The Evacuation of Dunkirk

When the Germans were invading France the Allies were trying to fight back but they weren't able to. By then they were being pushed to the western sea board. While the Allies were on the Western Sea board they were split into the Northern Part and the Southern Part. These two groups of Armies were completely cut off from communicating with each other. On May 19, 1939 the British Leader Commander Viscount Gort was thinking that it was time to remove all Allied Forces from France before they could be taken over. Three days later orders from London came and the British Forces were to attack from Arras against the right flank of Hitler's German Army. On May 24, 1939 Hitler moved them so much towards Dunkirk that they couldn't advance.

This area was the last major port that they could evacuate the number of soldiers that they still had on French soil was great. While the Allies were trapped, the British Cabinet decided to evacuate all the soldiers instead of attacking Hitler again. The Admiral of the Royal Navy instructed every ship in the area to go to the port of Dunkirk even if it was a fisherman's boat to help evacuate the stranded soldiers. The evacuation began on May 26, 1939. One day after the evacuation began Belgium's Right Wing was broken by the Reichenau's advance. That very day the Luftwaffe was bombing Dunkirk and that forced many fishermen to come up to shore to rescue the stranded officers on the main land. When it came to June 4 of 1939 they had to leave due to all the heavy fire. They left 198,000 British Soldiers, however 140,000 French and Belgian soldiers have been saved. All the heavy equipment they had was left behind because they didn't have any room aboard the vessel. There were heavy casualties to the Royal Navy. Six ships were sunk and nineteen were damaged. The only possible way that they were able to get so many soldiers from Dunkirk was due to Hitler's decision to stop the General in charge. This decision was due to the fact that great protection was given by the Royal Air Force. It took about three days to get Hermann Goring to convince Hitler that the German Army could take over the port of Dunkirk. Hitler then took control again and sent the army to the south of Somme-Aisne line to attack them. That slowed the Germans down enough the Allies could escape.

The Attack on London

The Evacuation of Dunkirk

Winston Churchill

Speeches by Winston Churchill:

Inauguration Speech

We Will Never Surrender

The Speech of France

The Speeches of Victory