He does not retreat, he does not surrender, he dies on the spot.
This sentence, a German officer of the 18th Army wrote in his campaign report on June 2, 1940.
He is not talking about the British, he is talking about the French, the French sailors, those who are still holding the perimeter of Dunkirk while the last British ship left the docks 36 hours ago, you know Dunkirk.
Everyone knows Dunkirk.
The Christopher Nolan film.
The small English boats, the Spinfires in the sky.
The miraculous evacuation of 338,000 men, the dark spirit, British pride, victory snatched from defeat.
But here is what you have never been told about these 338,000 evacuated men: 123,000 are French, one-third.
And while British ships were taking troops to England, while Winston Chilly proclaimed “We shall never surrender”, 40,000 French soldiers remained on the beach.
Not because they had missed the boats, but because they were holding the lines.
6000 French sailors, six districts of the island, six battalions of marine riflemen and colonial troops.
Facing them were three German divisions, 50,000 men, 800 tanks, and the most modern artillery in Europe.
And for 9 days they held out.
For 9 days they transformed every house, every canal, every street in Dquerque into a tomb for the German infantry.
For 9 days, Vermart’s generals sent report after report to Berlin, all carrying the same message.
Extremely tenacious French resistance, advanced, slowed down, high losses.
So why is it that when you type “Kirk” into Google, you only see British soldiers ? Why is it that when Hollywood tells this story, the French completely disappear from the screen? Why has this fierce defense, documented in German archives, validated by enemy testimonies, and proven by the thousands of French dead found in the ruins, been erased from history? It is not a mystery, it is a theft, the theft of a story, the theft of a sacrifice, the theft of a glory that should have been eternal.
And today, we’re going to pick it up again.
Not with opinions, not with nationalism, but with the words of those who fought against them.
The Germans, those who saw with their own eyes what six French sailors could do against 50,000 soldiers of the RA.
If this video reveals a story that has been hidden from you, if it helps you understand why Dunkeevk is not just a British victory, but a French sacrifice, then subscribe because every week we bring back from oblivion a story that Hollywood will never tell.
To understand what will happen in Dunkirk, you must first understand what has already happened.
May 14, 1940, Gouerian’s panzers crossed the Meuse River at its teeth.
In 48 hours, they did what the German army failed to do in 4 years during the Great War.
To break through the French front.
May 19, the German armored divisions reached Beville on the English Channel.
This move was not anticipated by French strategists .
Nobody saw it coming.
In 6 days, the German army cut the Allied forces in two.
In the north, the entire British expeditionary force, three French armies, and the Belgian army.
In the south, the rest of the French forces were unable to break through to the north.
The Germans call this movement the Sichel Schnit, the fossil strike.
And it worked beyond all expectations.
On May 20, the general, the new French commander-in-chief, ordered a counter-offensive.
She failed on May 22nd, a second attempt.
It also fails.
The tanks are too fast.
The French infantry cannot keep up.
Communications are down.
The orders are no longer arriving.
On May 24, Adolf Hitler made a decision that would change the history of the war.
Halt Beffel, the stop order.
The German armored divisions are 18 km from Dunkirk.
She could be there in 4 hours.
It could completely encircle the allied forces.
It could turn the evacuation into a massacre.
But Hitler is afraid.
Fear that his precious panzers would be exhausted in the marshes of Flanders.
Fear of losing their armored vehicles before the offensive towards Paris.
Fear that the infantry would not be able to keep up.
So he gives the order to stop and for 48 hours the German armored divisions remain motionless a few kilometers from their prey.
These 48 hours saved the British army.
But she does not explain it because on May 26, when Hitler lifted the halt order, when the Panzers resumed their advance, when the German infantry launched the assault on Dkerk, he did not find troops in retreat.
They find a vanguard perimeter, a perimeter 40 km long, canals transformed into anti-tank ditches, houses transformed into bunkers, dunes transformed into artillery positions and 6000 French sailors who have decided that he will not retreat.
General Friedrich Carl Kranz, commander of the German 18th Army, wrote in his diary: “We thought we would find a broken army, we found a fortress, a fortress of men.
” When we talk about French sailors at Dunkirk, we might imagine ship crews, men in blue uniforms lost on land, fighting with rifles they don’t know.
That’s not who they are.
They are marine fusiliers, the elite troop of the French national navy , men trained for amphibious combat, for assaulting coastal fortifications to hold positions under naval artillery fire .
Soldiers who have spent years transforming their bodies into war machines.
The 21st Marine Fusiliers Battalion, the 22nd BFM, units which bear the names of Napoleonic battles on their flag.
Men who grew up with the history of Trafalgar, the Invincible Armada, and colonial wars.
But they are not only marine riflemen, there is also the 32nd Infantry Regiment, line troops, mostly Bretons, peasants, fishermen, workers from the arsenals of Brest and the Orient, men who know what it means to hold a position, even when orders no longer make sense.
There are the Algerian riflemen of the 4th Rifle Regiment, Berbers from the mountains of Kaby, men who fought in the Moroccan Rif who know mountain warfare, trench warfare, and war without mercy.
There are naval gunners, crewmen of 75mm guns and 47mm anti-tank guns.
Men who have learned to calculate trajectories at sea under rolling conditions and who are now applying this science to dry land.
There are sappers, naval engineers, men capable of blowing up a bridge, mining a road, turning a canal into a death trap in a few hours, and there is one man who commands them all.
Admiral Jean Abrial, commander of the fortified place of Derk, years old, veteran of Verdin, naval officer who commanded squadrons in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic.
A man who received the order from Churchill himself.
Hold out from a church for as long as possible.
Don’t defend Derk until the British leave.
Hold out from a church for as long as possible.
In May 1940, when Operation Dynamo officially began, when the first British ships entered the port of Derk, Admiral Abrial established his headquarters in the underground bunkers of the naval basin, 7 meters underground.
Reinforced concrete, 2 m thick.
Radio communication with London and Paris.
The staff map was laid out on steel tables and a simple plan.
The area will be divided into three sectors.
In the eastern sector, the marine riflemen hold the canals between Derk and the Belgian border.
In the western sector, the French infantry held the line between Derkque and Graveline.
In the southern sector, Algerian riflemen and colonial troops hold the roads towards Berg.
Each sector must last three days.
Days for the British army to evacuate.
It took 3 days for 338,000 men to board boats and cross the Channel.
3 days during which 6000 French will face 50000 Germans.
A German general, in a captured postwar report, wrote, “We thought three days would be enough.
It took us nine days, and we lost more men at Dinkaf than during the entire Polish campaign.
May 27, 1940.
The German artillery opened fire.
Not a warning salvo, not a reconnaissance bombardment, a deluge of fire.
300 field guns, 150 heavy guns, 80 railway artillery pieces .
The entire firepower of three divisions concentrated within a 40-kilometer radius.
150mm shells tore 6-meter craters in the dunes.
210mm shells pulverized the houses of Rosandel and Malotolébain.
88mm shells fired horizontally sliced through the facades of buildings like razor blades.
For two hours, a church burned, and then at a.m., the German infantry advanced.” Eastern sector.
The marines of the 21st Marine Fusiliers (BFM) held a trench line along the Berg Canal.
Facing them was the German 61st Infantry Regiment : 3,200 men, supported by 81mm mortars and storm-guns.
At a.m., the first German sections reached the north bank of the canal.
At a.m., the marines opened fire.
What followed was described by a German non-commissioned officer, Unter Klaus Hartman of the 2nd Battalion, in a letter to his wife found in the Freiburg military archives: ” We thought the bombardment had destroyed everything.
We thought we would march to the port without firing a shot.
We were wrong.
The French were dug into invisible holes, and when we reached the canal, they rose up like ghosts.
Every position was a machine-gun nest.
Every house concealed a sniper.
In 10 minutes, my section lost…” Twelve men.
Twelve men in ten minutes—that’s not a fight, it’s a massacre.
The 1st German infantry regiment attempts to cross the canal at three points: at the Berg lock, at the Capelle-la-Grande bridge, and at the makeshift crossing built by German pioneers near Couekerc.
All three attempts fail at the Berg lock.
A section of marine riflemen commanded by Petty Officer Jean Lartig destroys two crossing barges with anti-tank grenades.
The Germans retreat, leaving 23 bodies in the canal.
At the Capelle-la-Grande bridge, Algerian riflemen of the 4th RTT shoot down a Stormgchutz with a 25mm anti-tank gun.
The vehicle burns for six hours, blocking the bridge.
No other German vehicles can pass.
At the Couekerc crossing, French sappers blow up the canal banks at the precise moment the German infantry begins to cross.
The water, laden with debris and Debris drowns 17 German soldiers.
At 2 p.m., the German 61st Infantry Regiment retreats.
German losses for the morning of May 27: 146 killed, 289 wounded, 12 vehicles destroyed.
French losses: 37 killed, 54 wounded.
The ratio is 1 to 10.
And this is only the first day, May 29, 1940.
Operation Dynamo has been underway for three days.
For three days, British ships have been entering and leaving the port of Dunkirk.
For three days, Allied troops have been boarding, crossing the Channel, and landing in England, and in three days, 126,000 men have been evacuated, including 6,000 French.
6,000 out of 126,000.
Meanwhile , at the defensive perimeter, the 6,000 French sailors holding the lines haven’t moved an inch.
They They were not ordered to retreat.
They received no reinforcements.
They received an order to hold.
On the evening of May 29, Admiral Abrial received a message from London.
Churchill had decided that the evacuation must be accelerated.
Absolute priority to British troops.
The French would be evacuated as far as possible.
As far as possible, Abrial read the message, bound it, then placed it on the command table and issued a new order.
The eastern and western sectors were to hold for another 72 hours.
The southern sector was to withdraw gradually towards the port, but maintaining a defensive line until the very last moment.
No unit was to break away without an explicit order.
In short, the French would remain on the front line while the British embarked.
This was no secret.
The French soldiers knew it, the naval infantry knew it, the Algerian riflemen knew it, and yet they held on.
May 30, western sector.
The German 56th Infantry Regiment launched a major offensive on Gravelines.
Objective Break through towards the port, cut the line of retreat, prevent evacuation.
Facing them was the French 32nd Infantry Regiment.
800 men, three battalions, no more mortar ammunition, no more grenades, just rifles, a few machine guns, and the order to hold.
At a.m., the assault began.
By a.m., the first French line was overwhelmed.
By a.m., the second line bent but didn’t break.
At a.m., Captain André Malerot, commander of the 2nd Battalion, ordered a bayonet counterattack.
A bayonet counterattack in 1940 against MG34 machine guns against flamethrowers.
The German report from the 56th Infantry Regiment describes this attack with clinical precision.
At a.m., approximately 150 French soldiers left their positions and charged our lines in the open.
Our machine guns opened fire at 200 meters.
The enemy continued to advance.
At 100 meters, we used flamethrowers.
The enemy continued to advance.
Contact was established in hand-to-hand combat.
Extremely violent fighting.
We were forced to retreat 400 meters.
Forced to retreat.
150 men pushed back a German regiment.
Not to win, not to conquer, just to gain an hour.
An hour during which 2,000 more British soldiers would lie on ships.
Of the 150 Frenchmen who charged, 91 would not return.
Captain Malot would be found dead.
German bayonet in his chest, surrounded by seven German bodies.
But the line held.
June 1, 1940, night falls on Dquerk.
In the harbor, the last British ships embark the last British troops.
At p.m., Rear Admiral William Tenan, commander of the British evacuation, leaves a krek on the destroyer Chikari.
He leaves behind He had 40,000 French soldiers.
40,000.
And in his official report sent to the British Admiralty, he would write, “Without the heroic resistance of the French troops on the perimeter, the British evacuation would have been impossible.
A word that is used when we know that men have died so that others may live.
A word that is often forgotten when history is written.
June 2, 1940, the British troops left.
338226 men evacuated, 198000 British, 140000 French.
But there are still 40,000 French people in Dkerk and the Germans know it.
General Auberst Fedor Vonbck, commander of Army Group B, sends a message to the high command in Berlin.
French resistance in DKEfk still active.
We request permission to use heavy artillery and massive aerial bombardment to accelerate the reduction of the pocket.
What will follow is not a battle, it is a programmed annihilation.
June 2, 2008 Europeans.
The Luftwaffe launches 300 sorties over Dunkirk.
Stas dive bomber Nkel H1.
Messer Schmidth B110 fighter-bomber.
The 250 kg bombs turn the streets into craters.
The 500 kg bombs bring down the buildings.
The 50kg incendiary bombs start fires that will last 3 days.
Meanwhile, German artillery is pounding the perimeter with an intensity not seen since Verdin and German infantry is attacking everywhere at once.
East sector, west sector, south sector.
The three German divisions launched coordinated assaults on all axes.
They are no longer trying to break through.
She seeks to crush.
In the cases of underground meters of the naval basin, Admiral Abrial receives the reports.
Eastern sector, line breached at Rosendael.
Western sector, enemy 600m from the port.
Triaï, southern sector, resistance grouped in the ruins of Malot.
This means that the lines no longer exist.
This means that battalions are reduced to companies, companies to sections, sections to isolated combat groups holding positions without hope of relief.
At 2 p.m., Abrial sends a radio message to Paris.
Critical situation.
We demand the immediate evacuation of the remaining troops.
Response from Paris at 4pm.
Evacuation authorized.
All available means will be sent.
Hold out until nightfall.
There are 6 hours left before sunset.
6 hours during which 40,000 men had to hold out against an army that had been ordered to take no prisoners.
What happens during those 6 hours.
The German archives treated the document with bureaucratic coldness.
61st Reports street fight in Rosanda.
Enemies use every house as a bunker.
High losses PM.
56th reached the docs.
Organized resistance in your pocket.
Several enemy counter-attacks repelled.
PM.
18th Infantry Division reports systematic destruction of French position.
Very few enemy prisoners fight until they run out of ammunition and then surrender or commit suicide.
In the runes of Mala-bain, a section of marine riflemen, surrounded for 3 hours, continues to fire with the last of their ammunition.
When a German officer shouted at them to surrender, Petty Officer l’Artigue, the very same one who defended the Berg lock on May 27, replied in French: “Come and get us.
Hand-to-hand combat , grenade, bayonet, rifle butt.” When everything was finished, the German officer ordered the French bodies to be recovered.
There were 23 of them.
All dead, no wounds in the back, which means that none of them fled.
June 3, PM.
The last French ships arrive in DK.
Destroyers, torpedo boats, requisitioned trawlers, fishing boats, everything the French Navy could gather for a final evacuation.
During the night of June 3-4, 26,000 French soldiers embarked.
There are 14,000 left.
June 4, AM.
The last French ship leaves Derkquk.
On board were Admiral Abrial and his staff.
The last marine riflemen approve.
The last officers on whom, in the smoking ruins, in the collapsed bunkers, 14,000 French soldiers await the dawn.
The dawn that will bring the end.
At 099.
General Beau-Frè, the last French commander on site, raises the white flag on bastion 32.
The Battle of Dunkirk is over.
French toll: 40,000 prisoners, 3,500 dead.
The perimeter held for 9 days.
German casualties: 2700 dead, 5400 injured, 340 vehicles destroyed.
A ratio of 1 to 3 against Vertmart at the height of its power, against the army that had just conquered Poland in 3 weeks, against the army that conquered Paris in 2 weeks, 6000 French sailors delayed three German divisions for 9 days.
9 days during which 338,000 men were saved.
And Hollywood forgot to tell the story.
June 10, 1940, 6 days after the fall of Derk, Winston Churchill delivers his famous speech in the House of Commons.
We will fight on the beaches.
We will fight on the landing grounds.
We will fight in the fields and in the streets.
We will fight in the hills.
We will never surrender.
A speech that will go down in history.
A speech that transforms a defeat into a symbol of resistance.
A speech that does not mention French troops even once.
Not once.
The Dinkk spirit becomes British.
The miraculous evacuation becomes British, the sacrifice becomes British.
And the 40,000 French prisoners, the 3,500 French dead, the 9 days of French resistance, they become a footnote.
How could this have happened? First reason, defeat.
On June 22, 1940, France signed the armistice.
In 6 weeks, Vertmart conquered the French market.
In the eyes of world public opinion, France has lost.
France has capitulated.
France has betrayed us.
D’unker becomes an insignificant detail in the narrative of a general debacle.
The second reason is survival.
Great Britain continues to fight.
Alone for a year, she will be the last line of defense against Hitler.
And to justify this solitary resistance, to galvanize the British people, a founding myth is needed.
Firstly, what becomes of this myth? But a British myth, exclusively British because it is a myth shared with France, France which has just capitulated, would weaken the narrative.
Third reason, de Gaulle.
Yes, de Gaulle.
General de Gaulle, in exile in London and leader of Free France, immediately understood the problem.
If Dunkirk is portrayed as a French sacrifice, it reinforces the idea that France fought to the very end.
But this also reinforces the idea that France has lost.
De Gaulle needs another narrative.
A story of resistance, not defeat.
A story of future victory, not past sacrifice.
So, he talks about Bakeim, he talks about the Italian campaign, he talks about the liberation and Dunkirk slips into the shadows.
reason Hollywood 1958 Dirk British film by Lesle Norman no French characters 2017 D Kirk film by Christopher Nolan no French dialogue the only French people shown on screen are soldiers who try to board a British ship and are repelled.
Two films, 60 years apart, the same erasure.
For what ? Because Hollywood tells the story of the victors.
And in 1940 the victors were not the French.
The victors are those who survived, those who carried on , those who won the war.
Great Britain, America, the USSR, France.
France lost in 1940.
It doesn’t matter that it fought afterwards.
It doesn’t matter: Birakheim, Italy, Provence, liberation.
In the collective imagination, France in 2940 is a France that has collapsed and the inquiry becomes the proof.
Except that it is a lie, a constructed lie, a maintained lie, a lie that serves a British national narrative but erases a documented truth.
The German archives are unequivocal.
The reports of the 18th Army, Army Group B of the Wehrmacht High Command , all describe the French resistance at Derk as exceptional, fierce, heroic.
General Auurst Vanbok, in his personal diary published in 1951, wrote: “If the French had shown the same determination on the Somme as at Dinerk, we would never have taken Paris.
But they showed it at Dinerk for 9 days, 6000 men against 50000.” And nobody ever told you that.
Let’s go back to the initial sentence.
He does not back down.
They do not surrender.
He died on the spot.
A German officer.
June 2, 1940.
Dunkirk.
This sentence sums it all up.
Not just a battle, not just a sacrifice, but a truth that history has chosen to forget.
France did not collapse in 1940 because its soldiers did not know how to fight.
It collapsed because its generals did not know how to command, because its strategy was obsolete, because its equipment was unsuitable, because its military doctrine was based on the war of 1914 while Germany was inventing the war of 1940.
But these soldiers, these soldiers fought at Ston where a single French B1 bis tank destroyed 13 German panzers before being immobilized.
at Anut where the French cavalry fought the first tank battle in history and inflicted more losses than it suffered; at Saumur where the cadets of the cavalry school held the bridge over the Loire for 3 days against an entire armored division; and at Dquerkque for 9 days, 6,000 men, 50,000 Germans.
This is not an anomaly, this is not an accident.
This is what French soldiers were capable of doing when given a clear mission, a defensible position, and a command that did not abandon them.
But this story did not match the narrative.
The British narrative needed Dunkirk to be an exclusively British, heroic, miraculous victory.
The French post-war narrative needed 1940 to be forgotten in favor of the resistance and liberation.
The American narrative required France to be a defeated nation saved by American intervention in 1944.
So 6,000 French sailors became a footnote.
40,000 French prisoners have become invisible.
3500 French deaths have become anonymous.
But the German archives, she does not forget the reports of the 18th army kept in the military archives of Freiburg which describe 47 separate battles on the perimeter of Dunkirk between May 27 and June 4.
Of these 47 battles, 31 ended with a German retreat or a halt to the offensive.
31.
This is not a French defeat, it is a repeated tactical victory.
A victory that lasts 9 days.
A victory that saves 338,000 men.
A victory that no one knows about until now because you who are watching this video, you now know what Hollywood will never tell you.
You know that Derkf is not just a British story, you know that behind every ship that left the port, there was a French soldier holding the line.
You know that behind every British person saved, there was a Frenchman who died so that he could leave.
And now you know what a German officer wrote in his report on June 4, 1940, when the last French soldiers laid down their arms.
We have conquered a church, but we have not defeated these men.
We just made them land.
If this story has moved you, if it has made you discover a little- known part of French history, if it has made you realize that the dominant narrative is not always the complete story, then subscribe to La Gloire française because every week we bring back from oblivion a story that you should have learned in school.
A story that Hollywood stole, a story that we are reclaiming, one video at a time.
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And above all, remember, 6,000 French sailors held off 50,000 Germans for 9 days and nobody told you about it until…
