Non-fiction Audiobook Review: Last Hope Island

Another of my random history reads.

 

 

Title: Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War
Author: 
Lynne Olson. Read by Arthur Morey & Kimberly Farr
Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2017, 19 hours. Original hardback by Random House, 2017, 526 pages.
Source: Library


Publisher’s Blurb (via Overdrive): 


A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days
When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces of six occupied nations who escaped there to continue the fight. So, too, did General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed representative of free France.    

As the only European democracy still holding out against Hitler, Britain became known to occupied countries as “Last Hope Island.” Getting there, one young emigré declared, was “like getting to heaven.”
In this epic, character-driven narrative, acclaimed historian Lynne Olson takes us back to those perilous days when the British and their European guests joined forces to combat the mightiest military force in history. Here we meet the courageous King Haakon of Norway, whose distinctive “H7” monogram became a symbol of his country’s resistance to Nazi rule, and his fiery Dutch counterpart, Queen Wilhelmina, whose antifascist radio broadcasts rallied the spirits of her defeated people. Here, too, is the Earl of Suffolk, a swashbuckling British aristocrat whose rescue of two nuclear physicists from France helped make the Manhattan Project possible.

Last Hope Island also recounts some of the Europeans’ heretofore unsung exploits that helped tilt the balance against the Axis: the crucial efforts of Polish pilots during the Battle of Britain; the vital role played by French and Polish code breakers in cracking the Germans’ reputedly indecipherable Enigma code; and the flood of top-secret intelligence about German operations—gathered by spies throughout occupied Europe—that helped ensure the success of the 1944 Allied invasion.  

A fascinating companion to Citizens of London, Olson’s bestselling chronicle of the Anglo-American alliance, Last Hope Island recalls with vivid humanity that brief moment in time when the peoples of Europe stood together in their effort to roll back the tide of conquest and restore order to a broken continent. 

My Review:
I think everything in the blurb is accurate as far as it goes--except perhaps the final sentence. As you'd expect from a book that takes 19 hours to read, there is a LOT in here, and I did find the stories of those small European countries we seldom hear about well worth reading. The book took me a long time to get through; unlike some of the history I've picked up I couldn't listen for too long at a stretch. That wasn't due to any fault in the writing, and only a little to a narrative style that sometimes irritated me with odd pauses.

No, the real problem was reading the stuff I didn't want to hear. The parts where the new British secret ops department screwed up badly, over and over--incompetence that led to untold deaths of their agents and far more among the Dutch and French resistance. Or the parts where Britain and especially the US repeatedly threw those same countries, and especially the Eastern European countries, under the bus in the interests of expediency.

That's why I question the honesty of that last sentence in the blurb. Because if there was one thing I took away from Olson's epic work it was that especially once the US entered the war, no one cared enough about Holland, Belgium, or Norway to stand together with them, and they were often completely left out of the planning. Then at Yalta (as we all know), Roosevelt (over Churchill's ineffectual protests) gave Poland and Czechoslovakia to the Soviets with a callous indifference for which we are still paying.

It's good that we are finally hearing about those contributions made by the occupied nations, as mentioned in the 3rd paragraph of the blurb. It's also painful to realize that they were ignored at the time in a manner both calculated and offensive.

My Recommendation:
There's important history here. I can't honestly say I liked the book, but I think we are overdue for a little correction of especially our American view of ourselves as the saviors of the world.

FTC Disclosure: I checked Last Hope Island out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  


 

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2024
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