Defeat and Division

Douglas Porch is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His previous books include Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (2013), The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II (2004; published in Britain as Hitler's Mediterranean Gamble), The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (1995), The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force (1991), The Conquest of the Sahara (1984), The Conquest of Morocco (1982), The March to the Marne: The French Army 1871–1914 (1981), The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution (1977), and Army and Revolution: France 1815–1848 (1974).

• Introduction; 1. 'Missed Opportunity Mythology'; 2. From Phoney Peace to Phoney War, 1938–1940; 3. Case Yellow; 4. 'Stand and Fight...'; 5. “The War is Over for Us”; 6. “The Wisdom of a Great Leader.”; 7. La France libre; 8. 'Grandi soldati'; 9. France's North African Hinterland; 10. TORCH; Epilogue.

'A clear-eyed, ambitious and myth-busting account that places the Fall of France in 1940 and De Gaulle's Free French in a wider scenario that sees Vichy France and its colonial empire as a serious military player down to 1942. A tour de force by a historian who is a master of his craft.' Robert Gildea, author of Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance