“A miracle of deliverance, achieved by valour” – Winston Churchill on Dunkirk

This edited article about the Second World War originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 651 published on 6 July 1974.

The evacuation of the B.E.F from Dunkirk by Graham Coton

It is often supposed that Germany’s 1940 blitzkrieg in the West was successfully carried out with an overwhelming superiority of ground forces, particularly armour. This is just not true. In every branch of its armies, the Third Reich operated from numerical inferiority – even in the most decisive arm of all, in tanks. German tanks in 1940 were fewer and less powerful than those of the Allies.

The sober truth is that the Germans had a better battle plan.

As we have said before, the tank was a British invention, and the revolutionary theory of tank warfare at high speed – the blitzkrieg – was a British theory. It was left to Germany to use the tank in the way that brought out its advantages of mobility, hitting-power, effect on enemy morale, and so forth. Germany was also blessed, in that fateful early Summer of 1940, with a commander who had absorbed the new theory of tank warfare and who passionately believed in it.

General Heinz Guderian led the armoured spearhead through the Ardennes and pressed on for the coast. In doing so, he reduced the Allied High Command to utter confusion, for such behaviour had no parallel. According to the military textbooks, a commander who was so foolish as to direct a single column of attack deep into enemy territory ran the risk of running out of supplies, of being cut off from the rear, and of being attacked from the flanks. In the event, Guderian managed pretty well for supplies; and there was no one at Allied headquarters to give the order either to cut him off or attack him from the flanks (even if there had been troops available for these tasks), because no one in Allied headquarters had the slightest idea of the speed and direction of Guderian’s advance. When the lead motor-cycle units of the German panzers rattled into Abbeville on May 20th, it must have seemed like an invasion from Mars.

After Abbeville, they threw away the military textbooks . . .

Allied Central Command was cracking up fast. It was left to the British Cabinet to order the British Expeditionary Force to reverse its line of march and drive towards Amiens, in an attempt to cut off the German thrust at the neck. It was an impossible order, but General Lord Gort did his best by attacking with what armour he could lay his hands on. This small counter-attack did little or nothing to upset Guderian, but – as we shall see – it had an incalculable effect on the German High Command, not all of whom had Guderian’s inspired devotion to the theory of blitzkrieg.

Gort’s counter-thrust was further hampered by the replacement of the Allied commander-in-chief, General Gamelin, by General Weygand. Weygand took three precious days to examine the situation, before he approved the plan.

The breaking point came, on May 27th, when the Belgians cracked under the pressure of attack. Their king sued for an armistice, and his troops blew “Cease Fire” the following dawn.

This left a hole in the line, through which the Germans poured unchecked.

By this time, Gort had already taken a definite decision to retreat to Dunkirk, and to evacuate as much of the B.E.F. as could be taken away by the Royal Navy.

By this time also, Guderian’s spearhead had already crossed the line of the canal – the last defence line of the port – only ten miles from Dunkirk.

By May 26th, the full realisation of the B.E.F.’s peril had descended upon the British people. That day, churches throughout the country were packed to the doors, and a special Service of Intercession was celebrated in Westminster Abbey, where the highest in the land knelt to pray for their battle-weary troops in retreat through the fields of Flanders.

Winston Churchill recalled how, in his stall in the choir of the great church, he was conscious of the congregation’s fear – not of death, wounds or material loss, but of the defeat and ruin of their country.

As it was, two factors were already operating towards the salvation of the B.E.F. First, for no apparent reason, Guderian was halted at the line of the Dunkirk canal by a personal order from Hitler. Second, the Admiralty had already begun to assemble a fleet of small craft to terry our troops from the port and beaches of Dunkirk.

They assembled in their hundreds, the little ships of Britain: ferry-boats, naval drifters, coasters, fishing boats – every conceivable type of craft under a thousand tons. The operation was put under the command of Admiral Ramsay, and was given the code-name of ‘Dynamo’.

Contrary to legend, most of the troops were embarked from Dunkirk Harbour itself, and less than a third from the open beaches. The latter method put a terrible strain on the crews of small boats ferrying men from the shallows to the bigger craft waiting offshore. On the evening of the 29th, and from then on, the Luftwaffe pummelled the harbour and the beaches. Fortunately, the soft sand blanketed the effect of the blast, but the little ships fared badly: out of a total of 860 craft of all sizes used in the evacuation, six destroyers, eight troop ships and more than 200 smaller craft were sunk.

The last rearguard was embarked on the night of June 2nd, and Operation ‘Dynamo’ was shut down on the 4th, with 338,000 British and Allied troops brought back to fight another day.

Why, with the annihilation of the B.E.F. within his grasp, did Hitler check the onward thrust of his armoured spearhead?

Many reasons are put forward. Here are five:

The very speed of Guderian’s advance had proved his undoing. His superiors half-believed that he was driving to destruction – and they advised Hitler to put on the brake.

It was thought, by the German High Command, that Guderian’s armour should be conserved for the next stage of the battle for France. In fact, the battle was all but over bar the shouting.

Goring, head of the Luftwaffe, insisted that the B.E.F., cornered in Dunkirk, could be wiped out from the air. He was wrong.

Hitler – himself a veteran of the muddy Flanders fighting in World War I – was fearful that his tanks would get bogged down. In fact, the going was dry and hard all that marvellous summer.

Lastly – and a strange one, this – some of the German generals believed that Hitler allowed the B.E.F. to get away, so that Britain – her pride and honour satisfied – would be more willing to make peace.

If this last explanation is correct, Hitler was very, very mistaken about the British.