Korda - Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: defeat into victory

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Michael Korda

ALONE

Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk:
Defeat into Victory

L IVERIGHT P UBLISHING C ORPORATION

A Division of W. W. Norton & Company

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS SINCE 1923

NEW YORK LONDON

Copyright 2017 by Success Research Coproration

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Book design by Brooke Koven

Production manager: Anna Oler

JACKET DESIGN: EVAN GAFFNEY DESIGN

JACKET PHOTOGRAPH: WINSTON CHURCHILL ADDRESSES THE CREW OF THE
HMS EXETER , FEBRUARY 15, 1940, HUDSON / STRINGER / GETTY IMAGES

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Korda, Michael, 1933 author.

Title: Alone : Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk :
defeat into victory / Michael Korda.

Other titles: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk, defeat into victory

Description: New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017017244 | ISBN 9781631491320 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Dunkirk, Battle of, Dunkerque, France, 1940. | World War, 19391945CampaignsFranceDunkerque. | Korda, Michael, 1933 Childhood and youth. | World War, 19391945Great Britain. | World War, 19391945Personal narratives, English.

Classification: LCC D756.5.D8 K67 2017 | DDC 940.54/21428dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017244

ISBN 978-1-63149-133-7 (e-book)

Liveright Publishing Corporation

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In loving memory of Margaret,
Whose idea it was.

I have myself full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected... we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

W INSTON C HURCHILL ,
speaking to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940,
on the completion of the evacuation of Dunkirk

Contents

For Europeans the approach to World War T wo did not take place as a sudden event like Pearl Harbor but instead in the form of a numbing series of crises occurring at an increasingly rapid rate, each one more serious than the last, culminating in catastrophe.

As a child these crises did not have much, if any, effect on me until war finally came and changed my life as it did everyones, most far more harshly than mine. All the same, I saw, I remember, and by now, more than seventy-five years after the events that led to war, it is possible to know exactly what happened, and why, and to write about it objectively. All wars occur from a succession of mistakes, usually on both sides, and of no war is that more true than the Second World War.

Mine was a privileged childhood, and for that reason I, like several thousand other English children, ended up to my surprise in the United States as a kind of first - class refugee, set comfortably adrift by the war.

I have no complaints. This is not a tale of suffering; it is an attempt to explain what happened between the halcyon days of the summer of 1939, at the end of which war broke out, and the harsh awakening in the summer of 1940. Then we the British found ourselves alone, having misjudged the French Armys strength and placed ourselves in a position where what remained of our army was returning from the beaches of Dunkirk in small boats, having abandoned its equipment and its arms, leaving most of Western Europe in German hands.

How we arrived there, on the brink of disaster, is the subject of this book, at once the modest account of my familys dispersal, and a history of the greater events that led to Dunkirk, and to Britains finest hour, as Winston Churchill called it.

Memory is not an exact instrument. As we grow older we tend to impose the present on the past, or to remember what we wish had happened rather than what actually did. I was a phrase that did not then exista movie brat, for everyone in my family either made films or, in the case of the women, acted in them. My uncle Alexander Korda was a famous film director and producer, a movie mogul who challenged the Hollywood studio moguls on his own terms. My uncle Zoltan was a famed film director, my father, Vincent, an internationally renowned film art director, my auntie Merle Oberon a major movie star, my aunt Joan and my mother respected actresses. Ours was not an ordinary family, but war changes everybodys life, so this is also partly the story of how our lives were reshaped by the events around us, which my uncle Alex and his brothers could perhaps read more clearly than most because they were born in Central Europe, and therefore had no difficulty understanding what Hitler stood for or what he intended to do.

They had no illusions about Nazi Germany, which is more than can be said for a lot of powerful and respected people on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 1930s, and even in 1939 and 1940.

It is to those so much less fortunate than myself that I also dedicate this book.

Rule Brittania!

Brittania rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never

Shall be slaves.

T HOMAS A RNE, 1740