PARIS

A GERMAN HISTORIAN says he has discovered the real reason German tanks halted outside Dunkirk in May 1940, providing British troops streaming towards the town’s beaches in their tens of thousands with an opportunity to escape: a clever French officer in the area had all the traffic lights switched to red.

“We all know how obedient Germans are to traffic lights and pedestrian signals; they just could not proceed while the lights were red,” insists Dr Gunther Wittie, whose latest work, Absurd World War 2, is published this week. “Panzer units began to run into red lights all around Dunkirk, even when they were closer to the town than the British. Of course, the British, as usual, paid absolutely no attention to these signals, but German units stalled. You can see it in reports and diaries. And when they stalled, this leaked back to headquarters, where it was interpreted as an attack running out of steam, needing to rest and refit, before a final assault. This, in turn, led to the famous Halt Order. The British were able to reach Dunkirk; Goering then convinced Hitler the Luftwaffe could deal with them, and the German Army, once so close, provided the Royal Navy with a gap in which they could transport much of the British Expeditionary Force, and quite a few French troops, to Britain. The French officer who changed the lights to red? We’re still trying to find out his name. It’s not recorded. Only the order remains.”