The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

16
Crisis
THE AMERICAN JOURNALIST William Shirer had been given a guided tour of
the front thanks to Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry. On the 20th, he had
been taken to the Albert Canal then on to Brussels and Louvain and across
war-torn Belgium. He had seen close up the powerful effects of the German
war machine. The next day he had even witnessed at first hand the fighting
along the River Scheldt. ‘You have to see the German army in action to
believe it,’ he noted. He was hugely impressed by the power of the
Luftwaffe, by the fitness and high training of the infantry, and by
Germany’s machinery. ‘All day long at the front,’ he noted, ‘you pass
unending mechanized columns. They stretch clear across Belgium,
unbroken…It is a gigantic, impersonal war machine, run as coolly and
efficiently, say, as our automobile industry in Detroit. Directly behind the
front, with the guns pounding daylight out of your ears and the airplanes
roaring overhead, and thousands of motorized vehicles thundering by on
dusty roads, officers and men alike remain cool and business-like.’ Of
course, this is exactly what Goebbels wanted him and other journalists to
see and believe. The trip had been orchestrated very carefully. A single
motorized division would have given William the impression of German
mechanized might. And over Belgium, where the Germans had been
pushing back the weak Belgian army, it was an easy task to make the
conquerors look impressive. The German army was clearly better than any
other they were up against, but that did not mean it was a superbly refined
and highly mechanized fighting machine by any means. But the world
believed in its military might and it was essential that they continued to do
so. The psychological overpowering of their enemies remained an
important weapon for Nazi Germany.
Gort had given the order for the evacuation of all ‘useless mouths’ through
Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk on 19 May. These were non-combat troops
as well as the sick and wounded. At Boulogne, two Guards battalions had
arrived fresh from Dover on the 21st to help cover the evacuation; then,