To Lose a Battle: France 1940

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Macmillan, 1969 - History - 556 pages
During six weeks in 1940, Hitlers blitzkrieg shattered the redoubtable Maginot Line and, shortly thereafter, the French army. No historian has written a more definitive chronicle of that disaster than Alistair Horne, or one so emotionally gripping. Moving with cinematic swiftness from the battlefield to the Reichstag and the Palais de l...lyse, To Lose a Battle overspills the confines of traditional military history to become a portrait of the French national soul in its darkest night.

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Contents

Preface
7
19191930
19
Fortune Changes Sides
38
Copyright

16 other sections not shown

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About the author (1969)

Alistair Allan Horne was born in London, England on November 9, 1925. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force, but failed to qualify for pilot training because of poor eyesight. He later joined the Coldstream Guards, attaining the rank of captain. When the war ended, he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps and stationed in Cairo where he monitored Soviet activity in the Balkans. He received a master's degree in English in 1949 from Jesus College, Cambridge. Before becoming an author, he was a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and a spy for MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service. His books included The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune, 1870-71; To Lose a Battle: France 1940; Small Earthquake in Chile: A Visit to Allende's South America; The French Army and Politics, 1870-1970; Seven Ages of Paris; The Age of Napoleon; La Belle France: A Short History; and Kissinger: 1973, The Crucial Year. The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 won the Hawthornden Prize and A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 won the Wolfson Prize. He wrote several memoirs including A Bundle from Britain and But What Do You Actually Do?: A Literary Vagabondage. He was knighted in 2003. He died on May 25, 2017 at the age of 91.

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