The+Evacuation+of+Dunkirk

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__Dunkirk Battle Length __
The Battle of Dunkirk lasted one to two weeks. As the Germans were pushing to take Dunkirk, The British, French, and the U.S. were holding them off. Every one of the troops fighting against the Germans ended up having to be evacuated. **Lord Gort** made the decision to evacuate on **May 26**, **1940**, and the last troops departed France on **June 4 1940**.

__Evacuation Success & Failure Significance__
This huge evacuation was somewhat successful and also somewhat a failure. It was a success because they didn’t lose all of there troops. It was a failure because the allies had to leave all of their tanks for the Germans to take and use. This event in World War 2 is **significant** because if the troops were not evacuated in time the allied forces might not have won. Beginning on **May 27**, **Operation Dynamo** rescued **7,669** men on the first day and **17,804** on the second. Many French troops remained to hold the perimeter and were captured. VISIT LINKED MAP - [|The Evacuation of Dunkirk]

__Other Important Information __
 * As the fleet began to arrive at **Dunkirk**, the **soldiers** began preparing for the voyage. Due to time and space concerns, almost all heavy equipment had to be abandoned. In In the dire days of the summer of 1940 Dunkirk was a great boost to flagging confidence in Britain & the fleet of the little ships was seen as a great savior in the cause of the defense of Britain.
 * By **14th May**, 1940, the German tanks led by **General Heinz Guderian** had crossed the River and had opened up a a fifty-mile gap in the Allied front. Six days later they reached the Channel.
 * When he heard the news, **Winston Churchill** ordered the implementation of ** Operation Dynamo **, a plan to evacuate of troops and equipment from the French port of Dunkirk, that had been drawn up by **General John Gort**, the Commander in Chief of the **British Expeditionary Force (BEF**).
 * Between **May 27th** and **June 4th**, 1940, a total of 693 ships, 39 Destroyers, 36 Minesweepers, 77 trawlers, 26 Yachts and a variety of other small craft brought back 338,226 people back to Britain.
 * The beach and sea were in chaos. There were bodies floating in the water and we were under constant attack from machine-gun fire, bombing, explosions sending shrapnel in every direction on World War 2.

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**Major-General Harold Alexander** inspected the shores of Dunkirk from a motorboat this morning to make sure no-one was left behind before boarding the last ======

ship back to **Britain**.
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