Operation Menace: The Dakar Expedition and the Dudley North Affair

Continuing on from Arthur Marder's previous book,From the Dardanelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in Peace 1915-1940 this next volume investigates the Allied expedition of September that year, with De Gaulle present, which unsuccessfully attempted to break the French at Dakar away from the Vichy Government. A pet operation of Prime Minister Churchill, the operation was undertaken against all advice, and it turned out to be a fiasco. In the author's words, "Menace exemplified, in its genesis, planning, and execution, all that can go wrong in warfare; an operation fouled up by unforeseen contingencies, the accidents of war, and human error, and against a background of undue political interference, inadequate planning, and half-baked co-operation between Allies." Using Admiralty and Cabinet papers, as well as private sources of information, Marder weaves a skilled course through all the complex material to produce a masterly case-study of how an operation is mounted and how it can go disastrously wrong. It is a classic, tragicomic illustration of the fog of war.