Customer Reviews

Dunkirk: The British Evacuation, 1940

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

End of May 1940 and the German Panzer columns have reached the channel. The BEF along with one French Army and the Belgian Army are cut off from the rest of France by an armored corridor. The British and French try to break through and reconnect but cannot. The British finally realize that their small army needed for the protection of England might be in jeopardy and the war lost. The Belgian Army collaspes and Britain pulls back to the Dunkirk enclave where they try to extricate their forces. Jackson writes about the military aspects of this operation from a British perspective. He tells of the gallant withdrawl and the land, sea, and air operations that resulted in the saving of over 200,000 British and French troops. This was certainly a costly operation but it resulted in saving the British Army.

This is a nice short book about the Dunkirk operation. This is an entirely British perspective, as only one German pilot had his opinions stated in the book. It also tells of the SS murder of British prisoners.
This is as good a book as Walter Lord's book. A nice read.

I remember first reading this book in college back when I was a youngster. Robert Jackson's book was so visceral! It was almost like I was there at the front lines with those troops in 1940, decades and decades before I was born.

The French and British Allied forces are detailed thoroughly, as are the Germans to a lesser extant. The German Wehrmacht was incredible! So mobile and tactically thorough, one wonders what would have happened had they not invaded Soviet Union in 1941 and instead concentrated all the rest of their forces in the Afrika Korps in North Africa. They very well may have driven the British out of Africa and with the Soviet Union mollified, guarding their eastern flank, Germany and Italy could have consolidated their gains, perhaps even linking up with their Japanese Axis partners in the Indian Ocean thus threatening British controlled India. But these are just alternative scenarios best looked at elsewhere.

The German point of view is not discussed overmuch in this book, which I feel is a mistake. Aside from hapless pilot Erich von Oelhaven, forced to bail out of his shot down Dornier DO-17, the first hand opinions of the Germans are rarely mentioned. This is only a slight quibble, however, as the first-hand point of views expressed by British troops run the gamut; one will truly enjoy them.

I wish they would write more books about the onset of World War II before American entry into the war. The American point of view always tends to be biased in favor of United States instead of looking at the big picture and discussing all points of view from the good, the bad and the ugly perpetrated by all sides in this horrendous war.

This book is a Four and a Half-Star book, so I rounded it up. Jackson's research and interviews are spot on and nourishes a book that should be on every military historian's shelf. I own two, a hardcover and a softcover. Buy this book and you won't be disappointed.

A. Nathaniel Wallace, Jr. (My 80th Review)