Was Dunkirk a Triumph or a Disaster? Why? Essay

The dieppe raid was a short costly battle where we might look back and think why, but the events are unmistakable. It starts with why the allies wanted to attack and why they choose Dieppe. Then when they did attack, what happened and went went wrong. Finally in the end how we paid for this mistake and how we learned from it. Although what happened was catastrophic I believe the Dieppe raid was both a success and a failure.

So, what exactly happened at the Battle of Dunkirk? Why did Churchill have to deliver a speech about it? The Battle of Dunkirk was a skirmish between the Allies and the Nazi Germans, ending in a defeat for the Allied forces. The overall attack of the German forces was too overwhelming for the Allies to bear, and the mistakes they made weren’t helping. The outcome was inevitable, “...when the force of and scope of the German penetration was realized...”

After the military disaster in Dunkirk, the Allies desperately needed to free Europe from Nazi Germany. The French were not the only Allies in need as Stalin’s Soviet Russia was doing their best to defend against Hitler’s lightning fast blitzkrieg. The British, American and Canadian forces needed to get on the ground in France in order to push back the Germans. An Allied invasion would create a two front war similar to the one that led to Germany’s defeat during World War I. Allied forces would need to cross the English Channel from Great Britain to the northern coast of France and make an amphibious landing. Amphibious landings on the coast depended on factors to be just right. Supreme Allied Commander, United States Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Allied Ground Forces Commander, British General Bernard Montgomery, were in charge of the planning of this massive invasion codenamed Operation Overlord.

Before the battle of Dunkirk, the Germans had the upper hand in the war. The Germans surrounded and trapped the Allied soldiers at Dunkirk. However, Hitler made the mistake of halting the attack and not finishing off the soldiers. He allowed for the Allied forces to escape because he claimed he wanted to make peace with Winston Churchill and he wanted to rest his troops. In later documents, it was revealed he stopped the attack to display his power and show the other military leaders that he was in charge. Nonetheless, the escape at Dunkirk was a significant event in the war because it allowed Britain to save a large number of soldiers that were needed to win later battles.

The Battle of Dunkirk was an important battle that took place in Dunkirk, France, during the Second World War between the Allies and Germany. On June 4, 1940, the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk on the Belgian coast ends as German forces capture the beach port. The evacuation took 9 days, the longest of its kind in history and very successful. The evacuation saved 338,000 Allied troops from being captured by the Nazis. On May 10, 1940, the Germans launched their attack against the West, storming into Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Faced with far superior airpower, more unified command, and highly mobile armored forces, the Allied defenders were a poor match for the German Wehrmacht. In a lightning attack, the Germans raced across

The battle of Villers-Bretonneux was a very successful battle for both the AIF and the allied forces. The battle was the first defeat of the Germans of the war and ended the German offensive in the Somme. This meant that the allies could send troops to battles elsewhere. It was also the first major success for the Australian imperial forces. An Australian war historian from the fifth battalion concluded, ‘Thereafter, no German ever set foot in Villers-Bretonneux save as a prisoner of war.’ (Australian government, 2015)

The Gallipoli Campaign (April 1915 - January 1916) might have been the biggest failure of the allies in WW1. The allied goal of freeing the Gallipoli Strait to allow ships to Russia in the winter and their goal knocking the Ottomans out of the war by reaching Constantinople was never achieved. They had failed because the Allies severely underestimated the Ottomans, the Allied troops were dropped off at the wrong place, the Allies were not ready to attack and the Allies made many critical mistakes. The Allies had planned that they would quickly capture the Gallipoli peninsula without much resistance from the Central Powers.

The Battle of Dunkirk was a majorly influential conflict during World War II. It is sometimes referred to as the miracle of Dunkirk. Because the British force remained almost entirely intact after Dunkirk the experience that they earned made them very useful in the remainder of the World War. The allied forces made a valiant effort to halt the German advance however because of they were greatly outnumbered and their command was slow to act they had little chance against Nazi Germany. The battle for Dunkirk was a great example of how powerful the German army was and how unprepared the rest of the world

The campaign began with an attempt to force the Dardanelles by naval power alone but early bombardments on the coastal ports failed and on 18 March 1915, three Allied battleships were lost to Turkish mines.

This is not to say that the British were able to destroy the Luftwaffe's might, but rather that they were able to fend it off. Hitler saw that the Luftwaffe could not sustain the rate of attrition that was being held at the moment and decided to dial back his commitment to the air campaign in Britain. He did so to gather his forces for the invasion of the USSR. Though the British RAF was able to hold out against the superior Luftwaffe, the country did take a substantial amount of damage in the city centers. London was under almost constant bombardment, which Hitler thought would lower morale to the point of reluctant capitulation. This had the opposite effect. The Battle of Britain, for all intents and purposes, rallied the British people and strengthened their dedication to the war effort. Men were drafted, women help in roles such as plane spoting and the war industry; the British people did their part to help their country. Moreover, footage and new of the bombardment of Britain was sent to the USA and Roosevelt in an attempt to garner support in the war effort. This was largely successful as Roosevelt traded old American destroyers for British naval bases in the Caribbean and West Indies in, rather lazily named, the Destroyers for Bases Agreement in September of 1940. This would strengthen the American and British relationship and would culminate in the signing of the Lend Lease Act

During the World War -II, the royal marines carried a raid on shipping in the German occupied French part of Bordeaux in the Bay of Biscay. The operation involved taking six canoes in the submarine till Gironde estuary, paddle till Bordeaux and attack the cargo ships with limpet mines. Out of the 10 men who went on this mission only 2 survived, 6 were executed by the Germans and 2 died of Hypothermia. Winston Churchill credited this attack to be responsible for reducing the war by at least 6 months.

1. Find out more about the retreat at Dunkirk. How did the British use this as a positive encounter?

Describing Dunkirk On the 20th May 1940the allied troops were trapped by the Germans on the Northern coast of France. The allies consisted of the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F), the Belgian Army and the ten best divisions of the French Army. It was on this day that Churchill gave the command for the evacuation to take place, to Britain by ship, following advice from Lord Gort (leader of the B.E.F). Rommel was advancing from the north and Degaudier from the south trapping the troops.

The films that I enjoy the most are mostly historical films with a thriller or dramatic tone, such as war films centered around Roman times, American Revolution, World War 2, Vietnam, etc. With war movies I also enjoy films that are set mostly in specific time periods of history that follow characters in their daily life and struggle.

In the summer of 1940, Adolf Hitler began operation “Sea-Lion,” or better known as the Battle of Britain. This was the plot to destroy the British RAF so that a German landing on the beaches of England and air assault could be possible. Because of the failure of the battle of Britain campaign, the course of the war was changed in the allies favor, and, Hitler’s plan for European domination was halted.