On This Day: ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ as 300,000 troops are evacuated from France

JUNE 4, 1940: More than 300,000 Allied troops were rescued from Germany’s World War II capture of France after the Dunkirk evacuation was completed on this day in 1940.

The last man to leave Dunkirk was Major-General Harold Alexander, who made sure no one was left behind before boarding the final ship back to Britain.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill hailed the nine-day operation as a ‘miracle’ after hundreds of ships – including small fishing boats – ferried the trapped soldiers away.

He also warned of an impending German invasion of Britain – but famously vowed to ‘fight on the beaches’ and ‘never surrender’ in perhaps his most iconic speech.

It had been hoped that many of the 338,226 evacuated troops – including around 100,000 French soldiers – would go on to shore up the defences elsewhere in France.

But facing an onslaught by the highly-mechanised and battle-hardened German army – and fearing a repeat of the bloodshed of World War II – France quickly collapsed.

Paris fell 10 days later and on June 22 the French government signed a humiliating armistice rather than go into exile like those of most other occupied European states.

The fall of France, which was divided into an occupied zone and one ruled by the Vichy puppet administration, came just six weeks after Germany’s invasion.

France had relied on its ‘impregnable’ Maginot Line, the most sophisticated defensive wall in history, to defend themselves against a Nazi assault.

But when it came, the Wehrmacht simply outflanked this state-of-the-art fortress by repeating a tactic used in the First World War and invading via Belgium.

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The British Expeditionary Force and the French First Army were soon surrounded in north-eastern France and were being pushed towards the sea.

So a decision was taken to rescue these troops from Dunkirk to avoid their imminent capture as Germany’s four million-strong invasion forces swarmed the country.

Operation Dynamo – as the evacuation was codenamed – began on May 27 as the Royal Navy hastily assembled fleet of 900 ships to ferry soldiers from the port.

On the first day, only 7,669 men were rescued, but numbers dramatically increased from May 28 when men were ordered to wade out from beaches as well.

To facilitate this, hundreds of other small vessels  – including 700 private boats from Ramsgate, Kent – went back and forth taking men to bigger ships in deeper water.

Meanwhile, the troops, who often had to wait shoulder-deep in water for hours, faced being bombed and strafed by Luftwaffe planes.

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A British Pathé newsreel showed how one of the many dramatic scenes of men being pulled into the waiting vessels.

Once on board the cross-Channel ships, the soldiers continued to face German attacks – and 243 vessels were sunk during the operation.

In total, the BEF had lost 68,000 men during their entire three-week French campaign and had to leave most of their equipment, including tanks, in France.

A further 220,000 Allied troops were rescued by British ships from four other French ports to bring the total of Allied troops evacuated to 558,000.

But, while it was a major boost to British morale – allowing the nation to fight on – many in France felt abandoned betrayed by their neighbour.

Dunkirk – and the Royal Navy’s destruction of the French fleet in North Africa on July 3 – fostered deep anti-British sentiments and support for the Nazis.

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Many Frenchmen also thought the UK would be incapable of standing up to Germany’s might - but they were proved wrong during the Battle of Britain.

Britain stood alone in Europe against Germany for another year before the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

And the U.S. did not declare war on Germany until the Nazis’ Axis partner Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7 that year.

France was eventually liberated on August 25, 1944, two months after British, American and Canadian forces launched the D-Day landings in Normandy.