Product Description

Most people think that England's last war with France involved point-blank broadsides from sailing ships and breastplated Napoleonic cavalry charging red-coated British infantry. But there was a much more recent conflict than this. It went on for over two years and cost several thousand lives. Under the terms of its armistice with Nazi Germany, the unoccupied part of France and its substantial colonies were ruled from the spa town of Vichy by the government of Marshal Philip Petain, the victor of Verdun, one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. Between July 1940 and November 1942, while Britain was at war with Germany, Italy and ultimately Japan, it also fought land, sea and air battles with the considerable forces at the disposal of Petain's Vichy French. When the Royal Navy sank the French Fleet at Mers El-Kebir almost 1,300 French sailors died in what was the 20th century's most one-sided sea battle. British casualties were nil. In the House of Commons, MPs greeted Churchill's brutal resolve not to risk the warships of their very recent ally falling into German hands with cheers and threw their order papers in the air. It is a wound that has still not healed, for undoubtedly these events are better remembered in France than in Britain. Despite the appalling losses on both sides, the war the British and eventually the Americans fought against France in 1940-42 has never been written about as an entity. An embarrassment at the time, its maritime massacre and the bitter, hard-fought campaigns that followed rarely make more than footnotes in accounts of Allied operations against Axis forces. Until now.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5560 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 490 pages

Review
"Colin Smith, a veteran war correspondent, has built an impressive reputation as a military historian.... a fascinating story." (MAX HASTINGS THE SUNDAY TIMES - 16.08.09 )

"grim revelations about the thousands of allies killed by troops loyal to Vichy." (Our Choice of the Best Recent books THE SUNDAY TIMES - 23.08.09 )

"his descriptions of these obscure battlefield encounters are thrilling and his narrative is spruce and peppery." (CHRISTOPHER SILVESTER THE DAILY TELEGRAPH - 29.08.09 )

"Colin Smith...military historian and reconteur..." "there is much of the flavou of Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy in Smith's delight in arcane detail and rumbustious anecdote." "a narrative of war that has much of Patrick O'Brian about it." "there are few who can, like Smith, bring to life these lesser-known battles and the unknown soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of them dead now, who faced death and won these wars for us then." (CARMEN CALLIL THE GUARDIAN 24.10.09 )

"Smith's considerable achievement is to unmask the reality and make us understand this painful period far better than ever before." (CATHOLIC HERALD - 12.10.09 )

"This well-documented and intriguing history unearths one of the least-known episodes of the Second World War... Smith's writing is dispassionate, his writing robust, his sources well-chosen and well-used and his talent for military history self-evident." (GOOD BOOK GUIDE - SEPT 09 )

"absorbing... a fascinating and compelling read." (WESTERN DAILY PRESS - 19.09.09 )

"a classic on the conflict with Hitlers Vichy allies... a superb book on an astonishing array of long-buried incidents." (OXFORD TIMES 03.10.09 )

About the Author
Colin Smith is the acclaimed author of SINGAPORE BURNING and co-author of ALAMEIN - WAR WITHOUT HATE.

Customer Reviews

The Wrong Enemy: A dark chapter brought to light.
Smith's great skill is to illuminate a complex passage of history with strong, clear narrative, brought to life with a profusion of human detail. The war against Vichy France is often treated as a grim footnote to the larger story of the second world war. It was, after all, fought against what one of the protagonists quoted by Smith exactly described as the 'wrong enemy', so it is hardly surprising that it receives less attention than it deserves. Now we have a detailed and brilliantly assembled account in which the reader gets a clear understanding of the historical context and a real sense of what it might have been like to have been involved. As in all the best narratives, the people are brought vividly to life by Smith's sharp eye for human detail, supplemented by generous quotations from eye witnesses.
A thoroughly good read and a very worthwhile contribution to the understanding of one of the darker strands of the complicated relationship between France and England.

Long Overdue
A long-overdue history of a messy, inglorious chapter of France's wartime exploits.
Rich in detail, immensely entertaining to read and packed with vivid personal stories of participants from both sides at many levels, military and civilian.
The anguish felt by many at what they saw as an unnecessary conflict is well presented, particularly that of Admiral James Somerville at Mers-el-Kebir, forced to fire on fellow-sailors who only a short time previously were allies.
Smith's book brings to the fore this important and largely forgotten war within a war.
Highly recommended.

England's Last War against France
Colin Smith does a favour to all of us who believe that an honest and just history of World War 11 has still to be written. Kissinger's view that 'history is the memory of the state' has rarely held good because it conveniently ignores the suffering of the millions who do the bidding of political masters. 'England's Last War Against France' is a 'people history' - something that British historians have never been very good at. Smith allows those, from the most humble to the great and the good, that fought in the war between Britain and Vichy France from 1940 to 1942 to be heard.

The author reminds us that it was a war that largely by-passed the British psyche. Indeed, some might still find it surprising that the French forgave Britain so quickly for the damage it inflicted on the French navy at Oran, on its forces in Dakar, in the Middle East, Madagascar and wherever else French interests lay that Nazi Germany wanted to get its hands on. Of course, allied leaders, including de Gaulle, found moral justification for what Britain did to our closest neighbours after they signed an armistice with the Nazis in 1940. Apart from those Frenchmen killed by British forces in the far flung French Empire of the time, Smith does not let us forget that as many French civilians died, during the battle for Normandy after D-Day, as Allied soldiers in that campaign.

Smith ranks with Antony Beevor and Max Hastings as a great war historian. But whereas Beevor and Hastings concentrate their efforts on the shortcomings, or otherwise, of politicians and military commanders in WW11, Smith forensically dissects the accounts of those who had to face life and death in the frontline of battles. He allows the voices of ordinary men and women to be heard in history. 'England's Last War Against France' is 'history from below' at its best.