Was Dunkirk a Miracle or a Disaster?

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Was Dunkirk a Miracle or a Disaster?

September 4th 1939, Germany invaded Poland and refused to leave, in return Britain declared war. For the next six months Hitler did nothing, tricking Churchill into thinking he was satisfied with his regained land naming it a ‘Phoney War’.

April 1940, the end of the Phoney War. Hitler attacked Norway and Denmark and by the end of May Hitler had invaded Holland as well as Belgium! Churchill realised this anti-clockwise pattern and new that France was next. He decided to send in the British Expeditionary Force and promised to defend the country from invasion.

June 1940, Germany won their attack. The soldiers fled to Dunkirk and 328,000 men out of 400,000 were saved, but was this really a Miracle or a Disaster?

     After World War I, the Maginot Line was built on the French and German border in hope of preventing further attack. The British thought Germany would attack through Belgium using Blitzkrieg, so placed the BEF along the border. To their amazement, the Germans had a surprise attack through the Ardennes. France didn’t expect this as the Ardennes has dense forestry and is mountainous so the idea of Blitzkrieg was seen as impossible because German tanks wouldn’t be able to transport through. Germany trapped the BEF in a pincer movement and the only place to go was the coast.

     As hungry soldiers hurried to the channel ports of Dunkirk with the fear of death, many felt guilty as they past hardships of Dunkirk such as children’s corpses in town ruins.

Operation Dynamo was launched. Admiral Ramsey persuaded anyone with boats to help with evacuations, but Germany didn’t make this easy, they mined the sea forcing Britain to travel the long way round. Also the Luftwaffe destroyed jetties stopping ships docking and bombed boats and soldiers on the beach. The evacuation took nine to ten days.

Churchill described the soldiers as heroes but many felt ashamed of needing rescuing and failing. Others felt relieved to be alive. 

The evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk in May 1940 was seen as a Miracle to many Historians. For example in source 1 David Knowles explains how ‘A miracle is the best description of what happened,’ and brings up how private boat owners such as fishermen helped to rescue soldiers at their time of need. This information’s extracted from his book ‘Escape from Catastrophe’ in 2002 meaning it’s a Secondary piece of evidence. The source is reliable as the Historian has gathered many pieces of evidence and conjoined them into one but it’s also his opinion, ‘ A miracle is the best description of what happened at Dunkirk’ making it non-reliable because it only shows one side of the story. This source was published for people to buy the book so a negative aspect is points being exaggerated, ‘The escape captured the minds and hearts of the British people.’

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     Source 2 gives statistics and facts adding onto source 1, ‘Almost 340,000, 71 heavy guns and 595 vehicles were rescued’, and tells us the RAF ‘shot down three German planes for every British plane lost.’ This source is from an ‘Essential Modern World History’ book by Ben Walsh. The information could be valid as it is from a book of learning but where the book is modern world history it doesn’t cover the topic in great accuracy and gives little detail. For example it says, ‘The efficiency of the operation showed how powerful and effective the Royal Navy ...

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