Facts & Figures of the Evacuation of the Allied Army from Dunkirk at the end of the Battle of France

“The Miracle of Dunkirk”

late May – early June 19409 days340,000 troops850 boats – 700 of which were civilian boatsBritish, French, Belgian

Soviet-controlled

Axis-controlled

neutral

Allied-controlled

June 1940

Winston Churchill• “the gathering storm” – was

radically opposed to appeasement• becomes PM after Chamberlain

resigns, May 1940• face of British resistance, the

fierce fighting spirit of Britain during WWII

• 2002 British poll named him the “Greatest Briton of All Time”

“History will judge us kindly”, Churchill told Roosevelt and Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943. When

asked how he could be so sure, he responded, “because I shall write the

history”.

• Late May – Beg. June – Dunkirk evacuation

• June 4th – “We shall fight on the beaches” speech

• June 10th – Italy declares war on Britain & France

• June 18th – “This will be our finest hour” speech

• June 22nd – France officially surrenders

• JULY 1940 – MAY 1941 – BATTLE OF BRITAIN

Fuhrer Directive No. 17

“The Luftwaffe is to overcome the English Air Force [Royal Air Force, RAF] with all means at its disposal and in the shortest possible time.

The attacks are to be primarily directed against the planes themselves, the ground

organization, and the supply installations, also against the aircraft industry, including plants

producing anti-aircraft material.”

Why didn’t Nazi Germany win the Battle of Britain?

• Target switch• RADAR• Planes• Home advantage• Bad intelligence – bureaucratic rivalry

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so

many to so few.” – Churchill referring to what the British people

owed the RAF for their victories during the Battle of Britain

The poster's popularity, reignited in 2000, has been

attributed to a "nostalgia for a certain British character, an

outlook“. According to Bagehot, a reporter for The

Economist, it "taps directly into the country's mythic image of

itself: unshowily brave and just a little stiff, brewing tea as the

bombs fall.”

St. Paul’s Cathedral in London through the smoke of the Blitz