Within nine days of furious defence and heavy bombing of the port's beaches, more than 330,000 soldiers, including over 100,000 French (of whom a majority returned home after the surrender of France), were carried over to England aboard 693 ships, including destroyers, minesweepers, trawlers, yachts, rowing boats, sailing dinghies, paddle-steamers and others, in an incredible feat of sea transport. 34,000 Allied soldiers were captured by the Germans and 177 British aircraft were shot down during the operation (the Germans lost 132 planes).

It has remained a mystery why the German army halted in the area around Dunkirk instead of crushing the Allied defenders. Some sources allege that the onslaught was stopped due to Nazis' concerns about infantry divisions catching up with the armour, some say that it was due to Hitler's overconfidence in Goering's promises about winning the battle by means of Luftwaffe alone. One source offers a rather fanciful explanation that Hitler wanted to respect the "indispensability" of Britain and resolved to respect her integrity. One way or the other, should the British Expeditionary Force be captured in France, consequences would be disastrous for Britain. It is correct that all the heavy equipment including artillery, tanks and other vehicles had to be left behind, however, thousands of British and French troops were saved to fight another day.

The artillery shelling of the city and the bombing of the beaches and the port left Dunkirk heavily damaged after the peace treaty was signed between triumphant Germany and defeated France. For the following four years, the brown curtain of Nazi occupation was drawn over the port.
The port of Dunkirk in WWII
Operation Dynamo
Jan Hyrman
In May 1940, France was invaded by Hitler's Germany. Over 100 Wehrmacht divisions and 2,500 tanks (a considerable part of that number was formed by Czechoslovak designs taken over by the German army after the occupation of Czechoslovakia the previous year) clashed with the united forces of Belgian, British and French armies. By the numbers, the clash was of epic proportions, however, it was to become a very short one. On 14th May, 1940,
Photo by courtesy of Maria Khayutina
the German onslaught on a very wide front, supported by about 3,000 aircraft, slashed through the Allied defences, opening a gap on the Meuse river. Within days, the Nazi troops were within sight of the English Channel, surrounding hundreds of thousands of defenders around the French port of Dunkirk.

The battle for time started. The city was subjected to heavy artillery fire, Stuka bombers and fighters strafing the beaches filled with soldiers and vehicles became a regular spectacle during the siege. According to an account produced by an anonymous British artillery officer, at night "the whole front was one long continuous line of blazing buildings, a high wall of fire, roaring and darting in tongues of flame, with the smoke pouring upwards and disappearing in the blackness of the sky above the roof-tops". Huge clouds of dense black smoke were rising from the oil refineries set ablaze just next to the port, the smoke was visible from as far as the Thames estuary.

In response to the surrounding of the B.E.F. around Dunkerque, the Operation Dynamo was ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The plans for it were drawn up by General John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, the Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.). To illustrate the desperation of the defenders, General Gort, who was later to become the Governor of Malta, himself was seen, according to one account, standing on the beach with two Guardsmen as ammunition loaders, shooting at the German dive bombers with his rifle.
The Atlantikwall
The Atlantic Wall, the western frontier of Hitler's Fortress Europe.
Clearing the Channel Ports
One of the lesser-known campaigns of Northwest Europe in 1944, the struggle to capture French ports cost many lives of Allied soldiers, particularly Canadians.
Czechoslovaks at Dunkirk 1944-1945
It was not exactly the place where the members of the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group would want to get stuck for the rest of the war, but many different reasons caused the unit to retain the mission of sieging the ruins of the port till May 1945.