Learn how Nazi panzers wedged between French and British troops and trapped the latter at Dunkirk
The British Expeditionary Force being surrounded by invading Germans at Dunkirk and evacuated from France by a motley rescue fleet of military ships and private boats; from The Second World War: Triumph of the Axis (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Transcript
[Music in]
NARRATOR: With a three-to-one superiority in tanks and aircraft, the Nazi panzers struck through Belgium and Holland . . .
driving a wedge between the British and French armies--encircling the British at Dunkirk.
As the British pulled back to the coast, they left all their precious heavy equipment behind to the advancing enemy. Now there was only one way out of the German trap--by sea! To try and save their army from obliteration, the British gathered a motley rescue fleet. Destroyers, fishing smacks, even paddle steamers--anything that could float went to Dunkirk. In what was one of the most audacious feats in naval history, this strangely assorted armada rescued a third of a million Allied soldiers.
[Music out]
NARRATOR: With a three-to-one superiority in tanks and aircraft, the Nazi panzers struck through Belgium and Holland . . .
driving a wedge between the British and French armies--encircling the British at Dunkirk.
As the British pulled back to the coast, they left all their precious heavy equipment behind to the advancing enemy. Now there was only one way out of the German trap--by sea! To try and save their army from obliteration, the British gathered a motley rescue fleet. Destroyers, fishing smacks, even paddle steamers--anything that could float went to Dunkirk. In what was one of the most audacious feats in naval history, this strangely assorted armada rescued a third of a million Allied soldiers.
[Music out]