Complete Speeches of Winston Churchill
We
Shall Fight on the Beaches
June 4, 1940
House of Commons
The position of the B. E.F had now become critical As a result of a most skillfully conducted retreat and German errors, the bulk of the British Forces reached the Dunkirk bridgehead. The peril facing the British nation was now suddenly and universally perceived. On May 26, "Operation Dynamo "--the evacuation from Dunkirk began. The seas remained absolutely calm. The Royal Air Force--bitterly maligned at the time by the Army--fought vehemently to deny the enemy the total air supremacy which would have wrecked the operation. At the outset, it was hoped that 45,000 men might be evacuated; in the event, over 338,000 Allied troops reached England, including 26,000 French soldiers. On June 4, Churchill reported to the House of Commons, seeking to check the mood of national euphoria and relief at the unexpected deliverance, and to make a clear appeal to the United States.
From the moment that
the French defenses at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the
second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have
saved the British and French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal
of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was not immediately realized.
The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the
Armies of the north were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this
kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian
Army of over 20 divisions and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore,
when the force and scope of the German penetration were realized and when
a new French Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of General
Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium to
keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right
hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced across the
Somme in great strength to grasp it.
However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and
rear of the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armored divisions, each of
about four hundred armored vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted
to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off
all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed our own
communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards
through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais,
and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armored and mechanized onslaught came a
number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded
comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German
people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of
liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.
I have said this armored scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk-almost but not
quite. Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards
defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this
country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen Victoria's Rifles,
with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000 Frenchmen, in all about four thousand
strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour
to surrender. He spurned the offer, and four days of intense street fighting
passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable
resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy, and
we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not
in vain. At least two armored divisions, which otherwise would have been turned
against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent to overcome them.
They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the
time gained enabled the Graveline water lines to be flooded and to be held
by the French troops.
Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible
for the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with
the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn.
The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded. Their sole
line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighboring beaches. They
were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air.
When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion
for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest
military disaster in our long history. I thought-and some good judges agreed
with me-that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. But it certainly
seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British
Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in
the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition.
These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the House and
the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain
of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to
build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about
to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.
That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved
final was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us
to come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed themselves
from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in the late war,
and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality,
the French and British Armies might well at the outset have saved not only
Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was
already invaded, King Leopard called upon us to come to his aid, and even
at the last moment we came. He and his brave, efficient Army, nearly half
a million strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line
of retreat to the sea. Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least
possible notice, without the advice of his Ministers and upon his own personal
act, he sent a plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his Army,
and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat.
I asked the House a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were
not clear, but I do not feel that any reason now exists why we should not
form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian
Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the
sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and
all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest
Army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank,
as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost
between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French
Army, who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible
that any large number of Allied troops could reach the coast.
The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their
main power, the power of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into
the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in
upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began
to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach
or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas; they sent repeated
waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation,
to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained, and upon the sand
dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one
of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic
which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their
armored divisions-or what Was left of them-together with great masses of infantry
and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting
appendix within which the British and French Armies fought.
Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen,
strained every nerve to embark the British and Allied troops; 220 light warships
and 650 other vessels were engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult
coast, often in adverse weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and
an increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have
said, themselves free from mines and torpedoes. It was in conditions such
as these that our men carried on, with little or no rest, for days and nights
on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters, bringing with
them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they have brought back
are the measure of their devotion and their courage. The hospital ships, which
brought off many thousands of British and French wounded, being so plainly
marked were a special target for Nazi bombs; but the men and women on board
them never faltered in their duty.
Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the
battle, so far as its range would allow, from home bases, now used part of
its main metropolitan fighter strength, and struck at the German bombers and
at the fighters which in large numbers protected them. This struggle was protracted
and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and thunder has for
the moment-but only for the moment-died away. A miracle of deliverance, achieved
by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline, by faultless service, by
resource, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity, is manifest to us all. The
enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was
so roughly handled that he did not hurry their departure seriously. The Royal
Air Force engaged the main strength of the German Air Force, and inflicted
upon them losses of at least four to one; and the Navy, using nearly 1,000
ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, out of the
jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately
ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes
of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside
this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many
of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw
only the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its achievements.
I have heard much talk of this; that is why I go out of my way to say this.
I will tell you about it.
This was a great trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces.
Can you conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make
evacuation from these beaches impossible, and to sink all these ships which
were displayed, almost to the extent of thousands? Could there have been an
objective of greater military importance and significance for the whole purpose
of the war than this? They tried hard, and they were beaten back; they were
frustrated in their task. We got the Army away; and they have paid fourfold
for any losses which they have inflicted. Very large formations of German
aeroplanes-and we know that they are a very brave race-have turned on several
occasions from the attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air
Force, and have dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have
been hunted by two. One aeroplane was driven into the water and cast away
by the mere charge of a British aeroplane, which had no more ammunition. All
of our types-the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant-and all our pilots
have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face.
When we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the
air above this Island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find in
these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring thoughts may
rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French Army was
very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of
a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of
civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand
airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history
of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the
Crusaders, all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these
young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that
we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering
power, of whom it may be said that
Every morn brought forth a noble chance
And every chance brought forth a noble knight,
deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on
so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for
their native land.
I return to the Army. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this
front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two
or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy,
and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so
well-in these battles our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded
and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who
have suffered bereavement or who are still anxious. The President of the Board
of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has been killed, and
many in the House have felt the pangs of affliction in the sharpest form.
But I will say this about the missing: We have had a large number of wounded
come home safely to this country, but I would say about the missing that there
may be very many reported missing who will come back home, some day, in one
way or another. In the confusion of this fight it is inevitable that many
have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from
them.
Against this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly
inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have
perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of the battle
of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns -- nearly one thousand-and
all our transport, all the armored vehicles that were with the Army in the
north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military
strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The
best of all we had to give had gone to the British Expeditionary Force, and
although they had not the numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment
which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped Army. They
had the first-fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone.
And now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will
last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this Island. An effort the
like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Work is
proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and week days. Capital and Labor
have cast aside their interests, rights, and customs and put them into the
common stock. Already the flow of munitions has leaped forward. There is no
reason why we should not in a few months overtake the sudden and serious loss
that has come upon us, without retarding the development of our general program.
Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men,
whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us
to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military
disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been lost,
a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed
is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the
enemy's possession, the whole of the Channel ports are in his hands, with
all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we must expect another
blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France. We are told that
Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been
thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed
boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone. "There are bitter weeds
in England." There are certainly a great many more of them since the
British Expeditionary Force returned.
The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully
affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this Island incomparably
more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this
war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with
a defensive war. We have our duty to our Ally. We have to reconstitute and
build up the British Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant Commander-in-Chief,
Lord Gort. All this is in train; but in the interval we must put our defenses
in this Island into such a high state of organization that the fewest possible
numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible
potential of offensive effort may be realized. On this we are now engaged.
It will be very convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon
this subject in a secret Session. Not that the government would necessarily
be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have
our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they
will be read the next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit by
views freely expressed in all parts of the House by Members with their knowledge
of so many different parts of the country. I understand that some request
is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Majesty's
Government.
We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not
only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities,
but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should
the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great many
people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies
of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time
and under the present stress, draw all the distinctions which we should like
to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attendant
upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the
way, for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class,
for which I feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers
to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use those
powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House, without the
slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than satisfied, that
this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out.
Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion,
I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries
of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less
against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of
Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the
Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the
chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations
of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured
that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice,
the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare
ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous
maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered
and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye.
We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong
to air power if it can be locally exercised.
I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected,
and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove
ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm
of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary
alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve
of His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament
and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together
in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil,
aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even
though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or
may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi
rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the
end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall
fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend
our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall
fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if,
which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were
subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded
by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time,
the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and
the liberation of the old.