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