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The film is based on the Battle of Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo in May 1940. Operation Dynamo was the all out effort to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force from France. Hitler’s army had launched its Blitzkrieg across western Europe and had conquered the Low Countries and France. The German army and especially its Panzer tanks had proven too strong for the allies. They have managed to drive a large force of British and French troops into an area around the port of Dunkirk. The British and the French, numbering over 300,000 were surrounded and under constant aerial bombardment.
However, the British Royal Navy with the assistance of many merchant navy and civilian craft evacuated most of the Anglo-French army, in a plan codenamed Operation Dynamo. The British hailed this as a major success and Churchill described it as the ‘miracle of Dunkirk.’<ref>Taylor, A.J.P. and S.L. Mayer, Eds. A History of World War Two. London: Octopus Books, 1974, p. 57</ref> It was widely believed that if the British has not been able to evacuate their forces from Dunkirk that the country would have been defenseless in the face of Germany and could have lost the war. The evacuation of Dunkirk was a major boost for British morale at a time when they had failed to effectively to fight the Nazis Germans and their allies on their own. It is widely believed that Hitler did not order a final and all-out attack on Dunkirk because he was overconfident. He ordered his Panzers to halt their advance.<ref>Frieser, Karl-Heinz. The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. 2005), p. 145</ref> He probably did not think that the British could evacuate their forces from Dunkirk. There has been some controversy regarding the accuracy of the movie. This article will discuss how historically accurate is Christopher Nolan’s movie.
====The aerial battle over Dunkirk====
