Fall of France
Following Germany's invasion of Poland, which started WWII, Britain and France declared war on Germany but did not actually attack the Germans. Although the Royal Navy blockaded German ports, and German U-boats and surface raiders hunted Allied shipping, the situation in Europe remained deceptively calm. In fact, it was so calm that people described the war as the Phoney War. While the combined forces of Holland, Belgium, Britain and France outnumbered Nazi Germany, Holland and Belgium remained neutral, even after Germany invaded Norway and Denmark. As a result, Holland and Belgium did not coordinate with France and England to plan a combined reaction to a German offensive. France had been a battlefield during WWI and the losses to French manpower had been so extreme that the nation had not fully recovered more than twenty years later. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the previous war, the French had constructed a supposedly impregnable series of fortifications, the Maginot Line, to hold off any German army while a counter-offensive was prepared.

Both the French and British military leadership thought that armies moved as slowly as they had in WWI, but the Germans had developed fast-moving armoured units that had trained to work in tandem with Luftwaffe bombers. The Germans launched a two-pronged offensive on May 10, 1940. One prong moved through Holland and Belgium to distract the Allies, while the second prong, made up largely of armoured units, made its way through the Ardennes Forest, where the French defences were weak, thus trapping the Allied armies in a pincer. General Maxime Weygand replaced General Maurice Gamelin as commander of the French army on May 18, but Weygand's attempts to organize a counter-offensive failed because the reserves needed for a counter-offensive did not exist. Stunned by the Luftwaffe's bombardment of Rotterdam, Holland surrendered after five days of fighting. The Belgian army was crumbling, while German tank units were charging through France and threatened to surround the British. Faced with the destruction of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), General the Viscount Lord Gort, the commander of the BEF, decided to fall back to the Channel ports and evacuate the British army.

Operation Dynamo
Although the Royal Navy had not expected defeat, and could not have imagined the overwhelming German victory, Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay, responsible for the Channel, had been ordered to prepare a small staff to organize an evacuation if it became necessary. Ramsay had placed the evacuation staff in the Dynamo Room (it had contained the generator that had powered the command post during WWI) in the naval headquarters located within the white cliffs of Dover, so the operation was called Operation Dynamo.

Operation Dynamo officially started during the evening of May 26. The original plan had depended on using the ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk as evacuation points, but only Dunkirk remained free by this time. Boulogne had surrendered on May 25, and Calais was overrun a day later. The capture of Calais meant that artillery could fire on ships travelling from Dunkirk to Dover, so they would have to take a route that was twice as long, thus reducing the number of men that could be evacuated.

Dunkirk had been chosen for the evacuation because it was the third largest port in France and the largest on the Channel. The marshes around the port made it easy to defend, while the sixteen miles of beaches were an excellent place for troops to assemble. The lack of wharves or jetties would be a problem, especially since much of Dunkirk harbour had already been blocked by previous air attacks, therefore small craft would be needed to transport the troops to the ships waiting outside the harbour. Originally, the planners expected that the Germans could only be held off for two days, which was enough time to evacuate 45,000 men.

The Royal Navy's destroyers had already made numerous trips across the Channel, evacuating first the Dutch government and troops, and then repeating the process for Belgium. Destroyers were useful because of their speed but most were already committed to the Mediterranean, Asia or the Norwegian campaign. Realizing that there were not enough destroyers, the navy requisitioned thirty passenger ferries and forty Dutch schuyts (small coastal ships with a crew of three), which were given naval crews.

Fortunately, the navy would have access to a large number of civilian ships. Based on the orders of an unknown British naval officer, an announcement following the nine o'clock news on May 14 had requested all owners of self-propelled pleasure craft between thirty and one hundred feet-long to provide the Admiralty with information about the craft within fourteen days. This was an astonishingly foresighted order since the BEF had made no indication of needing to retreat and had not even fought a serious battle against the Germans by that time. Within days, the Admiralty had a thick register filled with the names of available ships. Some of the boats' owners, as well as civilian mechanics and fishermen, became temporary members of the Royal Navy, while retired naval officers and petty officers were brought back into service to man the boats.

39 destroyers, including a Polish destroyer, 38 minesweepers, 18 anti-submarine trawlers, six corvettes, and 80 other small naval craft were assigned to the evacuation. France provided 19 destroyers and 65 civilian ships. Combined with the Merchant Marine and civilian ships, a total of 848 ships assisted with the evacuation. This was a remarkable achievement since many of the civilian operators had never crossed the Channel. The Admiralty quickly produced enough charts for all of the civilian and military ships.

Evacuation
The evacuation proved to be a nightmare to organize, since the numerous wrecks in the outer harbour made it hazardous for ships to enter, so the naval planners simply gave up and decided to use the beaches. Despite the impressive organization, the small craft did not arrive as quickly as the destroyers, so the evacuation was painfully slow at first, since the destroyers' whalers were the only boats available. The whalers had to be rowed against the tide for twenty minutes to reach the shore and could only take 25 men, so it took hours to load the thousand men that was a destroyer's maximum load. Hoping to speed up the evacuation, trucks were driven out into the water head-to-tail to form a rough jetty, but it made little difference.

By the evening of the 27th, it was clear that ferrying troops from the beaches to the waiting ships was far too slow, so Captain W. G. Tennant, who had been sent over from Dover to oversee the evacuation, made the decision to use the East Mole, a 1,600 meter-long artificial barrier that had been built to shelter the harbour entrance from storms. Troops would queue along the Mole's wooden walkway, which was wide enough for four men, but loading could only take place at high tide. This was a risky manoeuvre but the only other option was to allow most of the BEF to be captured. It proved to be a brilliant decision, since six hundred men could board a destroyer in roughly twenty minutes. The larger ships took troops directly from the East Mole, while the smaller craft concentrated on the beaches.

While the preservation of the BEF was naturally the key issue for Britain, the capture of Paris and the defeat of France was the main objective of the German army, and the destruction of the BEF was a secondary issue. Furthermore, Goring had pressed on May 23 for the Luftwaffe to be given the honour of destroying the BEF. Hitler agreed to Goring's request the next day, and ordered Rundstedt to pull back his armoured units to give the bombers clear targets. It is important to remember that none of the German command staff seriously feared that the entire British and French armies could be evacuated. Instead, the Allies would place themselves into a trap where they could be shelled and bombed at leisure, while the Luftwaffe destroyed any ships that tried to evacuate them.

Actually, the Luftwaffe was too worn-out and over-committed to fulfil Goring's boast that it would destroy the trapped soldiers at Dunkirk. Most important, the Stuka dive-bombers were still busy supporting the German army as it pushed against the retreating Allied forces. Worse, the bombers were based in Germany, so Dunkirk was almost at the limit of their range. As a result, the air attacks against Dunkirk on May 25 and 26 were small affairs. After Calais fell during the night of May 26, more bomber groups were sent to Dunkirk, which received a serious pounding on the morning of May 27. The harbour was knocked out of commission and some of the ships were hit, even though they were difficult targets, so only 7,669 men were evacuated that day.

The RAF's Fighter Command made a huge effort to keep the Luftwaffe away but it was nearly impossible since the journey to and from Dunkirk used up most of the fighter planes' fuel, leaving little for combat. Sixteen RAF fighter squadrons had been assigned to defend Dunkirk from Britain, but no more would be permitted because Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, head of RAF Fighter Command, was conserving his forces for the coming defence of Britain. Soldiers lined up in queues that stretched for miles, and they dug mini-trenches in the sand to gain some protection from the constant air raids. Although the Luftwaffe's main targets were the harbour's infrastructure and the ships waiting offshore, not the troops on the beaches, that was probably small consolation to the troops since even near-misses were terrifying, while the sound of the relentless artillery and air bombardment was hard to bear. Sometimes the dive-bomber pilots simply decided to bomb the beaches or German fighters would strafe the men.

The units manning the BEF's rearguard had already been exhausted when the retreat started, so they could barely remain standing. Many units continued to fight as they retreated but it was difficult to balance the need to keep moving with holding off the enemy, and not every unit managed to escape the Germans. Small and large groups of bone-weary men struggled to make it to Dunkirk, battling an almost numbing fatigue until the terror caused by the sound of a Stuka dive-bomber jolted them awake with terror as they hid in ditches. The chaotic situation meant that wounded troops were sometimes left behind since there were not enough vehicles to transport them.

The roads were littered with abandoned equipment because the troops had been ordered to destroy all of their equipment, except for weapons. Although artillery was simply blown up with shells, some units did not have enough explosives to destroy their supplies or vehicles, so they would simply wreck the engine. As units moved through the defensive perimeter to the assembly areas on the beaches, they often gave their weapons, especially Bren machine guns, and ammunition to the troops manning the perimeter. Both British and French units defended the troops waiting to be evacuated.

The Belgians surrendered on May 27. Despite the myth that Belgium had not notified the British of the surrender and left the British flank vulnerable, the Belgians did officially inform the British when King Leopold telephoned Gort during the early afternoon to warn him that the Belgian army could not keep fighting. Furthermore, the British had not told the Belgians about their evacuation plan, which had officially commenced a day before Belgium's capitulation. This inability to keep each other notified was not intentional. Communication between the Allied HQs was poor, and even communication within the BEF depended on finding functioning telephone connections, which given the German penetration of French territory, was difficult at best. Moreover, the BEF lacked translators to deal with the locals in both Belgium and France, so it was hard to gain local intelligence or talk to nearby Allied units.

Poor weather meant that there were few air attacks on May 28. An overcast sky would force the German bombers to fly so low that they were vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire, therefore the Luftwaffe commanders refused to send bombing missions on cloudy days. Despite the freedom from air attack, only 17,804 men were evacuated.

The weather improved on May 29, so three destroyers and five passenger ships were sunk, but 47,310 men were still taken away that day. The increase in troops evacuated was due to the use of the Mole. Admiral Jean-Marie Abrial, responsible for the French coastal waters and ports from the Belgian border to Normandy, learned on May 29 that the British were evacuating. The French had been furious that French units entering the perimeter had been forced by British troops to destroy their equipment, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, in order to reduce congestion within the perimeter. Abrial thought that the British were helping the French to dig in around Dunkirk, not escape. Gort assumed that Abrial had been told about the evacuation. Faced with such a situation, the two officers sought advice from their superiors, which led to an embarrassed Churchill officially notifying the French government of the evacuation. It was decided that French troops would have equal opportunities to be evacuated but few French ships appeared, so few French soldiers were actually embarked. The British used the East Mole and the French used the West Mole.

By May 30, the embarkation had become more efficient, and bad weather ensured that there was little interference from the Luftwaffe, therefore the evacuation moved quickly. 53,823 men were evacuated, 29,512 from the beaches and 24,311 from the harbour. Even so, it seemed unlikely that the British I Corps, which was manning the perimeter, could be evacuated in time, since no one expected the perimeter to hold longer than June 1.

The troops generally waited patiently on the beaches but some units were led by inept officers or their officers had cracked and were unable to maintain discipline, which naturally made the evacuation more complex. Undisciplined men would swarm onto the small craft sent to transport them to the larger ship, swamping them. Naval officers kept the queues relatively orderly with the threat of drawn pistols. As the tide came in, the men at the head of a queue would feel the water rising above their knees and then their stomachs but they would not risk losing their place in line to move away until it had reached their necks.

Gort left France on May 31, after handing over command of I Corps to Major-General Harold Alexander. Churchill had flown to Paris that same day to meet with the Supreme War Council. Weygand was furious that many more British troops had been evacuated than French but this anger seems odd since he had only permitted the evacuation of French troops the previous day. Meanwhile, the troops manning the 25-mile-long perimeter faced an increasingly bleak future. They had benefited from a lack of coordination between the two German armies closest to Dunkirk but the situation changed drastically when the German 18th Army was directly ordered to break through the British perimeter.

On May 31, 68,000 men were evacuated, 22,000 from the beaches and 45,000 from the harbour. After May 31, most of the troops were evacuated from Dunkirk Harbour. Nearly 30,000 men were taken off the beaches on May 30, 23,000 on May 31, and 17,350 on June 1, but 24,000 were taken from the harbour on May 30, 45,000 on May 31, and 47,000 on June 1. Even the smallest craft could not reach the beach itself without grounding, so the men often had to swim a few hundred yards. The weight of the men would ground the boat, and they would have to get out and push the boat out, which greatly slowed the evacuation.

In some areas of Britain, owners of fishing boats and pleasure craft refused to cross the Channel, so the navy commandeered the boats but it was hard to find enough mechanics capable of running small boats since they were used to much larger ships. Part of the problem was that the government only permitted the civilians to be informed of the situation at 6 P.M. on May 31. Before then, the civilians were unwilling to volunteer because they simply did not know what was happening. Although the civilian-manned boats and ships did not actually take many men away, they did play a vital role in bringing supplies to the thirsty, starving men on the beaches. The return of good weather led to a savage air battle on May 31. The next day, the Luftwaffe intensified their bombing runs against the ships that were picking up troops, sinking 31 ships, including four destroyers. Often the ships had already picked up a full load of men, most of whom would die when the ship exploded or went down.

Ships that approached or left Dunkirk were frequently attacked mercilessly by Stuka dive-bombers. The destroyers could at least fire back but the civilian ships just had to try to dodge the bombs and hope for the best. The fighting was not one-sided. The Stuka pilots referred to the raids as the hell over Dunkirk because there was so much anti-aircraft fire.

Aside from the air bombardment, ships moving across the Channel were vulnerable to U-boats, which sunk a number of ships. Despite the danger and chaos, ships would move next to sinking ships to load on as many crew members and soldiers as they could, therefore many soldiers were saved from drowning.

Most of the BEF had already been evacuated by the evening of June 1, so the effort to save the French troops did not receive the same urgency. However, it was actually safer since the German heavy artillery and Luftwaffe had been withdrawn on June 1 to prepare for the assault against Paris. The decision to launch a major air raid against Paris on June 3 meant that there were few attacks against Dunkirk on June 2 and 3.

Poor communication ensured that thousands of Frenchmen waiting to be evacuated were left at Dunkirk as ships sailed back to Dover empty. This did not improve cooperation between the two reluctant allies, and enhanced the standing of Deputy Prime Minister Petain who wanted to end the alliance with France and make peace with Germany. The French felt abandoned while the British were furious that the French troops had apparently been unwilling to be evacuated even though British ships had been risked to try to save them.

Operation Dynamo ended at 1423 on June 4, having saved 338,226 men, almost 300,000 more than the initial estimate of 45,000. Despite the myth of the little ships, the Royal Navy and the Merchant Marine were primarily responsible for saving the troops at Dunkirk. One third of the troops were evacuated on destroyers. Nearly 200,000 of the 338,000 men taken from Dunkirk boarded ships from the Mole. Six out of the thirty-eight British destroyers had been sunk, and another twenty-six had been badly damaged, either by bombs or collisions.

RAF Fighter Command lost 106 fighters between May 26 and June 3 but the soldiers queueing defenceless on the beach had little sympathy since they rarely saw the dogfights.

68,111 British troops were killed or captured before the final evacuation.

Aftermath
Most of the soldiers simply fell into exhausted slumber as soon as they were on board the ships, waking up once they reached Dover. Expecting to be blamed for a crushing defeat and the abandonment of France, they were astonished to find that the British people were filled with overwhelming support for their soldiers. Whenever trains would stop at a station, local women would appear with food and drink for the troops. The confused mass of men were shipped by rail away from Dover to army bases and depots, where they were gradually organized and then moved across the country to rejoin their respective units. Even though the evacuation itself only involved a few British ports, much of the nation saw the exhausted men being transported and were aware of their sacrifice, so the Dunkirk evacuation became part of the national consciousness.

Since the correspondents that had accompanied the BEF in France had been heavily censored, the public only learned of the total defeat after the evacuation had been in progress for five days and nearly three-quarters of the army had been saved. At that point, the British government and military leadership won the cooperation of the press in the creation of the patriotic myth of Dunkirk. The news blackout had been maintained with the support of the railway organizers who sent the exhausted troops to depots and the women's volunteer associations that cared for them. Actually, the press had no option but to cooperate since any newspaper that was accused of stirring up opposition to the war would be closed down. Even so, there was no need, since the press supported the government in this hour of need. The myth was that the British army had been let down by its allies but had fought its way to Dunkirk, where an armada of "little ships" crewed by civilian volunteers brought them home. Part of the myth was the statement that the defeat of the BEF was mainly due to the French army's inability to stand its ground, even though the BEF was successfully evacuated because French units had manned the perimeter against the Germans. This myth rallied the nation to face the threat of German invasion during the Battle of Britain but would help poison relations between Britain and France.

Related Movies:
A Yank in the RAF (1941)
Directed by Henry King, starring Tyrone Power and Betty Grable
An American pilot joins the RAF during the early stages of WWII to impress an ex-girlfriend but only starts to take the war seriously while covering the evacuation at Dunkirk. (please click here to read the full review)

In Which We Serve (1942))
Directed by Noel Coward and David Lean, starring Noel Coward and John Mills
The film follows the crew of a British destroyer from the eve of WWII to the Battle of Crete in 1941. (please click here to read the review)

Mrs. Miniver (1942)
Directed by William Wyler, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon
The Minivers, an English middle-class family, experience the early days of WWII, including Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. (please click here to read the full review)

Dunkirk (1958)
Directed by Leslie Norman, starring John Mills and Robert Urquhart
Following the astonishing success of the German Blitzkrieg, the Royal Navy struggles to evacuate the British army from France back to Britain at the beginning of WWII. (please click here to read the review)

Atonement (2007)
Directed by Joe Wright, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley
The daughter of a wealthy English family and the son of a servant fall in love during the Interwar years but her younger sister misunderstands their relationship and ends up accusing the man of rape. Sentenced to prison, he is only released on the condition that he join the British army, where he is sent to France at the beginning of WWII.

Further Reading:
Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory-Major General Julian Thompson, London: Pan Books, 2009.

Despite the title, the author is more concerned with the Blitzkrieg and the BEF's retreat to the coast than the actual evacuation, which is only dealt with during the last third of the book. However, he excels at presenting the confusion of the British retreat from the viewpoint of both the men trying to survive on the ever-changing front and BEF HQ, where Gort struggled to salvage the situation. Although Thompson does examine the overall Allied reaction to the German offensive, he concentrates on the BEF, which should not be surprising since Thompson is a retired major general in the Royal Marines. The British-centric viewpoint of the book may not appeal to everyone, but Thompson definitely produced an excellent look at the BEF during the Fall of France.

Dunkirk: The British Evacuation, 1940-Robert Jackson, London: Cassell, 2002.

It is a short book and Jackson spends most of it dealing with the Dunkirk evacuation. The first third shows the confusion and mistrust among the reluctant allies in order to explain why Gort decided to abandon France to preserve the BEF for the defense of Britain. The rest of the book presents the preparation for Operation Dynamo, the exhausting retreat and the chaos at Dunkirk as the navy labored to save as many troops as possible.

Dunkirk: The Patriotic Myth-Nicholas Harman, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980.

The author admits that he grew up believing in the patriotic myth that brave British soldiers had been betrayed by their allies, but managed to fight their way back to Dunkirk, where they were somehow transported back to England by an armada of little ships, even though nobody thought that it was possible. While researching the book, Harman found that the little ships had actually played a small role, and the British had not been betrayed by their allies, but had intentionally concealed their plan to retreat. Approaching the period with an open mind, he explores the perspective of Holland, Belgium and France, as well as Britain, to explain why cooperation between the four nations was so half-hearted, which made German victory much easier. The author also shows that the BEF was woefully unprepared for war, largely due to Gort's failure as a leader during the Phoney War. The evacuation itself is handled quite well, with each day receiving its own chapter. The best book on Dunkirk that I have read.

Lightning War: Blitzkrieg in the West, 1940-Ronald E. Powaski, Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

It is a decent introduction to the Fall of France but Powaski does a better job of covering the Blitzkrieg than the Dunkirk evacuation, simply because there is not enough space to do anything other than provide a basic examination of the evacuation. He explains the debate among the German generals well and shows that the British government did not initially give Churchill its full support. The afterword provides a good summary of why France fell so quickly, but the book itself is less effective. There is a lot of ground to cover and Powaski touches on all of the key elements: the swift intimidation of Holland, King Leopold's stubborn attempt to remain independent, French over-confidence, Britain's refusal to commit itself to another European war and the fact that the German military was simply much better prepared for modern warfare. However, he ignores the fact that the French and British had refused to listen to members of the Polish military who had escaped into France and warned about Germany's new tactics. It is a good introduction but the reader who wants to gain an understanding of the German conquest of Europe will have to look elsewhere.

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