The Reluctant Enemies

This book tells for the first time the full story of one of the most tragic, yet one of the least remembered conflicts of the Second World War. After the fall of France, Britain was effectively at war with her great European ally, beside whom she had until very recently been fighting and with whom she still - she believed - shared a common purpose. This book illuminates the dilemma in which the ministers of the Vichy French government found themselves; duty impelled their loyalty to a sham government, common sense told them - or should have told them - otherwise. So one of its themes is the desperate no-man's-land between necessary collaboration and true betrayal, a policy which some members of the Vichy governments, believing as they did that the allies were doomed, did not hesitate to follow. Warren Tute entered the Navy in 1932 and served on HMS Ajax and on the staffs of General Eisenhower and Lord Mountbatten, and who was present at some of the events which he describes in this book. The narrative is peopled with sketches of the main participants, and communicates the authentic flavour of the tragic confrontation of erstwhile allies.
Was it all the result of an accidental arrangement of historical circumstances? Or was it, in some mysterious way, a final conflict with our historic enemy across the Channel, the last armed clash between the Gallic and the Anglo-Saxon temperaments? Everyone who reads this book will be able to make up his or her own mind, and will leave it with a reinforced impression of the responsibilities and decisions - decisions to which there may be no right answers - which are forced on individuals in time of war.