Defending the Rock, by Nicholas Rankin

Defending the Rock, How Gibraltar defeated Hitler
Nicholas Rankin

Hardback with dust jacket in as new condition.

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.

660 pages
160 mm x 240 mm (6.25 in x 09.5 in)
Central section of B&W photographs
2017 Faber & Faber, London