ng post-Waterloo France.General Murray appointed Sir Manley Power to oversee the evacuation of British troops from France. Cordial relations had been restored by that time and on December 3 the mayor of Calais wrote a letter to Power to express thanks for his "considerate treatment of the French and of the town of Calais during the embarkation."
In the 1930s, Calais was known as a socialist stronghold. The British returned to Calais again during World War I; it was near the front lines in Flanders, and a key port for the supply of arms and reinforcements to the Western Front. The town was virtually razed to the ground during World War II. In May 1940, it was a key objective of the invading German forces and became the scene of a last-ditch defence — the Siege of Calais— which diverted a sizable amount of German forces for several days immediately prior to the Battle of Dunkirk. 3,000 British and 800 French troops, assisted by Royal Navy warships, held out from 22 May to 27 May 1940 against the 10th Panzer Division. The town was flattened by artillery and precision dive bombing and only 30 of the 3800-strong defending force were evacuated before the town fell. Their sacrifice may have helped Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Allied forces at Dunkirk, as 10th Panzer would certainly have been involved on the Dunkirk perimeter had it not been busy at Calais.[Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, some 330,000 Allied troops escaped from the Germans at Dunkirk.
During the ensuing German occupation, it became the command post for German forces in the Pas-de-Calais/Flanders region and was very heavily fortified, as it was generally believed by the Germans that the Allies would invade at that point] It was also used as a launch site for V1 flying bombs and for much of the war, the Germans used the region as the site for railway guns used to bombard the south-eastern corner of England. In 1943 they built massive bunkers along the coast in preparation for
