Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain Essay -- Papers

Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain Dunkirk began the 24th May 1940, when French and English soldiers were trapped on the beach of Dunkirk fighting a losing battle against the Germans. So the British launched a desperate attempt to evacuate them back to British soil where they would be safe, known as operation dynamo. Soldiers were rescued from the beaches in France by the thousands; overall 350,000 were brought back to England with 139,997 French, almost all the BEF were saved. I am going to read through all the sources and decide whether I agree with AJP Taylor's interpretation of the result of Dunkirk. To en able me to answer the question I will use a variety of sources from paintings, photographs, written extracts and a short video clip. It is important to look at each source and conclude the successes and disasters about Dunkirk. All the sources were made by British people therefore they may come across as biased. Source A is a contemporary painting created by Charles Cundall, it shows the troops being rescued from the Dunkirk beaches. It is a secondary source, because, Charles Cundall wasn't actually at Dunkirk when it happened, this makes the source less reliable because it is an artist's impression. This source shows a lot of deliverance that also fits with my knowledge such as the many soldiers being rescued via pleasure boats, fishing boats etc to be rescued. There are big boats, small boats with all different appearances, because the public helped in this desperate attempt to evacuate the British and the French and save thousands of lives. In the background you can see the moles, which also became useful, they allo... ...ctics include the fact that the British soldiers buried themselves in the sand to prevent the Germans seeing them. Therefore I conclude that looking back at my statement 'Dunkirk was a great deliverance and a great disaster' I think that there was not sufficient evidence to support this quotation because I sources that I have read apart from one have been totally biased towards Britain. The only exception was source F this showed both sides and point of views and contained sufficient evidence although it would because it was written by AJP Taylor. Most of the other sources lacked evidence and didn't fit with my knowledge and were used for propaganda to boost morale. However taking into account that evidence was more for the patriotic feel, which boosted morale on home front, therefore balanced deliverance of Dunkirk.