Why did the Nazis let the British escape at Dunkirk?

It's simple: Goering assured him that he would destroy the BEF using airpower alone, so Hitler diverted the army to continue the conquest of France.

>I'd actually be quite interested to read Veeky Forums's views on the matter myself as I've never really understood Hitler's hesitation at that juncture (I always just saw it as an early example of his poor military command).
You'd assume wrong. His local commanders, Rundstedt and Von Kleist, told him to do so because their operational strength was way down, and that pursuing the main french army was more important than closing the pocket.

>The BEF could well have been absolutely decimated if Hitler simply hadn't wavered at that point. Imagine British morale going into the Battle of Britain if it was the humiliating Massacre of Dunkirk instead of the Miracle that ended up playing out.
Morale doesn't affect total wars in any clearly perceivable fashion.

>It's quite feasible that things could have played out very differently indeed over the course of the rest of the war had Hitler acted more decisively.
No, it isn't. What is feasible are things like getting a bloody nose trying to rush largely unsupported tanks into marshy terrain, or allowing the French to reorganize to make Fall Rot something other than a cakewalk.

why is there so many old people in the picture

German lines were overstretched and they felt things were going too easily so far. They wanted to prevent another Miracle of the Marne, and so halted.

Europeans stopped having children in the 70s

this

>That old fucker on the left with his gold digger gook wife
lol

Short version, they didn't.

misinformation
layers of command interfering with eachother

like with everything in the reich, one thing was not under the leadership of one thing
this is true for the army too

hitler believing racing his subordinates will give better results
in reality this turned into a mass, and different commands from different institutions were all legit, he had the final say in everything but this made execution slow and troublesome

so in short, a fuck up happened and due to the nature of the german military chain, it caused a delay which allowed the allies to escape

not the only time it happened

a better and more professional explanation

youtube.com/watch?v=Q95__gXJ9l0&list=PLv0uEimc-uN9D_d2ZQxVmIpGNh4DUBVms&index=22

>make up some bullshit opinion and attribute it to the French boogeyman
>get mad at the opinion you just made up

Angloness is a mental illness.

What are you talking about? I am the first one you quoted and asked an honest question.

They were good people and didn't want to shed blood unnecessarily.

this

everyone makes it sound like it would've been a disaster for the English, but I read there were something like 300000 British and French soldiers at Dunkirk, would it really have been that easy for the germans to defeat a force that huge?

Cause 'Merica was like let my people go

Weren't they entirely surrounded though?

Nigga I have literally been told by French people here that the BEF should've stayed

It is not an uncommon view.

The Germans surrounded them with a much larger force. No real point.

No, they would have been crushed as soon as Germany got enough forces into the region. Yeah, 300,000 men sounds like a lot, but the Germans have close to 4 times that if they really want to call everyone in. More importantly though, the pocket is physically tiny. 2.bp.blogspot.com/-b1vpnSXPhbM/UbcrcZ_HYYI/AAAAAAAAAA4/lPmOzL0Kw6M/s1600/Dunkirk_battle_1940_map.jpg

Pack men in that tightly, and they'll take far more damage from things like artillery and air strikes than they can react to on a more dispersed opponent. Only about a fifth of them could even fight at any given moment if they wanted to bring their arms to bear, and while you have a lot of reserves if you want to try to do that, you're going to get smothered real fast

Hitler has always been a nice guy. Why do you think that he banned vivisection and was a big supporter of animal rights? For humans, he gave ethnic minorities jobs, housing, and food with what little money he could siphon from the military budget.

Because Hitler had autism, thats why

>No, it isn't. What is feasible are things like getting a bloody nose trying to rush largely unsupported tanks into marshy terrain

No, the British front to the West of the pocket was very weakly defended, the waiting period enabled them to consolidate the front.

>allowing the French to reorganize to make Fall Rot something other than a cakewalk.

No, the remaining French forces were outnumbered and outgunned and overstretched in a way that any "reorganization" wouldn't help much. It's not clear anyway why an immediate attack at Dunkirk would've weakened the rest of the German army so much.

>Nigga I have literally been told by French people here that the BEF should've stayed

Since when does few people represent the opinion of a whole country?

They still thought they could reason with the eternal anglo

;_;