Dunkirk evacuation

Dunkirk evacuation

The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between 26 May and 4th June 1940, during World War II. The operation was decided upon when large numbers of British, French, Belgian, and Canadian troops were cut off and surrounded by the German army during the Battle of France. In a speech to the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the events in France “a colossal military disaster”, saying “the whole root and core and brain of the British Army” had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. In his We shall fight on the beaches speech on 4 June, he hailed their rescue as a “miracle of deliverance”.

After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, France and the British Empire declared war on Germany. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to aid in the defence of France. After the Phoney War, Germany invaded Belgium and the Netherlands on 10th May 1940, and three of their Panzer corps attacked France through the Ardennes and rapidly drove to the English Channel. By the 21st May, the German forces had trapped the BEF, the remains of the Belgian forces, and three French armies in an area along the northern coast of France.

Commander of the BEF, General The 6th Viscount Gort, immediately saw that evacuation across the Channel was the best course of action and began planning a withdrawal to Dunkirk, the closest location with good port facilities. On 22nd May 1940, a halt order was issued by the German High Command, with Adolf Hitler’s approval. This gave the trapped Allied forces time to construct defensive works and pull back large numbers of troops toward Dunkirk, to fight the Battle of Dunkirk. From 28th–31st May 1940, in the Siege of Lille, the remaining 40,000 men of the once-formidable French First Army fought a delaying action against seven German divisions, including three armoured divisions.

On the first day of the evacuation, only 7,669 men were evacuated, but by the end of the eighth day, a total of 338,226 soldiers had been rescued by a hastily assembled fleet of over 800 boats. Many of the troops were able to embark from the harbour’s protective mole onto 39 British destroyers and other large ships, while others had to wade out from the beaches, waiting for hours in the shoulder-deep water. Some were ferried from the beaches to the larger ships by what came to be known as the little ships of Dunkirk, a flotilla of hundreds of merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft, and lifeboats called into service for the emergency. The BEF lost 68,000 soldiers during the French campaign and had to abandon nearly all of their tanks, vehicles, and other equipment.

In his speech to the House of Commons on the 4th June, Churchill reminded the country that “we must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”

Background

In 1939, after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of the Second World War, the United Kingdom sent British troops – the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) – to aid in the defence of France, landing troops at Cherbourg, Nantes, and Saint-Nazaire. By May 1940 the force consisted of ten divisions in three corps under the command of General John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort. Working with the BEF were the Belgian Army and the French First, Seventh, and Ninth Armies.

During the 1930s, the French had constructed the Maginot Line, a series of fortifications along their border with Germany. This line had been designed to deter a German invasion across the Franco-German border and funnel an attack into Belgium, which could then be met by the best divisions of the French Army. Thus, any future war would take place outside of French territory avoiding a repeat of the First World War.

The area immediately to the north of the Maginot Line was covered by the heavily wooded Ardennes region, which French General Philippe Pétain declared to be “impenetrable” as long as “special provisions” were taken. He believed that any enemy force emerging from the forest would be vulnerable to a pincer attack and destroyed. The French commander-in-chief, Maurice Gamelin, also believed the area to be of a limited threat, noting that it “never favoured large operations”. With this in mind, the area was left lightly defended.

The initial plan for the German invasion of France called for an encirclement attack through the Netherlands and Belgium, avoiding the Maginot Line. Erich von Manstein, then Chief of Staff of the German Army Group A, prepared the outline of a different plan and submitted it to the OKH (German High Command) via his superior, Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt. Manstein’s plan suggested that Panzer divisions should attack through the Ardennes, then establish bridgeheads on the Meuse River and rapidly drive to the English Channel. The Germans would thus cut off the Allied armies in Belgium and Flanders. This part of the plan later became known as the Sichelschnitt (“sickle cut”). Adolf Hitler approved a modified version of Manstein’s ideas, today known as the Manstein Plan, after meeting with him on 17th February.

On the 10th May, Germany attacked Belgium and the Netherlands. Army Group B, under Generaloberst Fedor von Bock, attacked into Belgium, while the three Panzer corps of Army Group A under Rundstedt swung around to the south and drove for the Channel. The BEF advanced from the Belgian border to positions along the River Dyle within Belgium, where they fought elements of Army Group B starting on 10th May. They were ordered to begin a fighting withdrawal to the Scheldt River on 14th May when the Belgian and French positions on their flanks failed to hold. During a visit to Paris on 17 May, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was astonished to learn from Gamelin that the French had committed all their troops to the ongoing engagements and had no strategic reserves. On the 19th May, Gort met with French General Gaston Billotte, commander of the French First Army and overall coordinator of the Allied forces.

Billotte revealed that the French had no troops between the Germans and the sea. Gort immediately saw that evacuation across the Channel was the best course of action, and began planning a withdrawal to Dunkirk, the closest location with good port facilities.Surrounded by marshes, Dunkirk boasted old fortifications and the longest sand beach in Europe, where large groups could assemble. After continued engagements and a failed Allied attempt on 21st May at Arras to cut through the German spearhead, the BEF was trapped, along with the remains of the Belgian forces and the three French armies, in an area along the northern French coast.

Prelude

Without telling the French, the British began planning on 20 May for Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the BEF. Dynamo took its name from the dynamo room that provided electricity in the naval headquarters below Dover Castle, where Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay planned the operation and briefed Churchill as it was under way. Ships began gathering at Dover for the evacuation. On the 20th May, the BEF sent Brigadier Gerald Whitfield to Dunkirk to start evacuating unnecessary personnel. Overwhelmed by what he later described as “a somewhat alarming movement towards Dunkirk by both officers and men”, due to a shortage of food and water, he had to send many along without thoroughly checking their credentials. Even officers ordered to stay behind to aid the evacuation disappeared onto the boats.

On the 22nd May, Churchill ordered the BEF to attack southward in co-ordination with the French First Army under General Georges Blanchard to reconnect with the remainder of the French forces. This proposed action was dubbed the Weygand Plan after General Maxime Weygand, appointed Supreme Commander after Gamelin’s dismissal on 18th May.

On the 25th May, Gort had to abandon any hope of achieving this objective and withdrew on his own initiative, along with Blanchard’s forces behind the Lys Canal, part of a canal system that reached the sea at Gravelines. Sluice gates had already been opened all along the canal to flood the system and create a barrier (the Canal Line) against the German advance.

The Battle of Dunkirk

By thge 24th May, the Germans had captured the port of Boulogne and surrounded Calais. The engineers of the 2nd Panzer Division under Generalmajor Rudolf Veiel built five bridges over the Canal Line and only one British battalion barred the way to Dunkirk. On the 23rd May, Rundstedt had ordered the panzer units to halt, concerned about the vulnerability of his flanks and the question of supply to his forward troops. He was also concerned that the marshy ground around Dunkirk would prove unsuitable for tanks and he wished to conserve them for later operations (in some units, tank losses were 30–50 percent). Hitler was also apprehensive, and on a visit to Army Group A headquarters on 24th May, he endorsed the order.

Göring urged Hitler to let the Luftwaffe (aided by Army Group B finish off the British, to the consternation of Halder, who noted in his diary that the Luftwaffe was dependent upon the weather and air crews were worn out after two weeks of battle. Rundstedt issued another order, which was sent uncoded. It was picked up by the RAF Y service at 12:42: “By order of the Fuhrer … attack north-west of Arras is to be limited to the general line Lens-Bethune-Aire-St Omer-Gravelines. The Canal will not be crossed.” Later that day, Hitler issued Directive 13, which called for the Luftwaffe to defeat the trapped Allied forces and stop their escape. At 15:30 on 26 May, Hitler ordered the panzer groups to continue their advance, but most units took another 16 hours to attack. The delay gave the Allies time to prepare defences vital for the evacuation and prevented the Germans from stopping the Allied retreat from Lille.

The Halt Order has been the subject of much discussion by historians. Guderian considered the failure to order a timely assault on Dunkirk to be one of the major German mistakes on the Western Front. Rundstedt called it “one of the great turning points of the war”, and Manstein described it as “one of Hitler’s most critical mistakes”. B. H. Liddell Hart interviewed many of the generals after the war and put together a picture of Hitler’s strategic thinking on the matter. Hitler believed that once Britain’s troops left Europe, they would never return.

The Evacuation

26th–27th May

The retreat was undertaken amid chaotic conditions, with abandoned vehicles blocking the roads and a flood of refugees heading in the opposite direction. Due to wartime censorship and the desire to keep up British morale, the full extent of the unfolding disaster at Dunkirk was not initially publicised. A special service attended by King George VI was held in Westminster Abbey on the 26th May, which was declared a national day of prayer. The Archbishop of Canterbury led prayers “for our soldiers in dire peril in France”. Similar prayers were offered in synagogues and churches throughout the UK that day, confirming to the public their suspicion of the desperate plight of the troops. Just before 7 pm on 26th May, Churchill ordered Dynamo to begin, by which time 28,000 men had already departed. Initial plans called for the recovery of 45,000 men from the BEF within two days, at which time German troops were expected to block further evacuation. Only 25,000 men escaped during this period, including 7,669 on the first day.

On the 27th May, the first full day of the evacuation, one cruiser, eight destroyers, and 26 other craft were active. Admiralty officers combed nearby boatyards for small craft that could ferry personnel from the beaches out to larger craft in the harbour, as well as larger vessels that could load from the docks. An emergency call was put out for additional help, and by 31st May nearly four hundred small craft were voluntarily and enthusiastically taking part in the effort. The same day, the Luftwaffe heavily bombed Dunkirk, both the town and the dock installations. As the water supply was knocked out, the resulting fires could not be extinguished. An estimated thousand civilians were killed, one-third of the remaining population of the town. The Luftwaffe was met by 16 squadrons of the Royal Air Force, who claimed 38 kills on 27th May while losing 14 aircraft. Altogether, over 3,500 sorties were flown in support of Operation Dynamo. The RAF continued to take a heavy toll on the German bombers throughout the week. Soldiers being bombed and strafed while awaiting transport were for the most part unaware of the efforts of the RAF to protect them, as most of the dogfights took place far from the beaches. As a result, many British soldiers bitterly accused the airmen of doing nothing to help.

On 25th and 26th May, the Luftwaffe focused their attention on Allied pockets holding out at Calais, Lille, and Amiens, and did not attack Dunkirk. Calais, held by the BEF, surrendered on 26th May. (Remnants of the French First Army, surrounded at Lille, fought off seven German divisions (several of them armoured) until 31st May, when the remaining 35,000 soldiers were forced to surrender, having run out of food and ammunition.)

28th May – 4th June

The Belgian Army surrendered on the 28th May, leaving a large gap to the east of Dunkirk. Several British divisions were rushed in to cover that side. On the 30th May, Churchill received word that all British divisions were now behind the defensive lines, along with more than half of the French First Army. By this time, the perimeter ran along a series of canals about 7 miles (11 km) from the coast, in marshy country not suitable for tanks. With the docks in the harbour rendered unusable by German air attacks, senior naval officer Captain (later Admiral) William Tennant initially ordered men to be evacuated from the beaches. When this proved too slow, he re-routed the evacuees to two long stone and concrete breakwaters, called the East and West Mole, as well as the beaches. Almost 200,000 troops embarked on ships from the East Mole (which stretched nearly a mile out to sea) over the next week. On the 28th May, 17,804 soldiers arrived at British ports. On the 29th May, 47,310 British troops were rescued.

The next day, an additional 53,823 men were embarked, including the first French soldiers. Lord Gort and 68,014 men were evacuated on the31st May, leaving Major-General Harold Alexander in command of the rearguard. A further 64,429 Allied soldiers departed on the 1st June, before the increasing air attacks prevented further daylight evacuation. The British rearguard of 4,000 men left on the night of 2nd–3rd June. An additional 75,000 French troops were retrieved over the nights of 2nd–4th June, before the operation finally ended. The remainder of the rearguard—40,000 French troops—surrendered on 4th June. Churchill made a point of stating in his We shall fight on the beaches address in the House on 4th June, that the evacuation had been made possible through the efforts of the RAF.

Navy

Evacuation routes

 

Three routes were allocated to the evacuating vessels. The shortest was Route Z, a distance of 39 nautical miles (72 km), but it entailed hugging the French coast and thus ships using it were subject to bombardment from on-shore batteries, particularly in daylight hours. Route X, although the safest from shore batteries, travelled through a particularly heavily mined portion of the Channel. Ships on this route travelled 55 nautical miles (102 km) north out of Dunkirk, proceeded through the Ruytingen Pass, and headed towards the North Goodwin Lightship before heading south around the Goodwin Sands to Dover. The route was safest from surface attacks, but the nearby minefields and sand banks meant it could not be used at night.

The longest of the three was Route Y, a distance of 87 nautical miles (161 km); using this route increased the sailing time to four hours, double the time required for Route Z. This route followed the French coast as far as Bray-Dunes, then turned north-east until reaching the Kwinte Buoy. Here, after making an almost 270 degree turn, the ships sailed west to the North Goodwin Lightship and headed south around the Goodwin Sands to Dover. Ships on Route Y were the most likely to be attacked by German surface vessels, submarines, and the Luftwaffe.

“You knew this was the chance to get home and you kept praying, please God, let us go, get us out, get us out of this mess back to England. To see that ship that came in to pick me and my brother up, it was a most fantastic sight. We saw dog fights up in the air, hoping nothing would happen to us and we saw one or two terrible sights. Then somebody said, there’s Dover, that was when we saw the White Cliffs, the atmosphere was terrific. From hell to heaven was how the feeling was, you felt like a miracle had happened.“

— Harry Garrett, British Army, speaking to Kent Online

Ships

The Royal Navy provided the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Calcutta, 39 destroyers, and many other craft. The Merchant Navy supplied passenger ferries, hospital ships, and other vessels. Britain’s Belgian, Dutch, and French allies provided vessels as well. Admiral Ramsay arranged for around a thousand copies to be made of the required charts, had buoys laid around the Goodwin Sands and down to Dunkirk, and organised the flow of shipping. Larger ships such as destroyers were able to carry about 900 men per trip. The soldiers mostly travelled on the upper decks for fear of being trapped below if the ship sank. After the loss on 29th May of 19 British and French navy ships plus three of the larger requisitioned vessels, the Admiralty withdrew their eight best destroyers for the future defence of the country.

British ships
Type of vessel

Total Engaged (T)

Sunk (S)

Damaged (D)
Cruisers 1 (T) – 1 (D)
Destroyers, 39 (T) – 6 (S) -19 (D)
Sloops, corvettes and gunboats, 9 (T) – 1 (S) -1 (D)
Minesweepers, 36 (T) – 5 (S)- 7 (D)
Trawlers and drifters, 113 (T) – 17 (S) – 2 (S)
Special service vessels, 3 (T) – 1 (S) 
Ocean boarding vessels, 3 (T) – 1 (S) – 1 (D)
Torpedo boats and anti-submarine boats, 13 (T) 
Former Dutch schuyts with naval crews, 40 (T) – 4 (S) – Unknown (D)
Yachts with naval crews, 26 (T) – 3 (S) – Unknown (D)
Personnel ships, 45 (T) – 8 (S) – 8 (D)
Hospital carriers, 8 (T) – 1 (S) – 5 (D)
Naval motor boats, 12 (T)  6 (S) – Unknown(D)
Tugboats, 34 (T) – 3 (S) – Unknown (D)
Other small crafts, 311 (T) – 170 – (S) – Unknown (D)
Total British ships, 693 226
* Does not include ships’ lifeboats and some unrecorded small privately owned craft.

Little ships

A wide variety of small vessels from all over the south of England were pressed into service to aid in the Dunkirk evacuation. They included speedboats, Thames vessels, car ferries, pleasure craft, and many other types of small craft. The most useful proved to be the motor lifeboats, which had a reasonably good capacity and speed. Some boats were requisitioned without the owner’s knowledge or consent. Agents of the Ministry of Shipping, accompanied by a naval officer, scoured the Thames for likely looking vessels, had them checked for seaworthiness, and took them downriver to Sheerness, where naval crews were to be placed aboard. Due to shortages of personnel, many small craft crossed the Channel with civilian crews.

The first of the “little ships” arrived at Dunkirk on the 28th May. The wide sand beaches meant that large vessels could not get anywhere near the shore, and even small craft had to stop about 100 yards (91 m) from the waterline and wait for the soldiers to wade out. In many cases, personnel would abandon their boat upon reaching a larger ship, and subsequent evacuees had to wait for boats to drift ashore with the tide before they could make use of them. In most areas on the beaches, soldiers queued up with their units and patiently awaited their turn to leave. But at times, panicky soldiers had to be warned off at gunpoint when they attempted to rush to the boats out of turn. In addition to ferrying out on boats, soldiers at De Panne and Bray-Dunes constructed improvised jetties by driving rows of abandoned vehicles onto the beach at low tide, anchoring them with sandbags, and connecting them with wooden walkways.

Aftermath Analysis

Troops landed from Dunkirk

27th May – 4th June
Date            Beaches- Harbour-Total
27th May – 7,669                            7,669
28th May – 5,390       11,874         17,804
29th May -13,752       33,558        47,310
30th May – 29,512      24,311        53,823
31st May –  22,942      45,072       68,014
1st June –   17,348       47,081       64,429
2nd June –   6,695       19,561        26,256
3rd June  –   1,870       24,876       26,746
4th June –    622 25,     553 26,           175
Totals =     98,671 239,  555 338,     226

Allied ships

Type of vessel

Warships (all types)

49 (T) – 8 (S) –  Unknown (D)

Other vessels

119 (T) – 9 (S) – Unknown (D)

Total Allied ships 168 (T) –  17 (S)

Grand total

861 Total  – 243 (S)

Before the operation was completed, the prognosis had been gloomy, with Churchill warning the House of Commons on 28th May to expect “hard and heavy tidings”. Subsequently, Churchill referred to the outcome as a “miracle”, and the British press presented the evacuation as a “disaster turned to triumph” so successfully, that Churchill had to remind the country, in a speech to the House of Commons on 4th June, that “we must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”

Three British divisions and a host of logistic and labour troops were cut off to the south of the Somme by the German “race to the sea”. At the end of May, a further two divisions began moving to France with the hope of establishing a Second BEF. The majority of the 51st (Highland) Division was forced to surrender on the 12th June, but almost 192,000 Allied personnel, 144,000 of them British, were evacuated through various French ports from 15th–25th June under the codename Operation Ariel. The Germans marched into Paris on 14th June and France surrendered eight days later.

More than 100,000 evacuated French troops were quickly and efficiently shuttled to camps in various parts of south-western England, where they were temporarily lodged before being repatriated. British ships ferried French troops to Brest, Cherbourg, and other ports in Normandy and Brittany, although only about half of the repatriated troops were deployed against the Germans before the surrender of France. For many French soldiers, the Dunkirk evacuation represented only a few weeks’ delay before being killed or captured by the German army after their return to France. Of the French soldiers evacuated from France in June 1940, about 3,000 joined Charles de Gaulle’s Free French army in Britain.

In France, the unilateral British decision to evacuate through Dunkirk rather than counter-attack to the south, and the perceived preference of the Royal Navy for evacuating British forces at the expense of the French, led to some bitter resentment. According to Churchill, French Admiral François Darlan originally ordered that the British forces should receive preference, but on 31 May, he intervened at a meeting in Paris to order that the evacuation should proceed on equal terms and that the British would form the rearguard. In fact, the 35,000 men who finally surrendered after covering the final evacuations were mostly French soldiers of 2nd Light Mechanized Division and the 68th Infantry Division. Their resistance allowed the evacuation effort to be extended to 4th June, on which date another 26,175 Frenchmen were transported to England.

The evacuation was presented to the German public as an overwhelming and decisive German victory. On the 5th June 1940, Hitler stated “Dunkirk has fallen! 40,000 French and English troops are all that remains of the formerly great armies. Immeasurable quantities of material have been captured. The greatest battle in the history of the world has come to an end”.(a) Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, the German armed forces high command) announced the event as “the greatest annihilation battle of all time”.

Casualties

The BEF lost 68,000 soldiers (dead, wounded, missing, or captured) from the 10th May until the surrender of France on 22nd June. 3,500 British were killed and 13,053 wounded. All the heavy equipment had to be abandoned. Left behind in France were 2,472 guns, 20,000 motorcycles, and almost 65,000 other vehicles; also abandoned were 416,000 short tons (377,000 t) of stores, more than 75,000 short tons (68,000 t) of ammunition and 162,000 short tons (147,000 t) of fuel. Almost all of the 445 British tanks that had been sent to France with the BEF were abandoned.

Six British and three French destroyers were sunk, along with nine other major vessels. In addition, 19 destroyers were damaged. Over 200 British and Allied sea craft were sunk, with a similar number damaged. The Royal Navy’s most significant losses in the operation were six destroyers:

Grafton, sunk by U-62 on 29th May
Grenade, sunk by air attack at Dunkirk on 29th May
Wakeful, sunk by a torpedo from the E-boat S-30 on 29th May
Basilisk, Havant, and Keith, sunk by air attack off the beaches on 1st June
The French Navy lost three destroyers:

Bourrasque, mined off Nieuport on 30th May.

Sirocco, sunk by the E-boats S-23 and S-26 on 31st May.

Le Foudroyant, sunk by air attack off the beaches on 1st June.

The RAF lost 145 aircraft, of which at least 42 were Spitfires, while the Luftwaffe lost 156 aircraft in operations in the nine days of Operation Dynamo. The Royal Navy claimed the destruction of 35 Luftwaffe aircraft during the period from 27th May to 1st June and damage to another 21 aircraft. Aircraft losses from 10 May until the fall of France were 959 for the British and 1,279 for the Germans.

For every seven soldiers who escaped through Dunkirk, one man was left behind as a prisoner of war. The majority of these prisoners were sent on forced marches into Germany. Many of the prisoners were marched to the city of Trier, with the march taking as long as 20 days. Others were marched to the river Scheldt and were sent by barge to the Ruhr. The prisoners were then sent by rail to prisoner of war camps in Germany. The majority (those below the rank of corporal) then worked in German industry and agriculture for the remainder of the war.

The missing dead of the BEF are commemorated on the Dunkirk Memorial.

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