Volume 53, Number 19 · November 30, 2006
A 'Miracle of Deliverance'?
By Niall Ferguson
Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man
by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
Harvard University Press, 701 pp., $35.00
Sometimes history chooses not to repeat itself. In 1914 Britain sent a relatively small expeditionary force—six infantry divisions and one of cavalry—to the European continent, to defend Belgium and France against a German invasion. Whether this force was decisive is debatable, but the combined effect of British, Belgian, and—above all—French resistance sufficed to stem the German tide. Twenty-five years later the British once again sent a relatively small expeditionary force, called Operation Dynamo (initially four and then another six infantry divisions), to the European continent. The ensuing debacle at Dunkirk brought Hitler closer to outright victory than at any other time in World War II.
Review, 3939 words
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