France, May 26 – June 4: British military “Operation Dynamo”
–The evacuation of British and Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France
The German Army had stopped the British and French troops at the Battle of Dunkirk. The “greatest [British] military defeat for many centuries,” recalls Winston Churchill.
He warned that “the whole root, the core, and brain of the British Army” was stranded in Dunkirk. Churchill called the subsequent rescue of 338,226 soldiers a “miracle of deliverance.” Many hundreds of small British civilians merchant boats, fishing boats, and even pleasure–craft participated in the historic, partially ad–hoc rescue.