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 2 allies very unequally, and bitterness is rising on the French side. In Paris, where the Supreme Inter-Allied Council is meeting, Churchill faces and General , 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.
Supreme Inter-Allied Council, Paris, 31 May 1940, you are Churchill facing Reynaud and Weygand: what rule to set for the Dunkirk evacuation?
On 31 May 1940, before Reynaud and , Churchill decided in favour of evacuation on equal terms: British and French would leave "arm in arm" (bras dessus, bras dessous), and British troops would form part of the rearguard covering the evacuation. Operation Dynamo ultimately allowed some 338,000 men to be evacuated, including around 123,000 French soldiers. The gesture sealed the alliance in adversity and left a lasting impression. Many of the French landed in England were nevertheless repatriated to France shortly afterwards, at their own request or out of operational necessity, and were taken prisoner during the capitulation of June 1940 — a fate that took nothing away from the symbolic significance of the decision.
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