The war had been raging in Europe for the last eight months,
but the Allies had not yet experienced a taste of the relentless Nazi blitzkrieg.
That all changed in May of 1940 when the British Expeditionary Forces found themselves stranded
in continental Europe while the French and Belgian armies fell to the Germans.
Within a matter of days, the Allied troops were trapped by the invading forces on the coast
of France and Belgium around a critical port that offered their last hope to flee. However,
the British Imperial General Staff doubted that even 25 percent of the men could be saved.
A desperate and near-miraculous rescue operation ensued, one that might have even saved the Allied
cause from total collapse. In the words of US Army officer George Fielding Eliot: (QUOTE)
"No purely military study of the major aspects of
the war could do justice to the skill and the heroism of Operation Dynamo."
Open The Way
After Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939,
the German and Allied troops faced each other along the border for months.
Meanwhile, Britain had assembled the British Expeditionary Force to aid its allies in
the continent - but that spring, the Germans would prove how powerful their blitzkrieg was.
On May 10, 1940, a small German army attacked the Netherlands,
capturing key bridges by deploying parachutists deep within the country.
Having gained control, the intruders opened the way for mobile ground forces.
Simultaneously, German airborne troops invaded Belgium, landing on the fortress of Eben Emael
and along the Albert Canal, also seizing critical bridges. Then, on the 11th, the German forces
breached the Belgian front, pushing back the Belgian, French, and British divisions to a
line between Antwerp and Namur while the invading tanks advanced to the west with little opposition.
Another army supported by tanks then crossed Luxembourg, and soon
the Nazi forces were overlooking the Meuse River across the Franco-Belgian frontier.
By the 13th, they had already crossed the Meuse.
Within four days of the start of the invasion,
the Dutch government and Army capitulated to the enemy, after which the Germans pierced
through the French defenses at Sedan and sliced their way toward the English Channel.
Counteroffensive
The advance of the German armies drew the main Allied forces to meet them.
On May 15, General Henri Giraud assumed command of the French Ninth
Army and attempted a counteroffensive to halt the invasion west of the Meuse.
But much to the General's dismay, he soon realized the forces on hand were not enough for
such a herculean effort. Making matters worse, the enemy had already advanced much farther.
While the French withdrew to block the attackers at the Oise line,
the German panzer division outran the retreating troops in a single day.
Hinged on General Paul Ludwig von Kleist's clever maneuvers across the Ardennes Forest,
the German invasion was by then progressively lined by motorized divisions along its
southern flank, as infantry corps marched tirelessly, offering their undying support.
And as desperate as they were, the Allied leaders still hoped that their forces could
stop the expanding "bulge" of the German Army. However, they were quickly crushed. As they moved
swiftly in armored columns, the Germans managed to trap the Allies inside an ever-decreasing pocket.
In their race to the Channel, the Germans cut off the Allied
forces in Belgium and reached Amiens and Abbeville in a matter of days.
By then, they had effectively blocked communication lines between the North and South.
Subsequently, the German motorized division formed a strong defensive flank along the line
of the Somme. From there, the invaders turned to Calais and headed toward a critical point:
the last escape port still open.
Operation Dynamo
As they failed to stop the attackers and were totally uncommunicated,
the Allied troops were in critical danger.
Already on the ninth day of the invasion, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary
Force, General John Gort, began considering the evacuation of his forces by sea.
The effort would be coordinated by the Royal Navy,
namely Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsey and his team, from Dover Castle.
Notably, there was a network of tunnels deep within the cliffs,
and the passages became crucial for the evacuation.
As Ramsey and his team prepared for the ships to rescue their men on May 26,
the order came to put their plans into action. The operation was codenamed Dynamo,
which allegedly came from a room inside the Dover Castle's tunnels that once held a dynamo,
a machine that generated electricity. However, there's no evidence to support that claim.
To make matters worse, the Belgian Army paved under pressure from the enemy advance on May 27.
Cracked and with no reserves left to fill the gaps, the country was overrun.
That same evening, the Belgian people were forced to sue for an armistice,
and the next morning, they sounded the cease-fire.
The British were now practically alone against the Germans,
only supported by a modest French contingent and what remained of the Belgian armies.
Their only hope was to escape through Dunkirk.
Duty Calls
The Allied politicians and military leaders were getting entangled in
different views and orders while the men on the frontline fell back under the
increasing pressure from General Walther von Reichenau's advance through Belgium.
Moreover, the impending danger of a backdoor approach sweeping
north from the recently-fallen Boulogne was a constant threat.
Consequently, Gort withdrew three of his divisions and sent them south to strengthen their line of
canals shielding Dunkirk and the Allied rear. Meanwhile, the admiralty had amassed every
kind of watercraft to help bring the troops home, including all sorts of small boats,
while the Royal Navy called for help and hundreds of civilians answered, lending
every sort of small craft, from fishing smacks and cockleboats to lifeboats and sailing barges.
The main docks were the optimal place to evacuate the troops, but the Germans had
conveniently put them out of action. As such, there were two less-than-ideal alternatives:
either a spindly breakwater on the east side of the harbor or the shallow beaches to the north.
Both options had a clear disadvantage: no destroyer was able to approach within a mile.
Therefore, the evacuees would have to be ferried in small craft,
going back and forth to convey them to the larger ships.
Even so, with no military training but full of courage,
the improvised fleet crossed the English Channel on its way to Dunkirk.
Triumph
There was little time to plan an orderly evacuation,
and there were barely any means of communication.
Captain William Tennant, the designated beach master, was in charge of tactical oversight.
Upon arriving at the port, he discovered that the wooden boardwalk in the eastern
breakwater was wide enough for a column of troops to traverse it four abreast.
As such, the bulk of the evacuation efforts was directed there, and about 200,000 troops were able
to board rescue ships from the breakwater, while the remainder headed directly to the beaches.
Meanwhile, the Allies were under constant attack and had to defend a small pocket around
the harbor. Uncountable men were crammed in the streets and buildings in the town
and all along the beaches, all vulnerable to heavy German air strikes and shelling.
At first, the rescue attempt was painfully slow. On the first day on May 6, only 8,000
men could be evacuated. It was only after a few days that the operation gathered enough pace.
Civilian volunteer crews in their tiny vessels repeatedly picked up soldiers
queued up patiently ashore and in the water. The rescuers bravely took them
out to the transports while enduring fierce attacks from the Germans.
Others even had to take the troops back themselves across the entire Channel.
The Royal Navy's vessels, especially destroyers but also minesweepers and requisitioned merchant
ships with naval crews, crossed the Channel time and time again, suffering considerable losses.
Then, at 10:50pm on June 2, Tennant radioed Rasmey and communicated a
triumphant message: (QUOTE) "BEF evacuated."
After several days of extenuating efforts, 239,465 troops had reached safety through
the breakwater, while 98,761 were rescued directly from the beaches.
Disputed Victory
Operation Dynamo was the biggest evacuation in military history.
Afterward, Tennant and British I Corps commander General Harold Alexander toured the area from
a motor launch using a megaphone to make sure no man was left behind. In the end,
about 198,000 British troops were rescued, as well as 140,000 Allied men, mainly French.
For all the objectives achieved by the Allies, nearly all of the equipment had to be abandoned,
including precious tanks and vehicles, and the BEF lost 68,000 soldiers during the French campaign.
Adolf Hitler even presented the battle as an overwhelming and decisive victory for the Germans.
Even so, the operation did boost the Allies’ morale, and on June 4,
Prime Minister Winston Churchill hailed the rescue as a: (QUOTE) "Miracle of deliverance."
However, he also warned the country, stating that: (QUOTE) "We must be very careful not to
assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations."
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