Paddy Ashdown

From best-selling author of A Brilliant Little Operation and winner of the British Army Military History prize comes the long neglected D-Day story of the Resistance uprising and subsequent massacre on the Vercors massif – the largest action by the French Resistance during the Second World War.

This meticulously researched book from Paddy Ashdown recounts the story of three separate groups of plotters during the Second World War – one military, one political, one intellectual – as they made plans on and around the mountainous plateau near Grenoble – the Vercors. The aims of the groups were the same: to hasten the departure of the German occupiers in France and to restore the pride of their country after its fall. It was to prove not only the largest Resistance action of the entire war but also, in the severity of the German response, the most brutal crushing of resistance forces in Western Europe.

Long overlooked by English language histories, this magnificent book sets the story in the context of D-Day, the muddle of politics and many misjudgements of D-Day planners in both London and Algiers, and – most importantly – it gives voice to the many Maquisard fighters who fought to gain a voice in their country’s future.