"Once in a while a book comes along with an analysis of the past that so strongly resonates with the present that it is as if the two are fused.... Mr. Jackson shows that France was better prepared and better led than either was Britain in 1940 or than France itself had been in 1914. France's military defeat and Britain's survival and ultimate triumph were not due to innate, cultural defects in the French character. Geography meant France was attacked first: it lacked time and lacked the channel.... And the alliance between France and Britain never recovered. As Mr. Jackson's book shows, sometimes events on the ground can move very fast, but history takes its own time."--Rupert Barwall, Wall Street Journal
"France's sudden and shocking defeat in May of 1940 was one of the great calamities in the history of Western democracy.... Jackson assesses the social and political, and also the diplomatic, intelligence, and military, context of the catastrophe.... His book is the best introduction to it.... An admirably accessible analytical history of a complex and fraught event."--
Atlantic Monthly"Jackson's book tells in gripping detail the military, human and political story of a few crucial weeks whose ramifications for European relations for decades afterwards were enormous.... More than a military history, this sharply written account is also an elegy for a fading culture in which we all have a stake."--
Financial Times"A brilliant and authoritative book, compellingly written and persuasive in its explanation of one of the most puzzling events in 20th-century history. Impossible to put down.' Richard Evans, Cambridge University'A fine, powerful and very readable book. Jackson brings a freshness and sharpness to the discussion, with the reader being drawn straight into the action and atmosphere."--Robert Gildea, Oxford University
"Jackson's account is vivid...His conclusions are reinforced by some intriguing analysis--and an ingenious study of counterfactuals--e.g.what would have happened had the United Kingdom been in France's place?"--Stanley Hoffman for
Foreign Affairs
