In the Summer of 1940, after evacuation of the British Expeditionary
Force from Dunkirk and the Franco/German armistice which followed the
fall of France, Britain stood alone against the armed might of Hitler's
Germany, supported only by the forced of her dominions and inspired by
little but the rhetoric of her newly-appointed Prime Minister, Winston
Churchill.
It seemed inevitable at the time that Hitler's next move would be the
invasion of Britain and Churchill was not slow to use this threat to
unite the people of Britain behind him; for not a few people in
influential circles in Britain then favored a quick settlement with the
Fuhrer.
Michael Glover's penetrating analysis of the mood of British people that
summer, of the German ability to mount an amphibious invasion at the
time and of Britain's ability to repel such an invasion shows how
ill-founded the scare was, while explaining how well it served the
British cause. Hitler, as he shows, had embarked upon a course to which
there were only two outcomes - either of which was bound to lead to his
ultimate downfall. But in the summer of 1940 the beleaguered inhabitants
of Britain were in no mood or position to relax in the comfort of such
historical hindsight. Unprepared they may have been, but as the author
shows, they were unflinching, unbowed - and, ultimately, undefeated.
This is, however, by no means a work of chauvinistic
self-congratulations; it is rather a distinguished historian's
assessment of the last great invasion scare the British Isles have
endured since the Martello towers were built in 1805.
