What Dunkirk Can Teach Us About Finding Victory in Failure

Art from Dunkirk, courtesy Warner Bros.

I’m a fan of Director Christopher Nolan, and I think Dunkirk is one of his best. It tells the story of one of the most remarkable episodes of World War II—the evacuation of more than 300,000 besieged soldiers from the beaches around Dunkirk, France—in harrowing detail.

It gives us three different perspectives told on three different timetables. We spend a week with a few sailors stuck on the beach, who are desperately trying to find a boat to take them home before they’re killed by the Nazis. We’re on board a small yacht owned by an elderly civilian, Mr. Dawson, for a day as he sails to Dunkirk to help, risking his own life, along with the lives of his son and his son’s friend. We fly with a British Spitfire pilot for an hour, as he spars with German fighters and bombers and his fuel levels sink ever more critically.

It’s a nifty bit of cinema. Some people are calling it the greatest war movie ever. But it had some wonderful raw materials to work with.

The real events surrounding Dunkirk took place around May and June of 1940, just as World War II was beginning in earnest. Nazi Germany had just plowed through the Netherlands and Belgium, sprinting past France’s formidable defense system (called the Maginot Line) and piercing the country’s side. The Allied forces assigned to stop the Nazis were outnumbered 2-to-1, and soon 400,000 soldiers, including the majority of the British army, were trapped on the beaches outside Dunkirk: Nazis to the east and south, the sea to the north and west.

The troops would have to surrender, most likely, and perhaps Britain wouldn’t be far behind. British leaders hoped that they’d be able to rescue 30,000 troops from the Nazis. Maybe 45,000, if they were lucky.

But thanks to some incredibly fortuitous weather, an inexplicable pause by Nazi forces and inspiring pluck by hundreds of “little boat” captains like Mr. Dawson, more than 330,000 soldiers were saved. It’s become known as the Miracle of Dunkirk. The event precipitated Winston Churchill’s famous “Never Surrender” speech—a speech that can still give you tingles when you hear it now.

In that same speech, Churchill’s clear to classify it as a “colossal military disaster.” And yet, in the midst of that disaster, the seeds of victory were sown.