The ‘British Air Ministry’ announced:

‘During June 1 the RAF supported the retreat operations of the British Expeditionary Force, by attacking bridges, canals, troop columns and rail junctions. Forty German aircraft have been shot down in the Dunkirk area. Thirteen British planes are missing. For the past week our coastal wings have carried on uninterrupted patrol flights to secure the evacuation of Allied troops. Large numbers of German aircraft were shot down in the numerous aerial combats fought during supervision of the transport ships on their journey to England.

London: Lieutenant General Alan Brooke is summoned to the War Office by the C.I.G.S., Sir John Dill who tells him that he is to return to the Cherbourg peninsula in France in order to form a new B.E.F. and so support the French Army. After a long discussion with Dill he is told that Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War, wants to speak with him. Eden is very charming and expresses sympathy for all the difficulties that lay ahead of Brooke. He finishes by asking Brooke if he is satisfied that he is being sent on a mission that has no chance of military success and every chance for disaster. If there was a political element in the mission, such as keeping France in the war, that is not for him to judge. He is told that when he arrives in France he will take command of all British forces there. (W. Jay Stone) 

FRANCE: Dunkirk: A further 26,256 men are taken off. The last of the British 2 Corps. Leaving 60,000 Frenchmen defending the perimeter. During the night another 20,000 British and French are taken off.

Sergeant Leonard Howard left Dunkirk yesterday. He describes the hours he lay waiting to be rescued: "I lay in the sand, in the dunes at Dunkirk, and I slept because I was really completely exhausted. And the next morning I went into the water in the hope of getting a boat, being picked up. And there was no hope. They tried to organise queues but it was very difficult; there was a great deal of panic. I saw British troops shoot British troops ... a small boat came in, and they piled aboard it to such a degree that it was in danger of capsizing. And the chap in charge of this boat decided that unless he took some action ... and he shot a hanger-on. I saw chaps run into the water screaming because mentally it had got too much for them."

Yesterday morning, Howard and another man found a canoe in which they paddled out towards the rescue boats. "As the rope from this ship finally hit the canoe, it literally sank the canoe and we held onto the rope and were pulled onto the ship."

Hitler visits a number of locations around Ypres and Vimy where his regiment, the 16. Bavarian Reserve Inf. Rgt. (List), had fought during the Great War.

The itinerary for the day of the visit to the Vimy memorial is described:

Sunday, June 2. Having been woken at 7:30am, and taken breakfast at eight, the party left the chateau half an hour later. They crossed the urban area of Lille to reach Pont-a-Marck where Hitler had a brief meeting with Generaloberst Günther von Kluge commanding 4.Armee. They then drove on to Avelin where they conferred with General der Infanterie Adolf Strauss, the commander of II.Armeekorps. Motoring via Ceclin, Carvin and Lens, the party arrived at Vimy where they visited the Canadian Memorial Park. At the base of the twin pillars of the memorial, General der Infanterie Hermann Hoth of the V.Armeekorps had set up maps detailing the crossing of the Meuse river at Dinant and the tank battle near Cambrai. Hitler then said to Generalmajor Erwin Rommel, the commander of the 7.Panzer Division: "Rommel, we were very worried about you during the attack." Behind the audience, covered with wooden shuttering put up by the French to protect it from being damaged in the fighting, stood the figure of  "Canada in Mourning."

(p.10 - After the Battle No.117, "Hitler on the Western Front")

The ATB article also relates that before leaving the Canadian Memorial Park, Hitler stopped to walk over the part of the old front line which had been preserved just as it had been left in 1918, complete with trenches and craters. (Russell Folsom)