Once the Germans had pushed through the Ardennes, they began to encircle to coalition of British, German, and Belgium troops to the north. While evacuations had begun, they were smaller scale, mostly in the tens of thousands, while hundreds of thousands had to be evacuated. In the small town of Dunkirk, over 400,000 soldiers were waiting for evacuation as the Germans advanced all around them. Their only chance was to cross the channel and fall back to Britain.
But Dunkirk was hardly a great evacuation spot. The Luftwaffe had destroyed much of the port’s facilities and the water was much too shallow for larger warships. Therefore, Operation Dynamo called upon the usage of any kind of small craft to transport these soldiers back to Britain. Thousands of ships, many of which were civilian, crossed the channel to Dunkirk to save the army trapped there. Throughout the next week, 338,000 soldiers would be evacuated, allowing the British to fight another day.
The Miracle of Dunkirk is called such because of the circumstances surrounding the evacuation. If the BEF had been captured there, almost Britain’s entire army would be lost and the war effort would quickly dissipate as it seemed like all of Europe was now part of the Axis Powers. But it would not have been allowed if not for the brave actions of civilians who brought their boats across the channel. Remarkably, the Allies were helped the most by Hitler during this evacuation. Even while the Germans closed in on Dunkirk, Hitler order the Panzer Divisions to stop, and for those three days Allies to prepared for Operation Dynamo. If they had continued, the Allies would likely have been doomed altogether.
In the aftermath, hundreds of thousands were evacuated the Britain would live to fight another day. But they left all of their heavy equipment behind: tanks, artillery, etc so although they praised it a miracle, it was still a crushing defeat. No major British army would ever land in France until D-Day. Furthermore, nearly 100,000 soldiers would be left behind in Dunkirk, fighting to provide precious time for the evacuation. France had still fallen but the war would go on.
Sources: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/darkest-hour/britain-on-the-brink/
https://www.britannica.com/event/Dunkirk-evacuation
https://ww2-weapons.com/french-armed-forces-1939/
http://www.globeatwar.com/article/manstein-plan-vs-case-yellow
Alex, I thought this post was very interesting and informative about the European side of the early parts of World War II. One thing I found interesting was Hitler's hesitation to continue pursuing Britain at Dunkirk in order to exterminate them. According to various sources, it seems that one of Hitler's main reasons was that he believed Britain had no chance of escaping in the first place. Although this thought process may have been foolish in retrospect, I suppose that it's called the _Miracle_ of Dunkirk for a reason. Another reason that I found was that Hitler apparently wanted to pursue an easy peace treaty with Britain, so the Germans did not completely finish the British soldiers off in order to make the hypothesized peace treaty not as hostile. Again, in retrospect this was probably not the best thought process. I suppose that Hitler's mentality here bears some similarities towards his attitude towards America, considering America inconsequential. Hitler was clearly wrong about both Dunkirk and America.
ReplyDeleteYeah I wasn't sure whether to include his reasoning for waiting because there is a lot of different views on the matter. Some examples are like what you said but I also read about some others.
Delete1. The commander of the Luftwaffe claimed that he could stop any evacuation from the air.
2. There was a counter attack at Arras on May 21 which scared German commanders because they believed that following attacks would threaten to cut them off (this was wrong of course as no counter attack really came)
3. Other German generals argued that he should conserve his Panzer division for the next stage of the offensive.
4. He was afraid that German tanks may get bogged down in the North like the WWI.
Your post was very interesting on how the British escaped what looked to be certain defeat. It was also interesting to see how the British used civilian ships to be part of the evacuation. I was surprised that the civilians contributed directly to the war effort instead of the army using their own supplies. The selflessness that some citizens displayed showed how dedicated they were to helping their country. This selflessness helped turn a failure into a success, which was what the British needed to stay in the war.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.passagemaker.com/trawler-news/dunkirk-little-ships