flee From Dunkirk

British troops at Dunkirk in 1940. History Net

The Western Powers were humiliatingly crushed in the 1940 Battle of France. The Germans swiftly routed the French and British armies and forced France to surrender, accomplishing in six weeks what they had been unable to do in four years during WWI. By late May, the Wehrmacht had pushed the British army into a shrinking pocket surrounding the port of Dunkirk, and seemed on the verge of annihilating the defenders.

Then, with a decisive victory over the British in his grasp, Hitler inexplicably ordered his panzers to halt, and left the task of reducing the surrounded forces to the Luftwaffe. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the British pulled off a miraculous evacuation. That led to a myth explaining Hitler’s halt decision as a gesture of goodwill, deliberately allowing the British, whom he admired, to escape.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.