First published 2017
Joshua Levine reconstructs the nine-day evacuation at Dunkirk from May 27 to June 4, 1940, when over 300,000 Allied troops faced annihilation by Nazi forces. The author draws from fresh interviews with veterans and survivors to examine this military rescue from three perspectives: land, sea, and air. Levine reveals the experiences of soldiers who endured days of bombing and machine gun fire on the beaches without food or ammunition. He chronicles the civilian boat owners whose vessels carried impossible loads of desperate men. He follows the pilots who sacrificed themselves to buy precious time for the evacuation. The book explores both those who escaped and those who did not survive. Levine places what Winston Churchill called a miracle into its complete historical context. This account served as source material for Christopher Nolan's film featuring Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and Harry Styles. The book transforms this famous military defeat into a detailed narrative of human endurance and sacrifice.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, world-war-ii, non-fiction, military-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: human-endurance, sacrifice
Setting: Dunkirk, Nazi Germany
Period: 1940
374 pages · Kindle Edition · HarperCollins Espanol