British Prisoners of War Taken by the Wehrmacht at Dunkirk France in the spring of 1940

The majority of the British Expeditionary Force sent to France in 1939-1940 escaped German capture. For reasons debated to this day the rampaging German panzers that had eviscerated the Western European Allied armies in just under a fortnight during May 1940 had been held up just short of capturing the French port of Dunkirk; a port serving as the collection point for the retreating Allied armies cut off along the English Channel.

In a brilliant rescue operation the British had managed to save 338,226 Allied soldiers from the Germans. Although the BEF was forced to leave all heavy weapons behind the rescue operation provided a tremendous psychological boost to the reeling British war effort at a time when Britain seemed on the verge of total defeat.

Picture Courtesy US National Archives, local identifier no. 242-EB-7-35