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LAST HOPE ISLAND
Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War
LAST HOPE ISLAND is a vivid character-driven account of how Britain became a crucial safe-haven for the exiled leaders of the European countries conquered by Hitler from the New York Times bestselling author of Those Angry Days and Citizens of London, Lynne Olson.
When the Nazi blitzkrieg subjugated Europe in World War II, London became the safe haven for the leaders of seven occupied countries--France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Czechoslovakia and Poland--who fled there to avoid imprisonment and set up governments in exile to commandeer their resistance efforts.
The lone hold-out against Hitler's offensive, Britain became a beacon of hope to the rest of Europe, as prominent European leaders like French general Charles De Gaulle, the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, and King Haakon of Norway competed for Winston Churchill's attention while trying to rule their embattled countries from the precarious safety of "Last Hope Island.”
Readers will be delighted to learn some unexpected facts, among them that….
*more than twenty percent of the RAF pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain were, in fact, not British. Many were from the countries of occupied Europe. Indeed, in the opinion of a number of British pilots and commanders, the contributions of the Polish pilots -- more than a hundred in all -- made the difference between victory and defeat in the Battle.
*contrary to conventional wisdom (and reflected in the hit movie The Imitation Game) that Alan Turing and the code-breaking operations at Bletchley Park were solely responsible for breaking the Germans' Enigma code, in fact, Britain's code-breaking success was due in large part to the French and, above all, to the Poles. According to a top official at Bletchley Park, the Ultra operation "would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details of the Enigma machine and how it was used."
*most of the intelligence about German operations in occupied Europe came from European intelligence services, rather than from Britain's vaunted but hapless Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), which nonetheless took all the credit.
*if it hadn't been for the gold reserves of the Belgian government-in-exile, Britain could never have stayed financially afloat in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, before the U.S. got into the war. Besides loaning gold to Britain, the Belgians, through their colony in the Congo, provided much of the uranium for the Manhattan Project.
As she did so effortlessly in her previous books, Lynne Olson brings to life this fascinating dimension of World War II history, in prose that is both intensely readable and animated by the larger-than-life characters who inhabited that world. With the prospect of Brexit looming, this book couldn’t be timelier— it reveals how the evolution of British and European relations in World War II have come to shape current events.
Lynne Olson, former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, is the author of six books, the most recent being the New York Times bestseller, THOSE ANGRY DAYS: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 (Random House, 2013). She is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, CITIZENS OF LONDON: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour (Random House, 2010) and TROUBLESOME YOUNG MEN: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England (FSG, 2007). More about the author at www.lynneolson.com.
The lone hold-out against Hitler's offensive, Britain became a beacon of hope to the rest of Europe, as prominent European leaders like French general Charles De Gaulle, the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, and King Haakon of Norway competed for Winston Churchill's attention while trying to rule their embattled countries from the precarious safety of "Last Hope Island.”
Readers will be delighted to learn some unexpected facts, among them that….
*more than twenty percent of the RAF pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain were, in fact, not British. Many were from the countries of occupied Europe. Indeed, in the opinion of a number of British pilots and commanders, the contributions of the Polish pilots -- more than a hundred in all -- made the difference between victory and defeat in the Battle.
*contrary to conventional wisdom (and reflected in the hit movie The Imitation Game) that Alan Turing and the code-breaking operations at Bletchley Park were solely responsible for breaking the Germans' Enigma code, in fact, Britain's code-breaking success was due in large part to the French and, above all, to the Poles. According to a top official at Bletchley Park, the Ultra operation "would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details of the Enigma machine and how it was used."
*most of the intelligence about German operations in occupied Europe came from European intelligence services, rather than from Britain's vaunted but hapless Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), which nonetheless took all the credit.
*if it hadn't been for the gold reserves of the Belgian government-in-exile, Britain could never have stayed financially afloat in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, before the U.S. got into the war. Besides loaning gold to Britain, the Belgians, through their colony in the Congo, provided much of the uranium for the Manhattan Project.
As she did so effortlessly in her previous books, Lynne Olson brings to life this fascinating dimension of World War II history, in prose that is both intensely readable and animated by the larger-than-life characters who inhabited that world. With the prospect of Brexit looming, this book couldn’t be timelier— it reveals how the evolution of British and European relations in World War II have come to shape current events.
Lynne Olson, former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, is the author of six books, the most recent being the New York Times bestseller, THOSE ANGRY DAYS: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 (Random House, 2013). She is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, CITIZENS OF LONDON: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour (Random House, 2010) and TROUBLESOME YOUNG MEN: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England (FSG, 2007). More about the author at www.lynneolson.com.
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Published 2017-04-25 by Random House |
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Published 2017-04-25 by Random House |