Deadly Stroke By Warren Tute British destruction of French fleet in Oran 1940

$10.00

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Deadly Stroke By Warren Tute

The tragic, little known story of the British destruction of the French fleet in Oran, in July, 1940, after the armistice with Germany

"One of the saddest, most brutal stories of the war, told just about as well as it could be."

-NICHOLAS MONSARRAT

HERE Is the first detailed account of one of the bloodiest-and most agonizing-events of World War II: the destruction of the French fleet by their allies, the British, after the fall of France in 1940.

Two weeks after France's debacle, with the Nazi invasion of Britain an imminent possibility and the perfidy of the Vichy regime already clear, Churchill came to the decision that no elements of the French navy could be allowed to fall into enemy hands. He ordered that every French ship, from Alexandria to Martinique, Portsmouth to Dakar, surrender, remove to the Caribbean, or be seized. Only those in Algeria, under the command of General Gensoul and now committed to the policies of the Vichy government, refused the ultimatum. As Churchill's deadline approached and desperate negotiations proved futile, the British opened fire and, in a tragic and ironic battle, decimated the trapped French fleet.

A minute-by-minute re-creation based on both French and British eyewitness accounts and illustrated with rare photographs and two maps, THE DEADLY STROKE, evokes the terrible necessity of the British decision, the personal and diplomatic tensions of the urgent-and doomed - negotiations, the human impact on officers and sailors forced to carry out orders made far from the scene, to attack the men who had so recently been their allies. Introduction by John Colville, private secretary to Winston Churchill.

All pictures are of the actual item. If this is a railroad item, this material is obsolete and no longer in use by the railroad. Please email with questions. Publishers of Train Shed Cyclopedias and Stephans Railroad Directories. Large inventory of railroad books and magazines. Thank you for buying from us.

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