Alone : Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: defeat into victory Cover Image

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Alone : Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: defeat into victory / Michael Korda.

Korda, Michael, 1933- (Author).

Summary:

In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of World War II, Alone brings to resounding life perhaps the most critical year of twentieth-century history. For, indeed, May 1940 was a month like no other, as the German war machine blazed into France while the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line crumbled, and Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in an astonishing political drama as Britain, isolated and alone, faced a triumphant Nazi Germany. Against this vast historical canvas, Michael Korda relates what happened and why, and also tells his own story, that of a six-year-old boy in a glamorous movie family who would himself be evacuated. Alone is a work that seamlessly weaves a family memoir into an unforgettable account of a political and military disaster redeemed by the evacuation of more than 300,000 men in four days?surely one of the most heroic episodes of the war.

Record details

ISBN: 9781631491320
Physical Description: xiv, 525 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Publisher: New York : LiveRight/Norton, 2017.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Bibliography and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Prologue: "The past is a foreign country" -- To the brink -- The failure of diplomacy -- "Speak for England!" -- The phoney war -- Operation Pied Pier -- Case Yellow -- "Gad, gentlemen, here's to our greatest victory of the war" -- Hitler "Missed the bus" -- "In the name of God, go" -- "The top of the greasy pole" -- Rommel crosses the Meuse -- "We are beaten; we have lost the battle" -- "The mortal gravity of the hour" -- May 20, 1940: "A pretty fair pig of a day" -- "The fatal slope" -- "Hard and heavy tidings" -- The sharp end of the stick -- The battle of Arras: "We may be foutu" -- "Their zest and delight in shooting Germans was most entertaining" -- The burghers of Calais -- "Fight it out to the bitter end" -- Flag officer, Dover -- "Presume troops know they are cutting their way home to Blighty" -- Dynamo -- "Fight it out, here or elsewhere" -- Holding the line -- "The little ships" -- "The best mug of tea I have ever had in my life" -- "Arm in arm" --

"We are going to beat them" -- The Dunkirk spirit -- At sea -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- List of illustrations -- Index.