Alone

May 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.

July 15, 2017
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.

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Starred review from August 1, 2017
There is already a sagging shelf of weighty tomes on the British Expeditionary Force's evacuation from Dunkirk in May 1940as well as a new movie on the topicbut room must be made for Korda's fine combination of gripping history and fascinating memoir. Korda wrote about his famous family (his father was a film editor; his uncle, a film director; and his aunt, the actress Merle Oberon) in the best-selling Charmed Lives (1979), and he revisits them here but in a very different context, contrasting their experiences during the early days of the war with those of less fortunate British citizens. This personal history makes for a striking backdrop to the account of, first, the run-up to war; then the German blitzkrieg into France; finally, the evacuation of 300,000 mainly British troops from the beach at Dunkirk, aided by the now-legendary little boats, pleasure craft piloted by British citizens. Korda brings a smooth, flowing style to the familiar story but also shifts at least some of the typical emphasis, noting that celebration of the evacuation and immortalization of the little boats' has tended to draw attention away from the savage fighting that preceded it. Equally fascinating is his analysis of how Hitler's decision to divert his tanks from Dunkirk allowed the British to turn defeat into a strange kind of victory. In all, Korda succeeds in infusing straight history with the accessible tone of narrative nonfiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

June 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

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