Battle of Dunkirk?

Question

What was the outcome of the Battle of Dunkirk. I know the Allied troops were stuck in the pocket and England helped with getting them out but who won- the Allies or Germany

Answer 1

The successful evacuation of 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk ended the first phase in the Battle of France. It provided a GREAT BOOST to British morale, but left the remaining French to stand alone against a renewed German assault southwards. German troops entered Paris on June 14 and accepted the surrender of France on June 22.

The LOSS of so much materiel on the beaches meant that the British Army needed months to resupply properly and some planned introductions of new equipment were halted while industrial resources concentrated on making good the losses.

SOURCE AND ADDITIONAL READING
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dunkirk

Answer 2

Dunkirk was a German victory on the surface but a British and Allied victory underneath, one that likely allowed the Allies to win the war. The British ran for their lives. Black eye for them. But Hitler believed his pal Herman Goering in his insistence that the Luftwaffe could bomb England into submission. That would free the Wehrmacht to turn eastward for the invasion of Russia. Bad move on Adolph's part. The RAF (forewarned by radar which Germany did not know was in operation) and the masterful disinformation operations of the British to throw off the Germans allowed the British to prevail during the Battle of Britain. Finally, Hitler's hopes were dashed with the bombing of Pearl harbor and the entry of the US into the fray. The Russian winter froze his army. That was about it.

Answer 3

It was a complete and decisive German victory. The British were forced to abandon nearly their entire armored force in order to evacuate their troops across the channel. Only valiant support from the RAF and the mobilization of Britain's massive merchant fleet managed to save the Expeditionary Force from total obliteration. It could be said that the Germans failed in their primary aim though, as nearly 300 thousand soldiers (check that figure, but I believe it's correct) including British, Free French, Belgians, Polish, ect. were evacuated. While these men were forced to leave their arms and heavy equipment behind, the value of 300 thousand trained soldiers cannot be overestimated.

So, the Germans won the battle, but failed to crush the British army at Dunkirk. As such, that force was evacuated to England to fortify it against invasion, and eventually to retake mainland Europe.

Answer 4

Germany were the victors in so much as they were left in control of the territory. But they missed the opportunity to wipe out a large part of the British and French Army.
This happened in May 1940 when France and Britain were the only forces left to oppose Hitler.
Hitler was caught off balance by the quick success of his generals and ordered them to stop before Dunkirk so it would appear that he was in charge of the tactics and could claim credit for their success.
The British and French were confined to a small area around Dunkirk and they were bombed on the beaches every day as they waited to be evacuated to England.
But many thousands succeded in getting off with the help of British civilians who came over in their small boats as well as the naval ships.
At this stage of the war Hitler was hoping that Britain would sue for peace so he could turn his attention to his real goal, the invasion of Russia.

Answer 5

the Germans won the tactical....short term......victory.....in that they drove the English off the Continent. They badly lost the long term.....many say even the war...for those English that escaped with only the clothes on their backs were the only trained Army the Brits had.
The difference between an Army and a mob is training, experience and discipline.Those 200,000 Englishmen who escaped dried themselves off; and then they trained 200,000 other Englishmen; and they 200,000 Indians and South Africans and Canadians and Aussies and Kiwis; and to a certain extant, 500,000 Americans till, barely a thousand days later they came back across the Channel behind an unstoppable wall of steel; the Armies of the English Speaking Peoples coming to liberate Europe from the foulest evil the world had ever known.

The below paste is a bit long....but in 35 years of reading history I have never come across anything so accurate and eloquent and I urge you t read on:

Let William Manchester tell the story of those Days of Dunkirk:

"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. "