Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat into Victory

by Michael Korda

Overview

Combining epic history with rich family stories, Michael Korda chronicles the outbreak of World War Two and the great events that led to Dunkirk.

An epic of remarkable originality, Alone captures the heroism of World War II as movingly as any book in recent memory. Bringing to vivid life the world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of the war, Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Clouds of Glory, chronicles the outbreak of hostilities, recalling as a prescient young boy the enveloping tension that defined pre-Blitz London, and then as a military historian the great events that would alter the course of the twentieth century.

For indeed, May 1940 was a month like no other. The superior German war machine blazed into France, as the Maginot Line, supposedly "as firmly fixed in place as the Pyramids," crumbled in days. With the fall of Holland and Belgium, the imminent fall of Paris, the British Army stranded at Dunkirk, and Neville Chamberlain’s government in political freefall, Winston Churchill became prime minister on this historical nadir of May 10, 1941. Britain, diplomatically isolated, was suddenly the only nation with the courage and the resolve to defy Hitler.

Against this vast historical canvas, Korda relates what happened and why. We first meet him at the age of six, surrounded by his glamorous movie family: his stage actress mother; his elegant father, Vincent, soon to receive an Academy Award; and his devoted Nanny Low, with whom he cites his evening prayers. Even the cheery BBC bulletins that Michael listened to every night could not mask the impending catastrophe, the German invasion so certain that the young boy, carrying his passport on a string around his neck, was evacuated to Canada on an ocean liner full of children.

Such alarm was hardly exaggerated. No one, after all, could have ever imagined that the most unlikely flotilla of destroyers—Dutch barges, fishing boats, yachts, and even rowboats— would rescue over 300,000 men off the beach at Dunkirk and home to England. The miraculous return of the army was greeted with a renewed call for courage, and in the months that followed, the lives of tens of millions would be inexorably transformed, often tragically so, by these epochal weeks of May 1940.

It is this pivotal turning point in world history that Korda captures with such immediacy in Alone, a work that triumphantly demonstrates that even the most calamitous defeats can become the most legendary victories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631491320
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	836,559
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Michael Korda participated in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. He is the author of major biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Robert E. Lee., as well as the best-selling memoir Charmed Lives.

Table of Contents

Prologue: "The Past Is a Foreign Country" xiii

Part 1 The Second Great War

1 To the Brink 3

2 The Failure of Diplomacy 27

3 "Speak for England!" 46

4 The Phoney War 55

5 Operation Pied Piper 75

6 Case Yellow 83

7 "Gad, Gentlemen, Here's to Our Greatest Victory of the War" 103

8 Hitler "Missed the Bus" 116

9 "In the Name of God, Go" 124

Part 2 The Battle of France

10 "The Top of the Greasy Pole" 149

11 Rommel Crosses the Meuse 164

12 "We Are Beaten; We Have Lost the Battle" 175

13 "The Mortal Gravity of the Hour" 187

14 May 20, 1940: "A Pretty Fair Pig of a Day" 197

15 "The Fatal Slope" 209

16 "Hard and Heavy Tidings" 218

17 The Sharp End of the Stick 228

18 The Battle of Arras: "We May Be foutu" 245

19 "Their Zest and Delight in Shooting Germans Was Most Entertaining" 259

Part 3 Dunkirk

20 The Burghers of Calais 277

21 "Fight It Out to the Bitter End" 290

22 Flag Officer, Dover 301

25 The Home Front 307

24 "Presume Troops Know They Are Cutting Their Way Home to Blighty" 322

25 Dynamo 338

26 "Fight It Out, Here or Elsewhere" 351

27 Holding the Line 368

28 "The Little Ships" 379

29 "The Best Mug of Tea I Have Ever Had in My Life" 397

30 "Arm in Arm" 412

31 "We Are Going to Beat Them" 425

32 The Dunkirk Spirit 439

33 At Sea 453

Acknowledgments 463

Notes 465

Bibliography 483

List of Illustrations 491

Index 499

Editorial Reviews

Many readers have been through all this material before…But here this crucial time is recounted by someone who witnessed those years as a child. Korda…is like a charming dinner party host offering his personal experience of history…Korda's breezy book makes a fine introduction for anyone new to this fulcrum point of the 20th century.

The New York Times Book Review - Thomas E. Ricks

05/15/2017
English-born writer and novelist Korda (Clouds of Glory) attends to the British experience during the desperate months from the beginning of WWII to the retreat from Dunkirk and the very real prospects of a German invasion. Building around his own fragmented childhood memories, Korda eloquently depicts the reluctance with which Britain went to war. The atmosphere during inactive winter of 1939–1940, commonly called the Phoney War, seemed “very much as it had been in 1914–1918, but on a smaller scale,” Korda writes, and was accompanied by wishful thinking that Hitler had missed his opportunity to strike. The German invasion and overrunning of Norway in April generated apprehension that brought Winston Churchill to power—just as the whirlwind attack on France and the Low Countries demonstrated clearly that it was the Allies who had missed their chance. Synergistic catastrophe, well narrated by Korda, culminated at Dunkirk; the evacuation was a tactical tour de force, but also a reminder that, in Churchill’s famous words, “wars are not won by evacuations.” At any rate, Korda’s Hungarian-born father organized the family’s own timely evacuation from Britain to Hollywood. But his English mother unreflectively believed “everything would work out well in the end.” The successful Dunkirk evacuation “would sustain the people through the next four years,” Korda writes, with his mother’s optimism eventually affirmed. Maps & illus. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Michael Korda’s cool dissection of the battle of Dunkirk and its aftermath makes wonderful reading: he’s as able a historian as he was an editor."

Larry McMurtry

"Entertaining. . . This crucial time is recounted by someone who witnessed those years as a child. Korda, a longtime book editor before becoming a full-time author, is like a charming dinner party host offering his personal experience of history. . . A fine introduction for anyone new to this fulcrum point of the 20th century."

Thomas E. Ricks

"The incredible, almost miraculous story of what happened at Dunkirk in the year 1940—and why—is unfolded in Alone with great narrative skill and superb delineation of a highly interesting cast of characters, including, importantly, the author himself and his own remarkable family."

David McCullough

"The story of the coming of World War Two, the fall of France, and the ‘miracle’ at Dunkirk has been told many times before, but Michael Korda injects this familiar tale with fresh poignancy and compelling drama as only the finest historians can do…[His] memories as a young boy, watching his famous film family deal with the onset of war, give his elegant narrative an added dimension that makes it compulsively readable."

Max Boot

"Where Korda's account differs from many similar Dunkirk histories is in a wide trawl of simultaneous social history alongside the military and political events. . . The book is also lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs—many of them unfamiliar. Anyone wanting to explore the history behind Christopher Nolan's recent film could do a lot worse than start here. "

Times Literary Supplement - Nigel Jones

06/15/2017
Prolific editor and author Korda (Clouds of Glory) pens a historical memoir that touches close to home, an in-depth look at his native England's pivotal escape at the Battle of Dunkirk during World War II. Korda states in his prolog that this is both a personal story and an intimate history of how the British Army came to the precipice of defeat. Though some intimate accounts are contributed, this book weighs heavily on the war and the political and strategic views on both the Allied and German sides. Korda returns to the decisive period of 1939–40, when Germany's aggression is felt in eastern and western Europe leading up to the decisive retreat at Dunkirk, which the author believes to have saved roughly 300,000 British soldiers to fight another day. Korda writes vividly, and World War II enthusiasts, particularly British supporters, will enjoy his retelling of England's seemingly solitary battle as the last European power willing and able to stand up to Germany. VERDICT This lengthy, at times dense, history might disappoint those interested in a more personal account, finding its home among fans of descriptive World War II military history. [See Prepub Alert, 3/13/17.]—Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

Library Journal

★ 2017-07-03
A swiftly paced, illuminating account of events at the opening of World War II in Europe, recounting "a military defeat with a happy ending."Revived in part thanks to Christopher Nolan's 2017 film Dunkirk, the history of the British Expeditionary Force is compelling even in its barest bones. Korda (Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee, 2014, etc.), noted as both a historian and publisher, brings a personal touch to the story with that of his own family's flight from Europe a step or two ahead of the advancing Nazis. So it was with the BEF, caught in France at the beginning of the German blitzkrieg. They fought valiantly as they retreated toward the coast, then were evacuated, famously, by a flotilla of both military and civilian boats that crossed the Channel under extreme danger, attacked by Stuka bombers and heavy artillery all the while. As the author observes, these unfolding events occasioned the first sustained contact between the French and British commands, to uneasy results. Some of the French commanders were highly effective, others not, while of the ordinary French troops, as one British veteran recounted, "their zest and delight in shooting Germans was most entertaining." Even so, Winston Churchill found it necessary to deny the French access to the Royal Air Force, since, the British leader reasoned, the French army might well fold, as it did, and leave the British to fight the war alone. To craft this narrative, full of set pieces both political and military, Korda has scoured the archives, citing, for instance, the journals of "that rarest of observers, a well-educated public school Oxonian serving in the ranks" and looking deeply into all kinds of records. The author has a fine eye for the telling detail, too, such as the fact that British trucks captured at Dunkirk turned up among the German military train during the invasion of Russia in the following months. An excellent revisitation of a critically important set of battles that, once a byword for courage, have faded in memory.

Kirkus Reviews

"Michael Korda, who has often extended our understanding of so many diverse subjects, has accomplished another masterpiece in Alone. Dealing with Britain’s desperate situation as France fell, he shows how the evacuation from Dunkirk became the inspiration for eventual British victory. One of Korda’s best."

Henry Kissinger

"A fascinating mix of political history and personal reminiscence. I personally had almost the same experience, and was transported back seventy-five years."

John Julius Norwich

"Korda tells an exciting story laced with eyewitness detail and a fine sense of drama."

Globe - Matthew Price

"Entertaining. . . This crucial time is recounted by someone who witnessed those years as a child. Korda, a longtime book editor before becoming a full-time author, is like a charming dinner party host offering his personal experience of history. . . A fine introduction for anyone new to this fulcrum point of the 20th century."

Thomas E. Ricks - New York Times Book Review

"Where Korda's account differs from many similar Dunkirk histories is in a wide trawl of simultaneous social history alongside the military and political events. . . The book is also lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs—many of them unfamiliar. Anyone wanting to explore the history behind Christopher Nolan's recent film could do a lot worse than start here. "

Nigel Jones - Times Literary Supplement

"Korda tells an exciting story laced with eyewitness detail and a fine sense of drama."

Matthew Price - Globe