May 1940: 338,000 Allied soldiers are evacuated from Dunkirk in nine days. 86 years later, French, British and German archaeologists and historians investigate shipwrecks and archives to uncover the hidden story of Operation Dynamo and challenge the myth of the “Miracle of Dunkirk.”
At the end of May 1940, the Allied forces are caught off guard by the Nazi offensive. Encircled, the British Army and part of the French forces retreat to Dunkirk. For Winston Churchill, who is at the head of the British government, the priority is to save, at all costs, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers trapped there. The code name? Operation Dynamo.
An armada of 850 assorted vessels—warships, fishing boats, privately owned pleasure craft, transport ships and ferries—is requisitioned in France, Britain and Belgium to evacuate the troops trapped in the German pincer movement by sea. It is a race against time. For nine days and nine nights, these vessels make repeated crossings under German bombardment, covering the 60 kilometres separating Dunkirk from Dover.
Eighty-five percent of the troops—338,226 men, including 123,000 French and Belgian soldiers—reach Britain safely. It is the largest seaborne evacuation in military history. But the cost is heavy: 250 vessels are sunk, taking the lives of more than 7,000 military personnel and civilians, while 34,000 French soldiers are taken prisoner on 4 June 1940.
Barely had it ended when Operation Dynamo was exploited for propaganda on both sides. Glorified by the British, the operation was used by Hitler and the Vichy regime to fuel anti-British sentiment. More recently, it was invoked during the Brexit debates as evidence that Britain could do without the European Union.
All these myths, disseminated through books and blockbuster films, have contributed to downplaying the role of the French Army and the mistakes made by the German Army in what became known as the “Miracle of Dunkirk.” Eighty-five years later, historians and archaeologists are restoring the true history of Operation Dynamo, in particular the role of the French Army, whose nine-day defence of the perimeter helped make the evacuation possible.
In the waters off Dunkirk, an archaeological mission will get underway. Archaeologists and divers from the Department of Underwater Archaeological Research (DRASSM), working in collaboration with Historic England, will set out to trace the legendary sunken vessels and the crews who went down with them.
At the same time, French, British and German historians will return to the archives and to the sites where events unfolded in order to gain a better understanding of the respective roles played by the British, French and German armies in the success of the evacuation.
From the seabed to military archives—including those of the Hauts-de-France region, the city of Dunkirk, the Dunkirk 1940 Museum, departmental archives and INA Nord—and from the British Army headquarters in the tunnels beneath Dover Castle, which gave the operation its name, to the archives of the Imperial War Museum, they retrace the history of the ships and the men, as well as the people of Dunkirk who witnessed or took part in the evacuation of the city at the risk of their lives.
Structured like a gripping thriller, following the countdown of the nine days and nine nights of the Allied evacuation, this ambitious documentary retraces the largest seaborne evacuation in military history. Combining archive footage, an expedition at sea and 3D reconstructions, the film sheds new light on the untold story of the most victorious defeat of the Second World War: a spectacular and controversial maritime operation that, according to historians, foreshadowed the D-Day landings.
