Germany, Berlin, Führer's estate.

It was getting late, and darkness replaced light over the land, but the vast Führer's estate was lit up as bright as day.

Although Lyon is simple by nature, and everything in the house is simple and practical, as the residence of the head of state, the appearance of the manor is still majestic, quite in the style of a royal palace, especially the gate of the manor, which is more than ten meters wide, large enough for four Tiger tanks to pass side by side.

But it was such a wide and majestic door, but it was almost crowded at this moment. And for no other reason - the head of the Third Reich celebrated the capture of Dunkirk and captured 400,000 Allied troops, and tonight he invited all the military and political dignitaries and celebrities of the Axis countries to attend a banquet in his private name, and the Admiralty will also confer the title of Marshal on Raeder tonight.

Yes, Churchill's dynamo operation failed after all. On the sixth day of the operation, Rundstedt's Army Group A managed to break four lines of defense outside Dunkirk and enter the city.

At dawn on the seventh day, Admiral Hadro Alexander, who had seen that the general situation was gone, left Dunkirk with most of the senior officers on the last group of evacuation fleets, and at about 7 o'clock in the morning, the officer corps headed by a British major general and division commander arrived at the front headquarters of Rundstedt to formally surrender to the German army on behalf of the Allies.

On the German side, the officer corps of Army Group A led by Rundstedt accepted the surrender of the Allied forces in Dunkirk on behalf of the German high command, and then there was a ceasefire on all fronts in Dunkirk, and the exhausted Allied soldiers walked out of the ruins of Dunkirk and handed over all their weapons and ammunition to the Germans, and nearly 400,000 Allied soldiers on the beach also lined up honestly, and marched to the prisoner of war camp that had been set up outside Dunkirk, where they would stay until the Germans captured Paris.

In the end, Churchill withdrew only 110,000 soldiers, 90,000 of whom were soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force.

This result is 108,000 miles away from Churchill's goal, but it has to be said that this is quite good, and it is really a miracle that 110,000 people can be withdrawn in six days under the encirclement and interception of German artillery, bombers, submarines, and torpedo boats.

In addition to the coordinated assistance of the Royal Navy and the French Navy, it is inseparable from the support of the British people, in this operation, a total of nearly 900 civilian ships were temporarily requisitioned, they are the backbone of this retreat, without them, the number of 110,000 is difficult to say whether it will be discounted.

The German army also had a brilliant record, the navy, land and air forces joined forces, sinking a total of more than 500 large and small ships, most of which were sunk by the air force, in the later stage of the operation, the powerful Imperial Air Force under Catherine even forced the Allied large warships not to dare to act in the daytime, and could only take advantage of the fact that the German bombers could not attack at night and quietly return to the mainland.

But the night operation also posed a problem, and that was the elusive German submarines.

Since the beginning of Operation Dynamo, under the direct command of Lyons, Dönitz's command has deployed a total of 61 attack submarines, 7 cow submarines and 2 submarine carriers on the British Y route, and in the six days of the operation, they have sunk a total of 133 large and small ships.

In the early morning of the fifth day of the operation, the wolves led by the U-23 submarine ambushed and completely annihilated the British fleet composed of four frigates and two minesweepers, resulting in the death of nearly 5,000 British army and navy officers and men, and only the K11 frigate among the six warships had more than 100 soldiers survived being captured.

On 3 May, the German High Command issued an order for all participating units to enter the second phase of the battle plan, codenamed the Red Plan, with the aim of converging the 1st and 2nd Panzer Clusters with Army Groups A and C, and then destroying the Weigand Line, which was established by the French Commander-in-Chief, General Maxim Weygand, with the help of the Somme and Aisne rivers, as quickly as possible, and capturing Paris before it was completely fortified.

General Maxime Weygand had just taken over as commander-in-chief of the French army from General Gammelin, and at this time the elite of the French army was lost, with only 71 divisions left under his command, and most of these 71 divisions were uneven in number and poorly equipped.

However, this line of defense still attracted the attention of the German High Command, because during World War I, near the Somme, Germany and the British and French forces fought the largest battle of the First World War, the Battle of the Somme.

The Germans were defended at the Battle of the Somme, with 67 divisions and the same line of defense that they had built on the Somme. The Anglo-French army, which was the attacking side, gathered 86 divisions, and they fought for seven days just to prepare artillery fire before the attack, completely destroying the first line of German defense. However, the outcome is well known, the British and French forces paid the price of 623,000 casualties, and fought from June 24 to November 8, 1916, but failed to break through the German defenses, and finally had to declare the battle defeated.

And although it was a World War I, and the weaponry and tactics were different from now, the huge casualty ratio was enough to see how difficult it was to cross the Somme.

However, what the Supreme Command did not expect was that the implementation of the red plan did not encounter any resistance, and the Second Panzer Group, which was responsible for the vanguard of the entire German combat group, had a smooth journey at the beginning of the offensive, and Rommel only took less than two days to break through three French lines one after another, and the forward troops reached the east bank of the Somme.

Obviously, the German victory at Dunkirk dealt a great psychological blow to the Allied forces elsewhere, and many French soldiers abandoned their armor during the first round of German tank test attacks, and fled back without looking back after a quick shot or two, so that the commanders and fighters of the German armored forces often took the position in confusion.

In the end, Rommel's tank men even came up with a clever trick - they installed a loudspeaker on the tank, and shouted to the surrounding French soldiers while rushing along the road: "Listen to the French troops on the other side!" We don't have time to capture you, so please consciously lay down your weapons and surrender, and try to stand on the side of the road to make way for us, and the infantry behind us will receive you! ”

And most of the French troops were really obedient, and when they saw the German tanks rushing over, they honestly dropped the guns in their hands and raised their hands and squatted on the side of the road, and then watched the German tank group drag a thick smoke and dust to the side.

On 6 May, the Luftwaffe began to concentrate its fire on French positions on the west bank, and on the same day Rommel's panzer group reached the east bank of the Somme, and the forward troops began to tentatively cross the bridge.