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The Grand Prix Saboteurs |
Author: Joe Saward
Published: 2006-12-31 |
List price: $24.99
Our price: $22.49
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As of: December 01st, 2008 02:23:04 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 An engrossing read, despite need of reediting.
I found this to be an engrossing read, in spite of the need of some reediting tweaks. As this book has only recently come out, after eighteen years or exhaustive research, it is understandable that much was missed in rushing it to print and surely will be cleaned up in subsequent reprints.
Regardless of editing flaws, and despite reading at times much like a numbingly detailed report and others almost like the work of Ken Follett, it remains always a most fascinating read. This book provides a unique insight into the British support in the recruitment and training of agents, as well as an examination of the activities and intrigues within the French resistance movement.
IMHO, this book should be included in every high school library, given the historical significance of the French resistance and the unique, often quite wealthy, individuals who paid the ultimate sacrifice for love of country.
 In Depth Read of resistance Networks
I found this book especially engrossing because it combines two things I am very fond of - history and motorsports. However, the fact that Williams and Benoist are Grand Prix drivers is more of an interesting sidebar; the focus is on their actions during World War II. During the war, Williams was sent to France to help set up resistance networks to foil Nazi plans and help the Allies win the war. Sometime these efforts were disjointed and other times successful. Nonetheless, they persist until they are caught and start all over.
The book is excellently researched and very thorough. The details of Williams and Benoist lives and actions during the war are well documented and I felt genuine sympathy for them near the end. The book is a great read for someone who wants to read about a side of World War II that isn't often told.
5 Star Topic Hampered by 3 Star Editing
Joe Saward has done a great job of researching this fascinating topic area and it shows. This book is filled with details and information about the various people, towns, and events that surrounded these WWII secret operations. Unfortunately these details along with some questionable editing decisions conspire to make this 5-star topic into a 4-star book.
The book is written much like a report, which is fine. But beware that it is a dense report full of names and locations, some of which are critical to remember and others not as much. I don't feel that the author did a good job making the distinction clear to the reader. To further confuse the reader the author alternates how he refers to the different characters - first name, last name, code name, under-cover name, etc... This would have been fine if there were just a handful of characters, but in this story there are dozens upon dozens of names. Some of the detail seems superfluous, as if the author has done a "brain dump" of everything he knows on the topic, without always stopping to think if it is relevant information for the reader to know. I also felt the writing could have used another round of review by the editor. I found myself stumbling over run-on sentences and awkward phrases (e.g., "John had had a bad day...") which are acceptable in day-to-day speaking, but do not read well. When I finished reading the book the other day I was left thinking to myself how much better the book could have been if only some of these flaws had been addressed.
Criticisms aside this is a truly fascinating topic area - pre-WWII Grand Prix champs turn secret spies. The vast majority of the book (I'd guess 75%+) is devoted to the spy activities of the drivers, but the author does a good job of describing their racing careers.
If you are a combined racing/history buff then I believe this book is worth a read.
 More history than story.
Is it a "bad" book? Not at all. The research and insight poured into this book is evident from start to finish. I was expecting more about the personal stories about these ex-racers and their wartime exploits, though. What Joe Saward gives us is more of a historical recounting of how these networks evolved and operated during the war. This is a book you will enjoy as a history buff, especially if you like to read about covert operations in WWII. It is not a light read though, and for me was not particularly entertaining to read.
What Price Glory?
Many years ago, as a post-graduate student at Bedford College, University of London, I often had lunch or tea with the History faculty and frequently heard the professor of French history, N. M. Sutherland, speak about a very clever student named "Joe" and learned that he was interested in motor racing. His full name is Joe Saward and his latest book brings together both interests.
The focus of the book is on "Williams", a Grand Prix driver of some significance in the 1920s, who became involved through the Special Operations Executive in Resistance activities in France during WW2 with the emphasis on his wartime activity and also upon those involved in the networks to which he belonged or with whom he worked. This book is thus much more of a history of Resistance activity than it is a book about motor racing, though not the worse for that, and it contributes to motor racing by showing that drivers and racing people are not one-dimensional but have lives that extend beyond racing, and some of them nobly so.
To me the most dispiriting aspect of Saward's very detailed account is how easily the networks were penetrated by the Gestapo and its French collaborators and also how totally inadequate security measures were among the Resistance/SOE networks. For example, quite inexcusably, radio operators were shared between networks thus insuring that when an operator was captured, as eventually almost always happened, and interrogated, more than one network would be eliminated in a single stroke. Saward also recounts how one Resistance member travelled with a written list of 200 agents on his person! He was caught by the Gestapo who then set about arresting all those on the list. As a result of these security blunders many former racing people were caught and killed by the Germans. All were brave and are to be admired, but I could not help concluding that much of what they undertook, pre-D-day, was of questionable value, especially the sabotage actions, given what it cost in lives. The acquisition of intelligence might have had some value, and would have been a better objective, but little was passed back to London that was of great significance. Saward does not really question, or question deeply enough, I think, whether what was undertaken was really worthwhile or worth the cost in human lives. In reading the book I could not find anything in the way of action that was significant; Europe was not set alight, as Churchill dreamed, but only a few small sparks set off. It seemed to me that the most important accomplishment of those involved in the SOE networks was not what they attempted in terms of sabotage, but that their commitment was testimony that not all of France would meekly give in to the Nazi/Vichy degradation. Get the book and see if you agree.
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