SKETCH BEHIND DUNKIRK
Hasty drawing that saved thousands revealed
DUNKIRK IS one of the most dramatic military rescues in history and featured in a hit Oscar-winning film just last year.
Now a never-before-published sketch offers a new insight into the evacuation in which more than 300,000 surrounded Allied soldiers were plucked from the French beaches and saved from the advancing Germans – a seemingly miraculous success amid “a colossal military disaster”, in the words of
Winston Churchill. The sketch, used to aid the escape from the beaches, is among the rare documents featured in a new book on the Second World War.
The War on Paper: 20 Documents That Defined the
Second World War, explores the conflict through a series of papers which changed the course of the war.
Published by the Imperial War Museums, the book also features more than 50 images, extracts from letters and diaries, maps and posters charting the conflict.
The documents range from Adolf Hitler’s signed directive ordering the invasion of Poland in 1939 to Winston Churchill’s annotated “End of the Beginning” speech, made after the Allied victory at El Alamein in 1942.
There is also the hastily scribbled “diagrammatic lay out of embarkation” by Captain Ken Theobald of the 5th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment, which was used by the British Expeditionary Force to flee from Dunkirk in 1940.
The drawing is one of five pullout replica documents in the book.
Home Front documents in the book include an “If the Invader Comes” leaflet and Air Raid Precautions, while the Governor of Singapore’s final broadcast is also featured.
Kindertransport identity papers help to tell the story of the efforts to keep children out of harm’s way, while Queen Mary’s ration book offers a reminder that sacrifice was shared throughout society. Other documents include the AngloGerman Declaration signed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler in September 1938, spelling out the desire not to go to war and leading Chamberlain to claim “peace for our time”.
There are also photographs of Chamberlain holding the declaration aloft to the cheering crowd who greeted him at Heston Airport on September 30, 1938, and of the occupation of Warsaw, Poland. Another image shows the signing of the surrender of all German forces in northwestern Europe at Luneberg Heath, May 4, 1945. Anthony Richards, the war museums’ head of documents and sound and author of The War on Paper, said: “It has been my privilege to have worked with the IWM documents collection for over two decades, and in that time it has never ceased to impress and at times surprise me with its depth of coverage and insight into how the war was fought.
“The story behind certain documents can be fascinating, and I hope that readers will find the examples included in The War on Paper to be both interesting and thoughtprovoking, as they portray the events of the war in a most immediate, direct way.”
The War on Paper is published on Thursday.
The story behind certain documents can be fascinating. Anthony Richards, of the Imperial War Museums and author of the new book.
IT TAKES a visit to the Churchill War Rooms, deep under Whitehall, to comprehend how Britain’s decision-making apparatus was so rudimentary when the Second World War was being fought. This is further illustrated by a compelling new book, The War on Paper, which reveals 20 priceless documents which defined the conflict – and helped to save this country from Nazi tyranny.
Published by the Imperial War Museum, it includes the hastily scribbled “diagrammatic lay out of embarkation” by Captain Ken Theobald of the 5th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment, and which was used by the British Expeditionary Force to flee from Dunkirk in 1940. To think such a heroic rescue mission was sketched out on paper – and then implemented – shows, once again, the desperate peril that the country faced, the galvanising leadership of Winston Churchill and the importance of preserving all those documents which genuinely changed the course of history.