The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

will go on fighting,’ he jotted, ‘we must now fall back on the Atlantic,
creating the new lines of Torres Vedras.’
Jock and Churchill must have been just about the only two people who
thought there was any mileage in this whatsoever. Certainly General Brooke
did not. That day, he had seen both Weygand and Georges, who told him
that it was all over. The French army, Weygand said, had ceased to be able
to offer organized resistance. Georges concurred and it was agreed that the
Breton Redoubt idea was impossible. Brooke rang Dill and told him this
and then began making preparations to get the 52nd and Canadian Divisions
to Brest and Cherbourg, and remaining troops to Nantes and then to various
ports to be evacuated.
Around 8 p.m., Dill called from Admiralty House and then put
Churchill on the phone, who said that he did not want his troops evacuated.
He told Brooke that they had been sent to France to make the French feel
that Britain was supporting them. ‘I replied that it was impossible to make a
corpse feel,’ Brooke noted. The conversation went on for half an hour,
Churchill arguing vociferously for their continued presence in France, but
Brooke, unmoved, stood his ground. And eventually the Prime Minister
said, ‘All right, I agree with you.’
So began the Royal Navy’s latest series of evacuations. Thanks to
Brooke, over the next few days, a further 200,000 men were lifted from
Cherbourg, Brest, St Nazaire and La Pallice. It meant that more than half a
million men were brought back from France in all. Half a million men who
could continue the fight.
On 16 June, Reynaud again asked that France be released from its
obligation to Britain and be able to seek terms with Germany. The War
Cabinet replied that they would do so only if the French fleet sailed to
British ports. Meanwhile, Général de Gaulle, one of the few French
generals refusing to throw in the towel, had flown to London. He urged
Churchill to propose a formal union between Britain and France, which the
War Cabinet had been ruminating over for several days. The offer was
clearly born of desperation and although it was sent to Reynaud, and
Churchill was all set to go to France to discuss it, the French Prime Minister
refused to see him again. Indeed, that night, Reynaud resigned. Had he held
on, he could have formed a government in exile, but it was not to be. He
did, however, perform one last service for the Allied cause by agreeing that