A work dealing with the battle at Mers-el-Kebir between the French and British Navies. Mr. Tute has put together a clear account of the serious blow to the French Navy. While this action was a clear indication that the British and their empire would continue to fight the Germans in 1940, the butcher's bill was high, and sadly mirrored similar actions that the Royal navy had carried out in the struggle against Napoleon, notably at Copenhagen in 1801. This is a useful addition to the literature on the relations of Vichy France with the Allies. ( )

My initial reaction to this book was rather positive. It's not as though a great deal has been written about the British assault on the French squadron at Mers-el-Kebir in the wake of the German victory of 1940, at least in English, and Tute certainly seemed to cover all his bases; going so far as to gain the assistance of the French admiral who had the misfortune to be in command that day. What doesn't hack it is when Tute is unwilling to pass judgement on what this whole incident meant in the end, and even when I was a much younger man I would have seen this as a cop-out; never mind that we're now as far as from the publishing of this book as the book was from the events described within. This seems like a tacit critique of Churchill at a time when the man's wartime reputation was still sacrosanct. I may have to hunt down Tute's "Reluctant Enemies," his relatively recent (1990) account of Anglo-French antagonism in World War II to see if he became less mealy-mouthed about passing judgement as time went by.

Apart from that, what I'd really like to have seen more of is what this meant to the French junior officers and enlisted men. Were they of one mind with their commanders? Would they have preferred to carry on the fight? Maybe such a book exists in French, but I haven't seen it in English yet, and if it hasn't been done it's probably a decade or so too late to be assembled. ( )