Published: 1 March 2009
Air & Space Power Journal - Spring 2009

Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. Harvard University Press (http://www.hup.harvard.edu), 79 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, 2006, 720 pages, $35.00 (hardcover).

Do you want good maps of a short land battle? If so, this is your book, for the appendix includes 21 of them. Do you want a blow-by-blow account of a short land battle, apparently down to experiences of the last private? Here it is. Do you want documentation? Dunkirk has 95 pages of footnotes—in small print, many of them citing primary sources in several languages. Do you want stories of heroism and sometimes cowardice? Here they are. Do you want new explanations of why the Wehrmacht halted long enough to permit the evacuation of close to 300,000 Allied soldiers who lived to fight another day? They are here—the gallant last stands of a few brave British men who held up the German advance. (As opposed to Hitler’s delaying to give Hermann Göring a chance to do it with airpower alone or the plain exhaustion of German armored units from their long charge to the coast.) But if your reading list is focused on air warriorship and too crowded to permit tedious study of an obsessive, blow-by-blow account of an emergency evacuation that happened more than a half century ago (and one hardly likely to be repeated), you had better move on to other works. This book contains 204 pages of back matter alone!

British author Hugh Sebag-Montefiore trained as a barrister but has taken up historical writing. His previous book dealt with the Enigma machine and the breaking of German codes in World War II. The author’s legal background is apparent in his careful documentation and great attention to detail. He organizes the book chronologically, with less than the usual attention to the naval aspect of the operation—a topic well covered elsewhere, in any event. Too, Sebag-Montefiore does not dwell on the airpower dimension.

As Churchill lamented at the time, wars are not won with evacuations. Yet the experience did have a positive dimension in that the rescue served as a bright light in a sea of darkness—a morale booster in an otherwise dark landscape. Furthermore it saved some important human resources to fight another day. If you have a special interest in the subject, be prepared to spend a lot of time on Dunkirk. The maps, collected at the end, are quite competent. Yet you will find the process of following the story by referring to the appendix for the maps rather tedious. Otherwise move on to other works on your list. Airmen would gain more from the relevant passages of The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power, 1930–1940 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1961) by Derek Wood with Derek Dempster.

Dr. David R. Mets
Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.