Alright then: Britsplaining Dunkirk. Not the actual events, but the significance of it to the national culture. For the actual history it is hard to beat having it narrated to you by Olivier in The World At War.
Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour. Many countries also have a famous mobilisation of the people - a revolution, something with a national day to name streets after. Dunkirk is ours.
The popular memory of Dunkirk is one of spontaneous organisation. Not an organised event run by the state, but one where the official efforts had already failed and British lives could only be saved by a mass ad-hoc action by whichever members of the public happened to be at hand to crew a boat. This ties in with the wider popular memory of the war as "total effort": everyone was a contributor.
This leads to "Dunkirk spirit": spontaneous solidarity in the face of adversity. Often invoked lightheartedly in the face of ordinary disasters like being stuck on a train for hours or squelching about a drenched music festival, but it works for more serious events too. It was invoked a lot when the Ariana Grande concert was bombed in Manchester. This is part of why there is no real counter-part to the individualism of survivalists or "preppers" in the UK: everyone believes that when a real disaster happens, you can rely on your fellow members of the public, and we will survive together.
A detail of the news interview that is very relevant to the whole thing is "stiff upper lip", and responding to threats with blithe dismissal and flippancy. The officer on the beach saying "I wish they wouldn't do that" about the strafing is the exemplar here. But there's quite a few famous, extreme examples: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/major-digby-tatham...
I was in London during 7/7 and more recently the London bridge attack: foreigners were a little ruffled. Locals could not care less, or more exactly, expected to deviate at little as humanly possible from their routine and knew exactly how to get there because they expected everyone to know how to make that happen.
As soon as rumours of an incident on the public transport leaked on the morning of 7/7, there were lines in front of every tube station and major bus stop: one file, people patiently waiting their turn. I asked:
“You are queuing for what?
— (flabbergasted) The mechanic…”
It took me a while to realise that: before there were severe disruptions, many people might not be able to take their usual route. London public transport is notoriously complicated and most humans can’t really process a journey. Now we have CityMaper but at the time, that was not imaginable.
Experienced workers (I believe former tube and bus drivers) can, a feat not unlike the London taxicab “Knowledge” optimise a journey under disruption. So, the queue was for every traveller whose journey was presumably interrupted to announce his or her destination and have spouted out (with the most undecipherable Norrff-Lundun accent) a sequence of three to six bus numbers and the corresponding transfer station.
No one asked if there would be mechanic available, or what they would do. It was just a normal day, with the Tube mostly not working and some buses disrupted. The sorriest I've heard was "I know… Get a round without me, I'll get the next one when I'm there."
Check out the stories of what happened during the London Bridge attack, but… yeah, expect a combination of “I am not not finishing my beer for that.” and “Attack? Londoners!? Are you daft, mate?!”
> I was in London during 7/7 and more recently the London bridge attack: foreigners were a little ruffled. Locals could not care less, or more exactly, expected to deviate at little as humanly possible from their routine and knew exactly how to get there because they expected everyone to know how to make that happen.
It's worth remembering that, as with much of western Europe, terrorism had been a real threat for a significant part of second half of the 20th century. See, in London's case, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in... ; almost every year from 1970–97 had attacks (and most years had a fairly large number of attacks). Terrorism, to some degree, was a matter of ordinary life.
This is why the "London reeling from ..." headlines in the US were viewed with contempt in Britain. Most people just want to get on with their lives. Carrying on with as little disruption as possible is seen as part of the national character.
I appreciate the Britsplaining. I also like the full context from the article of the quote you excerpted:
>"I wish they wouldn't do that," said the officer with impressive cool. I tried to copy his nonchalant tone and said, "I suppose you get quite used to that sort of thing." "Not a bit of it, old man," he replied, lowering his voice. "What you get used to is pretending you are not as scared as your men are."
I suspect he’d be like Adrian Carton de Wiart VC ([1]; wounded 9 times during WW1, lost an eye, hand, part of an ear but “Frankly, I had enjoyed the war…” and was involved in the WW2 Norwegian campaign on his 60th birthday) and make no comment whatsoever other than how it was a great adventure.
> Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour.
I'm not sure why Stalingrad is on this list. Do you mean that it was a glorious last stand for the Germans? I haven't noticed it being represented in that manner in German culture before.
It was a last stand for Russians in WW2. Stalin was determined not to let the city bearing his name fall. He funnelled a huge amount of soldiers and materiel in order to keep the city. The Germans tried to blitzkreig it, but the Russians held it and the battle persisted on the streets of the city for a long time.
It was a brutal battle. The USSR suffered 1,129,619 total casualties; 478,741 personnel killed or missing, and 650,878 wounded or sick.[1]
The USSR eventually won the battle, and it was the first real turning point in the war.
It also had actual strategic important - as the closest point between the Don and Volga rivers, it was a center of industry and transshipment. (The industry was mostly destroyed during the battle, but its logistical importance remained.)
These days, it's still a major transportation hub - only there's now a canal connecting the two rivers, allowing ship transport aong the Black, Caspian, and Baltic seas (and to the traditional population and economic centers around Moscow and Petrograd).
"Last stand" usually implies that the defensive force is either wiped out entirely, or otherwise basically ceases to exist - or, at the very least, that this would be their likely fate in defeat, because there's nowhere to retreat. That's not what happened in Stalingrad - as you point out, it was an eventual Soviet victory. Indeed, it was ultimately a major defeat for the Germans, with over 700,000 casualties, and far-reaching strategic implications in the theater. And there was certainly the opportunity for the defenders to retreat, if such orders were given.
So Stalingrad was definitely a heroic stand - just not a last stand. Ditto battle of Moscow, siege of Leningrad etc.
There were many examples of actual last stands on the Eastern Front of WW2, though. Brest is the one that's particularly famous, but some other examples would include the 28 Panfilovtsy,
Pearl Harbor isn't a traditional "last stand" either. I think he just meant it as an extraordinary military battle that defined an ethos to that nation.
From the wiki
> A common saying was: "You cannot stop an army which has done Stalingrad."
I got a little carried away with the list; I realised I had two American entries on it and wanted it to be a little more global. While I've read Antony Beevor's Stalingrad I'm not familiar with how the war as a whole is remembered in Russia.
Dunkirk is just one of many tragic defeats, retreats and Pyrrhic victories commemorated in Britain: retreat to Corunna, retreat from Kabul, Charge of the Light Brigade, Cawnpore, Gallipoli, Ypres, Somme, Crete, Narvik, Dieppe, Cassino, Arnhem ('A Bridge Too Far'), Imjin River...
As well as some desperate sieges following earlier incompetence: Lucknow, Mafeking, Rorke's Drift ('Zulu'), Malta, Myitkyina, Tobruk ('Tobruk'), more recently Sangin and Lashkar Gah.
But we do ignore the truly embarrassing ones: Yorktown, Maiwand, Isandlwana ('Zulu Dawn'), Spion Kop, Kut Al Amara, sinking of the Repulse & Prince of Wales, Singapore, Suez and more recently Basra.
There are many reasons why the soldiers could be saved and why the Germans did stop the panzers. The weather, the Belgians were fighting the Germans, the French were defending Dunkirk while the British could sneak away, the Luftwaffe did mainly bomb the harbor not the beaches, there were many heroic acts from many people, e.g. Commander Coulston, courageous civilians on ferries, Hitler still admired Britain and hoped for peace with the empire, tanks and people were under extreme stress for days, the Battle of Arras, the main drive and interest of Germany was Paris not Dunkirk - so they moved tanks and Ju87 towards Paris, the Germans - as many British - thought evacuation was not possible, Goering thought he could prevent evacuation with the Luftwaffe, and many more.
Most of these are of little importance. The German army had swept through France with ease. They could have finished off the British forces, as the generals wanted to - Hitler's intervention is the key reason in my view.
Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour. Many countries also have a famous mobilisation of the people - a revolution, something with a national day to name streets after. Dunkirk is ours.
The popular memory of Dunkirk is one of spontaneous organisation. Not an organised event run by the state, but one where the official efforts had already failed and British lives could only be saved by a mass ad-hoc action by whichever members of the public happened to be at hand to crew a boat. This ties in with the wider popular memory of the war as "total effort": everyone was a contributor.
This leads to "Dunkirk spirit": spontaneous solidarity in the face of adversity. Often invoked lightheartedly in the face of ordinary disasters like being stuck on a train for hours or squelching about a drenched music festival, but it works for more serious events too. It was invoked a lot when the Ariana Grande concert was bombed in Manchester. This is part of why there is no real counter-part to the individualism of survivalists or "preppers" in the UK: everyone believes that when a real disaster happens, you can rely on your fellow members of the public, and we will survive together.
A detail of the news interview that is very relevant to the whole thing is "stiff upper lip", and responding to threats with blithe dismissal and flippancy. The officer on the beach saying "I wish they wouldn't do that" about the strafing is the exemplar here. But there's quite a few famous, extreme examples: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/major-digby-tatham...