Author-Michael Korda
Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk:
Defeat into Victory
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat...
You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs -- victory in spite of all terrors -- victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. "
On the heels of the summer blockbuster film
Dunkirk
, Michael Korda's
ALONE: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat into Victory
, tells the larger story of the turning point in World War II history when over 300,000 Allied troops were trapped off the coast of France and a ragtag fleet of civilian fishing boats, pleasure crafts, and ferries came to their rescue.
Bestselling author Michael Korda has witnessed many remarkable events in the 20th century, not to mention edited presidents, world figures, and newsmakers during his esteemed tenure at Simon & Schuster. But it is his six-year-old self who offers another perspective on the tumultuous spring and early summer of 1940, when the European conflict escalated from "phony" to all-out war.
Korda gives a thorough recounting of the figures and consequences around Germany's blitzkrieg into Belgium, France, and the Netherlands in May of 1940, while interweaving his own memories as a child bystander across the Channel.
Korda breaks down the myriad players, big and small, who were thrust into the confusion as Hitler capitalized on Allied tactical blunders to seize more and more territory. It would culminate in the heroic British evacuation at Dunkirk, when a flotilla of civilian English boats made the perilous voyage to the French coast to save the lives of 250,000 British soldiers.
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