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The British evacuation from
Dunkirk is often described
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as a miracle. Over 300,000 Allied soldiers pulled
from the sea in the face of overwhelming odds
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and the so-called 'Dunkirk spirit' that
made it happen helping Britain through
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its darkest hour. But what made
the evacuations from Dunkirk
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so successful? and are the myths
surrounding the operation to be believed?
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Well before we answer those questions
and more a reminder to subscribe to
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the Imperial War Museums YouTube channel for
more videos just like this every two weeks.
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The Dunkirk evacuation is looked upon as a
miracle, a miracle of deliverance I think
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Churchill himself called it in the House of
Commons. But it's not so much a miracle as a
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coming together of series of circumstances
which played into the hands of Britain.
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And to be fair to the Allies
they hadn't had much luck so far.
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Two weeks previously Germany began its invasion of
the Low Countries with French and British forces
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then moving into Belgium to meet them,
however this attack was just a diversion.
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Using cutting-edge blitzkrieg tactics German
tanks smashed through the Allied weak point in
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the Ardennes and dashed to the coast surrounding
the allies. If you want to find out what made this
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blitzkrieg attack so powerful we've got a video
all about that linked in the description below.
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In Belgium and part of Northern France, we have
virtually the whole of the British expeditionary
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force and a French army surrounded with
their backs to the coast. So the British
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army started thinking about evacuation before
anybody else did because they thought they
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might be able to save some of their army
from what looked like a terrible disaster.
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But time was against them, the german
spearhead that had cut the Allies off
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then began taking channel ports despite desperate
Allied attempts to hold on to them. By May 26th
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Dunkirk was the final port remaining. Worse
still the port itself had been badly damaged,
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leading to dire predictions of what would
actually be possible during the evacuation.
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Well, the initial thoughts of the British
government and high command was that
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they were going to try to save what they could.
There was no expectation of getting the whole
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British Expeditionary Force out they thought
they might get act between 30 and 45,000 men.
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Despite those predictions though the
evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo,
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eventually managed to save over 338,000 Allied
soldiers. So how did they do it? Well according
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to Paul there are three things that made these
evacuations so successful. First was the weather.
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Yeah, the weather could hardly have been more
favourable. There were very unusually for that
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time of year very light winds for most days
there was not a lot of surf on the beach.
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That allowed men to load into smaller boats right
on the beaches before boarding for larger ships,
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an impossible task on windier
days, and when there was wind,
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that played into the Allies hands as well.
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The wind was from the east which blew smoke
from the burning port of Dunkirk across the
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beach offering a bit of cover from air
attack and also there's some low cloud
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for most of the period of the evacuation.
Low cloud over the beach also protected
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the troops from air attack so they
won in every sense weather-wise.
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Next up was a bit of ingenuity from the naval
officer in charge of the evacuation, Captain
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William Tennant, which goes against one of those
classic Dunkirk narratives. One of the things we
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remember or think we remember about Dunkirk is
the little boats who took men off the beaches.
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Certainly they were there, over 300 of them,
but that was a minority of the men who escaped.
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Most of the evacuation took place across
one of the harbour breakwaters at Dunkirk.
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This was a very narrow thing with a
walkway on top of it. Most of the men,
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I think around 200,000 of the 338,000 men, came
off through that route as opposed to the beaches.
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The harbour mole was so effective because it
allowed troops to step right from the harbour
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onto destroyers or other large ships rather
than going through the time-consuming process
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of taking smaller boats from the beach. The
mole was never designed to be used this way,
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but it was a major factor in making
the Dunkirk evacuations such a success.
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Finally, let's look at the
infamous german halt order
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which gave the Allies valuable time to create a
defensive perimeter around the port of Dunkirk.
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People in the higher German command basically
could not believe their luck. They always were
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assuming that the French would manage to launch a
counter-attack and cut off those tanks that were
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advancing with such speed. They kept trying to
get tanks to slow down so the infantry could
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catch up and so this halt order on the 24th of
May is sort of another iteration of that caution.
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Another key issue were further Allied
garrisons at other important towns.
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British defenders at Calais held on
against all the odds until May 26th
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while French forces in Lille managed
to occupy 10 German divisions alone.
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The Germans realised that,
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even though they won this battle effectively,
they had not defeated France. France still had
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a huge army and they were going to need all their
tanks in order to achieve this after they dealt
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with whatever happened at Dunkirk. They also
thought that the German air force could destroy
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the troops in the bridgehead or any ships trying
to save them, this was why that order was issued.
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Bring all of this together and you can see why
so many more troops were saved than expected.
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The weather providing valuable cover from air
attack, the harbour mole allowing extra men
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to embark, and the German halt order giving
the Allies valuable time to set up defences.
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But what was it actually like
to be in the town of Dunkirk?
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The soldiers there had a variety
of experience and the British Army
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behaved in a variety of different
ways. There was some heroism,
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on the other hand, there were instances
of disorder and instances of panic.
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Scenes on the beaches varied from boredom
as soldiers waited for pickup, to bedlam as
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the Luftwaffe swirled overhead. According to
one soldier writing in his diary on May 30th,
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the situation was desperate "every
man for himself getting loaded".
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We have in our collection a small
French railway map which was
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pinched from the wall of a cafe by
a soldier Bill Osborne. He expected
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that he might get separated from his unit
and have to find his own way to the coast
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things were that chaotic. He also wrote a letter
on a scrap of paper to his wife anticipating that
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he would be killed and telling her to make
a new life with somebody else if she could.
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And for the soldiers who did escape the stress was
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not over. They were expecting a frosty
reception on their return to Britain.
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They thought that they would be vilified by
the public. They thought that they'd arrived
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home with their tail between their legs and yet
they found themselves treated largely as heroes
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uh because people were so relieved
at having saved so many men and this,
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for obvious reasons of national morale, was
the line pushed by the press and the BBC. It
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was extraordinary that they'd saved as many men
as they had, well what it didn't point out was
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that we'd had to leave all our equipment behind
and Britain was effectively open to invasion at
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that point had the germans had either the
plans or the will or the ability to do it.
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And that's the reason that so many of these
myths surrounding Dunkirk exist. British
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morale was at a low point and so the British press
emphasized stories of heroism like those so-called
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little ships. Most of those craft were piloted
by Royal Navy crews rather than civilians
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and yet these stories of plucky
Brits winning against the odds
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are the stories which have stuck around, part
of what's become known as the 'Dunkirk spirit'.
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The myth certainly was necessary at the
time you know keep people's morale up.
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Although Churchill in the House of Commons was
was fairly straight with the House of Commons
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and said you know this is a deliverance
but "wars are not won by evacuations".
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Victory for Britain was a long way off, but the
evacuation at Dunkirk was one of the few rays
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of light in the Allied cause. It was a great
success coming at the end of a dismal failure,
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a success which kept the British army
intact and British morale afloat,
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for now. The following month France surrendered to
Germany. The battle of Britain was about to begin
