this country is at war with Germany. We shall go on to the end. I remember the

sheets of plane which came up and almost blinded us for my guns.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the World War Two podcast. I'm Angus Wallace.

The evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940 is one of the

most iconic moments of the Second World War. The miracle of the little ships,

plucking soldiers off the beach is regularly played out in popular media, including the 1958

and 2017 films titled Dunkirk. But this is very much the British narrative. What if we turn the

tables to look at the fighting from the German perspective? Joining me once more is Robert

Kirscher. Robert was last with us to discuss Didier and the landings at Omaha Beach in episode 92.

He has a new book, Dunkirk in 1940, The German View of Dunkirk. Welcome back Robert. I want to

explain the fighting around Dunkirk from the German part of you. Do we need to start with the

German attack in the West? I mean, what was the plan and did Dunkirk fit in that plan when the

campaign was launched? No, what is interesting is that there was a very creative plan. A lot of

people tend to say that Army Group B that came through Belgium was a faint and the real strike

was the Panzer thrust through the Ardenne. I don't entirely subscribe to that because if you

look at the forces involved, Army Group B is about two-thirds the size of A. So you're looking at

a parallel offensive. The other point is that the Balschemier, which had never been used on

large scale before, are used in Army Group B sector. So that wasn't as a faint because they were

appropriately used there because they were overcoming the Dutch ball drops to cause. But all that

subsequently I think been lost. So I see it as a two-bronged offensive both in effect covering

the other. Now I think the thing that happened was that it very quickly became a victim of its own

success in the sense that Hitler was pursuing this new creative idea. And then suddenly it was

...