Word: british
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...British were already thinking about evacuating France, and Dunkirk, about 50 miles away, was the only port that remained open to them. They hoped to rescue perhaps 45,000 men in the two days they estimated they might have left. But Guderian's tanks did not move, and more British troops kept pouring into Dunkirk. While the Royal Navy sent 165 ships, many of which could not enter the shallow harbor, London issued an emergency call for everything that could float -- yachts, fishing boats, excursion steamers, fire-fighting boats, some 850 vessels in all. The first 25,000 men reached...
...nine days, often under heavy fire, the ships steamed to and fro as the great evacuation continued. By June 4, when it ended, some 200,000 British troops had been rescued, along with about 140,000 Allied forces, mostly French. British losses: 40,000 left behind, dead or taken prisoner. To many of the French, the evacuation was a British betrayal, a flight, the abandonment of an ally. To the British, it was a miracle and the only route to national survival...
With 60 remaining divisions, the French tried to form a new defensive line along the Somme, but after having lost about 40 divisions plus almost all British forces, they were seriously outnumbered, as well as outgunned and outgeneraled. The Germans had not only their panzer units but also 130 infantry divisions. On June 7 the French commander Maxime Weygand told the government, "The battle of the Somme is lost," and advised it to ask for an armistice. Premier Reynaud declared, "We shall fight in front of Paris," but the government itself fled to Tours and then Bordeaux...
...beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." And again on June 18: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour...
Hitler could not believe it. The French had been defeated, the war won, and the British must see reason. In a speech to the Reichstag, he jeered at the idea of Churchill's fighting on in Canada, but he offered to make peace. "I can see no reason why this war must go on," he said. Churchill decided not even to answer, leaving it to Lord Halifax to declare, "We shall not stop fighting until freedom is secure." Hitler was again lying. Just three days before his "peace speech" on July 19, he had officially told his commanders, "I have...