Dunkirk

In World War II, the Allied expeditionary force was surrounded in Dunkirk in 1940. 338,000 soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk to England in Operation Dynamo. The operation has been depicted in several motion pictures, including Christopher Nolan's 2017 film Dunkirk. The withdrawal, which was militarily a defeat, was seen as a miraculous saving of soldiers whom the British public had thought lost to capture or killing and gave a much needed morale boost. British politicians still like to invoke the "Dunkirk spirit" in times of national crisis.