Sebag-Montefiore's Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man is what my students would call “a good read.” Accompanied by many excellent maps, he takes the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) through its landing in France in fall 1939, and the winter Sitzkrieg or Phony War, to the German assault of May 1940, the evacuation from Dunkirk at the end of that month, and finally, the evacuation of the Second BEF in mid-June. As in most military calamities, the fault rarely lies with one individual or action. From the top political and military leadership to the bottom, there is ample room for blame, and Monetefiore rises to the task. The leading French generals were worn out and quarrelsome, their troops sullen and slovenly. The British command was not a model of unity, either, and the bill for years of neglect with respect to providing modern equipment was about to come due. Overshadowing all was a strategy that played into the hands of the Germans and worse, the failure to modify it given the chance. While French General Gamelin expected the Germans again to come through Belgium, that country's neutrality prevented the Allies from entering until the Germans had actually invaded; thus, Gamelin held his northern group of armies and the BEF in readiness at the French-Belgian border, prepared to rush into Belgium once the Germans moved. The Germans initially obliged this strategy, largely replicating the 1914 Schlieffen Plan until their strategem fell into the hands of the Allies. A German plane carrying a courier with operational documents strayed into Belgium, and the cat was out of the bag. The appalled Germans then weighted their attack much farther south—to strike west just above the Meuse River at Sedan rather than through northern Belgium and southern Holland. Inexplicably, Gamelin did not consider that the Germans would change their plan after it fell into Allied hands; he adhered to his original plan to rush into Belgium, taking the fight far from France. For their part, the British had concerns that the captured German documents were an elaborate ruse. In the end, the Allies held to their design to rush into Belgium, dooming them if the German thrust across the lower Meuse worked. And work it did.

The argument over why the Germans failed to press on and annihilate the disorganized French and BEF at Dunkirk started in 1945 when Hitler's generals could openly criticize the Führer, whom they blamed. The debate has gone back and forth, and Montifiore seems to lean toward the German generals being the culprit, but that is almost a side show here. Instead, he focuses on the tension and growing animosity at the highest level between the British and French governments as the campaign unfolded. The French initially thought they could hold out at Dunkirk and await relief from their armies to the south; the English correctly assessed the situation and ordered the evacuation of the BEF. The French felt abandoned, and when they finally bowed to the inevitable, their tardy decision left many more Frenchmen standing on the beach than English troops, poisoning the relationship between the two allies. Montefiore shows Churchill at his best in keeping his eye on the strategic picture with a willingness to sacrifice British interests to those of the alliance. Nonetheless, Churchill recognized what was essential to England's survival, and he refused to send reinforcements to the RAF units in France while simultaneously doing his utmost to keep France from entering a separate armistice with the Germans.

The story of Dunkirk is hardly new; Montefiore admits what he offers does not change the picture. His focus instead is on those units and soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force who fought to hold the lines around the town and the beaches while the Royal Navy pulled off its miraculous evacuation of more than 330,000 soldiers. The unlucky rear guard units had orders to hold until the last man, hence the book's subtitle. Few escaped with their lucky comrades; most were captured or killed. The exploits of these “forgotten heroes of Dunkirk,” says the author, deserve telling. Employing unit and family records and archives in Belgium, England, France, and Germany, he does just that. The author's narrative of the unfolding calamity is chronological, and he is adroit in illustrating how decisions made at the highest levels (e.g., ministerial and general staff), played out in the form of desperate struggles by the BEF after guard which bought time at a steep price for certain units. The saddest voices are those of the overwhelmed physicians and nurses ordered left behind to tend the wounded. This is not the new military history, with its spotlight on the correlation of forces, gender, remembrance, or families left behind; no, it is a rousing tale of soldiers in action, one that is hard to put down.