Unauthorized Action ; Mountbatten and the Dieppe Raid

Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. Book. Very Good. Trade Paperback. Second Printing. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 314pp., index, notes, ill. Very light wear. "One of the most memorable events of the Second World War took place on 19 August 1942, when the largest amphibious raiding force in modern history made its way across the English Channel towards the German-occupied French port of Dieppe. The result, a few hours later, was a disaster. That some 3,300 Canadian soldiers and officers should wait over two-and-a-half years for combat and then be killed, wounded, or captured in a single morning is one of the greatest tragedies of the Second World War. For more than forty-five years a cloud of mystery has hung over the event, which has seemed to defy all rational explanation. On the basis of much new research and a meticulous and sensitive analysis of all the forces - political, military, diplomatic, and personal - that shape the disaster, Villa casts new light on why it was executed when it was known to court failure, and who was responsible. This book contains revealing studies of Britain's chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force who - in the midst of a war that seemed on the way to being lost - acquiesced in the ill-fated raid, and of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, whose responsibility of Dieppe becomes clear as in no other study to date.".