3. Although a military defeat, the delay caused by the Siege of Lille enabled the evacuation at Dunkirk to be far more successful than it otherwise would have been, saving tens of thousands of professional soldiers who would return to fight again in Europe in 1944
Attempting to retreat on the night of May 27, 1940, only the British Expeditionary forces near Lille, as well as the Third Corps of the French First Army, successfully crossed the Lys. Surrounding the majority of the First Army in Lille, several German Panzer and Infantry divisions subsequently enclosed the remainder and laid siege to the city. Attempting multiple breakouts on the morning of the 28th, the French efforts were mostly in vain, with only a few companies escaping. Fighting house to house across the Lille suburbs for days, with food and ammunition rapidly declining, on June 1 35,000 Allied soldiers were forced to surrender to the Germans.
Although seemingly a devastating defeat for the Allies, postwar perceptions of the Siege of Lille have offered a somewhat more nuanced interpretation. Beginning with Churchill’s The Second World War, who referred to the battle as a “splendid contribution”, it has been argued the encounter delayed the German advance upon Dunkirk for four crucial days. Occupying several divisions otherwise intended to pursue the retreating Allies to Dunkirk, the brave efforts of the doomed soldiers in Lille instead bought sufficient time for the miraculous evacuation of at least an additional hundred thousand soldiers from the French beach.