Dunkirk

In May 1940, the situation on the Western Front of World War II deteriorated sharply: German armored forces broke through the Ardennes, and the Anglo-French Allied armies were pressed back to the small port town of Dunkirk in northern France. Some four hundred thousand men waited on the beaches to be annihilated—or to be saved. Centering on the British-led Operation Dynamo, this book draws on officers and soldiers from both sides, civilians, archives, diaries, and old newspapers to reconstruct the whole process—from being encircled and buying time, to the scarcity of troops and abundance of boats, air defense and anti-submarine operations, nighttime evacuations, and the boarding of the last rearguard. The author does not reduce the retreat to a simple defeat, but restores it as an operation woven together from organization, communications, weather, public opinion, and individual courage: the small boats on the Channel, the heavy equipment left behind, the soldiers waiting on the dunes, and the delicate Allied coordination between Britain and France all form part of the narrative. The original English title, The Miracle of Dunkirk, literally means “the miracle of Dunkirk”; the Chinese edition is titled Dunkirk. Since publication, the book has been a long-standing bestseller and is regarded as a classic popular history narrative of the Dunkirk evacuation, suited to readers who wish to understand the retreat through the eyes of those who were there.