Lessons from a war movie
One week before collegiate classes are to open, I was able to watch the movie “Dunkirk” with my wife and daughter. It was a well-made movie and an emotional action spectacle, with little dialogue. The movie was visual and told from three perspectives — the land, the sea and air.
One cannot help but be captured by the intensity depicted on the screen that I immediately googled the history behind the film and in so doing, learned more from my readings. I planned to write my own lessons from Dunkirk only to discover a number of pieces have been written on the subject. Allow me to share some of these to our readers.
The first piece is by Mark Evers who studied how the battle of Dunkirk teaches about management. In his findings, each night the British military formulated intricate plans to rescue the British Expeditionary Force. But as soon as the sun would rise, conditions like the weather, German activity, equipment failures, intelligence, etc. changed and the well developed plans proved unfit. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of individuals understood exactly their mission and proceeded with great courage to accomplish the mission. Evers called it a great example of how important a clear, well understood mission is to success, and a tribute to the powerof human resourcefulness and the essence of having a shared purpose.
Melvin Rhodes wrote a piece “Big Men in Little Boats – Lesson from Dunkirk.” At that time in history, the German advance through France threatened to capture about 338,000 men. If that happened, Great Britain would not have been able to resist the expected Nazi invasion attempt after the fall of France. Winston Churchill addressed the situation by calling for a strategic retreat and asked ordinary British people to take out their boats and yachts to rescue the stranded soldiers. Over 700 vessels accomplished this heroic work – big men in small boats.
Rhodes draws three lessons. One, the movie is a reminder of how quickly the situation in Europe can change and threaten the United Kingdom. Second, there is reference to what Churchill called the “island race,” the British ethnic descent whose passion for the country has preserved freedom in centuries. But the most important point Rhodes raise, which is not even mentioned in the film, is that King George VI called for a National Day of Prayer on the day the evacuation began. Rhodes reminds the British people of the role religion played in four centuries of their greatness, the importance of faith which unfortunately is neglected in today’s irreligious age.
Finally, Finnegan Schick characterized the WWII story as a moment of inglorious retreat. He saw the event depicted in Dunkirk not as we wish them to be, but as they are from the perspective of the soldiers, humans who are powerless to change the course of human events. Survival is a matter of empty fuel tanks, leaking boats and rough seas, not realpolitik or grand strategy. The miracle of Dunkirk may have rejuvenated the British war effort by giving the country a renewed sense of hope. But to the ordinary soldiers, it was simply a matter of beating the odds.
Altogether, there can be no human rationalization for war at the individual level as history has appropriately documented. War in any form destroy lives and Dunkirk demonstrated how random the destruction can be, from bombs in the air, torpedoes in the sea and rifles on land. There is no rhyme or reason why one should survive or perish over the next guy. But despite this reality, men engage in war for all kinds of reasons – power, possession, money, prestige and even religion. The individual soldier is a pawn in this struggle for a greater good, but who decides what is the greater good? This is a sad reality of our own history.
In the Philippines, our own Marawi episode is a testament to the craziness of armed conflict. As of this writing, the casualties in the Marawi incident include 471 militants, 109 government forces and 119 civilians. This number may pale in comparison with the thousands lost in the Battle of Dunkirk. But the number of those killed, especially from the civilian side, and the evacuation of 180,000 common people are one too many to accept. Even in a localized and smaller setting such as Marawi, the meaning and purpose of war are indeed too complicated to comprehend. Peace on earth, goodwill for all men – these are our ideals. History tells us that it is at its best as an aspiration.#
(Benel D. Lagua is Executive Vice President at the Development Bank of the Philippines. He is an active FINEX member and a long time advocate of risk-based lending for SMEs. The views expressed herein are his own and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of his office as well as FINEX.)