Axis helped to the Evacuation of Dunkirk only by ummm..''let them feel free and flee ''...about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops have been saved . On May 24th German units were about to cross the canal defense line close to Dunkirk, the only remaining port by which the BEF could be evacuated, meanwhile an inexplicable order from Fuhrer not only stopped Axis advancement but actually called them back to the canal line. So called evacuation started by 26th May...
I have heard it theorized that Hitler was jealous of his generals and didn't want any of them to be known as the ones who crushed the remnants of the English and French forces. He was worried that one of them might become more popular than Hitler himself was. Hitler also had a pipe-dream about making a deal with Britain to split the world in half. He should have known that by that point in the war, such a plan was totally unrealistic and had not a snowball's chance in hell of actually occurring, but then again Hitler wasn't exactly known for his calmness and rationality.
Although Hitler had a pipe dream about teaming up with the British Empire to fight the common enemy of Bolshevism, and in fact sent his emissary Rudolf Hess into Britain in May 1941, this really didn't have anything to do with the OKW's delay after 21st May. In the afternoon of the 21st May a surprise Anglo-French tank attack on the advancing German infantry caused havoc: the Panzers were far ahead to intervene and had to wheel back to support them. 300 Germans were killed or wounded and 400 taken prisoner. Not a high number if you compare it with later battles in the war, but it was the bloodiest afternoon of the war for Germany up to that point and shook the confidence of the German High Command enough to 1) Delay any advance for 24 hours, and from then on 2) Order the Panzers to move much more slowly to permit contact with their following infantry. The AngloFrench attack is named the Second Battle of Arras. 170 British and French prisoners captured in the attack were executed by the SS. There is also another reason why the Germans didn't move as quickly as they could have if they wanted to trap the British army waiting on the beaches, and that was Goering's overoptimistic bragging that he could easily annihilate Dunkirk (and indeed the entire RAF). And we all know what happened to the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940, don't we!
Very few Londoners understood this as prelude of Hitler's Blitzkrieg. Luftwaffe raided day and night for next 70 days over Manchester,Bristol,Southampton etc. etc.. with a prior target to civilians. By 15th August 1940,the Black Thursday, Britain saw the deadliest attack(probably from Luftwaffe-Norway base),which RAF said ''Eagle Day'', invaded by ME110 fighter-bomber,Luftflotte-2,3 and 5 alongwith Stuka divers.Probably 1st they used ''fuel-injected'' engines enable to perform better at maneuvering negative-G.Having 2 20mm MG FF cannons by each,these were then the masters of sky and RAF narrowly escaped from defeat .
My father was in Dover helping the Dunkirk evacuees come ashore from the motley fleet of boats, ships, pleasure yachts and basically anything that could sail to the Dunkirk beaches and back without taking on too much water. His job was to hand out blankets and hot tea to the men coming ashore, many of whom were in a pitiful state. He saw one of his best friends from school just a year before and shouted, "Peter! Hi! You made it, you're ok now". His friend was so worn out and shell shocked that he didn't even recognise my father. The brave fleet of thousands of boats rescued the bulk of the BEF, but they were in a terrible state.
Dunkirk allowed the cream of the British Army, it's pre war regular forces, to escape to fight another day. It was a vital operation.
Though there was the ..'Halt'..for the Germans,do you think, if the French defence were more 'active', the war could have turned in a very different way.It was reported that Rommel already been trapped badly[Arras]there.British armour at that point was very strong,enough at least to change the course of war there. Well what I mean to say,instead of retreat, if the Allied remained more aggressive,Operation Dynamo was not required then.Absent of RAF,the Evacuation could have been devastating.
Karl-Heinz Frieser in his book 'The Blitzkrieg Legend' answers this question about the 'Halt Order' pretty convincingly. He examines eight possible explanations for the halt and concludes that it was Hitler asserting his dominance over his senior staff that allowed it to stay in place long enough for the evacuation to happen. He says that the order to stop had already been given by von Runstedt, who was paranoid about his flanks being left exposed. This order was the subject of a major argument between Runstedt on the one hand and his superiors Halder and von Brauchitsch on the other. To stop him halting the tanks they ordered Runstedt to hand over command of his divisions to Army Group B. When Hitler found this out, he backed Runstedt to show his senior generals who was really in command and demanded that every future alteration in the command structure be subject to his personal decision. Frieser says that at the same time Goering was promising that the Luftwaffe could wipe out the Allies in the pocket (and they certainly sank a lot of ships). He notes that Goering presented to Hitler the idea that if the Wehrmacht claimed Dunkirk as their victory, it might destabilise Hitler's leadership; better to let the Luftwaffe, an organisation created by the Nazis, take the glory rather than the generals. If you're interested in the 1940 Blitzkrieg, I can't recommend Frieser's book enough; nor High Sebag Montefiorie's superb work 'Dunkirk - Fight to the last man'.
One factor to remember is that the roads all over Belgium were jammed with refugees, so moving troops around with any speed was very difficult; the French defended very hard indeed in some places (Stonne for example), but they had distributed their tanks all over the place so they had no real capacity for a counter-punch in strength, and when they tried it (near Sedan) their logistics and communications were so bad that the infantry and tanks arrived at different times (or not at all). The British certainly had tank concentrations, but in places like Arras where they launched counter-attacks, they inevitably had to fall back because the Germans were flanking them to the south. At Arras they mauled the Germans pretty hard but they also lost a lot of tanks of their own, something like 80% of them either breaking down, running out of fuel or being immobilised by anti-tank guns. Also, the Germans had radios in their tanks, the British were still using signal flags.
