The Danger Zone (DZ)

26 April 1937 is a fateful day for the Spanish Republicans, the Spanish Nationalists. The Germans and the whole world really. 

The German Condor Legion was the away team of the Luftwaffe (Hitler didn’t want to be seen as getting involved in a war in Europe). It led by Hugo Sperrle and his chief of staff was Wolfram von Richthofen. Von Richthofen was the highly controversial cousin of the most famous World War I ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen – the Red Baron. 

On 26 April 1937, von Richthofen was in command of launching the controversial bombing attack on the Spanish town of Guernica in the Basque region in the North of Spain. At that time, the Basque region was controlled by the elected socialist/Communist Republican government. The Nationalists rebels, commanded by General Francisco Franco, were in the process of prosecuting a campaign against the Republican forces to conquer that area. The Nationalists were supported by the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler and very substantially, only in terms of numbers, by military personnel of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Their performance was mostly abysmal, which was something that wouldn’t change in the coming World War.

The air-raid on Guernica was reported on by the journalist on the spot (well he arrived there the day after the attack) George Steer. His article about the attack was published in both the Times of London, and the New York Times. Steer’s newspaper report read, in part:

The object of the bombardment seemingly was demoralisation of the civil population and destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.

That is, George Steer was calling this air raid a terror raid against a civilian population.

Pablo Picasso, the world famous ex-pat Spanish painter, was living in Paris at the time of that air raid. He was immediately commissioned by the Republican government to produce a painting about the bombing of Guernica. Picasso completed his painting just a few months after the attack, in June 1937. Picasso never returned to Spain to live.

Picasso’s finished painting was displayed at the International Exhibition of Arts in Paris in 1937. It’s the world’s most famous painting of war. Painted in blue, black and white, measuring 3.5 metres high by 7.8 metres wide, it is a powerful, and physically imposing, condemnation of the German terror raid on Guernica. The only problem with that description is that, well maybe it wan’t a terror raid. If it wasn’t, the left who were behind promoting it as that, rendered an enormous service to Adolf Hitler which I would say guaranteed the second world war in Europe. This series of programmes will reveal all.

Tag words: Antony Beevor; Pablo Picasso; James C CorumGuernica; Spanish Civil War; Wolfram von Richthofen; Hugo Sperrle; Baron Manfred von Richthofen; Red Barron; Francisco Franco; Adolf Hitler; Benito Mussolini; Condor Legion; General Wilhelm Wimmer; Herman Göring; Hans Udet; General Helmuth Wilberg; Nazi Germany; Carl von Clausewitz; On War; Hans Jeschonnek; Curtis Le May;

That well known left newspaper, the Guardian, used a word normally forbidden in its pages. The word’s a Christian word. Especially known to be associated with Jesus Christ. That word is miracle. But the story of what happened at Dunkirk forced the hand of the reviewer Mark Kermode, in his review of Christopher Nolan’s 2017 movie Dunkirk. The reviewer tells us:

Intertitles tell us that British and French troops are “hoping for deliverance… for a miracle”, while the Bergman-esque spectre of death haunts the beach. Entitled “The Mole” (after the jutting stone and wood structure from which marine evacuation beckons),

The actual unspoken words that appear on the screen are:

The enemy have driven the British and the French Armies to the Sea.

Trapped at Dunkirk, they await their fate.

Hoping for Deliverance.

For a Miracle.

As I told you at the beginning of the last programme, the Cambridge Dictionary defines a miracle in these terms:

An unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by a god because it does not followthe usual laws of nature.

Was the escape of the British Army and a significant part of the French Army trapped at Dunkirk, a miracle from God? I’ll tell you the facts and you decide for yourself.

Tag words: Christopher Nolan; Dunkirk; Blitzkrieg; Operation Dynamo; British Expeditionary Force;Jesus Christ; General Sir Edmund Ironsides; Chief of the Imperial General Staff; CIGS; King George VI; Exodus; Parting of the Red Sea; Quran; Koran; Captain William Tennant; Vice-Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay; Stuka; Ju 87; Captain E.F. Wharton; the Little Boats; Walter Lord; The Miracle of Dunkirk; Douglas Bader; Karl Heinz-Frieser; The Blitzkrieg Legend; Hermann Göring; Albert Kesslring; Wolfram von Richthofen; General Harold Alexander; Admiral Sir Dudley Pound; Winston Churchill; General von Bock;

Over the previous 22 programmes I’ve covered the amazing campaign launched by Germany against France. It produced Germany’s most spectacular victory of World War II. From my analysis it could have led to Hitler winning World War II, as William Shakespeare put it, as surely as night follows day.

Karl-Heinz Freiser, at the end of the previous part, took the view that Germany could never have won World War II because, in this industrial age, there was no way that Hitler could have beaten the combined industrial might of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Canada, and all of the other Allies. But I disagree. The brilliance of Manstein’s 1940 Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) did make that a possible outcome – if it had been exploited to the full.

The only thing that robbed Hitler of victory in World War II, in my opinion, was the escape of the British, and many many French and other Allied troops, at Dunkirk.

The escape of so many British and allied soldiers at Dunkirk is most commonly described as a miracle. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a miracle in these terms:

An unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by a god because it does not followthe usual laws of nature.

So was what happened at Dunkirk a miracle according to this definition? Let’s look closely at what happened. You make up your own mind on this – just make sure that you keep your mind open.

Tag words: James S Corum; Karl-Heinz Freiser; Adolf Hitler; Miracle of Dunkirk; Luftwaffe; Hermann Göring; Spanish Civil War; Condor Legion; Wolfram von Richthofen; Me 109; He 111; Do 17; Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber; He 59 seaplane; Royal Navy; Battle of Britain;

On 20th December 1941, at the Wolfschanze, the 5 hour meeting between Hitler and Guderian began. The belief at all times in the Third Reich, when things were going badly, was almost always put down to decisions or actions taken by people surrounding Hitler. If only Hitler knew truth he would put things right.

Guderian in his memoirs repeats this view, while taking a dig at the creature comforts enjoyed at Hitler’s headquarters, compared to life at the front of Army Group Centre. Guderian wrote: 

At that time, however, I still believed that our Supreme Command would listen to sensible propositions when they were laid before it by a general who knew the front. This belief I retained while making the long flight from the ice-bound battle area north of Orel to the well-appointed and well-heated Supreme Headquarters far away in East Prussia.

If only Hitler knew.

Tag words: David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Wolfschanze; Adolf Hitler; Heinz Guderian; Third Reich; Army Group Centre; Field Marhsall von Brauchitsch; Friederich Nietzsche; Nazi ideology; Thus Sprake Zarathustra; Übermensch; The Will to Power; Mein Kampf; 'Lords of the Earth; Erich von Manstein; Lost Victories; General von Kluge; National Socialist; Ostheer;

Guderian had been headstrong as a victorious panzer commander leading the charge across France from the Ardennes to the English Channel. The next year he had been the same in leading the charge into Russia. But was Guderian, now having failed to bring the Russian blitzkrieg to a successful conclusion, still that same man?

The failure to take Moscow in December, partly caused because the Germans were then vastly overstretched, with supply lines that weren’t coping, with the final nail in the coffin of their attempt to take Moscow being the surprise launching by the thoroughly defeated Russian Army, as the Germans saw it, of the Russian Winter Offensive. How good that offensive was has been grossly exaggerated in most minds. It was a pitiful affair that damaged the Russians more than it did the Germans. Then came Hitler’s halt order, his haltbefehl, of 18 December 1941. Was that going to save the German Army or destroy it? Generals from the new Army Group Centre commander, von Kluge down, handled it with subtelty. But subtelty wasn’t schneller Heinz (Swift Heinz) way of doing things. Ultimately what would be left of the Ostheer – the German Army in the east - for the next fateful year, 1942 and would the German Army in that year be able to win the war on the eastern front, or was Germany then doomed to a slow agonizing death by a thousand cuts?

Tag words: David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; halt order; haltbefehl; Heinz Guderian; schneller Heinz;Panzer Leader; Adolf Hitler; Army Group Centre; Ostheer; Nicholas von Below; At Hitler’s Side; von Kluge; Wolfram von Richthofen; Bock; Winter Offensive; Rastenburg; Wolf’s Lair;

Adolf Hitler said to his generals of the invasion of Russia:

We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.

When I first heard that I thought what a boastful little dick. But now that I’ve looked closely at what happened during the Blitzkrieg invasion of France, maybe he wasn’t. So let’s join Hitler’s top panzer general, one of the geniuses behind the cataclysmic Fall of France, Heinz Guderian, as he’s circling in behind Moscow to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union and victory in World War II for Germany. Pushing his men forward like only a German panzer general of World War II could do.

Tag words: David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Adolf Hitler; Heinz Guderian; Panzer Leader; Wolfram von Richthofen; James S. Corum; VIIIth Air Corps; Franz Halder; Mungo Melvin; Manstein; Dr Abraham Twerski; Winter Offensive;

Assuming that Britain had come to terms with Germany in May or June 1940, after the loss of its Army, failing to escape from Dunkirk, and wondering if America would have continued to provide lend lease aid to the Soviet Union alone, and if it did, could the Soviet Union have survived the German Blitzkrieg unleashed on it on 22 June 1941 or more likely earlier.

Let’s have a look at the evidence.

Tag words: Dunkirk; Blitzkrieg; Soviet Union; Luftwaffe; Red Army; Molotov; Joseph Stalin; US Ambassador Steinhardt; AY Vishinsky; Winston Churchill; Theodore Roosevelt; Viktor Naidenko; Lend Lease; David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Communists; Georgi Zhukov; Pearl Harbour; Anastas Mikoyan; Edward Stettinius; Colonel Henry Aurand; Henry Morgenthau; Harry Dexter White; Andrei Gromyko; Litvinov; Adolf Hitler; Harry Hopkins; Volkischer Beobachter; rasputitsa;

In my last programme I looked at what Britain would do if the miracle of Dunkirk hadn’t happened. I concluded that Britain would most likely have come to terms with Hitler. Probably some time in June 1940. 

In just 12 months time, at the latest on 22 June, 1941, although probably much earlier without England involved in the war any longer, Hitler would turn on Russia.

British Historian, Alistair Horne, in his book To Lose a Battle wrote:

Had the BEF had been wiped out in northern France, it is difficult to see how Britain could have continued to fight; and with Britain out of the battle, it is even more difficult to see what combination of circumstances could have aligned America and Stalin's Russia to challenge Hitler.

In this programme I’m going to look at what might have happened to Russia when as Churchill had said of the looming Battle of Britain: The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Now that meant the Soviet Union.

Would Stalin have survived then? With the Panzers starting their engines lined up along the borders with Stalin’s Russia, and Guderian and the Panzer forces knowing how to fight a lightning war this time, base on their experience in France.

Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Lend Lease; Harry Hopkins; Alistair Horne; To Lose a Battle; Winston Churchill; Joseph Stalin; Heinz Guderian; Norman Gelb; Dunkirk: The Complete Story of the First Step in the Defeat of Hitler; Adolf Hitler; Theodore Roosevelt; fireside chat; Cordell Hull; Operation Barbarossa; Harry Truman; president Herbert Hoover; Colonel Yeaton; Ambassador Steinhardt; Maxim Litvinov;

The question for this programme is, if the Panzers had reached and taken Dunkirk before the British had gotten there, would Germany have won World War II in Europe?

Tag words: Len Deighton; Blood, Sweat and Toil; Dunkirk; Alistair Horne; To Lose a Battle; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Winston Churchill; Adolf Hitler; Lord Halifax; Paul Reynaud; Mussolini; Neville Chamberlain; Admiral Keyes; Lord Gort; King George VI; Marshall Pétain; Lloyd George; as Edward VIII; The Duke of Windsor; Mrs Wallis Simpson