Dunkirk Was a Great Deliverance and a Great Disaster

"Dunkirk was a Great Deliverance and a Great Disaster",

Is there enough evidence to support this?

In this essay I will look at the sources given and decide whether they agree or disagree with the above statement. Then I will examine and evaluate each individual piece of evidence in turn and discuss whether or not they are reliable. The evidence I will be using is in the form of sources A to J. I will also analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each source, and finally coming to a decision as to whether or not there is enough evidence to support the statement "Dunkirk was a Great Deliverance"

Sources A to C show a picture of the actual event. Source A, however, is a contemporary painting. Therefore cannot be counted on to be reliable as a painting is nothing but the artist's individual impression of events. This is because we know that there is almost sure to be bias, as the painter was commissioned by the British government, and therefore will include spin which suited the political environment of the time. There is also the issue of where the artist got his information from; we don't know whether he was actually present, or whether he used other sources so it could be either primary or secondary evidence. I would say that this source agrees with the statement, as firstly it shows the scale of the defeat, which constitutes a disaster, but then on the other hand the boats are there to rescue them so it is also deliverance.

The other two sources are photographs, which are very difficult to bias, at least on the scale that the photographs show. This does not mean however, that photographs are perfect examples of evidence, on the contrary they only provide a snapshot of events in that one place at that one exact time. We have no indication of what events led up to the photograph and what followed. Things might also have been much different in other locations at the same time. However the photographs to correspond with our own knowledge of what events occurred as they show long lines of soldiers waiting to be evacuated. This presents the viewer with an image of the scale of what occurred. This lends weight to the statement "Dunkirk was a Great Deliverance." The picture also shows some of their equipment, which, as we know from our own knowledge, was mostly left behind due to the sheer enormity of the operation was left behind. These sources lead the viewer to believe that Dunkirk was a success, for though the retreat was a military disaster, the sheer numbers of men that escaped was enormous, and therefore was also a "great deliverance"

Sources D, E and F are a set of speeches, quotes and newspaper cuttings, from both 1940 and from later historical orations. The first source is a caption from a speech delivered in 1940. It describes the BEF as "a body of seasoned veterans." Which had a "Refusal to accept defeat." Although this is a primary source, it cannot be classed a totally reliable as it was written by a British newspaper, and was influenced by the British government. This was a horrible defeat for the British, but the government had to keep morale up and so they placed a different spin on what was essentially the army running away. Therefore this could be classed as little more than propaganda. However, if this source is to be believed, then Dunkirk was a great success, and therefore a deliverance.

Source F has similar characteristics, that is, that it suggests that Dunkirk was "deliverance," the figures presented seem to indicate that operation dynamo was a success. The historian whose work was published in 1965 gave statistics of "338 229 men were brought across the channel," This however is not