"Above all, what was most lacking on the French side was the will to fight. The memories of the 1,500,000 dead of the First World War, the sapping effects of the Front Populaire, the unhelpfulness of Britain as a military partner in the interwar years (even by September 1939 four divisions were all she could send to France), appeasement, Hitler's bloodless victories and the appallingly swift smashing-up of Poland had all left their mark, as had the lethargy of the months of the "phoney war"."
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Historians from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge alumniBiographers from EnglandFellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Original Language: English
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Written for the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of France
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Alistair Horne
1954 – 1962
Sir Alistair Allan Horne CBE FRSL (9 November 1925 – 25 May 2017) was a British historian and academic best known for his works about armed conflicts involving 19th- and 20th-century France, including his classic about the Algerian War, A Savage War of Peace. A former spy and journalist, Horne wrote more than 20 books on travel, history, and biography.
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