The 2 Days That Cost Germany the War

On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded France and the Low Countries. Ten days later its tanks had crossed the Meuse, reached the Channel coast and pinned the British, French and Belgian armies against the sea at Dunkirk. By 24 May the leading panzer divisions of Army Group A were sitting on a line of canals from Lens through St Omer to Gravelines, less than 15 miles from the port, with almost nothing standing in their way. Then the order came down to stop. Gerd von Rundstedt, Guenther von Kluge, Ewald von Kleist, Heinz Guderian and Franz Halder all left accounts of what happened next, and the German command records from those days contradict most of them. The decision has been blamed on one man since 1945, which is not where the paperwork from May 1940 points. This is the Dunkirk halt order told from inside the German command: who stopped the tanks, why they did it, and whether those two days decided anything at all.