Was dunkirk a triumph or a disaster & why?

Answer 1

Both, it was a triumph for Britain and a disaster for Germany. The Army that Germany could have destroyed was now across the channel defending the beaches of England. Had the Germans made a determined effort to destroy this army then attempted a quick channel crossing England might have been out of the war. Aside from the troops at Dunkirk, England had only 1 Canadian Division, the Home Guard, the Royal Navy and Air Force to defend England. England was able to augment this force with 330,000 troops, under equipped but experienced and now defending their homes.

For Britain Dunkirk is and should be consider a triumph because England was able to save a large part of there army. Even through the Army lost most of the equipment it gave England the ability to defend it's own soil. Now the Germans would have to cross the channel and destroy the army that they failed to destroy in Dunkirk.

Sometimes to win one must avoid defeat.

Answer 2

Dunkirk was both a triumph and a disaster.

Operation Dynamo, saved the British army from being captured by the German army,but the British army was put out of battle of France, leaving France to be killed off by Germany. Also most of the British kit(Tanks, Artillery,Weapons, and other heavy ideams) behind for the germans, The British Army now needs time to rearm their troops

Answer 3

Dunkirk is referred to as a "miracle" simply because the Germans should have, and could have, easily wiped out the British expedition. The German high command halted as the army was about to go for the kill (on orders from Hitler who at times would lose his nerve temporarily). Goering promised to destroy them with the Luftwaffe but despite the intense attack by the German air force, thousands of British soldiers escaped to fight another day. It was a psychological victory for England because it showed they were down but not out. Germany had won the day for sure, but despite the bloody beating England received, she was still standing. With the ensuing Battle of Britain a clear disaster for Germany, Dunkirk stands out as a triumph for England because it showed she would not quit and the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany can be traced back to this "miracle" at Dunkirk.

Answer 4

It could be regarded as a triumph because of the numbers of troops that were rescued from the beaches.

If all those troops had been captured it would have left a massive hole in the British Army.

The French who were rescued formed the Free French Army, many of who returned to France to Spy, set up Resistance and generally be a pain in the neck for the Germans.

Answer 5

it was a triumph for two reasons: if the British Army had been captured, that was the end of it. Game over. Even though the British Army escaped with only the clothes on their backs, they were still an Army; trained and disciplined; they were able to train another 200,000 Englishmen, and they another 200,000 Australians and Canadians and South Africans; and they another 500,000 Americans, so, barley a thousand days later, that force that had left with nothing came back behind a wall of steel and ships and guns; a million man Army of the English Speaking Peoples, to liberate Europe from a foulness that the world had never before seen.
Secondly, Dunkirk brought Winston Churchill to the Prime Ministry. William Manchester tells it better than anyone else ever has or will:

"THE French had collapsed. The Dutch had been overwhelmed. The Belgians had surrendered. The British army, trapped, fought free and fell back toward the Channel ports, converging on a fishing town whose name was then spelled Dunkerque.
Behind them lay the sea.
It was England’s greatest crisis since the Norman conquest, vaster than those precipitated by Philip II’s Spanish Armada, Louis XIV’s triumphant armies, or Napoleon’s invasion barges massed at Boulogne. This time Britain stood alone. If the Germans crossed the Channel and established uncontested beachheads, all would be lost, for it is a peculiarity of England’s island that its southern weald is indefensible against disciplined troops. Now the 220,000 Tommies at Dunkirk, Britain’s only hope, seemed doomed. On the Flanders beaches they stood around in angular, existential attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls awaiting disposition. There appeared to be no way to bring more than a handful of them home. The Royal Navy’s vessels were inadequate. King George VI has been told that they would be lucky to save 17,000. The House of Commons was warned to prepare for “hard and heavy tidings.”
Then, from the streams and estuaries of Kent and Dover, a strange fleet appeared: trawlers and tugs, scows and fishing sloops, lifeboats and pleasure craft, smacks and coasters; the island ferry Grade Fields; Tom Sopwith’s America’s Cup challenger Endeavour; even the London fire brigade’s fire-float Massey Shaw — all of them manned by civilian volunteers:
English fathers, sailing to rescue England’s exhausted, bleeding sons.

Even today what followed seems miraculous. Not only were Britain’s soldiers delivered; so were French support troops: a total of 338,682 men. But wars are not won by fleeing from the enemy. And British morale was still unequal to the imminent challenge. These were the same people who, less than a year earlier, had rejoiced in the fake peace bought by the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. Most of their leaders and most of the press remained craven. It had been over a thousand years since Alfred the Great had made himself and his countrymen one and sent them into battle transformed. Now in this new exigency, confronted by the mightiest conqueror Europe had ever known, England looked for another Alfred, a figure cast in a mold which, by the time of the Dunkirk deliverance, seemed to have been forever lost.
England’s new leader, were he to prevail, would have to stand for everything England’s decent, civilized Establishment had rejected. They viewed Adolf Hitler as the product of complex social and historical forces. Their successor would have to be a passionate Manichaean who saw the world as a medieval struggle to the death between the powers of good and the powers of evil, who held that individuals are responsible for their actions and that the German dictator was therefore wicked. A believer in martial glory was required, one who saw splendor in the ancient parades of victorious legions through Persepolis and could rally the nation to brave the coming German fury. An embodiment of fading Victorian standards was wanted: a tribune for honor, loyalty, duty, and the supreme virtue of action; one who would never compromise with iniquity, who could create a sublime mood and thus give men heroic visions of what they were and might become. Like Adolf Hitler he would have to be a leader of intuitive genius, a born demagogue in the original sense of the word, a believer in the supremacy of his race and his national destiny, an artist who knew how to gather the blazing light of history into his prism and then distort it to his ends, an embodiment of inflexible resolution who could impose his will and his imagination on his people — a great tragedian who understood the appeal of martyrdom and could tell his followers the worst, hurling it to them like great hunks of bleeding meat, persuading them that the year of Dunkirk would be one in which it was “equally good to live or to die” — who could if necessary be just as cruel, just as cunning, and just as ruthless as Hitler but who could win victories without enslaving populations, or preaching supernaturalism, or foisting off myths of his infallibility, or destroying, or even warping, the libertarian institutions he had sworn to preserve. Such a man, if he existed, would be England’s last chance.

In London there was such a man."

Answer 6

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