The Netherlands. The siege of Calais was a battle for the port of Calais during the Battle of France. After the Franco-British counter-attack at the Battle of Arras 21 May , German units were held back to be ready to resist a resumption of the counter-attack on 22 May, despite the protests of General Heinz Guderian , the commander of the XIX Armee Korps , who wanted to rush north up the Channel coast to capture Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk.
On 22 May, the British troops had established roadblocks outside the town and French rearguards skirmished with German armoured units, as they advanced towards Calais. British tanks and infantry had been ordered south to reinforce Boulogne but were too late.
They then received orders to escort a food convoy to Dunkirk but found the road blocked by German troops. On 23 May, the British began to retire to the old Calais walls built in the s and on 24 May, the siege began. The attacks by the 10th Panzer Division were mostly costly failures and by evening, the Germans reported that about half their tanks had been knocked out and a third of the infantry were casualties.
The German attacks were supported by the Luftwaffe , while the Allied defenders were supported by their navies delivering supplies, evacuating wounded and bombarding German targets around the port. The Germans tried several times to persuade the garrison to surrender but orders had been received from London to hold out, because an evacuation had been forbidden by the French commander of the northern ports. More German attacks early on 26 May failed and the German commander was given an ultimatum that if Calais was not captured by p.
The Anglo-French defences began to collapse in the early afternoon and at p. Next day, small naval craft entered the harbour and lifted about men, while aircraft of the RAF and Fleet Air Arm dropped supplies and attacked German artillery emplacements. In , Churchill wrote that the defence of Calais delayed the German attack on Dunkirk, helping to save the , soldiers of the BEF, a claim that Guderian contradicted in In , Lionel Ellis , the British official historian, wrote that three panzer divisions had been diverted by the defence of Boulogne and Calais, giving the Allies time to rush troops to close a gap west of Dunkirk.
