When did Adolf Hitler (Number 1) lose the war? Was it at Stalingrad? Kursk? El Alamein? During the Battle of Britain? On the beaches of Normandy? The Battle of the Bulge? Was it his failure to invade Britain after the fall of France? Or was it his decision to declare war on the United States following Pearl Harbor?
Each one of these events has its advocates. But an argument can be made that Hitler lost the war during the evacuation at Dunkirk in the spring of 1940.
In addition to army and navy personnel, many hundreds of English civilians took part in the massive evacuation of the 338,226 Allied troops from the French beaches of Dunkirk. Despite the dangers, civilians joined the Royal Navy in ferrying British, French, Dutch, and Belgian troops across the English Channel to safety. Admiral Bertram Ramsay is the man who conducted the rescue operation, and he represents all those involved in the rescue.
Rescue on the Beach
Bertram Ramsay was born in London in 1883. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 15. During the next 40 years, he continued rising in rank and responsibility. In 1938, at age 55, he retired and his naval career appeared to be at an end.
But when war broke out in 1939, Ramsay was back in uniform. The vice admiral was assigned the command of Dover. It would prove to be one of the most important commands of the war.
Disaster struck the Allies in May 1940. A German blitzkrieg tore into the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) and France. Allied forces found themselves trapped near the port of Dunkirk. The German panzers, supported by aircraft, were pounding the trapped soldiers and inflicting heavy casualties.
What lay ahead for the trapped forces was obliteration, surrender, or, if possible, evacuation. The British decided to evacuate as many troops as they could; initially, they hoped to get 45,000 men off the beaches.
A Call for Civilian Help
Ramsay came up with a dramatic plan. He called for civilians with motorized vessels to aid in the evacuation. And they came, assembling at the specified English ports. A ragtag flotilla of 800 vessels, large and small, made the run: naval warships, yachts, trawlers, fishing boats, tugs, steamships, ferries, and lifeboats. Under blistering enemy fire, they made their way across the Channel to Dunkirk. They arrived empty and left loaded.Ramsay created “roads”—traffic lanes in the Channel for the various vessels coming and going. Each boat would pick up a load of men, take them to England, then return for another group.
Meanwhile, German aircraft would bomb and strafe the fleet of ships. The Royal Air Force fought the attacking German planes. But British ships were hit and sunk. There were many casualties, but the vast majority of the men were saved.
A Break in the German Onslaught
After the war, German generals complained that they had been ordered by Hitler to halt their panzer attack outside the port. According to some German sources, Hitler felt that the destruction of the trapped force at Dunkirk might make the proud British fight even harder. The Führer was said to have thought that a partial evacuation would enable the British to seek honorable terms. That is only a theory; but the fact is, there was a brief pause, and the British were able to take advantage of it.
This explanation for the pause has never been officially confirmed. But if it is so, then it was a decision that might well have lost the war for Hitler.
Between May 26 and June 3, 1940, more than 330,000 troops were withdrawn from the Dunkirk beaches. The Allied forces left behind all their heavy equipment, but the troops would be alive to fight another day.
A Final Return to the Beach
When the evacuation first began at Dunkirk, Winston Churchill (Number 3) set a date to speak before the House of Commons. When he appeared, he confessed that he had been fully prepared to announce the surrender of a major part of the British Expeditionary Force in France. Miraculously the flotilla of ships and small boats had brought out most of the army.
Two and a half years after Dunkirk, Ramsay was heading up the amphibious landings in French North Africa. In July 1943, he landed British troops in Sicily.
In a stunning reversal of fortune, he took command of the huge Allied fleet that returned to France on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944. Tragically, he did not live to see the end of the war. Early in January 1945, a plane carrying the admiral crashed on takeoff from a French airfield.
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