Defending the Rock: How Gibraltar Defeated Hitler

Rankin, Nicholas

ISBN 10: 0571307701 / ISBN 13: 9780571307708

Published by London : Faber and Faber Limited, 2017

About this Item

Original gilt lettered burgundy boards, gilt lettered spine, dust jacket, map on endpapers, illustrated with some photographs in b/w, map, 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 375399-BY19

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Defending the Rock: How Gibraltar Defeated Hitler
• Publisher: London : Faber and Faber Limited
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571307701
• ISBN 13: 9780571307708
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

Two months before he shot himself, Adolf Hitler saw where it had all gone wrong. By failing to seize Gibraltar in the summer of 1940, he lost the war.
The Rock of Gibraltar, a pillar of British sea-power since 1704, looked formidable but was extraordinarily vulnerable. Though menaced on all sides by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Vichy France and Francoist Spain, every day Gibraltar had to let thousands of people cross its frontier to work. Among them came spies and saboteurs, eager to blow up its 25 miles of secret tunnels. In 1942, Gibraltar became US General Eisenhower’s HQ for the invasion of North Africa, the campaign that led to Allied victory in the Mediterranean.
Nicholas Rankin’s revelatory new book, whose cast of characters includes Haile Selassie, Anthony Burgess and General Sikorski, sets Gibraltar in the wider context of the struggle against fascism, from Abyssinia through the Spanish Civil War. It also chronicles the end of empire and the rise to independence of the Gibraltarian people.

About the Author

Nicholas Rankin worked for 20 years for the BBC World Service, winning two UN awards and becoming Chief Producer. His previous books include biographies of Robert Louis Stevenson and the war-correspondent George Steer, Churchill's Wizards, a study of camouflage, deception and black propaganda in both world wars, and Ian Fleming's Commandos, the history of a WW2 naval intelligence unit. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London and Kent.