During six weeks in 1940, Hitler's blitzkrieg shattered the redoubtable Maginot Line and, shortly thereafter, the French army. No historian has written a more definitive chronicle of that disaster than Alistair Horne, or one so emotionally gripping. Moving with cinematic swiftness from the battlefield to the Reichstag and the Palais de l'...lys?e, To Lose a Battle overspills the confines of traditional military history to become a portrait of the French national soul in its darkest night.