Military Campaigns, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany, Europe, military history 

The most exciting military feat in modern times was accomplished by the armies of Adolf Hitler when, in the early morning hours of 10 May 1940, screaming Stukas, thousands of paratroops and hordes of Panzer divisions descended on Holland and Belgium in the first wave of the attack which swept through Western Europe in six weeks. Within a matter of days The Netherlands had fallen, the heart of Rotterdam had been obliterated and hundreds of thousands of British, French and Belgian troops had been trapped in the Dunkirk pocket. The miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk was but a prelude to Germany's sweep through France. Opposition melted away and troops of the Wehrmacht marched in waves of field gray down the boulevards of Paris. As the Third French Republic breathed its last Mussolini took to the offensive on 10 June 1940. Within days France had capitulated and in the Forest of Compiegne Hitler danced for joy as the French delegates were forced to sign their capitulation in the same railway car in which Germany had signed the armistice in 1918. As Winston Churchill put it 'the long night of barbarism had descended across the Continent of Europe.' Within these short weeks France and the Low Countries had fallen under the heel of Nazism and Britain stood alone.

The story of this brilliant campaign from 10 May 1940 to 22 June 1940 is told by one of Britain's best historians. Ward Rutherford, author of Hitler's Propaganda Machine and nine other books, was a schoolboy in the British isle of Jersey, which was occupied during the Blitzkrieg of 1940. He was imprisoned there by the Nazis a few months before the liberation of Jersey in 1945. His treatment of Blitzkrieg in 1940 illustrated with hundreds of color and black and white photographs, maps, technical drawings and diagrams is a must for everyone interested in the history of World War II.

Ward Rutherford

Ward Rutherford was brought up in Jersey, where as a schoolboy during the German Occupation he had first-hand experience of Nazi propaganda. Early in 1945 he was imprisoned for listening to the BBC and remained there until the end of the war. He has worked as a journalist in Fleet Street and in radio and television. In 1962 he was appointed Head of Local Programs for Channel Television, the independent television station for the Channel Islands.

He is the author of ten books, mostly on aspects of recent history, including Hitler's Propaganda Machine, as well as two crime novels. His works have been translated into many languages including French, Italian, Japanese and Serbo-Croat. His first stage play, Fingers, received its premiere in 1978.

He currently lives in Brighton, England, with his wife, three children and two cats.

Taken from the inside flaps.