| An Englishwoman serves refreshments to exhausted French soldiers. The British Admiralty sent the Royal Navy back to Dunkirk on the nights of June 2, 3, and 4, 1940, to remove some 75,000 French soldiers. 40,000 men, mostly of the 68e and 12e divisions d’infanterie, remained as a rear guard and surrendered to Nazi German forces. German Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was delighted with the opportunity to exploit the departure of the United Kingdom Royal Army’s British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from France. Radio interviews with supposed French soldiers, disgusted with the British and willing to join the Nazis in fighting them, were recorded for broadcast. Even before Operation Dynamo commenced, French High Command expressed concern about evacuation of the read guard. On May 29, General Maxime Weygand (January 21, 1867 – January 28, 1965) requested through his military attaché to the United Kingdom that “the necessity for powerful air and naval cover in order to ensure the provisioning and partial evacuation of the troops fighting to defend the Dunkirk bridge-head.” By May 31, the United Kingdom War Cabinet directed the Royal Navy to evacuate French and British forces in equal numbers. The myth of the abandonment of French troops by the British at Dunkirk has, arguably, been perpetuated over the course of many decades. It owes its existence to an ignorance of how many French troops were rescued at Dunkirk: just over 112,000 French soldiers and other allied personnel were evacuated by the Royal Navy during Operation Dynamo, alongside 225,000 troops of the BEF. The photographer, author and journalist René Dazy (March 1921 – April 8, 2015), returned to France and later served as the entertainment editor for the resistance newspaper Liberation. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0385.jpg |
| Image Size | 383.92 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2048 x 1516 |
| Photographer | René Dazy |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | June 5, 1940 |
| Location | |
| City | Dover |
| State or Province | Kent |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Archive | Rue des Archives |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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