The Crimean War was the most destructive armed conflict of the Victorian era. It is remembered for the unreasoning courage of the Charge of the Light Brigade, for the precise volleys of the Thin Red Line and the impossible assaults upon Sevastopol's Redan. It also demonstrated the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the British military system based on privilege and purchase.??Poor organisation at staff level and weak leadership from the Commander-in-Chief with a lack of appreciation of the conditions the troops would experience in the Crimea resulted in the needless death of thousands of soldiers. The Royal Navy, by comparison, was highly effective and successfully undertook its operations in the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.??The relative performance of the two branches of Britain's armed forces is reflected in the despatches sent back to the UK by the?respective commanders. The comparative wealth of detail provided by Admirals Napier, Dundas and Lyons contrast sharply with the limited, though frequent, communications from Generals Raglan, Codrington and Simpson.??The despatches of all these commanding officers are presented in this compilation just as they were when first published in the 1850s. They tell of the great battles of the Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman, of the continuing struggle against Sevastopol and the naval operations which cut the Russian communications and ensured an eventual, if costly, victory. They can be read, just as they were when revealed to the general public more than 150 years ago.

Although over 330,000 British and French soldiers were evacuated from the Dunkirk beaches between 26 May and 4 June, many thousands remained in France, most under French command. Churchill, now the Prime Minister, and desperate to keep the French in the War, decided to form a Second BEF made up of 51 Highland, 1st Armoured and the Beauman Divisions, reinforced from the UK by a second Corps. He also ordered vital and scarce RAF fighter squadrons to France. Had these been lost the Battle of Britain might have had a very different result. General Alan Brooke was to command the second Corps comprising the only viable formations in the UK. Realizing the hopelessness of his mission he delayed for as long as possible. Meanwhile the situation in France went from bad to worse and five units were squandered. At St Valery 800 of the 51st Highland Division surrendered after heavy fighting and being outflanked by Rommel. This is the fascinating story of a disaster that could have been so much worse had Churchill had his way.

Why France, the major European continental victor in 1918, suffered total defeat in six weeks at the hands of the vanquished power of 1918 only two decades later remains moot. Why the stunning reversal of fortunes? In this volume thirteen prominent scholars reexamine the French debacle of 1940 in interwar perspectives, utilizing fresh analysis, original approaches, and new sources. Although the tenor of the volume is critical, the contributors also suggest that French preparations for war knew successes as well as failures, that French defeat was not inevitable, and that the Battle of France might have turned out differently if different choices had been made and other paths been followed.

From the comfortable distance of seven decades, it is quite easy to view the victory of the Allies over Hitler’s Germany as inevitable. But in 1940 Great Britain’s defeat loomed perilously close, and no other nation stepped up to confront the Nazi threat. In this cogently argued book, Robin Prior delves into the documents of the time—war diaries, combat reports, Home Security’s daily files, and much more—to uncover how Britain endured a year of menacing crises. The book reassesses key events of 1940—crises that were recognized as such at the time and others not fully appreciated. Prior examines Neville Chamberlain’s government, Churchill’s opponents, the collapse of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz. He looks critically at the position of the United States before Pearl Harbor, and at Roosevelt’s response to the crisis. Prior concludes that the nation was saved through a combination of political leadership, British Expeditionary Force determination and skill, Royal Air Force and Navy efforts to return soldiers to the homeland, and the determination of the people to fight on “in spite of all terror.” As eloquent as it is controversial, this book exposes the full import of events in 1940, when Britain fought alone and Western civilization hung in the balance.

* * * 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.

This book uncovers the vital relationships between British troops and local inhabitants in France and Belgium during the First World War.

Ernest R. May's Strange Victory presents a dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, Strange Defeat, about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of. In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances? Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field. Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment.