BACKSTORY: After Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Hitler’s regime. Britain sent the 13-division British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France and Belgium in anticipation of a German invasion, but for the next eight months there was virtually no fighting—a period known as the “Phony War.”
The war became real on May 9 and 10, 1940, when more than two million German soldiers, accompanied by thousands of panzers and aircraft, plunged violently into France and Belgium and pushed the BEF and some French units to the English Channel coast and the port city of Dunkirk. There, while under constant attack, over 330,000 troops managed to be evacuated back to Britain (Operation Dynamo).
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