This quote was said during his speech which was called 'We shall fight on the beaches". It refers to when the French, British and Belgian troops were surrounded in Dunkirk on the beach harbor. "Wars are not won on evacuation" has a double meaning because although the evacuation at Dunkirk was seen as a small victory they ultimately lost france. Winston Churchill's War time speech was really saying that all though the evacuation was a good thing they could not win the war if they were retreating. Wars aren't really won by having people evacuated or fleeing the war zone because the other side would just win by default and there wouldn't actually be a true feeling of accomplishment. At Dunkirk, the British were surrounded and the navy was given the order to leave. But when the British evacuated, they rescued 340,000 troops. Rescuing that many troops could be considered a victory but 'fleeing the scene' most definitely wouldn't. Churchill was not saying that you need to stay and fight or win or die like Stalin in Communist Russia, he was just saying that although we may have gotten those soldiers out they still needed to throw them back into the fight. Although Churchill did agree it was a success he knew that it would not help to end the war.
History 12