The Evacuation of Dunkirk

With a huge number of British Expeditionary Force troops stranded in one location, a massive evacuation operation was undertaken. While it was considered a success, the costs to the Allies were high.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we
are picking up where we left off in our two
part podcast on the evacuation of Dunkirk, known as the

(00:21):
Miracle of Dunkirk or Operation Dynamo, at least in the
UK in the US not necessarily known by that name
other places. Last time, we talked about at the beginnings
of World War two and how from May nine to tenth,
Germany invaded Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and France,
and then over the next ten days basically plowed right

(00:44):
through the Allied defense with advanced units making it all
the way to the English Channel. This was an efficient,
highly strategic maneuver on Germany's part to win very quickly
because Germany knew it could not outlast its enemies in
a drawn out war. So if you have not heard
that episode, this one will probably make basic sense. This

(01:05):
is where most of the movies, books, and TV shows
about the evacuation of Dunkirk start off. Anyway, But those
first weeks of World War two you tend to be
glost completely over, particularly for Americans, since the United States
had not joined the war riort at that point. Plus
it is often portrayed as France just sort of rolling
over and surrendering immediately with no resistance, which is not accurate.

(01:28):
So if you would like to know more about that,
it is back in Part one, and we have the
same caveat here as Part one. Even at two parts,
this stretch of history is just incredibly complicated. There are
multiple multi hundred page books that get into all the
fine details of all the individual towns and troop movements
and military decisions. So we're trying to strike a balance
with these two episodes between the two main modes of

(01:49):
telling this story, one of which is basically three sentences,
and the other is seven hundred pages of more detail
than you could possibly want. After the first German forces
plowed through France and reached the English Channel, the Allied
forces in France and Belgium were left in disarray. Not
only did they hold no central point from which to rally,
but they were increasingly cut off from one another, with

(02:12):
communication and supply lines disrupted. They were also being surrounded
and pushed towards the sea, with German forces moving in
from multiple directions. If you look at maps of how
this progressed, the arrows representing Germany essentially move in from
all sides through the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Germany also
dropped pamphlets to that effect, showing the Allied positions surrounded

(02:35):
by Germany urging them to surrender. Yeah, if you've seen
one of the many trailers for Dunkirk where you see
somebody holding this, this pamphlet that's been dropped out of
an airplane that basically is like, here's us, here's you,
You should surrender. Like that is based on a real thing.
On May one, the Allies tried to mount a counter
attack near a rapt in northwestern France. From the start,

(02:58):
this was a long Many of the tanks involved had
been moved to Belgium earlier in May to fight the
German invasion there. Then they were moved back into France
when it became clear that Germany's efforts in Belgium were
a diversion, with the primary attack really coming into France
through the Ardennes in the southeast. That was about three
hundred miles of travel over the course of ten days

(03:20):
without a lot of opportunity for repair maintenance. The Allied
force was able to inflict heavy damage at the start
of the fighting, but soon tanks started to break down
and the German force, which had been thrown into confusion
in the initial assault, regrouped. The German forces, superior numbers
in terms of both men and tanks, soon overwhelmed the Allies,

(03:42):
who once again had to fall back. However, the Allied
counter attack had done enough damage in those first hours
that the German high command started to fear that if
they had more armored divisions in one place, the Allies
might actually turn things around. So from Germany's point of view,
it became even more critical to win and win quickly.

(04:03):
It was clear at this point that the Allied forces
just did not have the strength to repel the German army,
not in the state that they were in, encircled, divided,
and being driven towards the coast. The German military was faster,
more nimble, and in general better prepared, and France and
Britain were still reeling from having fallen directly into Germany's trap.

(04:24):
So on May, rather than continuing to fight what was
obviously a losing battle, General John Gort, Commander in chief
of the British Expeditionary Force, recommended that they withdraw back
to Britain. Although this was a unilateral decision that disregarded
France's plan to continue fighting, it was not a hasty one.

(04:46):
Gort had presented this as the wisest option as early
as the nineteen and non combat personnel had begun to
be evacuated at that time. From the British point of view,
the proposed evacuation was not an abandonment of rants or
of the war effort. Britain would still be fighting alongside
France by sea and by air, but it seemed clear

(05:07):
that the only other options in terms of ground troops
were surrender or death. In either of those scenarios, hundreds
of thousands of soldiers would either be killed or imprisoned,
leaving Britain with almost no infantry or armored divisions. In
that scenario, Britain expected that Germany would invade and Britain
wouldn't have the means to stop it, so retreating back

(05:29):
across the Channel was a tactical move to get the
British Expeditionary Force out of harm's way. At least relatively speaking,
so they could plan a strike against Germany that would
actually work. From the French point of view, Britain was
abandoning them to face Germany alone. Between May twenty three,
when General Gort called for an evacuation and May when

(05:49):
Winston Churchill authorized it to begin, the British Expeditionary Force
made preparations to escape. With the loss of the Port
of Calais, Dunkirk was the last port that the all
Eyes could access. The Allies reinforced the canals around Dunkirk,
moved troops and equipment into position, and gathered as many
watercraft as possible. This included a lot of smaller military

(06:11):
vessels that were to be used as tenders, ferrying men
from the port to the larger ships awaiting off the coast.
The initial plan was to use Dunkirk's port to remove
forty five thousand troops over the span of two days.
This was not anywhere close to the number of troops
still left in Belgium and France, but Germany was rapidly
closing in from multiple directions. Many of the British troops

(06:34):
were just too far away to make it to Dunkirk
before Germany's inevitable victory there. This really seemed certain, especially
since some Handser brigades had already reached the defensive line
around Dunkirk. But on May there was a pause in
the relentless German assault. The advanced troops fell back, and
for about forty eight hours the bulk of the German

(06:57):
ground force stayed put. Their continues to be debate about
exactly why this was. If Germany had pressed ahead, Dunkirk
would have fallen before many troops could have been evacuated,
but instead Germany stopped. In all likelihood, it was probably
a combination of several of the most likely factors. There
was the practical need to refuel and maintain the panzers

(07:19):
that had gotten head, and to generally resupply. It's also
likely that the German army thought it would be possible
to stop the evacuation by destroying the ships from the air.
The area around Dunkirk was surrounded by canals that the
tanks couldn't cross without pontoon bridges, and it was also
marshy and easily flooded, leading to fears that the tanks

(07:39):
could become mired nearing an assault. The Allied success in
the early hours of the counter attack at Ross may
have raised fears that another stronger counter attack was being planned,
and there are various contradictory theories about how Hitler was
regarding Britain at this point, whether he was perhaps hoping
to negotiate a peace and stayed his hand with the
hope of using it as a tool during negotiations. Of course,

(08:03):
the counter argument to that is that he would have
had a much bigger card to play if he had
just captured the British Army. Regardless of what prompted it,
that brief repreve ultimately allowed far more troops to get
to done Kirk, and it gave the force already there
more time to bolster the fortifications. And without this pause,
the massive evacuation that we will talk about after a
sponsor break could not possibly have taken place. May was

(08:34):
scheduled to be the first full day of Operation Dynamos evacuations,
which were being planned and overseen by Bertram Ramsey, Vice
Admiral at Dover. But Captain William Tennant, who was responsible
for managing the operations in the port at Dunkirk, arrived
that day to find that the German Luftwaffe's air raids,
which had gone on for more than twenty four hours,

(08:54):
had destroyed most of the port facilities, and as that
was happening, the Belgian dens was crumbling on. Belgium sued
for an armistice, removing Belgium's fighting force from the defense.
Belgium would surrender to Germany the following day. The entire
situation immediately became more complicated. The destruction of Dunkirk's port

(09:16):
made the evacuation of Allied troops vastly more difficult, and
the newly opened hole in the Allied defense made it
more precarious. Captain Tennant concluded that it would be far
too time consuming to move troops directly from the shore
to the ships. The water near the shore was much
too shallow for even most small boats to get close.
Dunkirk's beaches were sandy and gently sloping, which made it

(09:38):
a very popular vacation destination, but that shallow water meant
that men would have to wade for up to one
hundred yards even to get into a smaller vessel, and
that smaller vessel would then need to carry its passengers
to a larger vessel waiting in deeper water, plus those
larger vessels couldn't take a direct route between Dunkirk and Dover.

(09:59):
Germany control old the port at Calais to the south,
along with much of the water around it, and could
train guns on the French coast from its position at Calais,
so ships going back to Britain had to take a
very roundabout way, sometimes traveling far north along the French
and Belgian coasts before turning to cross the channel. A
large scale evacuation directly from the beaches was just not feasible. Ultimately,

(10:24):
Captain Tennant decided to evacuate the troops from one of
the breakwaters that protected Dunkirk Harbor. It was known as
the East Mole, and this was a long jetty made
from concrete, stone and wood, with water on either side,
deep enough for destroyers to be moored there. It basically
made a bridge from the shore out to waiting ships,
and while some of those evacuating still did have to

(10:45):
wade out into the water, sometimes for hours, the East
Mole became the primary evacuation point. About two hundred thousand
of the men evacuated were taken from the Mole. Additional
makeshift jetties were also constructed by driving vehicles into the
water at low tide and then reinforcing them with wood
and other materials. As British troops were able to reach Dunkirk,

(11:07):
they gathered on the beaches queuing up to a wait departure,
and it was overall a harrowing weight. The men were hungry,
thirsty and dirty, and many were wounded. Although bad weather
kept the Luftwaffe away for a couple of days during
the evacuation, the area was otherwise under continual air assault.
The air was clouded with smoke from burning oil tankers

(11:30):
and smoldering ruined ships. The beach itself and the town
of Dunkirk were also increasingly filled with derelict vehicles and
other military equipment, deliberately put out of commission to keep
them from falling into the hands of Nazi Germany. It
was immediately clear that the British Expeditionary Force would need
more boats than it had to successfully evacuate. Even by

(11:51):
mooring destroyers along the East Mole, removal of the troops
was proceeding too slowly. Britain had already created a civilian
small vessels rediter for the war effort, and on the
Admiralty began contacting people who had listed their boats. They
would eventually broaden the net, putting out a call for
any small vessel that was very shallow in the draft

(12:12):
and could get close to the Dunkirk beaches. Owners were
directed to take their boats to several staging areas before
proceeding to Ramsgate, which was the departure point for the
fleet of little ships. The little ships ultimately included civilian
vessels of almost every conceivable use. There were yachts and
other pleasure craft, fishing boats, lifeboats, ferries, fireboats, racing boats,

(12:35):
and steamers. Some of the little ships were captained by
their owners or day to day operators. This was particularly
true of fishing boats, whose owners were well experienced on
the water already. Others were either handed over to or
commandeered by the Royal Navy to be helmed by military personnel,
regardless of whether they were going all the way back
to Dover or to a larger ship farther offshore. The

(12:57):
little ships were critical to the evacuation if for allowing
far more men to be removed from Dunkirk and doing
a job in incredibly dangerous circumstances. The evacuees weren't necessarily
safe once they got onto a ship. Though Hitler had
ordered Hermann Gurrig, the Luftwaffe commander in chief, to destroy
the British Expeditionary Force. This he tried to do by

(13:20):
bombing Dunkirk, primarily but not exclusively, focusing on the ships
out in the harbor. Men waiting on shore witnessed already
loaded boats and ships being bombed and sunk, with the
survivors of the initial impact drowning or being crushed by
debris before they could be rescued. This made leader of
ecuees reluctant to go below decks once they were aboard themselves,

(13:41):
because it would be harder to escape if the ship
that they were on were bombed or torpedoed. The destroyers
that were pulling men from the East Mole weren't intended
as troop transports, and with the men refusing to go below,
their decks became so overloaded that there was no room
to crew the ship's guns. Was also apparently a harrowing ride.
Since they couldn't crew the guns, they had to do

(14:01):
extra zigzagginus to get back across the channel, and since
they were very top heavy. With careening going on on,
the Liftwaffe's activity in Dunkirk reached its peak. Ten destroyers
and eight personnel ships were either sunk or put out

(14:23):
of commission on that one day, some by the Liftwaffe
and some by Navy torpedoes. Even so, forty seven thousand
troops were rescued just that day while under heavy fire.
Throughout the evacuation, the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy
tried to defend the transport ships by sea and air,
with the RAF providing twenty four hour air cover while

(14:44):
consistently outnumbered by German aircraft. A lot of the RAF
activity wasn't actually visible from the shore or the evacuation route, though,
which led to the assumption that there was no air cover,
even though the RAF lost one forty five aircraft while
defend in the evacuation. As the evacuation war on. This
led to a lot of friction and hard feelings between

(15:06):
the Air Force and the other branches of the British military,
and there are a lot of stories about people disembarking
one of the ships and running into a pilot being
like where were you guys, and the answers they were
they were they were in the air. The evacuation at
Dunkirk was originally a British plan to save the British
Expeditionary Force, but on May twenty nine, France, which had

(15:27):
previously planned to stay and fight, joined the evacuation effort
as well contributing French ships to the effort and evacuating
French personnel. France's involvement in the evacuation was marked as
this whole period of the war with numerous miscommunications and misunderstandings.
French troops arriving in Dunkirk on June one and second

(15:50):
believed they were going there to be evacuated, but they
had really been sent to mount a counter attack. Another
miscommunication played out on the night of June's second through third,
when French troops that were being evacuated were sent to
the beaches when the ships were really waiting at the
east Male. By the time the men learned where they
were supposed to be and got to the mole the

(16:10):
ships had left was further heightened the sense of bitterness
over Britain's decision to evacuate. French high command gave the
last remaining troops the order to evacuate on June three. However,
many of this last rearguard who tried to evacuate had
their way blocked by deserters who had been hiding in
Dunkirk and rushed the ships to try to get away.

(16:32):
Many of these French troops were ultimately captured. Between May
and June four, three hundred thirty eight thousand, two hundred
twenty six troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, two hundred thirty
nine thousand, five hundred and fifty five were taken from
the harbor, and ninety eight thousand, six hundred and seventy
one from the surrounding beaches. It was roughly a sixty

(16:54):
forty split of British and French troops, with a small
number of troops from other nations. Well. General Gort was
evacuated on the thirty to keep him from being captured
by the Germans, both for strategic reasons and because it
would have been hugely devastating to morale if that had happened.
So this was far far beyond the initial plan of
forty five thousand people rescued, and it was not by

(17:18):
any stretch without consequences, and we'll talk about all of
that after we first paused for a sponsor break. British
propaganda surrounding the Dunkirk evacuation began almost immediately. The term
Dunkirk Spirit came into use, signifying a coming together to

(17:40):
steadfastly faced down adversity. The fleet of Little Ships became
an emblem of bravery and perseverance that persists today today.
There's even an association of Dunkirk Little Ships that mounted
a smaller scale return to Dunkirk in On June four,
the day the evacuation ended, Prime Minister Winston Church gave

(18:00):
his famous we shall fight on the beaches speech, which
is quite rousing, and it he noted, quote, we must
be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the
attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations,
but there was a victory inside this deliverance which should
be noted. The victory inside this deliverance, though, was incredibly

(18:23):
hard one, as some troops were waiting at Dunkirk to
be evacuated, others, primarily British and French. We're defending a
twenty five mile that's about forty kilometer front around the
perimeter of Dunkirk, and this was the absolute last line
of defense, with the defenders only job to hold off
the Germans as long as possible to protect this evacuation.

(18:44):
The British troops had received this order as quote, you
will hold your present position at all costs to the
last man and last round. This is essential in order
that a vitally important operation can take place. As the
evacuation war on to the last man increasingly included men
who were two wounded to get to an evacuation ship,

(19:06):
along with medical personnel who had volunteered to stay. This
defense force was also relatively speaking poorly armed. Tanks, anti aircraft, guns,
and other heavy equipment had largely been destroyed or rendered
inoperable before the evacuation began to keep it from being
put into use by Germany, which meant that it also
could not be put into use by the defenders during

(19:29):
the evacuation. Eight thousand, sixty one British troops and one thousand,
two hundred thirty Allied troops were killed. At the end
of the war. At least fort hundred British troops who
had been present in continental Europe in May of nineteen
forty were missing with no known grave site because they
had been without real medical care for so long. Injured

(19:49):
British soldiers who did make it to Dover had often
contracted gang green or had wounds that were infested with maggots,
but the French losses were much much higher. About forty
thousand French troops left behind during the evacuation became prisoners
of war. Those who survived their time as POWs were
not liberated until ninety five, and in terms of the

(20:12):
war up until that point, France had faced huge losses.
From May tenth to June fourth, roughly sixty eight thousand
British troops were captured or killed for the French, though
that number was more than two hundred thousand. Germany lost
far far fewer troops during this time than either Britain
or France. At least two hundred and forty vessels were

(20:33):
lost during the Dunkirk evacuation, including nine destroyers, six from
Britain and three from France. Another twenty six destroyers were damaged.
Of the nine hundred thirty three ships that took part
in the evacuation, two hundred thirty six were lost and
sixty one were put out of commission. Because of the
number of men that needed to be evacuated, and the

(20:55):
constant pressure to remove them quickly before the Germans broke through.
The All Eyes also left behind a wealth of equipment,
including tanks and other vehicles, anti aircraft, guns, firearms, helmets,
as much of it as possible rendered inoperable before leaving
it behind. Food, fuel, and other supplies were also abandoned

(21:16):
during the evacuation. To be clear, these were not small amounts.
Approximately sixty thousand vehicles, two thousand, five hundred guns, seventy
six thousand tons of ammunition, and four hundred thousand tons
of stores were left behind. What couldn't be destroyed was
reclaimed by Germany. There were also whole groups of troops

(21:38):
that were stranded during the defense of the evacuation and
then were captured or killed. On May in Wormoot, France,
roughly thirty kilometers southeast of Dunkirk, about a hundred British
and French soldiers who had been part of the rearguard
were taking prisoner by the s S. Nearly all were
killed in what came to be known as the Wormoot massacre.

(21:59):
When the SS three grenades into the barn where they
were being held, then removed and shot the survivors in
groups of five. Only fifteen survived this initial massacre, but
so many of them were severely injured that most of
them had died within days of escaping. On May thirty one,
thirty five thousand troops were captured at Lee, roughly eighty

(22:20):
kilometers southeast of Dunkirk, when they were cut off as
the wider perimeter around Dunkirk collapsed. Germany, of course, also
continued its assault on France. After the evacuation was complete
on June ninth, the focus turned to Paris, with Italy
also declaring war on France on June tenth. The French
government fled on the France surrendered on June, with Hitler

(22:44):
arranging for the surrender to be signed in the same
train car on which Germany had surrendered at the end
of World War One. This was a humiliating defeat for France,
with the intentional use of the train car compounding that humiliation,
but it was not at all the sudden arrival of
troops on the steps of Paris followed by an immediate
surrender as it is so often described. Francis surrender up

(23:08):
ended Britain's plans for a return to fight on the
ground after regrouping, although the British Navy and the Royal
Air Force continued the fight and ground combat continued in
Northern Africa and other parts of Europe. It would be
nearly four years before Britain launched another major assault on
the ground in France that took place on the D
Day Invasion of Normandy and amphibious assault involving American, British

(23:31):
and Canadian forces among others. Although Charles de Gaul refused
to accept the French surrender and continued to try to
plan a French military resistance from Britain. After the surrender
to Germany, the official French government continued to be led
in Beauty France by Marshall Philippe Pitan, who cooperated with
Nazi Germany and was later convicted of treason. My conjecture

(23:55):
is that it is really possible that if the Vty
government had not started collaborating with the Nazis, the fall
of France would be portrayed much more as a valiant
but doomed effort, not as a cowardly surrender. I think
that's a fair assessment. It is that is largely like
that that move is is kind of what's pointed to
in terms of like, oh, look at these guys to

(24:16):
just do whatever just to stay alive. They'll they'll collaborate
with anybody which is not after after having previously lost
more than two hundred thousands. And of course, a German
attack on Britain did arrive as feared, although it did
not involve troops on the ground. The Battle of Britain
and the Blitz stretched from July nineteen forty two May
of nineteen forty one. So while the evacuation of Dunkirk

(24:40):
was a success and that it saved the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Allied personnel, far more than the
original plan, it was also unquestionably in military because it
has to be Yeah, I don't think the movie is
going to really frame it as a catastrophe, at least
based on I know. No, it's Christopher Nolan. He's not

(25:02):
really like the here's your happy ending kind of director.
So we'll see had I think, what, Yeah, we will see.
H do you have a miraculous email? I think Julie.
Julie rode in and said, Hi, Tracy and Holly. I'm
a sports radio host in Chicago who often works late
into the night, and I rely on missed in History
to get me through my forty five minute commute from

(25:23):
Downtown back to the suburbs almost every night. It just
so happened. I was driving home from my studio when
I started listening to the episode on the Eastland Disaster.
My commute takes me right along the Chicago River, and
I was right on top of the exact spot the
Eastland went down when you started discussing it, just between
Clark and Lass South Streets. I think most Gen xers
who grew up in Chicago or had relatives from Chicago

(25:46):
grew up knowing about two events, the Eastland Disaster and
the fire at the Our Lady of Angels School in
probably because so many of us had grandparents who lived
through both events and talked about them during our youth.
I was especially gratified to hear you mentioned Marshall Fields
helping out with the recovery effort after the Eastland went down.
It was just one of the reasons so many people

(26:07):
in Chicago were ridiculously loyal to the department store, one
of the others being Field's decision to rebuild its flagship
store in Chicago after the Great Chicago fire. Many of
us were extremely upset when Fields was bought out and
became Amazings. I'm including a couple of pictures of a
plaque along Chicago River that commemorates the victims of the Eastland.
Hope you enjoy Keep up the amazing work, Julie. Another

(26:30):
listener named Anne also sent us pictures of a memorial
at the Bohemian National Cemetery where a hundred and thirty
four victims of the Eastland disaster are buried. So thanks
both of you for sending these notes in these pictures.
If you would like to write to us, we are
at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also at Facebook dot com, sashmiss in History on Twitter
at miss in History. Basically all of our social media

(26:53):
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(27:20):
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