Having not read anything substantial about the Dieppe Raid since Brian Villa's contentious book back in the day, I was in the mood to check out some new scholarship on the topic. What most impressed me with this book is how the author dissects with great precision the train of bad decisions that created the disaster. While there is no shortage of blame to go around (with the sense being that Alan Brooke, Crerar & Monty have all probably escaped their share), the basic problem is that once Mountbatten's raiding reached a certain scale it was inevitable that the British Army high command would want the lion's share of the action. Mountbatten's saving grace is that he appreciated that he was undertaking high risk/low reward operations almost for their own sake, a point that the Army generals really didn't seem to comprehend. This led to the creation of a set-piece operation which depended on clockwork precision and surprise, and which fell apart almost immediately on contact with the enemy; the poor damn Canadians then lacking the support firepower to redeem the situation at the point of attack. In the end, Zuehlke is of the opinion that it in no way denigrates Canadian valor to conclude that this operation should never have been mounted in the first place. ( )

Best history of the battle that I've read by far. Well written, well researched, balanced. ( )