197: Operation Dynamo

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Operation Dynamo would be wildly more successful than anybody would have predicted. Come check out my keynote speech on the topic of Deception in February 2025: https://intelligentspeechonline.com/ Coupon Code: SECOND

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Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 197 - The Fall of France - Operation Dynamo. This week a big thank you goes out to Michael for the donation and to fidlar2000, Michael, and Joseph for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members. You can find out more about becoming a member over at historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members. After the first 3 days of the Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of British and French troops from Dunkirk around 58,000 men had been evacuated. This was already an impressive number, but there would be five more days of evacuation to follow. Over those 5 days there would be three critically important tasks that had to be performed well if the maximum number of soldiers were to be brought out of harms way. The first, and obvious, of these tasks was that the sailors and those ashore had to coordinate their efforts as well as possible and to this end Captain William Tennant came ashore on the second day of Operation Dynamo to coordinate the shore side efforts of the Royal Navy to get men into the boats. The second task was to keep the Luftwaffe away from the evacuation, a task to be performed by the Royal Air Force. The third task, by far the most dangerous was to keep the German groups forces away from the beaches for as long as possible. This duty fell to a combination of troops from the British and French armies that were along the Dunkirk perimeter. In my mind, and you will not change my mind about this, it would be these men that are the true heroes of Dunkirk. For a critical five days the British and French soldiers would hold off German attacks as best as they could, even though every day that they stayed on the line reduced the likelihood that they would themselves be evacuated. It was a tough job, but somebody quite literally had to do it and they did. In the air the fighting would continue, and here I will include a quote from Pilot Officer Allan Wright of 92 squadron which i found particularly interesting and which I honestly meant to have in the last episode but it got filed away in the wrong spot in my research notes. The reason I like it is because it clearly shows that the pilots, just like those on the ground, were often operating in an environment where they only barely understood the situation and were mostly just acting based on vague instructions “During the week or so of Dunkirk, briefings were almost nil, either about the enemy on the ground or in the air. At the time, the system of thorough aircrew briefings had not been thought of. We were, however, given the limits of our patrol area, warned not to patrol below 10,000 feet and told to attack any German aircraft seen. We were also warned to conserve fuel and to leave the battle area with sufficient fuel to get back. Not easy to assess in the heat of battle. No information at all was given on what was going on down there until it was all over and all our troops had already landed back in England.”

During May the 30th there would be serious discussions among some staff officers at BEF headquarters about the best way to surrender to the Germans. The reason for these conversations was due to the estimations of how many men would be able to actually escape the coming German attacks, with the general estimates being far below the number of men that would eventually be saved. On that night Lord Gort, the BEFs commander would announce that he had been ordered back to England, an order that he had spoken against but he had little choice. The mere possibility that such a high ranking British officer would be captured by the Germans was to be avoided at all costs if only due to the propaganda possibilities that it would give to the enemy. Along with Gort the commander of the 2nd Corps General Alan Brooke was also scheduled to leave, but before he did he would meet with the commander of the 50th Division which was to be moved from 2nd Corps to be a part of the 1st Corps which would be assigned to perimeter defense while the 2nd Corps was scheduled to begin evacuation over the next day. In his conversation with 50th’s commander, General Martel, Brooke would say that he did not know what message Martel should give to his officers, because they both believed there was very little chance that very many of the 50th’s men would be evacuated. This is skipping ahead a bit, but the 50th would actually be evacuated on June 1st, which I think says something about the expectation of the British military officers that were within the Dunkirk perimeter, with the conversation between Brooke and Martel happening just over 24 hours before the 50th was evacuated and even that span of time seeming to be more than was expected by the British officers. While all of these conversations were happening at BEF headquarters, in the air the 30th would be a relatively quiet date due to the weather conditions that prevailed over Dunkirk, with mist, clouds, and smoke from Dunkirk itself making all air operations either difficult or impossible. Here is Flight Lieutenant J. Ellis of 610 Squadron again: “On 30th May I led a formation of four Spitfire squadrons on an offensive patrol over Dunkirk. The other three squadrons were from Hornchurch and North Weald. Weather conditions were not good with poor visibility. We saw some Me110’s but before we could attack them they disappeared into cloud. In the afternoon of the same day we again patrolled Dunkirk with the same four Spitfire squadrons but it was so hazy we could hardly see the coast. As usual we encountered heavy Ack-Ack fire from our own forces but we saw no enemy aircraft.” On the 30th Lord Gort and the Chief of the British Air Staff would both send messages to the RAF commanders to thank them for the work that their men had done and were continuing to do. Gort would write: " Extremely grateful for valuable work of RAF. Presence and action of fighters is of first importance in preventing embarkation being interrupted and is having most heartening effect on troops." While the Chief of the Air Staff would write " I wish to express to you my warmest congratulations on the successes achieved by all Units during the critical period of the last forty-eight hours and my profound appreciation of the effort which you have been able to sustain. The messages from Lord Gort and VA Dover will show you clearly how vital a factor air support is during the continuance of the present operation, and I count on all ranks to continue to do their utmost to help the Navy and the Army, who are fighting most gallantly under conditions of extreme difficulty."

While the leaders in London were setting Operation Dynamo in motion, and Gort and other British officers were working on the details of evacuating as many people as possible there was one problem that they would have to determine a path forward on: The French. The British and French were allies, so far they had worked together quite well both before and during the war, they both saw each other as an essential part of achieving victory over Germany but there were some harsh realities that were entering into the decision making process in London. The first reality was that any troops that were not evacuated would either be killed or forced to surrender, that was a simple fact that no one could dispute. The second was that with the defeats that had already been suffered by the French military it seemed very likely that they would be forced to surrender regardless of the outcome of the evacuations. The third was that once France was defeated Germany’s eyes would inevitably turn to Britain. These facts were then mixed in with a bit of politics, with some in London heavily valuing relations with France while some believed that pure priority should be given to British troops in the evacuation. This was the crux of the problem, how should the available evacuation resources be shared between British and French forces. In retrospect this seems like less of a problem that it did at the time, because of how many men were evacuated before June 4th, however on May 30th and May 31st the feeling was that the evacuations may be forced to end at any moment. When they ended, probably due to German attacks onto the beaches, every soldier left behind would be killed or forced to surrender, regardless of which nation they were from. If you were a British leader who believed that France was doomed, you advocated for maximum possible efforts being made to evacuate British soldiers only, because they would be needed to defend Britain in the months that followed. If you were a British leader who had not yet given up on France then it was important to also evacuate French forces due to political reasons if nothing else, and there were also military reasons to evacuate them as well since they could be moved to French ports and still play a role in future defensive campaigns. During the critical days of May 30th and the 31st this second group would be the one to make the decisions, and so on the 30th Gort was told that a fair number of places should be given over to the French on the evacuation ships, although the exact definition of fair was still up on the air. However, this guidance was very flimsy and it was generally felt by the French officers in Dunkirk that they were not being given fair treatment. One area where this would come into play was the exact composition of the units that were protecting the Dunkirk perimeter. Troops were needed to hold off the German ground assault, but the French did not believe that the British were doing their fair share and because of this not enough French forces were being evacuated because so many were stuck in defensive lines protecting the evacuation beaches. After one very contentious meeting between the commander of British forces still in Dunkirk on May 31: General Alexander would see the French General Abrial say ‘Since we cannot count on English co-operation, General, I will fulfil my mission using French troops. We French have a mission which is to fight to the last man to save as many soldiers as possible from Dunkirk. Until we have achieved this goal, we will remain at our posts.’ On the British side Alexander would later recount that the differences in opinion between the British and French ran much deeper than just how many of each nationality was getting off the beaches. Alexander would say that Abrial and some of the French soldiers disagreed with the entire concept that combat capable troops should be evacuated, preferring instead to have all of the combat troops remain in the line while non-combatants were evacuated. Part of this misunderstanding was down to the lack of clarity in orders being received from Weygand and Paris during this period, with a hesitancy by the French High Command to fully commit to the evacuation and to make it clear that evacuation was the purpose of continued French resistance int he area. The British military leaders in Dunkirk were also receiving somewhat contradictory instructions from London. For example one War Cabinet meeting in the evening of May 31st would have in the minutes that “It would be entirely wrong to sacrifice our men by attempting to hold out longer in order to please the French.” But then the written orders that were sent out as a result of the meeting would say “You should withdraw your force as rapidly as possible on a fifty–fifty basis with the French… aiming at completion by the night of the 1st/2nd June.” Due to conversations at the Supreme War Council between Churchill, Weygand, and Reynaud orders were sent that the French soldiers should be given higher priority in the evacuation because up to that point far more British soldiers had been evacuated than Frenchmen. But they still did not write up the order in a way that would result in maximum possible effort to make evacuations as soon as possible, instead saying that the areas around Dunkirk were to be held until the French commander Abrial believed that no further British and French troops would be able to reach the perimeter, it was only then that final evacuations should begin. None of these orders from London, Paris, or anywhere else were specific and strong enough to make up for the continued difference in opinion among the British and French military leaders within the perimeter of Dunkirk. On the British side they believed that their only objective was to evacuate, while the French believed that Dunkirk could still be help for several more days. Everything would have been solved by firm and specific orders, but every directive that was being sent to Dunkirk was couched in ambiguous clauses that put much of the decision making on the military leaders in Dunkirk. It also did not help that the French and British military officers had fundamentally different readings of the orders, resulting in one French General to later write of the British commander Alexander at this point that “he was flagrantly disobeying his Commander-in-Chief’s orders, that he was abandoning his comrades at a critical moment, that he could go ahead and embark with his troops, that we would protect the evacuation… and that we would show him that whatever he said, we could remain for several extra days at Dunkirk without being captured.” He also recalls that he told Alexander that “Your decision to evacuate with your three divisions represents a disgrace for England.”

Even with all of the disagreements happening on the political and headquarters level, evacuations would continue throughout May 31st. The day would see the largest number of total soldiers evacuated, with just over 68,000 total evacuees. One of the major reasons for this large number was the fact that the day was generally quite cloudy which prevented the full force of German airpower from being felt. In fact many of the early British fighter sweeps did not encounter any enemy aircraft. However, later in the day some serious air battles would develop as the weather cleared, but this clearing also resulted in some steady seas which then made the evacuation from the beaches easier, so it was sort of a give and take. Better weather put the evacuation at greater risk of German air attack but also made it easier to evacuate. While the massive number of men were being evacuated the RAF would lose 21 aircraft during the days action, although they would claim twice that number in German aircraft, which of course was probably far inflated from the actual number. Information about the disagreements between the British and French military leaders would make their way back to the leaders in both Paris and London. For the British, this would result in a discussion at the War Cabinet meeting on June 1st where the decision was made to attempt to complete the evacuation that night, they also believed that they should give greater priority to British troops due to seeming inefficiencies that the French were introducing into the evacuation process. Not only were they not evacuating on land as quickly as the British wanted, French ships that were involved were also taking longer to make their trips because instead of dropping the French soldiers off at the nearest British port, which the British government fully supported and advocated for, the French instead wanted to take them further away to French ports like Le Havre. It was understandable why the French wanted to take French soldiers to a French port, but it slowed the evacuation of those troops considerably. If maximum possible priority was given to British soldiers, and every effort was made, it was felt that the evacuation of the BEF could be completed on the night of June 1st. This information was then sent to the British ships, with the plan also being to continue to evacuate French troops for as long as possible after all of the BEF were safely off of the beaches.

In Dunkirk, even with their disagreements Alexander, and the French leadership duo of Abrial and Fagalde continued to work closely together. On the morning of June 1st, with the final stages of the British evacuation seeming to be at hand Alexander informed the French that his plan was for his troops to fall further back during the night, abandoning the canal line that they had been holding over the previous days. From there they would create a smaller inner perimeter on their sector of the front which they would hold on the 2nd of June if any of his troops could not get away during the night. If any BEF troops then remained on June 2nd they would be evacuated the following night. The support of the French was absolutely critical at this stage, because there would only be a few thousand British troops that made up the rearguard behind the evacuating 1st Corps, and they would be totally dependent on the French holding their sector of the line and also providing assistance on the British sector that would be mostly unguarded. In the air a major operation by the Germans was mounted against the ships that were moving back and forth between Dunkirk and the English coast. This included several raids by German bombers early in the morning and then a raid by Stukas against the Dunkirk harbor and nearby shipping in the afternoon. Multiple ships were damaged, and almost more importantly the evacuation operations were slowed due to the disorganization that the attacks caused. Even with these disruptions another 60,000 men would be evacuated throughout the day and into the night. The next day, June 2nd was much the same, with the British trying to make sure that all of their forces were evacuated during the day and into the night with another 26,000 men brought aboard ships. This was mostly successful, and as evening fell on the 2nd, efforts were made to ensure that any British soldiers that had been left behind either in the town, on the beaches, or in the harbor were found and brought on board ships. At 11:30PM Tennant, who had been managing the evacuation for several days was able to send the signal to Dover that the BEF had been evacuated. French soldiers were continuing to be evacuated, with one of the challenges being that, as the number of French soldiers rose there was confusion because most of the ships and the men managing the evacuation operations were British. For example there was one situation in which there were multiple ships in place with nobody getting on them, while the French were clogging up the areas around just a few vessels because the French soldiers believed that they were supposed to stay with their units and only to board certain ships. It took time to communicate to those men and units that they needed to spread out and take any ship that was available. There were also other critical communication problems happening at the very worst moments. During the night of June 2nd there were multiple ships that left Dunkirk empty because French units had been told to go to the wrong place, and with the evacuation areas still several miles in width if a unit was told to go to one edge of the evacuation area but their ship was actually on the other it was possible that they would not reach it in time.

The final stage of the evacuation was planned for the night of June 3rd, with the remaining French soldiers being evacuated. A schedule was worked out where the French troops holding certain areas around the perimeter would collapse back to their evacuation points at very specific times, with the general thinning out of the line to start at 8:30PM. It would not be until the early hours of the morning on June 4th that the final French troops, a sort of crust of troops still at least making it appear that the line was manned, would also move to the harbor and beaches for their own evacuation. Unfortunately for many of these troops, while there were as much effort as possible put in to trying to ensure that they were evacuated many would not be. The problem was that on the night of June 3rd and into the 4th there simply were not enough ships available to get all of the soldiers out. This meant that when the final rear guard troops retreated to their evacuation points at around 2:30AM instead of finding ships waiting for them they instead simply found themselves at the end of a lengthy line of troops that had been scheduled for earlier evacuation but which had not yet been. General Barthélemy, the French commander of the final French troops to evacuate would recall late recall his thoughts: “The stars are growing paler. The sky is becoming lighter. The new day is dawning. The crowd on the jetty moves forward very slowly. I cannot see any boats at the end of the jetty.” No real thought had been given to wait to do in the situation that the French troops found themselves in. It had been clear hours before that not all of the troops would be evacuated that night, but there was no effort to halt the retreat from the inner perimeter, or to otherwise form some kind of defensive line to maybe try again the next night. Instead the thousands of French soldiers that remained simply were left to wait near the water for their eventual capture.

The German 18 Infantry Division would begin entering Dunkirk on the morning of June 4th, with nothing remaining between themselves and the beaches. The found 40,000 French troops still remaining, with all of them taken prisoner. At roughly the same time that the Germans were rounding up their prisoners the following telegram would be sent to French High Command from London to give them some information about the actions of the previous night “Number of men evacuated last night were probably as many as 25,000. The evacuation started with the Germans in Rosendael, and finished under the fire of German machine guns. Nothing more could have been done. Admirals Abrial, Platon, and Leclerc are at Dover, as is General Fagalde. Admiral Abrial thinks the work of the English last night was magnificent.” After 9 days and nights Operation Dynamo had finally concluded. The original estimates were that 45,000 soldiers could be evacuated before the Germans took Dunkirk, that being the estimates provided to the British government. But in the final accounting of the numbers it would be around 330,000 men from the British and French armies. There is some range in that number, probably caused by the general disorganization experienced by the units during the evacuation, and you will find sources using numbers between 300,000 and 350,000. Still a tremendous number of soldiers, with many of the French troops that were taken to England being moved to Cherbourg or Brest within a few days while in Britain the soldiers began the process of being reorganized. But even with all of the units that were evacuated, and which would be able to escape many long years in German Prisoner of War camps, Operation Dynamo was not a victory. It is perhaps better described as a slightly worse disaster. While the men were evacuated all of their equipment and most of their weapons were left scattered in the areas around the beaches. Tanks, trucks, artillery guns, rifles, kits, all would have to be replaced before the men who were evacuated could once again resume their role as soldiers. And all of those things would take time, and time was something that the British and French simply did not have. Because Dunkirk was not the end, but it was the beginning of the end, France was not yet defeated, but on both sides of the English channel the question became, how can we save ourselves from what comes next?