Author: Martin Mace
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 9781526709905
Category : Dunkirk, Battle of, Dunkerque, France, 1940
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
At 18.57 hours on Sunday, 26 May 1940, the Admiralty issued the directive which instigated the start of Operation Dynamo. This was the order to rescue the British Expeditionary Force from the French port of Dunkirk and the beaches surrounding it. The Admiralty believed that it would only be able to rescue 45,000 men over the course of the following two days. Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, however, when Dynamo officially ended, an armada of ships, big and small, naval and civilian achieved what had been considered impossible. In fact, in this period a total of 338,682 men had been disembarked at British ports. Such a figure has exceeded the expectations of most. Little wonder, therefore, that an editorial in The New York Times at the beginning of June declared, So long as the English tongue survives, the word Dunkirk will be spoken with reverence. Through 100 objects, from the wreck of a ship through to a dug-up rifle, and individual photographs to large memorials, all of which represent a moving snapshot of the past, the author sets out to tell the story of what came to be known as The Miracle of Dunkirk. The full-colour photographs of each 100 items are accompanied by detailed explanations of the object and the people and events which make them so special or relevant.
Author: W. J. R. Gardner
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780714651200
Category : Dunkerque (France), Battle of, 1940
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
Dunkirk was no victory, but it did preserve the basis of an army that was to carry Britain and later the Allies through the hard years ahead. This book presents the Navy's own history of the evacuation.
Author: Robert Jackson
Publisher: Rigel Publications
ISBN: 9781898800095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
This is the story of the dark days of 1940, when defeat overtook the British Expeditionary Force in Flanders and the ghost of a great army came home from France. It is the story of a lost campaign, as untried young men armed with little more than rifles took on the might of Hitler's panzer divisions while the Allied armies crumbled on all sides. It is the story of French soldiers too, whose heroism and sacrifice made the deliverance of Dunkirk possible. It was the greatest disaster in British military history: the Second World War was all but lost. Yet from the rout rose that legendary spirit that somehow found triumph in defeat, success in the extraordinary evacuation of so many men from beneath the German guns. Robert Jackson's closely detailed account of three weeks of battle, and the nine days it took an armada of ships to evacuate 198,000 troops, recalls with startling clarity how unprepared were the British for war in 1940. Book jacket.
Author: Richard Collier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dunkerque (France), Battle of, 1940
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Story of one of the great evacuations in military history.
Author: Walter Lord
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453238506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
The true story of the World War II evacuation portrayed in the Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk, by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Day of Infamy. In May 1940, the remnants of the French and British armies, broken by Hitler’s blitzkrieg, retreated to Dunkirk. Hemmed in by overwhelming Nazi strength, the 338,000 men gathered on the beach were all that stood between Hitler and Western Europe. Crush them, and the path to Paris and London was clear. Unable to retreat any farther, the Allied soldiers set up defense positions and prayed for deliverance. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an evacuation on May 26, expecting to save no more than a handful of his men. But Britain would not let its soldiers down. Hundreds of fishing boats, pleasure yachts, and commercial vessels streamed into the Channel to back up the Royal Navy, and in a week nearly the entire army was ferried safely back to England. Based on interviews with hundreds of survivors and told by “a master narrator,” The Miracle of Dunkirk is a striking history of a week when the outcome of World War II hung in the balance (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.).
Author: Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141906162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720
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Book Description
* * * Special 75th Anniversary Edition * * * Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man tells the story of the rescue in May 1940 of British soldiers fleeing capture and defeat by the Nazis at Dunkirk. Dunkirk was not just about what happened at sea and on the beaches. The evacuation would never have succeeded had it not been for the tenacity of the British soldiers who stayed behind to ensure they got away. Men like Sergeant Major Gus Jennings who died smothering a German stick bomb in the church at Esquelbecq in an effort to save his comrades, and Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews VC who single-handedly held back a German attack on the Dunkirk perimeter thereby allowing the British line to form up behind him. Told to stand and fight to the last man, these brave few battalions fought in whatever manner they could to buy precious time for the evacuation. Outnumbered and outgunned, they launched spectacular and heroic attacks time and again, despite ferocious fighting and the knowledge that for many only capture or death would end their struggle. 'A searing story . . . both meticulous military history and a deeply moving testimony to the extraordinary personal bravery of individual soldiers' Tim Gardam, The Times 'Sebag-Montefiore tells [the story] with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail and an inexhaustible appetite for tracking down the evidence' Richard Ovary, Telegraph Hugh Sebag-Montefiore was a barrister before becoming a journalist and then an author. He wrote the best-selling Enigma: The Battle for the Code. One of his ancestors was evacuated from Dunkirk.
Author: Julian Thompson
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1611453143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510
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Book Description
Describes the events surrounding the Battle of Dunkirk and the rescue of British troops from the beaches of Dunkirk during World War II.
Author: Robert Kershaw
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472854381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
'Kershaw's book is a welcome rebalancing; a thoughtful, well-researched and well-written contribution to a narrative that has long been too one-sided and too mired in national mythology.' - The Times The British evacuation from the beaches of the small French port town of Dunkirk is one of the iconic moments of military history. The battle has captured the popular imagination through LIFE magazine photo spreads, the fiction of Ian McEwan and, of course, Christopher Nolan's hugely successful Hollywood blockbuster. But what is the German view of this stunning Allied escape? Drawing on German interviews, diaries and unit post-action reports, Robert Kershaw creates a page-turning history of a battle that we thought we knew. Dünkirchen 1940 is the first major history on what went wrong for the Germans at Dunkirk. As supreme military commander, Hitler had seemingly achieved a miracle after the swift capitulation of Holland and Belgium, but with just seven kilometres before the panzers captured Dunkirk – the only port through which the trapped British Expeditionary force might escape – they came to a shuddering stop. Only a detailed interpretation of the German perspective – historically lacking to date – can provide answers as to why. Dünkirchen 1940 delves into the under-evaluated major German miscalculation both strategically and tactically that arguably cost Hitler the war.
Author: University Press
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
University Press returns with another short and captivating book - a brief history of the Miracle of Dunkirk. The Dunkirk Evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches of Dunkirk, in northern France. By late May of 1940, large numbers of British, Belgian, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week Battle of France. In a speech to the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called this "a colossal military disaster," saying "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army" had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. British Expeditionary Force commander, General Viscount Gort, immediately saw evacuation across the English Channel as the best course of action and began planning a withdrawal to Dunkirk, the closest good port. Operation Dynamo commenced on May 26 and, just eight days later, 338,226 Allied soldiers had been rescued by a hastily assembled fleet of over 800 vessels, including Royal Navy destroyers and the "Little Ships of Dunkirk" - a flotilla of hundreds of merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft, yachts, and lifeboats that crossed the English Channel after being called into service from Britain. In his "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech on June 4, Winston Churchill hailed the rescue as a "miracle of deliverance," and the British press presented the evacuation as a "disaster turned to triumph." Churchill was quick to remind the country that "Wars are not won by evacuations," yet, less than five years later, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. This short book provides a captivating account of the heroic and heart-warming events of the Dunkirk Evacuation of 1940 - an account that you can read in about an hour.
Author: Austin J. Ruddy
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526740877
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492
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Book Description
A colorful catalogue of objects that illustrate what everyday life was like in wartime Britain. A lifesaving gas mask. A ration book, essential for the supply of food. A shelter stove that kept a family warm while they huddled in their Anderson shelter. A leaflet dropped by the Luftwaffe that was designed to intimidate Britain’s populace during the threat of invasion. A civilian identity card over-stamped with the swastika eagle from the occupied Channel Islands. A rare, previously unpublished, snapshot of legendary bandleader Glenn Miller playing at a UK air base. A twisted remnant of German V2 rocket that went to space and back before exploding over London, the result of equally twisted military science. Colorful flag bunting that saw the VE celebrations in 1945. These disparate objects and many more together tell the moving and important story of Britain’s home front during the Second World War. The ordinary objects featured in this book, supplemented with facts, figures, dates, stories, and statistics, portray the highs and lows the British people experienced during six years of war—from the deprivations of rationing and the bombing of the Blitz, to the cheery songs, elegant fashions, and “Dig For Victory” spirit.
