Germany invading France?

Question

Hello,

When Germans invaded France, from Belgium, I want to know if there were any French civilians and soldiers which escaped to Britain by sea/boats/ships?

I was looking on the net, but couldn't find anything about that.

Answer 1

Large numbers.

From the Dunkirk beachead alone (Operation Dynamo), I have the figure (from a book to hand) of 141,445 non-British troops .

Evacuation from further west along the north coast of France rescued 191,870 troops (French and British) and 35,000 civilians.

And one previous answer is wrong: the French government left Paris for Bordeaux, and on June 17th a new government under Marshal Petain offered a conditional surrender to the Nazis (See "Vichy government")
It was on the 17th June that De Gaulle flew to England, from Bordeaux. The next day his wife and children were on the last boat out of Brest. In th edays that follwed the French surerender an appreciable number of French sailed for England in fishing boats to join the Free French forces.

But note the majority of those French troops (at least 100,000) lifted from Dunkirk were returned via Brest or Cherbourg to France, before the French capitualtion.

Answer 2

Hi. Hmmmm. Interesting footnote to WW1 or WW11. None "escaped" in WW1, but some French troops went with the British from Dunkirk in WW11. Just research Dunkirk to find out how many and from what units.

Answer 3

Yes, in fact the whole French government ran away to Britian. They had the "Free French" forces at Normandy

Answer 4

Thousands of them! The free french army was formed by them in England, and went on to liberate France in 1945 led by Gen. De Gaul.

Answer 5

From what I remember many French escaped to England they became what was known as the "Free French".

Answer 6

Search for Dunkirk, which was the beach where the forces congregated for the British civilian armada to pick them up.