@SS:
There’s your answer.
That’s not as clear cut as you make it out to be… yes, Hitler ordered the halt of the Panzers… and yes, there was talk of Hitler not wanting to totally crush the British, but at the very same time, he listened to Goering and TOTALLY Okay’d letting the Luftwaffe go nuts on the British at Dunkirk… having Goering throw everything but the kitchen sink at Dunkirk and Hitler doing nothing to stop it hardly goes in-line with the “he totally let them go” line of thinking.
As I said in my previous post, it’s really a very wishy-washy action and/or lack of action by Hitler on whether or not he was sincere about letting the English off the hook… if he was totally sold on the “let them go” line, he would have told Goering to stand-down… if he was totally on the “kill them all”, he would have sent the Panzers in.
As stated, the Third Reich and Hitler’s meddling often led to unclear policies and missed opportunities, the least of which was Hitler’s unstated policy of letting the different branches of the Third Reich constantly compete with one another, often at the detriment to national goals.
I don’t think anybody can say “yes he let them go” or “no, he totally tried to stop them”… the fact of the matter is, he kinda let them go while kinda trying to stop them.