Dunkirk: should the French be saved alongside the British?

In late May 1940, the Battle of France is turning into a disaster. Encircled in a pocket that keeps shrinking around Dunkirk, hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers — the British Expeditionary Force and strong French units — are pinned against the sea, under German artillery fire and the dive-bombing of the Luftwaffe. Operation Dynamo, launched on 26 May, throws into the Channel everything that floats: destroyers, ferries, trawlers and the flotilla of "little ships" that shuttle to the beaches.

In the first days, however, the evacuation benefits the two allies very unequally, and bitterness is rising on the French side. In Paris, where the Supreme Inter-Allied Council is meeting, Churchill faces Paul Reynaud and General Weygand, who press the Prime Minister not to abandon the French troops on the sand. The stakes go far beyond logistics: what is being decided here is the very solidity of the alliance, and British honour in the eyes of a partner on the brink of collapse.

Time, for its part, is not up for negotiation. Every hour of evacuation is paid for in ships sunk and men lost; the perimeter is contracting, enemy aircraft dominate the sky, and no one knows how many more nights the bridgehead will hold. Churchill must decide within hours.