[E-book ENG - epub-mobi-pdf] - Alistair Horne - To Lose a Battle. France 1940

To Lose a Battle. France 1940 - Alistair Horne

Publication Year: 1969

Language: English



In 1940 Hitler sent his troops to execute the Fall of France. A six-week battle with lightning 'blitzkrieg' warfare and combined operations techniques, the offensive ended the Phony War and sent the French forces reeling as their government fled from occupied Paris. For the Axis, it was a dramatic victory. But how was this spectacular result possible? In To Lose a Battle Alistair Horne tells the day-by-day, moment-by-moment story of the battle, sifted from the vast Nazi archives and the fragmentary records of the beaten Allies. Using eye-witness accounts of battle operations and personal memoirs of leading figures on both sides, this book steps far beyond the confines of military accounts to form a major contribution to our understanding of this important period in European history. 'Alistair Horne really brings home the pathos and human folly of war, and he writes brilliantly'.

The author



Sir Alistair Horne was born in London in 1925, and has spent much of his life abroad, including periods at schools in the United States and Switzerland. He served with the R.A.F. in Canada in 1943 and ended his war service with the rank of Captain in the Coldstream Guards attached to MI5 in the Middle East. He then went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature and played international ice-hockey. After leaving Cambridge, Sir Alistair concentrated on writing: he spent three years in Germany as correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and speaks fluent French and German. His books include Back into Power (1955); The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (Hawthornden Prize, 1963); The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1970–71 (1965); To Lose A Battle: France 1940 (1969); Small Earthquake in Chile (1972, paperback reissued 1999); A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–62 won both the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize and the Wolfson History Award in 1978 (revised paperback edition 2006). His other publications include The French Army and Politics 1870–1970 (1984), which was awarded the Enid Macleod Prize in 1985, Harold Macmillan, Volumes I and II (1988–91), A Bundle from Britain (1993), a memoir about the USA and World War II; The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944–1945 (1996); Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City (2003); Friend or Foe: A History of France (2004) and The Age of Napoleon (2004). In 1969 he founded a Research Fellowship for young historians at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 1992 he was awarded the CBE; in 1993 he received the French Légion d’Honneur for his work on French history and his Litt.D. from Cambridge University. He was knighted in 2003. He is currently working on an authorised biography of Henry Kissinger, as well as a second volume of his own memoirs.

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