Book Review of
The Miracle of Dunkirk
In May 1940, the remnants of the French and British armies, broken by Hitler’s blitzkrieg, retreated to Dunkirk. Hemmed in by overwhelming Nazi strength, the 338,000 men gathered on the beach were all that stood between Hitler and Western Europe. Crush them, and the path to Paris and London was clear.
Unable to retreat any farther, the Allied soldiers set up defense positions and prayed for deliverance. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an evacuation on May 26, expecting to save no more than a handful of his men. But Britain would not let its soldiers down. Hundreds of fishing boats, pleasure yachts, and commercial vessels streamed into the Channel to back up the Royal Navy, and in a week nearly the entire army was ferried safely back to England.
Based on interviews with hundreds of survivors and told by “a master narrator,” The Miracle of Dunkirk is a striking history of a week when the outcome of World War II hung in the balance (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.).
Grace's Review
In 2017, the movie Dunkirk came out, and I got to see it in theater the week after it came out. I absolutely loved the film and decided that I wanted to learn more about the event, so I got this book. I enjoyed this history because it talked more about what led up to the men being stranded on the beach of Dunkirk and all of the navy’s problems. This is a very factual book, so it does not read like fiction, which means it is a slower, but well worth the time it takes to read it.