Dramatized in Christopher Nolan's epic Dunkirk, the Battle of Dunkirk was much more than just
a firefight between the Axis powers and Allied forces of WWII.
It was May 1940, and the actions of leaders — and ordinary men — helped decide which
way WWII was going to go.
As the German army advanced through Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium to march on France,
things were looking dire for the British and French troops.
The Allies retreated but were pinned against the French coast.
Around 15,000 soldiers dug in to hold off hostile forces as boatloads of men were shuttled
to safety.
Those 15,000 souls saved more than 300,000 soldiers from certain doom.
The Maginot Line falls
In order to understand what pushed Allied forces into such dire circumstances in the
first place, we need to go back to September 1939.
According to The Telegraph, when Poland fell to German forces, Allied forces were powerless
to stop it.
Britain and France watched and waited, and there was an uneasy silence that lasted seven
months before Germany moved on France.
Dividing the German and Allied forces on France's western border were two lines of fortifications:
the German Siegfried Line and the French Maginot Line.
The Maginot Line was a series of hundreds of buildings and 50-plus fortresses, constructed
in the 1930s to prevent Germany from invading as they'd done in WWI.
The problem was that defenses tapered off at the Ardennes Forest between France and
Belgium.
When Belgium fell, around 1,500 German tanks stormed through the Ardennes Forest, bypassing
the Maginot Line completely.
Retreat to Dunkirk
History hasn't been kind to the French failure to stop the Germans as they marched across
Europe, but the French did inflict heavy losses on the Germans when they poured into France,
north of the Maginot line.
Along with the British Expeditionary Force, they fought — and fought bravely — to
slow down the Germans.
By the end of May, it was clear that the Allied forces were seriously outmanned and outgunned.
According to The Telegraph, General Lord Gort, VC of the British Expeditionary Force, was
faced with making the decision of continuing to fight against overwhelming odds, or evacuating
the French and British troops in hopes of regrouping and fighting another day.
He gave the order to retreat to the coast and try to evacuate from the port city of
Dunkirk.
The German halt
On May 24th, Hitler ordered his forces to halt just outside Dunkirk.
Why?
No one is 100 percent sure.
The Allied army was bloody and beaten, and one of the greatest questions of WWII is
why Hitler didn't move in immediately to crush the remnants of the Allied army.
One theory is that Hitler ordered a temporary ceasefire to give his troops time to rest,
refuel, and regroup in preparation for the final push.
By this time, they had been marching and fighting for a solid two weeks, and the army was exhausted.
But while the ground troops rested, the Luftwaffe took to the skies to bomb the soldiers at
Dunkirk.
Impossible odds
As Allied troops dug into defensive positions on the French beach, British HQ was scrambling
just across the English Channel.
They had a massive evacuation to pull off and not long to organize it.
The man who did it was Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay.
He started planning the rescue, codenamed Operation Dynamo, on May 19th, and ships were
on their way on May 26th.
But the Germans didn't intend to let the Allied troops evacuate easily.
Shelling from above continued, and German bombers rained doom down on the men crammed
into Dunkirk.
Bombing was so fierce that Dunkirk's harbor was demolished on May 27th, creating another
problem.
With the harbor out of commission, larger ships were forced to wait out in deep waters
while smaller craft picked up soldiers and shuttled them out to sea and safety.
As the evacuation started, 15,000 men — both French and British — set a perimeter around
Dunkirk.
They held back the advancing German troops on the ground while the Royal Air Force squared
off with the German planes.
By the end, the RAF chalked up 377 passed and only 87 losses.
Low expectations
In the face of the crushing German assault, Ramsay and the British command had to be realistic.
They only expected to save 45,000 lives out of the quarter million waiting on the beach.
At first, even that seemed hopelessly optimistic.
The first day, only 7,669 men were pulled from the Dunkirk beaches.
On the second day, 17,804 more made it out.
Later, ships honed in on two jetties that allowed 239,000 men to reach the safety of
the large ships.
By the time the evacuation was over, most estimates cite the final number of men rescued
at around 338,000.
Civilian help
To aid the evacuation, Ramsay and his men issued an order for all privately owned craft
to join military service, and this mini-fleet grew to include everything from fishing boats
to yachts and steamers.
They would become known as the Dunkirk Little Ships, and many of them still sail.
In 2015, 50 of them made the trip from England to Dunkirk again for the 75th anniversary,
carrying several soldiers who had been rescued by the little boats decades before.
Not all of the civilian ships made it back, though.
In 2015, the BBC covered a touching tribute to the Crested Eagle.
The memorial wreath was laid by 98-year-old veteran Vic Viner, whose brother was one of
the 300 who passed away in the fiery blaze that sank the Crested Eagle.
Catastrophic consequences
The evacuation of so many soldiers gave rise to the tale of the "miracle at Dunkirk," but
the operation came at a huge cost.
Of the 933 ships that participated in the evacuation, 236 didn't return home and another
61 were retired, and 1,000 Dunkirk citizens passed away alongside the soldiers, according to
the BBC.
History Extra reports that 68,000 B.E.F. and 290,000 French soldiers passed away during the operation,
compared to only 27,074 German lives lost.
Around 40,000 men were taken captive by the Germans, forced to march deep into German
territory, and put to work in forced labor camps.
Churchill called it a 'disaster'
The successful evacuation of so many was, indeed, a miracle and a testament to the power
of the human spirit.
But at the same time the media was spinning Dunkirk as a miracle, Winston Churchill was
cautious.
When he gave a speech on June 4, it was a rallying cry that made it clear the Allies
were not done fighting.
But he also acknowledged Dunkirk for what it was: "a colossal military disaster."
Maybe if the months preceding Dunkirk had gone differently so many lives wouldn't have
been lost, but when faced with no other option, the men who stayed behind on that beach sacrificed
everything to make sure 300,000 more people didn't have to be buried at Dunkirk.
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