German Radio Broadcast about the Dunkirk Evacuation - 30 May 1940
After the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, the British send an Expeditionary Force- the BEF- to France to help them defend against any German attacks. This Force was 390.000 men -13 divisions - strong.
After the German invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium, and with the Germans cutting off the BEF from the rest of the French Army, the decision was made on May 20th to evacuate the BEF from the French port of Dunkirk.
This evacuation, codenamed "Operation Dynmao" is one of the most famous chapter of the war. The British managed to evacuate 198.000 of their own troops, aswell as 140.000 French soldiers from May 26th to June 4th. All kinds of vessels, from warships over troop transports to small private boats, even yachts, were scrambled and used for the evacuation.
Although the Germans managed to come close to Dunkirk, due to an infamous Halt-Order from Hitler, Guderians panzer troops were forbidden to attack Dunkirk. The Halt-Order was issued on May 24th and was only lifted on May 26th, giving the Allies valuable extra time to built up a strong defense perimeter around Dunkirk to shield the evacuation.
However, the Germans did strongly attack the evacuation from the Air and Sea, sinking around 240 ships and damaging a further 45, including 6 British and 3 French destroyers.
Over the skies of Dunkirk, the largest Air battle of the war so far took place, with the British loosing 177 planes and the Germans loosing 132.
Only around 40.000 British and French troops went into captivity.
While large parts of the troops managed to escape, they had to leave behind all of their material: The Germans captured 700 tanks, 2400 guns, 64.000 vehicles of all kinds, 20.000 motorcycles and 470.000 tons of supply goods.
More importantly, however, was the fact that if the British had failed to evacuate their troops, they would have basically lost the backbone of their entire army at Dunkirk. As the German historian Karl-Heinz Frieser said, the loss of almost the entire British professional army at Dunkirk would have been the end of the Churchill Government and the end of the war.
This video is a short German news report from May 30th about the current status of the battle.
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Subtitles made by me.