A good history is immersive. It’s easy to sputter and choke as an immense wave of details washes over you, but if you are interested enough, engaged enough, you learn how to take it in—assimilate it—almost as if you have learned to breath underwater. DUNKIRK—FIGHT TO THE LAST MAN is impressively researched and annotated and certainly can swamp you with facts: names, dates, locations and landscapes, troop missions and movements, weaponry and the relative wisdom of those involved all swirl into a dense and vivid presentation. The history however is leavened with enough humanity, tales of bravery and stupidity, that you remember these facts work in service of a greater ambition. To show how history is propelled by a few people, carries many more with its passion but most people are just trying to get out of the way before it crushes them.

A good history also deflates myths. Prior to reading DUNKIRK-FIGHT TO THE LAST MAN, I could draw only the barest sketch of the events surrounding the massive WWII rescue operation. I was aware that a flotilla mixing personal and naval crafts ran stranded soldiers from a disintegrating wartime France back to England in just the nick of time. In my mind it was mostly civilian boats with the almost cartoonish image of the last English soldier escaping unscathed as the Germans run toward the docks shaking their heads and their fists. Rarely is history so clean. The first best way the author deals with this is by saving the actual evacuation for the end of the book. Instead, the evacuation looms in the back of your mind while you live through the early days of the war where the seeds were sewn for catastrophe. The frustration builds as the early political failings and arrogant military fumblings are exposed by the Nazi Blitzkrieg. Once the Germans finally attack, the narrative that spoke in days and hours drops down to an almost minute by minute recreation of events. What fascinated me most during this portion of the book was how it was not so much that the Blitzkrieg was unstoppable (and it may have been) but at how many junctures early in the war entire campaigns turned on the greatness or failings of a few people. And sometimes simple bad timing. This reminded me of the much more familiar territory of the D-Day landings. While history now lends the landings a gravitas of inevitability, success was far from assured. The luck that many German leaders, tanks and troops happened to be in the wrong place at the right time was just as important as the months of planning that went into the landings. Imagine this is true of most wars but likely underappreciated.

The human toll is horrific before the city of Dunkirk is even mentioned—already destroying any remaining romantic myths about this rescue. While the story remains both intriguing and devastating through to the last of the book, it is as we approach Dunkirk that the two major flaws pop up in the book. Early on it is teased that the Germans made a mistake by not addressing the city of Dunkirk earlier with sufficient force. Almost nothing is said after that about the German decision process leading to their not fully appreciating the military importance of Dunkirk. Many other parts of the book benefit from the German perspective and the minute by minute tale continued and I kept waiting, but this discussion never materialized—and it was largely why I read the book! The second flaw may be more personal to my curiosity but also early in the book, the involvement of the individual civilian boat owners was teased but during the actual recovery effort they were given short shrift.

All historians have agendas—at least authors certainly do—and I understand choices have to be made but I would have been happy with two paragraphs for flaw one and two or three more anecdotes for flaw two. I know that newly discovered information regarding the troops sacrificed and left behind so that as many other soldiers as possible could escape was a selling point for this particular take on Dunkirk, but I still felt a little cheated at the end. That being said, I highly recommend this un-sanitized take on Dunkirk for anyone who wants an in depth look at this story in particular or a greater understanding of the mechanics of warfare in general.