Dunkirk. It’s a battle that has inspired countless filmmakers, novelists, and historians – a battle that saved a nation, and quite possibly, the modern world as we know it. As a direct result of the actions of the men you will hear about in this episode, Great Britain survived to fight another day. The cornerstone of the modern world order was laid and mortared with the blood and sweat of the hundreds of thousands of men in today’s show. It was their sacrifice which built many of your civil rights. It was their blood that made possible the tens of thousands of bureaucrats growing fat on the largesse of the United Nations. 

We often hear about the hundreds of thousands saved off the coast of France – the lucky ones who made it across the channel. But we rarely hear the story of the cooks who transformed into heroes, of snipers who dueled in the dusk – where two men entered a village but only one walked away; it’s the story of men who lost their minds defending key highway intersections against thousands of battle-hardened German veterans. And it’s the lamentable story of the men left behind, the men shattered and broken, breathing their last ragged breaths on a fetid beach before darkness finally fogged their eyes. In today’s show we’ll hear them all. Their stories will live again like a second resurrection.

http://media.blubrry.com/429895/archive.org/download/bc38final/BC38final.mp3

Download Dunkirk here: Dunkirk episode 38

Maps and Pictures:

References:

To Lose a Battle: France 1940 by Alastair Horne

The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 by William Shirer

The Fall of France: The Nazi invasion of 1940 by Julian Jackson

Dunkirk: The men they left behind by Sean Longden

The Miracle of Dunkirk: The True Story of Operation Dynamo by Walter Lord

The Times Atlas of the Second World War by John Keegan

History of the Second World War by B.B. LIddell Hart

Supplying War by Martin van Creveld 

The Second World War by John Keegan