'We shall fight on the beaches'
1940 · Event
On the day the last ships leave Dunkirk, Churchill tells the Commons the truth — 'wars are not won by evacuations' — and then delivers the defiance that reframes the disaster: fight on the beaches, the landing grounds, the fields and the streets; never surrender. Resistance becomes the policy and the identity.
On these timelines: 1940: Britain's Darkest Hour, England, Master, United Kingdom (combined), World War II
More from 1940: Britain's Darkest Hour
- Battle of Britain (1940)
- Churchill becomes Prime Minister (1940)
- Battle of Britain Day breaks the daylight assault (1940)
- France signs the armistice at Compiègne (1940)
- The panzers cross the Meuse at Sedan (1940)
- Eagle Day opens the Luftwaffe's main assault (1940)
- The Coventry Blitz (1940)
- The Norway Debate topples Chamberlain (1940)
Around 1940
- Berlin Airlift (1948)
- Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
- Apartheid (1948)
- Indian independence and Partition (1947)
- Manhattan Project (1942)
- Korean War (1950)
- Spanish Civil War (1936)
- Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany (1933)
- Chinese Civil War (resumed) (1945)
- World War II (1939)