Dunkirk evacuation
The evacuation of Dunkirk took place between 26 May and 4 June 1940. Allied troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the Battle of France. A fleet of over 800 vessels rescued 338,226 troops from the beaches and harbour. Winston Churchill hailed the rescue as a’miracle of deliverance’
About Dunkirk evacuation in brief
The evacuation of Dunkirk took place between 26 May and 4 June 1940. Allied troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the Battle of France. A fleet of over 800 vessels rescued 338,226 troops from the beaches and harbour. Winston Churchill hailed the rescue as a’miracle of deliverance’ in a speech to the House of Commons on 4 June. Operation Dynamo was code-named Operation Dynamo and also known as the ‘Miracle of Dunk Kirk’ and the ‘Dunkirk evacuation’ The Dunkirk evacuation was part of Operation Dynamo, the second largest Allied evacuation of World War II. The evacuation took place after Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France on 10 May 1940. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to help defend France, landing at Cherbourg, Nantes, and Saint-Nazaire. The BEF lost 68,000 soldiers during the French campaign and had to abandon nearly all of its tanks, vehicles, and equipment. The French First Army fought a delaying action against seven German divisions, including three armoured divisions, in the Siege of Lille from 28 to 31 May. On the first day only 7,669 Allied soldiers were evacuated, but by the end of the eighth day, by a hastily assembled fleet of more than 800 vessels, more than 100,000 troops had been rescued. In his 4 June speech, Churchill reminded the country that’Wars are not won by evacuations’ and that the rescue of the troops was not a ‘victory’ The evacuation was the first major operation to take place in the English Channel during the Second World War.
The operation was codenamed ‘Operation Dynamo’ by the British Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy, and was followed by Operation Dynamo by the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force. It was the largest evacuation of its kind in the history of the war, with more than 1.5 million troops evacuated in total. It took place on beaches in the north of France, near Dunkirk. The area was left lightly defended by the Maginot Line, a series of fortifications along the Franco-German border. During the 1930s, the French had constructed the Mag inot Line to deter a German invasion across their border. With this in mind, the initial plan for the German invasion of France called for an encirclement attack through the Netherlands and Belgium, avoiding the forest and avoiding a pincer attack and destroying the French-chief Gamelin, the commander of the French Army. The Mag in the Netherlands was also believed to be a limited threat, noting that it never favoured large operations in this area. The plan was to funnel an attack into Belgium, which could then be met by the best divisions of theFrench Army outside of French territory, avoiding a repeat of the First World War, but this did not happen. The north of the Ardennes was declared to be ‘impenetrable’ by General Philippe Pétain as long as it was covered by wood wood.
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This page is based on the article Dunkirk evacuation published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 02, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
