dunkirk didn't happen because the allies had bad tank commanders. dunkirk happened because the germans had very excellent plan for the invasion of france and because the commanders of the british expiditonary force and the french troops they were with allowed the bef and french troops to be encircled with the only route of esca;e being dunkirk.
I agree the Germans had the better doctrine. Yet i still believe that if the tank commanders had regrouped and counterattacked in force than France might not have fallen as early as it did.
i disagree. the french had focused to much on the maginot line at the begining. i think the fact that the germans just went around the maginot line decided the battle for france.
France, for a lot of reasons, hinged their strategy upon fortified borders. It was their their plan to force the Germans to go around their fortifications by going through Belgium. They expected an Allied effort could stop the Germans in the north. Unfortunately, the Belgians had no desire to be France's battle ground and they declared their neutrality effectively putting an end to it, and the French failed to adapt. When the Germans did exactly what the French had planned for, the grand allied army wasn't in place to stop them.
The French would not have massed their tanks as their doctrines did not allow for it. They still believed in wars of attrition and tanks were deployed in scattered detachments to achieve this goal.
However, assuming the Allies did mass their tanks, it is doubtful they could have prevented the Fall of France. Tanks are just one component of an army. Infantry and artillery are more critical in ultimate victory than are tanks.
