Alright then: Britsplaining Dunkirk. Not the actual events, but the significance of it to the national culture. For the actual history it is hard to beat having it narrated to you by Olivier in The World At War.
Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour. Many countries also have a famous mobilisation of the people - a revolution, something with a national day to name streets after. Dunkirk is ours.
The popular memory of Dunkirk is one of spontaneous organisation. Not an organised event run by the state, but one where the official efforts had already failed and British lives could only be saved by a mass ad-hoc action by whichever members of the public happened to be at hand to crew a boat. This ties in with the wider popular memory of the war as "total effort": everyone was a contributor.
This leads to "Dunkirk spirit": spontaneous solidarity in the face of adversity. Often invoked lightheartedly in the face of ordinary disasters like being stuck on a train for hours or squelching about a drenched music festival, but it works for more serious events too. It was invoked a lot when the Ariana Grande concert was bombed in Manchester. This is part of why there is no real counter-part to the individualism of survivalists or "preppers" in the UK: everyone believes that when a real disaster happens, you can rely on your fellow members of the public, and we will survive together.
A detail of the news interview that is very relevant to the whole thing is "stiff upper lip", and responding to threats with blithe dismissal and flippancy. The officer on the beach saying "I wish they wouldn't do that" about the strafing is the exemplar here. But there's quite a few famous, extreme examples: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/major-digby-tatham...
I was in London during 7/7 and more recently the London bridge attack: foreigners were a little ruffled. Locals could not care less, or more exactly, expected to deviate at little as humanly possible from their routine and knew exactly how to get there because they expected everyone to know how to make that happen.
As soon as rumours of an incident on the public transport leaked on the morning of 7/7, there were lines in front of every tube station and major bus stop: one file, people patiently waiting their turn. I asked:
“You are queuing for what?
— (flabbergasted) The mechanic…”
It took me a while to realise that: before there were severe disruptions, many people might not be able to take their usual route. London public transport is notoriously complicated and most humans can’t really process a journey. Now we have CityMaper but at the time, that was not imaginable.
Experienced workers (I believe former tube and bus drivers) can, a feat not unlike the London taxicab “Knowledge” optimise a journey under disruption. So, the queue was for every traveller whose journey was presumably interrupted to announce his or her destination and have spouted out (with the most undecipherable Norrff-Lundun accent) a sequence of three to six bus numbers and the corresponding transfer station.
No one asked if there would be mechanic available, or what they would do. It was just a normal day, with the Tube mostly not working and some buses disrupted. The sorriest I've heard was "I know… Get a round without me, I'll get the next one when I'm there."
Check out the stories of what happened during the London Bridge attack, but… yeah, expect a combination of “I am not not finishing my beer for that.” and “Attack? Londoners!? Are you daft, mate?!”
> I was in London during 7/7 and more recently the London bridge attack: foreigners were a little ruffled. Locals could not care less, or more exactly, expected to deviate at little as humanly possible from their routine and knew exactly how to get there because they expected everyone to know how to make that happen.
It's worth remembering that, as with much of western Europe, terrorism had been a real threat for a significant part of second half of the 20th century. See, in London's case, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in... ; almost every year from 1970–97 had attacks (and most years had a fairly large number of attacks). Terrorism, to some degree, was a matter of ordinary life.
This is why the "London reeling from ..." headlines in the US were viewed with contempt in Britain. Most people just want to get on with their lives. Carrying on with as little disruption as possible is seen as part of the national character.
I appreciate the Britsplaining. I also like the full context from the article of the quote you excerpted:
>"I wish they wouldn't do that," said the officer with impressive cool. I tried to copy his nonchalant tone and said, "I suppose you get quite used to that sort of thing." "Not a bit of it, old man," he replied, lowering his voice. "What you get used to is pretending you are not as scared as your men are."
I suspect he’d be like Adrian Carton de Wiart VC ([1]; wounded 9 times during WW1, lost an eye, hand, part of an ear but “Frankly, I had enjoyed the war…” and was involved in the WW2 Norwegian campaign on his 60th birthday) and make no comment whatsoever other than how it was a great adventure.
> Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour.
I'm not sure why Stalingrad is on this list. Do you mean that it was a glorious last stand for the Germans? I haven't noticed it being represented in that manner in German culture before.
It was a last stand for Russians in WW2. Stalin was determined not to let the city bearing his name fall. He funnelled a huge amount of soldiers and materiel in order to keep the city. The Germans tried to blitzkreig it, but the Russians held it and the battle persisted on the streets of the city for a long time.
It was a brutal battle. The USSR suffered 1,129,619 total casualties; 478,741 personnel killed or missing, and 650,878 wounded or sick.[1]
The USSR eventually won the battle, and it was the first real turning point in the war.
It also had actual strategic important - as the closest point between the Don and Volga rivers, it was a center of industry and transshipment. (The industry was mostly destroyed during the battle, but its logistical importance remained.)
These days, it's still a major transportation hub - only there's now a canal connecting the two rivers, allowing ship transport aong the Black, Caspian, and Baltic seas (and to the traditional population and economic centers around Moscow and Petrograd).
"Last stand" usually implies that the defensive force is either wiped out entirely, or otherwise basically ceases to exist - or, at the very least, that this would be their likely fate in defeat, because there's nowhere to retreat. That's not what happened in Stalingrad - as you point out, it was an eventual Soviet victory. Indeed, it was ultimately a major defeat for the Germans, with over 700,000 casualties, and far-reaching strategic implications in the theater. And there was certainly the opportunity for the defenders to retreat, if such orders were given.
So Stalingrad was definitely a heroic stand - just not a last stand. Ditto battle of Moscow, siege of Leningrad etc.
There were many examples of actual last stands on the Eastern Front of WW2, though. Brest is the one that's particularly famous, but some other examples would include the 28 Panfilovtsy,
Pearl Harbor isn't a traditional "last stand" either. I think he just meant it as an extraordinary military battle that defined an ethos to that nation.
From the wiki
> A common saying was: "You cannot stop an army which has done Stalingrad."
I got a little carried away with the list; I realised I had two American entries on it and wanted it to be a little more global. While I've read Antony Beevor's Stalingrad I'm not familiar with how the war as a whole is remembered in Russia.
Dunkirk is just one of many tragic defeats, retreats and Pyrrhic victories commemorated in Britain: retreat to Corunna, retreat from Kabul, Charge of the Light Brigade, Cawnpore, Gallipoli, Ypres, Somme, Crete, Narvik, Dieppe, Cassino, Arnhem ('A Bridge Too Far'), Imjin River...
As well as some desperate sieges following earlier incompetence: Lucknow, Mafeking, Rorke's Drift ('Zulu'), Malta, Myitkyina, Tobruk ('Tobruk'), more recently Sangin and Lashkar Gah.
But we do ignore the truly embarrassing ones: Yorktown, Maiwand, Isandlwana ('Zulu Dawn'), Spion Kop, Kut Al Amara, sinking of the Repulse & Prince of Wales, Singapore, Suez and more recently Basra.
There are many reasons why the soldiers could be saved and why the Germans did stop the panzers. The weather, the Belgians were fighting the Germans, the French were defending Dunkirk while the British could sneak away, the Luftwaffe did mainly bomb the harbor not the beaches, there were many heroic acts from many people, e.g. Commander Coulston, courageous civilians on ferries, Hitler still admired Britain and hoped for peace with the empire, tanks and people were under extreme stress for days, the Battle of Arras, the main drive and interest of Germany was Paris not Dunkirk - so they moved tanks and Ju87 towards Paris, the Germans - as many British - thought evacuation was not possible, Goering thought he could prevent evacuation with the Luftwaffe, and many more.
Most of these are of little importance. The German army had swept through France with ease. They could have finished off the British forces, as the generals wanted to - Hitler's intervention is the key reason in my view.
For anyone interested in finding out more about Dunkirk and the events leading up to the evacuation I can strongly recommend "Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. It gives the British, French and German viewpoints and covers the incredible scale of the operation in a way that the movie couldn't really do.
I'm about halfway through "The Miracle of Dunkirk: The True Story of Operation Dynamo" by Walter Lord. Finding it to be a good read and it looks like it's still only $2.99 on Kindle if that sways it for anyone.
The World at War documentary series has a good episode about dunkirk.
One of the small boat captains describes picking up soldiers from the beach on dunkirk then getting back to sea, where they were met by a UK frigate. The frigate offered to take the soldiers to let the small boat go back to the beach(as was the plan) and the captain said "no chance mate get your own soldiers we're off back to blighty"
Side note, forgotten (by me): Post-Dunkirk, Britain and France--represented by Churchill and DeGaulle--planned to unite. From The Atlantic story:
"Although that battle story is fairly well known, the accompanying political drama that almost saw Britain and France merge is now largely forgotten. But the drama of that near-fusion can help explain the origins of European integration—and the reasons why Britain ultimately pulled away from the European Union in the decision we know as Brexit."
Common knowledge in GB/France? How's the Brexit analysis?
I thought this was going to be about later on, during Suez - I understand a union was proposed then too. This one I didn't know about, so I expect few Brits do.
The Brexit analogy is... eh, kind of overblown IMO, though I guess that's my views on cultural history in general. Brexit is more a result of domestic party politics than a reflection of our foreign relations, and it was Eastern Europe that loomed larger in the public consciousness when talking about the EU.
It would have been government policy if it had some sort of positive discrimination, let's say. But in this case we're talking about a plain lie, which doesn't seem justified from an artistic point of view...
For those who want to know more about why Dunkirk came about and why it was so shocking that France capitulated so quickly, I recommend this book.
> Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940
Few things I learned that I didn't know.
1. After Dunkir, UK govt was actually quite seriously considering suing for peace and to leave the Continental Europe to Nazi Germany.
One reason was the financial cost. UK could've sued for peace and save their treasury (already seriously depleted after WW1). Or decide to fight and pay for the cost of war (like in money).
2. As Prime Minister Chamberlain resigned, he was faced with picking a successors: Lord Halifax and Churchill. Churchill was the 2nd choice.
> "I wish they wouldn't do that," said the officer with impressive cool. I tried to copy his nonchalant tone and said, "I suppose you get quite used to that sort of thing." "Not a bit of it, old man," he replied, lowering his voice. "What you get used to is pretending you are not as scared as your men are."
"I wish they wouldn't do that," said the officer with impressive cool. I tried to copy his nonchalant tone and said, "I suppose you get quite used to that sort of thing." "Not a bit of it, old man," he replied, lowering his voice. "What you get used to is pretending you are not as scared as your men are."
Currently reading about Dunkirk because of the movie.
Interesting how the British told the French and Belgians to fight on while preparing and keeping their evacuation a secret. They even forced the French at gunpoint who wanted to defend Dunkirk to destroy their weapons. French who wanted to embark were shot at by the BEF - at the same time when French destroyers were helping the evacuation by fighting German E-boats. The BEF got away and the French fighting were captured. All RAF fighter squadrons were moved to the UK ahead of the evacuation.
It looks this was mostly by the BEF generals in France while Churchill wanted them to fight with the French.
Context being everything, the French Navy was at that stage under the control of the Vichy government of France, essentially a German puppet government and had Churchill not attacked the fleet it was likely it would have been used against the British Forces.
It was likely that the French would've tried to scuttle the fleet had the Germans tried to requisition it, as happened 2 years later in Toulon [1]. But obviously, hindsight is 20/20, there was no way for the British to guarantee that this was going to happen.
I think "likely" is overstating it, given ultimately the Vichy government scuttled almost their entire fleet two years later when the German's tried to take control of it. (The German's in the end captured a small number of small vessels, all the technologically modern ones the German's were interested in—the much large destroyers and cruisers—were scuttled.)
That said, it may well have seemed likely at the time, and it's only from hindsight that this is clear.
The war was truly going badly for UK at the time, with US still not joining the war. And those French naval vessels HAD to be take out of the war somehow. The Royal Navy was mighty, but stretched very thin.
Had the French naval vessels been seized by the Germans somehow to be used in WW2 actively, it certainly would've meant Germans/Italians completely denying the UK ships from reaching Middle East via Mediterranean. This would effectively mean no more supply of oil, meaning UK would've lost the war.
The local French admiral had been warned to surrender/scuttle the ships but he refused on account of his honor.
> Interesting how the British told the French and Belgians to fight on
The French only fought because the British (who were not in command) told them to?
> They even forced the French at gunpoint who wanted to defend Dunkirk to destroy their weapons.
You just said the British told the French to fight on. Now you're saying they forced the French "at gunpoint" (?) to destroy their weapons?
> French who wanted to embark were shot at by the BEF [...] The BEF got away and the French fighting were captured.
Of the people rescued by British ships and taken to Britain, 123,000 were French and 198,000 were British.
As for the BEF "getting away", a second BEF was assembled by Britain to defend France after Dunkirk - again under the command of the French - despite France's defeat being inevitable at that point.
> All RAF fighter squadrons were moved to the UK ahead of the evacuation.
The RAF moved to the UK due to European bases being overrun by the Germans. Nevertheless, despite certain and imminent French defeat and despite requiring aircraft for its own survival, Britain did send squadrons to France after Dunkirk. The RAF in fact sacrificed around 1000 aircraft, and even more in personnel, in defence of France.
It is true that the withdrawal was a unilateral British decision and the French wanted to continue fighting. It is also true that most of the rearguard were French and were, presumably, ordered to destroy any heavy weaponry.
Anyone who believes that the French needed the British to tell them to fight or make them obey orders at gunpoint clearly has a very poor, and highly inaccurate, view of French soldiery.
> ... shot at by the BEF ... 123,000 were French and 198,000 were British
Maybe the British weren't very good shots? More seriously, this might be alluding to the fact that the British were originally given priority for embarkation from the French admiralty. This was changed part way through the evacuation but did mean that the rearguard was almost exclusively French troops.
Again, though, whoever came up with the suggestion that French troops needed to be shot at to follow orders is a fairly nasty Francophobe masquerading as a Britophobe (probably not a word).
It's hard to comment on the RAF bit. I mean, where else were they meant to fly to?
It's a weird analysis, the BEF lost ~70k soldiers attempting to help in the defence of France and Belgium. It seems to suggest that did it to spite the French or something. Very odd.
> the rearguard was almost exclusively French troops
Bit of a stretch for "almost". The entire 51st Highland Division stayed as part of the rearguard, and few if any of them made it home. [1]
Possibly apocryphal: "One Highlander on the beaches of Dunkirk was overheard telling a comrade: 'If the English surrender too, it's going to be a long war'”
My grandfather was left behind at Dunkirk, taken prisoner, spent the rest of the war in Poland and returned home in one piece but very thin (6ft 4 and weighing around 8 stone according to family legend). He died aged 48 a year before I was born - heart problems, which might be expected I suppose.
I'm now working with the jigsaw of records and archives in the UK to try and find a little more about what happened and where as a result of the film mainly.
While true, the BBC has always taken current popular media as a platform to have a frank discussion about the issues that media explores. It's not intended to advertise the film, so much as expand on the events portrayed for those who came out of the film wanting to know more.
The politics were involved, but in a subtler way, by warping the decision-making process. The army was exhausted and needed to rest, repair their vehicles, and resupply. There was debate about whether it should first finish off the Dunkirk pocket or let the air force finish them off, and the air force chief Göring (who was both politically strong and fantastically overconfident) insisted that he could take care of it. Very similar to his later overconfidence in the Battle of Britain, and the way it warped German strategic decision-making.
Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour. Many countries also have a famous mobilisation of the people - a revolution, something with a national day to name streets after. Dunkirk is ours.
The popular memory of Dunkirk is one of spontaneous organisation. Not an organised event run by the state, but one where the official efforts had already failed and British lives could only be saved by a mass ad-hoc action by whichever members of the public happened to be at hand to crew a boat. This ties in with the wider popular memory of the war as "total effort": everyone was a contributor.
This leads to "Dunkirk spirit": spontaneous solidarity in the face of adversity. Often invoked lightheartedly in the face of ordinary disasters like being stuck on a train for hours or squelching about a drenched music festival, but it works for more serious events too. It was invoked a lot when the Ariana Grande concert was bombed in Manchester. This is part of why there is no real counter-part to the individualism of survivalists or "preppers" in the UK: everyone believes that when a real disaster happens, you can rely on your fellow members of the public, and we will survive together.
A detail of the news interview that is very relevant to the whole thing is "stiff upper lip", and responding to threats with blithe dismissal and flippancy. The officer on the beach saying "I wish they wouldn't do that" about the strafing is the exemplar here. But there's quite a few famous, extreme examples: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/major-digby-tatham...