Was the Dunkirk Evacuation a defeat or a victory?

Answer 1

It was a defeat. The British Army had gone to France to assist the French in fighting the Germans, to keep the Germans from overrunning France, just as they had helped the French in WWI. But in 1940, when Germany ended the "sitzkreig" and attacked France, this time, France was completely defeated in six weeks. The British were forced to try to evacuate their army, and they escaped at Dunkirk. Exactly why the Germans allowed this to happen is not entirely clear. The Germans themselves were surprised at the rapidity with which they defeated the French and British, and a bit disorganized. Its said that Herman Goering, head of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) promised Hitler that his air force could destroy the surrounded British. The Luftwaffe was the most Nazi of the German service branches, owing its very existence to Hitler. A German Air Force had been forbidden under the Versailles Treaty, but Hitler started one anyway in 1935. So Hitler allowed the Air Force to try to finish off the British, but they failed. Perhaps Hitler also hoped that now that the British had been defeated on the continent, they would be willing to make some sort of arrangement for peace with Germany, so he went easy on them. But the British wickedly refused to make peace with Germany, infuriating Hitler, and for a year after Dunkirk only Britain was at war with Germany.

Some 300,000 British troops escaped from France at Dunkirk, and about 30,000 French troops as well. But they got away without their tanks, trucks or artillery. They were, in essence, not really an army until these things could be replaced, merely a large crowd armed with light infantry weapons. If the Germans had managed to invade Britain it would have been difficult to defend without their heavy arms and equipment.