Publisher Description
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 that were 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.”
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“Shaun Grindell’s narration is the perfect complement to this most British of British histories, enlivening a text that puts scholarly accuracy over narrative verve. Author Robin Prior…gives body to a story whose outlines have so often been drawn by romance and legend. Grindell brings pace and purpose to…detailed summaries of cabinet and parliamentary debates, lists of aircraft models and their totals on either side, and accountings of casualties in various bombed British cities. Better heard than read, this is a must-hear for those who already know, or think they know, the story of Britain in that crucial first year of WWII.”
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