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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not Your Standard Take on Dunkirk, January 15, 2008
For well over sixty years, British and American readers have been presented with the view that the successful evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk between 26 May and 3 June 1940 was a tremendous triumph and "a morale victory" that allowed Britain to stay in the war. Most historical accounts have focused primarily on the actual evacuation and the role of "the small ships" that came to rescue Britain's hard-pressed troops before Dunkirk fell to the approaching German forces. In Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man, the author takes a decidedly different approach and instead focuses more on the series of tactical actions fought to maintain the Dunkirk perimeter, particularly the desperate rearguard actions fought by units that were later all but forgotten in the post-war histories. This book falls somewhere between a somewhat comprehensive history and a collection of first-person tactical accounts, but it succeeds in painting a portrait of two desperate weeks of ground fighting in the early stages of the Second World War that most readers will find unfamiliar. Overall, the book is well-written - even exciting at times - punchy and impeccably researched. There is a whiff of British biases in this book (particularly against the French) that some readers will resent, but it provides insights into the campaign that rarely, if ever, appear in other accounts.
Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man consists of 36 sequential chapters, divided into two main sections, the German attack and the Evacuation. The first section is meant to put the evacuation in context but it is oddly put together and does not altogether succeed. In the second chapter, the author discusses the arrival of the BEF in France in late 1939 and the numerous equipment and training deficiencies. However, the author misses his chance to introduce the main British players (Lord Gort, Brooke, Montgomery) or to even sketch the BEF's order of battle. This will confuse many readers later on, as leaders and generals just begin to "appear" when the action begins. The author then shifts to spend a couple chapters on the Mechelen Affair and Dutch intelligence efforts to provide early warning on the up-coming German offensive. Among other things, this book reinforces the impression that Dutch and Belgian stupidity and their unwillingness to cooperate with the Anglo-French staffs until their borders were crossed contributed greatly to the disaster that followed. The author then shifts gears to cover the German breakthrough at Sedan and the French collapse, which is very similar to material presented in Karl-Heinz Frieser's The Blitzkrieg Legend (2005). I found these chapters gratuitously anti-French and unconnected to the main narrative - it was as if the author made a detour to flog the poor performance of the French 9th Army in order to make the BEF's last-stands appear all the more heroic. This first section concludes with the failed counterattacks at Arras (very well done, with excellent tactical detail on British Matilda tanks) and the BEF's retreat to the coast.
The second section begins with the German panzers reaching the coast and the futile Anglo-French defenses of Boulogne and Calais. However, the real meat in this section consists of detailed tactical vignettes covering key delay actions at places like Cassel, Le Paradis and Wormhout. Many readers will cringe as they read about one British battalion after another that was crushed with 50-70 percent losses merely to hold a village or a bridge for a few hours. While there are plenty of heroics and a few VCs on these pages, it is also apparent that many BEF units fought poorly for a variety of reasons (lack of proper equipment, limited ammunition, poor leadership) and some units did fight pretty much "to the last man" while others bolted to the rear. The author recounts several incidents of British officers having to shoot other BEF soldiers who refused to stand and fight. British tactical leadership was stolid and unflappable, but sometimes bordered on imbecility, as the author recounts instances of several British battalion commanders who refused to believe that the Germans could arrive so quickly until shells started exploding around them. There was also a "country-club" mentality among many of these BEF officers, not yet blooded in combat, and it is distressing to read about British officers dining on sandwiches and champagne while their troops went unfed for days. Indeed, one gets the impression that the BEF's quartermaster's efforts fell apart as quickly as their troops were some of the first to evacuate. Noticeably, British artillery played little role in the fighting.
Most accounts of Dunkirk tend to emphasize that 338,000 troops were evacuated with little further explanation, but the author provides an appendix with detailed break-down by day and nationality. About 122,000 French troops were evacuated (most of whom were then shuttled back to Le Havre just in time to surrender), leaving barely 100,000 unwounded BEF soldiers evacuated. Many of the infantry divisions, such as the 2nd, were all but destroyed and many of the best battalions made it back to England with only 100 or so troops and few officers. From this book, the magnitude of the Dunkirk disaster is much more apparent and stripped of wartime British propaganda intended to put a good `spin' on what was, in fact, a catastrophe. The author concludes with chapters on the 2nd BEF in June 1940, focusing on the loss of most of the 51st Highland Division and the sinking of SS Lancastria with up to 3,500 British troops aboard. By the time that France fell, Britain's army was well and truly wrecked for months to come. This book is well stocked with maps, although their location at the back of the book requires constant page flipping.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stories of Bravery, April 12, 2007
This book is a well written collection of individual British soldiers' accounts of combat actions throughout the 1940 campaign in France and Belgium. It is not restricted to the actions around Dunkirk, instead covering the initial landing of the BEF in France, the phoney war winter, the initial movements to the Escaut line, and the initial encounters with the Germans along the Escaut. The book also highlights the actions of scratch units protecting the western flank of the BEF as it retreated to the coast at Dunkirk. The evacuation itself is covered in the same anecdotal style but is not a focus of the book. Over 20 maps are also provided.
The book is written almost entirely from the British perspective - once again, the activity of the French and Belgian armed forces don't get much coverage.
This is not really a comprehensive military history, as the focus is on individuals and their part in the dramatic events of May and June 1940. Discussions of the larger strategic and operational picture are provided in places, but not comprehensively, and often seemed to break the flow of the book. For example, several pages are devoted to the British cabinet discussion of a French proposal to use Mussolini in a mediation role, followed by more individual platoon level combat action.
Two chapters are devoted to British actions during the remainder campaign after Dunkirk, including the trapping and surrender of the 51st Highland Division at St. Valery and the sinking of the Lancastria. The book suffers from a lack of focus on strategic vs individual discussion here as earlier.
Still, overall, this is an entertaining read. Serious readers of military history might want to read this for the coverage given to the BEF prior to and after Dunkirk, which even if limited, far exceeds the coverage given in most histories.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
2 stars for compiling the information, August 24, 2007
Sebag-Montefiore's book is a tedious chronology of the events leading up through (and a bit beyond) the evacuation of the BEF from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940. I would have thought that a press like Harvard would be more discerning, but apparently not.
History is the critical assessment and analysis of past events. It seeks to explain why things happened. This book is not history, but merely chronology. This too can be useful, if one needs a reference source to look up dates, names, places, and things. But reading a list of events that runs 500 pages is a long slog.
It does not help that Sebag-Montefiore's writing style is frustrating. There is no continuity whatsoever to the story. This is probably the result of not having a theme or point he is trying to make. Literally, the reader can skip entire pages of every chapter and not miss important developments or assessments. Any explanation of events that would provide some context are buried in the end notes, some of which are several paragraphs long. Explanations of locations and setting are dismissed with a brief command to the reader to look at the maps. The maps themselves are excellent, but no map can ever stand in for text.
In the end, the book reads as a vehicle for the author to quote the source material he found. What we're left with is 500 pages of diary entries and anecdotes with no obvious point to be made. The true contribution of the Sebag-Montefiore is indeed to have collected this material. Now all we need is another author to use it and write a better book.
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