It's going to hear with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.

The 1940 British evacuation from the beaches of the small French port town of Dunkirk

is one of the most iconic moments in military history.

Ten British divisions were surrounded by the Germans and if the over 300,000 troops had been captured,

it could have destroyed the Allied war effort at the very beginning of World War II.

Due to the courage of the British people and the impromptu flotilla they put together to

rescue them, the British lived to fight another day. The battle was captured through Life magazine

photos spreads, the books of Winston Churchill, the fiction of Ian McEwen, and Christopher Nolan's movie.

While there are many heroic stories that have to do with Dunkirk, the failure of the Germans to capture the British is as much the German Army's fall as anything else.

Hitler was a Supreme Military Commander, but with just five miles before his tanks captured Dunkirk,

he only port through which the Trapped British Expeditionary Force could escape, he ordered them to come to a stop.

Why did he do this? Furthermore, was Blitzkrieg as effective as we think it was?

Did the German army make a number of other mistakes that kept them from capturing the British.

To explore Dunkirk from the British perspective as today's guest Robert Kershaw, author of Dunkirchen 1940,

the German view of Dunkirk.

We look at how there was much more to this battle than what we

understand, how many of the flaws in the German military were present right at the

very beginning of World War II, and while they fully reveal themselves at the end of

the war, they were always there and really how complicated

military events can be in history.

Hope we join this discussion with Robert Kershaw.

And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for word from our sponsors.

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