The race to the Channel: Dunkirk

The German tank commander, Guderian, now planned to race directly to the Channel ports and seize them. If the Germans controlled these, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) would be unable to escape to England. The 380,000 British and French troops, who had been fighting in Belgium and north-eastern France, fell back to Dunkirk towards the end of May. There the Germans surrounded them. For nine days between 27 May and 4 June, the German Luftwaffe (air force) pounded the beaches as the Royal Navy ferried the men back to England. While this was going on, 40,000 French troops held the Germans off.

Around 340,000 soldiers were rescued from under the noses of the Germans. Of these, 225,000 were British and the rest French. In this respect, 'Operation Dynamo' was something of a 'miracle', but the British had been forced to abandon huge amounts of valuable military equipment - 475 tanks, 1000 heavy guns and 400 anti-tank guns. Some 68,000 men of the BEF had been killed or taken prisoner in the battle for France. The 40,000 Frenchmen who held back the enemy were taken prisoner.

The British press and radio spoke of the miracle of Dunkirk, but the fact was the BEF had been driven out of France and Belgium in a serious defeat. Churchill tried to give a more accurate picture of events: Dunkirk was not a victory - 'Wars are not won by evacuations'. Reynaud, the French Prime Minister, desperately appealed to Churchill to send over ten squadrons of fighters (120 planes) to continue with the war. Churchill reluctantly refused. Britain would now need all her aircraft to defend herself. In Churchill's view the battle for France was over and the battle for Britain was about to begin.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 30