This detailed and exhaustively researched history lesson from a Washington, D.C. historian specializing in WWII focuses on the roles of various European royals and expats who fled to England at the start of that war. These include feisty Queen Wilhelmina of Holland, King Haakon of Norway, President Edvard Benes of Czechoslovakia, and Poland’s President in exile Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz and his Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski. King Leopold III of Belgium was not among them as he never managed to reach England. Prickly General Charles De Gaulle was the self-appointed leader of the French expats, but was distrusted by the Brits and detested by FDR.
There are hundreds of names of individual heroes and villains that I had never heard of, and Olson weaves into the story the experiences of familiar nonmilitary characters, including Audrey Hepburn, Madeline Albright, and the British journalist, Malcom Muggeridge, who was also a MI6 mole.
No military or political leader escapes from the documentation of duplicity, deviousness, betrayals, and blatant errors of military planning. King Leopold was scapegoated for the disaster at Dunkirk, as was Polish General Stanislaw for the slaughter at Arnhem late in the war. The haughty Brits distrusted and downplayed the major role of Polish airforce pilots and resistance fighters everywhere on the continent and in the end the Brits and Americans sacrificed Poland and the Czechs to appease Stalin. No one has ever adequately acknowledged the major role of heroic women escorting downed pilots out of occupied France to safety via Spain, nor the thousands of women who sheltered, fed, and hid servicemen and spies behind enemy lines. The rivalry and distrust between MI6 operatives and the Special Operations Executive foiling Nazi plans lead to disastrous planning and thousands of civilian deaths.
Of the many revelations that contradict the history we were taught in the 50s and 60s, none is more remarkable than the fact that Polish expats did most of the groundwork to decode the German communications system Enigma, popularly credited to Brits at Bletchley Park, as detailed by Kate Quinn in The Rose Code. The world’s major stock of heavy water, critical for the development of atomic bombs, was snatched from under Nazi noses from a remote Norwegian factory and smuggled to the U.S. The surprising assertion that 95% of the casualties of the BigThree allies (America, Britain and Russia) were Russians, is confined to a footnote. There is continuing debate among historians about the importance of SOE sabotage of Nazi operations in France after the D-Day invasion, even 75 years later.
One of many memorable quotes: “The worst thing a subordinate [in the military] can do is to question orders and to be proved right.” Some such truth-tellers were subjected to court-martial or executed. It is no accident that the word ‘snafu’ was first applied to the military.
There are some surprising omissions. The Italian fascists are barely mentioned and the role of religious leaders such as Pope Pious XII (see Hitler’s Pope, by John Cornwell) is totally missing, perhaps because these facets had little to do with the last hope island. A few maps of major sites of action would have helped this geographically-challenged reader.
This book will be of most interest and use to dedicated historians, military planners and teachers, and perhaps those in the espionage world. And there are still many Canadians of European origin alive who will remember some of their experiences there as children, particularly those who survived the starvation in Dutch cities brought on by the refusal of the Allies to help them, choosing instead a mad rush to enter Germany prematurely. My mother must have had mixed emotions on May 9, 1945 as Victory in Europe was announced (VE Day is May 8th). The war that had killed her younger brother in Belgium a few months earlier was over, but she suddenly had to deal with a screaming, helpless newcomer- me.
Thanks,
Siobhan
The Passionate Reader 