Churchill at War (2024) s01e01 Episode Script

I shall attempt to recount
the story of the coming upon mankind
of the worst tragedy
in its tumultuous history.
Prime Minister!
Sir, what are you doing?
When the shadows lengthened,
when darkness seemed to be falling,
it was Churchill who said no.
Evil would not prevail.
Churchill's one of
the dominant figures of the 20th century.
He's a central part in the biggest,
bloodiest war in human history.
When big countries think they can invade
and take over smaller countries
Superpowers with different visions
of how they should operate in the world
Churchill believed in freedom,
free speech, democracy.
Those ideals are not uncontested today,
far from it.
We are guardians of our country
in an age when her life is at stake.
He is a warrior first,
but then he's also this poet.
Hitler made you feel
that he could do anything.
Churchill made you feel
that you were capable of doing anything.
We shall never cease
to persevere against them
until they have been taught a lesson
which they and the world
will never forget.
Churchill said this is a threat unlike any
we've faced in the last thousand years
Sieg heil!
and Britain had to do
everything it could to destroy it.
All of our democracy
was just hanging by a thread.
He comes to seem as sort of an oracle.
I am here today
because he stood up against fascism.
The establishment
thought he was a warmonger
and that he gloried in slaughter.
We know it will be hard.
We expect it will be long.
We shall strive to resist him.
There was blood on his hands.
He was dangerous,
egotistical, opportunist, brilliant.
Churchill got a lot wrong.
But if you're gonna get one thing right,
the Second World War
is pretty high up there.
The world at times is starved
for strong leaders.
Churchill was a strong leader.
If Churchill was still around,
he would be like
an alarm clock going off again,
saying "Democracy has to be protected."
"Wake up."
Every nation expects its leader
should be like Winston Churchill
in time of crisis.
And arguably every leader since
has fallen slightly short.
In the high position I shall occupy,
it will fall to me
to save the Capital and save the Empire.
A state of war once more
exists between Great Britain and Germany.
Sieg heil!
Sieg heil!
I was deeply anxious
about the life of the people of London,
the greater part of whom stayed, slept,
and took a chance where they were.
How long would it go on?
How much more would they have to bear?
During the worst part of the Blitz,
there was 57 days
of consecutive bombing every night.
Civilian populations
were under attack in London.
Hitler wanted the British people
to be bombed into submission.
They're just savage raids
designed to reduce British morale.
It was exhausting for people.
They were unable to sleep
through the night.
There was a serious danger
that there would be demoralization.
The British people,
they are worried.
They are afraid.
They are in pretty dire straits.
I don't think it's appreciated
how close we could have come
to the catastrophe
of a Nazi-dominated Europe.
And somehow, Winston had to
keep a nation going through all of this,
to give a nation belief that victory
could be possible, survival even,
because you looked out the window
and you couldn't imagine it could be.
Churchill helped will a people
through a terrible period of time.
He wanted to see the people
of London. He wanted them to see him.
He knew that this was a battle for hearts
and minds, and he had a role to play.
There wasn't any anti-aircraft last night.
Why aren't we firing back?
We can't shoot at a target
in the dark, sir.
It's a waste of ammunition.
I don't care.
I want us to fire back every night,
no matter what.
They have to know we're fighting back.
Throughout the Blitz, Churchill projected
the image of calm determination.
He wanted that spirit to define
the British war effort.
Drink a cup of tea, get on with it.
The overwhelming response
of Londoners was to say,
"Give it back to them."
And that's what he promised he'd do.
There was a desire to
be the center of attention, if you will,
to be the man in the arena,
which is in part why he was so effective.
During these last crowded days,
my pulse had not quickened at any moment.
I took it all as it came.
I felt as if I were walking with destiny,
and that all my past life
had been but a preparation
for this hour
and for this trial.
He was destined for great things.
And he was taught that as a young man.
He was convinced from the day he was born
that he was put on Earth
as a divine instrument to save Britain,
to save the world.
As a child,
he was very conscious
that there are expectations upon him
because he was born into
the very top of British society.
His father, Randolph Churchill,
was an important Victorian politician.
And his mother, Jennie Jerome,
was born into a rich American family.
She shone for me
like the Evening Star.
I loved her dearly,
but at a distance.
His father never really thought
that he would amount to much,
and his mother
really took no notice of him at all.
She was pursuing affairs
with the Prince of Wales
and the Austrian Ambassador and so on.
It had to be lonely.
I think if you have
a dysfunctional family,
uh, the pressures have got to be double.
It is said that famous men are
usually the product of unhappy childhood.
The twinges of adversity are needed
to evoke that ruthless fixity of purpose,
without which great actions
are seldom accomplished.
Everybody believed Churchill's
father would be prime minister one day,
but he was extremely arrogant.
And when he submitted his first budget
and it was rejected,
and he wrote a letter
to the prime minister, resigning,
thinking it would never be accepted,
but it was.
He'd thrown it all away,
effectively ending his career.
Here is someone
that Churchill had idolized.
And he now watches him deteriorate.
His father's death,
when Churchill is just 20 years old,
that has a huge impact on Winston.
All my dreams
of comradeship with him,
of entering Parliament at his side
and in his support, were ended.
The death is at one moment
this great personal tragedy,
but also a moment of liberation.
His father's death
allowed him to have the space
to be a great man himself.
There remained for me
only to pursue his aims
and vindicate his memory.
He wanted to seek approval.
He wanted to be loved and admired.
I think that's a powerful
psychological driver of behavior.
He wants to make his name.
He wants to win acclaim.
He wants to do that
the way aristocrats always have,
and that's on the battlefield.
So Churchill manages to get
himself assigned to a cavalry regiment.
Good God, Winston,
you're riding that gray into battle?
As you see.
You might as well
paint a target on your chest.
They'll spot you a mile away.
I play for high stakes.
Winston Churchill rode a gray,
a white horse,
which was essentially
to draw attention to himself.
His fellow soldiers thought
it was an insane risk to take.
Nothing in life is so exhilarating
as to be shot at without result.
Churchill killed a number of men.
You can tell that he's exhilarated by it.
But he also has
a tremendous respect for it.
It is all chance or destiny.
And our wayward footsteps are best planted
without too much calculation.
Churchill was
a journalist while he was a soldier
because he's an extraordinary writer,
and he saw it
as his glittering gateway to distinction.
The idea of having someone
who is in uniform
and a journalist simultaneously
just doesn't compute
in today's day and age.
He is a warrior first,
so he understands war.
But then he's also this poet
who is able to translate that
to the public.
But as a military officer,
he would've been incredibly unlikable.
He's going to go to the combat zone
so that he can write about it,
make all kinds of money personally,
and become a name in the process.
I think, as a fellow peer,
you would hate Winston Churchill.
Churchill would have been
very comfortable in this world
of mass media, of selling yourself,
of spinning a great yarn,
trying to get likes and subscribers
on social media platforms.
Churchill seemed
to have this unique capacity
to go to the right location
at the pivotal moment.
I was eager for trouble.
There was not an instant to lose.
The Boer War is a fight
between the British Empire
and the Dutch Boer republics,
which are seeking independence.
Churchill goes looking for a way
of further raising his profile,
so he takes an expedition towards
the front line in an armored train.
And they're ambushed by the Boers.
The train is derailed.
They're coming under heavy fire.
Churchill's 24 years old,
and he immediately takes over.
You see that Churchillian will
and that desire to be at the center
of things, come to the front.
And the people who survived it credited
Churchill with saving their lives.
But Churchill wasn't so lucky.
Churchill was captured and sent
to a prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria.
His whole nature revolted against the idea
that somebody as vigorous as him
could be wasting vital weeks and months
and possibly years in prison.
And he immediately
set about trying to escape.
One night, he realizes
that the guards are preoccupied.
And he can quickly scale the fence
and get out.
The Boers, they started
searching everywhere for him.
And if they found him,
they very likely would have killed him.
So he decides to jump on a train,
hoping that it's going
in the right direction.
And despite not being able
to speak a word of Dutch,
he manages to make his way to safety
in what is now Mozambique,
which then allows him
to write up his adventures.
And that really goes stratospheric.
He was a hero.
When his boat came in,
there were crowds all cheering him.
He no longer had to worry
about making his name.
It had been made.
The fantastical nature of what
he actually accomplished in escaping
really helped solidify him
as a brand in Britain.
His resourcefulness,
his complete confidence,
his courage, his determination,
all those things helped him survive
his escape from the Boers
and helped him be the person
we needed him to be during World War II.
Sometimes what looks
like bad luck
may turn out to be good luck,
and vice versa.
Churchill becomes a member of
Parliament within the Conservative Party
at the age of 25.
That is far from usual for the time.
The young Churchill
was a brilliant, comet-like force.
He inspired immense loyalty,
but he also inspired a lot of eye-rolling.
Which is what brilliant young men do.
We are all worms,
but I do believe that I am glowworm.
And, of course, that puts him
at tension right from the beginning,
with certain elements
within the Conservative Party.
By 1904, he's prepared to dramatically
cross the floor at the House of Commons
and become a member
of the Liberal opposition party.
The Liberal Party aren't yet sure
whether they like him.
Many in the Conservative Party
regard him as a traitor.
Churchill was
a pragmatist as a politician.
He was not afraid to switch parties.
"Where is the wind going to take me
so that I can be in power?"
Churchill's
just becoming a Liberal minister
when he meets with Clementine Hozier.
Clementine was
a very striking young woman,
huge blue eyes.
They ended up sitting next to each other
at a dinner party.
They went straight into a conversation
about everything that was happening
in the House of Commons.
And Churchill couldn't believe
he'd finally found
a woman that shared
the same interests as he did.
And they got married a few months later.
What a comfort
and pleasure it was
to meet a girl
with so much intellectual quality
and such strong reserves
of noble sentiment.
Clementine couldn't have
a career herself in politics.
She was a woman, that wasn't allowed.
But this was a way that she could have
a real fulfilling and exciting life.
We do not live
in a world of small intrigues,
but of serious and important affairs.
Clementine was
interested in politics
and was very good at giving advice.
He didn't always take it,
but she always gave it.
One of the secrets
of a happy marriage
is to never speak to
or see
the loved one before noon.
In some ways, Winston
and Clementine do differ politically.
He's someone who is brought up
in that very male-dominated world,
and someone who, I think,
is loath to see that world disappear.
Clementine, who's a suffragist,
and Winston was
quite an old-fashioned man.
His original views were,
"We don't want women voting,
thank you very much."
"We've got enough troubles
of our own already."
At that time,
he was also Home Secretary.
He had lots and lots of
suffragettes arrested and put in prison.
Clementine was
completely loyal to him in public,
but behind closed doors,
she would take him on.
She was a sparring partner.
Once he found out they'd vote for him,
he lowered his resistance to the idea,
which is a very fine example
of realpolitik.
If we look back
on our past life,
we shall see
that one of its most usual experiences
is that we have been helped
by our mistakes
and injured
by our most sagacious decisions.
In 1914,
the beginning of the First World War,
Europe is dragged into conflict.
Both sides dug in.
It turned into a stalemate very quickly,
capturing, you know,
meters of ground, not miles.
Millions of men
living in muddy trenches.
Churchill famously said,
"There must be something else we can do
rather than send our young men
to chew barbed wire on the Western Front."
Churchill was
the First Lord of the Admiralty,
and he, amongst others,
started to look around
for a way of breaking that deadlock.
And one of his ideas was
an amphibious operation,
in an effort
to knock the Turks out of the war.
In previous wars, the Royal Navy
had just sailed up the narrows,
the Dardanelles,
that very thin stretch of water
between Europe
and what we call the Middle East today,
and the Turks have to do
what you want them to do.
On paper, it was an ideal operation.
But because the Dardanelles campaign
was run by a committee,
it didn't happen very quickly.
So they lost all element of surprise.
The Royal Navy had lost lots of ships.
The whole thing was a fiasco.
Churchill responds by thinking,
"What we need to do is
land a force on the Gallipoli peninsula
that will occupy that peninsula."
"Then the Royal Navy can sail up
and capture Istanbul."
With poor intelligence,
some uninspired leadership,
and poor communication, the whole thing
ends up being a dramatic failure.
The Allies had lost
147,000, killed or wounded.
Churchill very much
was the scapegoat.
The Press castigated him.
People yelled at him
in the streets
that there was blood on his hands,
the loss of all those lives.
It's clear how much
he loathes the loss of life
and the suffering
of ordinary people in war.
I feel like a wounded man.
I know I am hurt,
but as yet I cannot tell how badly.
They're going to evacuate.
Pull out of the Dardanelles
tail between their legs.
What will you do?
Well, I refuse to waste away in obscurity,
while my name and reputation are ruined.
Winston, what is going on?
If I can't serve my country in politics,
then I shall serve her on the battlefield.
Tomorrow I'm resigning
and rejoining my regiment.
It's what you must do.
But you mustn't get killed,
or they'll think you died on purpose.
That's not why I'm going.
But if I do die
and if there's anywhere else after
I shall be on the lookout for you.
I was ruined
for the time being in 1915,
and a supreme enterprise was cast away,
through my trying to carry out
a major and cardinal operation of war
from a subordinate position.
Men are ill-advised to try such ventures.
The First Lord of the Admiralty
resigned to become a major in the field,
Major Winston Churchill.
Imagine a member
of the cabinet leaving their role
and going and fighting on the front line.
That's what Churchill does.
He puts his money where his mouth is.
Fire!
He famously turned up
with a tin bath and his easels
and all the accoutrements
that a general needs to go to war,
champagne, whiskey,
you know, as if he actually
wasn't going to do anything.
He hadn't been
a soldier for some time.
They didn't like the idea
of a celebrity, uh, officer.
There was some hostility in his regiment
right at the beginning.
But then he took part in
some 30 expeditions into no man's land.
Churchill, famously,
whenever he came under fire,
would never take cover.
And one day one of his men said,
"Why do you do that?" He said,
'The point is, by the time you hear
the crack of the round whiz by you"
"it's gone.
So there's no point
in throwing yourself on the earth."
So soon, they see
that his words and his deeds match up,
and that he can be trusted,
and he's a legitimately good leader.
He wins them over.
My darling Clemmy
hold your head very high.
Above all, do not worry about me.
If my destiny has not
already been accomplished,
I shall be guarded surely.
This whole idea of fate,
that every little bit, including the parts
that go wrong in his life,
will prepare him to do
the job of Prime Minister.
After the First World War ended,
he had an extremely active decade.
He becomes
the Secretary of State for the Colonies,
and then Chancellor of the Exchequer.
So he becomes
one of the political big beasts.
In 1924, Churchill crosses
the floor of the House of Commons,
moving back from the Liberals
to the Conservatives.
In the context
of American politics,
it's a little bit like
somebody who's a Democrat
one day raising their hand and saying,
"I'm gonna run as a Republican
for the next election in order to win."
And doing that two times.
He was difficult to deal with,
as I understand.
He kind of irritated a lot of people.
He was quite confident of his capacities
and didn't mind telling people that.
Anyone can rat,
but it takes a certain amount
of ingenuity to re-rat.
Churchill was someone
who was willing to break with
the status quo of his own party,
over things that were
incredibly important to him.
In the 1930s,
India had wanted independence.
They were tired of British rule.
And Churchill never supported it.
I was a child
of the Victorian era,
when the realization
of the greatness of our empire
and of our duty to preserve it
was ever growing stronger.
Like many children
in the aristocracy,
Churchill was sent to boarding school,
in an institution
which was specifically designed
to build young men of the upper classes
into imperial officers and leaders,
to give them a sense
of their role as civilizing forces,
destined for racial and moral superiority.
He'd been raised to serve
the British Empire, to keep it together.
So he was a great believer
in the civilizing influence, if you like,
you know, rightly or wrongly,
of Britain and its colonial possessions.
For I feel
that the Indian danger
will raise a crisis equal in importance
to the greatest events
in the history of Great Britain.
He defies his own government.
He does not want to let
any part of the empire,
especially the jewel of the crown,
India, go.
Churchill throughout his career
fought to maintain that view of the world,
as it existed when he was a young man.
A world in which Britain was dominant,
in which the Union Flag fluttered
over territories all over the world.
Churchill hung on to imperialism
as a way to keep England great,
but the world was moving away from that.
I think
for some it's difficult to reconcile
Churchill as an advocate
for democracy and self-determination
because he believed in the British Empire.
That adds, I think,
to the problematic nature of his legacy
that we're all sort of contending with.
Because Churchill
was at loggerheads with his own party
over the future of India,
he did not have a government post.
He had no sway.
These are what famously
become known as his "wilderness years."
He's still in Parliament,
but he's on the back bench.
Nobody really wants to touch him.
He's a bit of a poisonous stone.
He's on the outs.
So it's 1932,
Churchill's out of office,
he's looking for a cause,
and he's interested in
what's happening in Germany,
and he's actually in Munich.
So you see, Herr Hanfstaengl,
the French try to form their troops
into squares, but
they are devastated
by the artillery of the Duke.
Marlborough orders the attack,
and the French center collapses.
A great victory for the Grand Alliance.
All because John Churchill,
the 1st duke of Marlborough,
was not afraid to fight.
Amazing. It must be gratifying to have
such blood running through your veins.
Perhaps I have some of those qualities
also, eh, Clemmy?
Oh, you've been touched
by many qualities, Winston.
Churchill goes out to Germany,
and that allows him to see at firsthand
the dramatic changes which are taking
place in German society at that time.
I've been regaling you
with tales of my great hero.
What about yours?
Tell me, Herr Hanfstaengl,
why is your chief, Hitler,
so violent about the Jews?
Where's the sense in being against a man
simply because of his birth?
How can any man help how he was born?
- If Herr Hitler was here, he'd tell you
- Yes, where is he?
Randolph said that you would arrange
for him to come to dinner this evening.
Oh yes.
He was meant to come tonight,
but he's very busy with the election.
Such a pity.
It seems Mr. Hitler has missed
his chance to meet Winston Churchill.
In Munich, Churchill was
supposed to have a meeting with Hitler.
And it's interesting to speculate
what would have happened
if the two of them had been able to meet
and discuss international affairs
at that point.
And in the end, Hitler stands Churchill up
because in the 1930s,
Churchill is out of office.
Hitler told Hanfstaengl there was no point
in him meeting Winston Churchill
because Churchill was a has-been
and nobody would ever hear of him again.
- Sieg heil!
- Sieg heil!
What Churchill saw
so clearly and so brilliantly
was that the Third Reich
was an existential threat
to human liberty and decency.
After the end
of the World War of 1914
emperors having been driven out
nonentities were elected.
Beneath this flimsy fabric
raged the passions
of the defeated German nation.
A gaping void was opened
in the national life of the German people.
And into that void
there strode a maniac of ferocious genius,
Sieg heil!
the repository and expression
of the most virulent hatreds
that have ever corroded the human breast
Corporal Hitler.
Sieg heil!
Adolf Hitler comes to power
by promising the German people
that Germany will be great again.
It'll be rich, it'll be powerful.
It'll be feared again as it once was.
- Sieg heil!
- Sieg heil!
The great dominant fact is that
Germany has already begun to rearm.
We see that the philosophy of bloodlust
is being inculcated into their youth
in a manner unparalleled
since the days of barbarism.
Heil!
You are flesh of our flesh
and blood of our blood
and in your youthful brain burns
the same spirit that commands us all.
Churchill views
Hitler as an incredibly disruptive force
that is going to bring conflict
back to Europe.
Which he sees as a direct challenge
to all of the values for which he stands.
I do not believe that war is imminent
or that war is inevitable.
But if we do not begin forthwith
to put ourselves
in a position of security
it will soon be
beyond our power to do so.
There is not an hour to lose.
Sit down.
The lessons Churchill drew
from the First World War is that
power matters in the world.
And if you want to stop wars
in the future,
you've got to project power,
you've got to project deterrence.
Warmonger.
People thought
he was a warmonger,
that he was only saying these things
in order to try to get back into office.
Because he'd used
such excessively dramatic language
so unnecessarily about
independence movements in the Empire,
that when he had a legitimate concern
about the rise of Hitler, for example,
it was kind of a case
of the boy who cried wolf.
Adolf Hitler reoccupied
the Rhineland in 1936.
The Rhineland
had been a massive security buffer
between France and Germany.
German troops
move back into their peacetime garrisons
in the unprotected zone.
Heil Hitler!
Heil Hitler!
When Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland,
Churchill saw that,
and it set alarm bells ringing.
But Britain and France didn't do anything.
No one wanted to be told in the 1930s
that another war was coming.
Remember how profound the pacifism,
the anti-war feeling, was at the time,
given the horrors of the First World War.
For all the leaders,
they feel utterly responsible
to not let that happen again.
Except Churchill,
to his credit, was one of the voices
who was really interrogating
that perspective and calling it wrong.
For five years,
I have talked to the House
on these matters.
Not with very great success.
I have watched this famous island
descending incontinently, fecklessly,
the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.
FREEDOM - PEACE
Adolf Hitler,
as Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor.
The guardian of the crown of the realm.
Sieg heil!
Sieg heil!
In 1938,
Adolf Hitler will annex Austria.
Hitler kept getting his way.
The Brits and French kept backing down.
He thought they'd keep backing down.
Many of
the British politicians thought
that by holding off,
they were preserving peace.
Instead, Britain's policy
of appeasement signaled to Hitler
that the international community
would not oppose his expansionism.
Sieg heil!
Sieg heil!
In Britain during that time,
you have a nominally national government,
dominated by the Conservative Party,
and led by Neville Chamberlain
as Prime Minister.
Neville Chamberlain
had known Churchill,
you know, all their political lives,
but when Churchill
was warning about Hitler,
Chamberlain didn't listen to him.
The more you are prepared,
and the better
you are known to be prepared,
the greater is the chance
of staving off war
and saving Europe
from the catastrophe which menaces it.
How much longer
must the obvious remedies be denied?
I felt a sensation of despair.
To be so entirely convinced in a matter
of life and death to one's country,
and not to be able to make Parliament
and the nation heed the warning,
or bow to the proof by taking action,
was an experience most painful.
After Britain and France
failed to stand up to Hitler,
he just kept going.
And he turned to Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia is
an ally of England and France.
So the rest of Europe says,
"How do we appease this upstart?"
One people. One realm.
Germany, sieg heil!
The British
prime minister, Neville Chamberlain,
made the decision
to negotiate with Hitler,
who promised that the Germans
would be satisfied
with Czechoslovakia's western borderlands.
When Neville Chamberlain
came back from Munich,
he thought he had made a great deal.
We regard the agreement signed last night
as symbolic of the desire
of our two peoples
never to go to war with one another again.
So they go ahead
and give him western Czechoslovakia
with the Munich Pact.
And with that, they throw
Czechoslovakia under the bus.
They give away land
that's not even theirs.
Churchill gives a speech
about this tragedy.
It is 30 minutes of him just eviscerating
the Chamberlain government
for allowing this to happen.
This is only
the beginning of the reckoning.
This is only the first sip,
the first foretaste of a bitter cup
which will be proffered to us
year by year
unless by a supreme recovery
of martial vigor,
we arise again
and take our stand for freedom
as in the olden time.
Hitler takes notice
of Churchill's speeches and responded.
The minute another man
rises to power in England,
someone like Mr. Churchill
That minute we know it would be
the ambition of these men
to break loose yet another world war,
and do so immediately.
Churchill really
got under Hitler's skin.
He's helped by this great sense of humor.
Nazi Germany is so humane.
All they ask for is the right to live
and to be let alone
to conquer and kill the weak.
Hitler was
a feral kind of creature.
There was an intuition to him.
In Churchill, he sensed a figure
who would not roll over.
Churchill understood
there was a gathering storm,
but at some point
Britain would have to commit itself.
But Britain still
would not declare war on Germany.
We seem to be very near
the bleak choice between war and shame.
My feeling is that we shall choose shame,
and then have war thrown in a little later
on even more adverse terms
than at present.
In 1939,
Hitler broke the promises
he'd made at Munich
and marched
into the rest of Czechoslovakia.
The Munich Agreement had been a lie.
And Chamberlain had been made a fool of
by acquiescing to Hitler.
This created a great groundswell
of support for Churchill.
He had been right all along.
They come to see that those that
stood against Churchill were, in fact,
weak, lacked courage.
Churchill knew
that peace with Hitler was a lost cause
and war with Nazi Germany
was very real, very imminent.
1939, Germany will make
a pact with the Soviet Union
for the division of Poland.
It's unimaginable today. It would be like
the US and Russia becoming allies
and really collaborating on dismembering
a country that sits between them.
Poland was attacked by Germany
at dawn on September 1st.
Poland became
the straw that broke the camel's back.
The storm clouds of war
which had been gathering
the previous two, three, four, five years,
1939 is kickoff for World War II.
The fateful hour
of 11:00 has struck.
A state of war once more exists
between Great Britain and Germany.
Hitler was clearly lying all along.
Churchill comes to seem
as sort of an oracle.
People were finally recognizing
that Churchill needed to be recalled.
The Prime Minister asked me
to visit him at Downing Street.
Chamberlain offers Churchill
the job of First Lord of the Admiralty,
which was the same office that he had
at the beginning of the First World War.
This allowed the signal
to be sent to the British fleet
"Winston is back."
Churchill was thrilled by this.
At last he'd been proved right
about his warnings about Hitler,
and now he was in a position
to do something about it.
Each one hopes
that if he feeds the crocodile enough,
the crocodile will eat him last.
All of them hope that the storm will pass
before their time comes to be devoured.
But I fear
I fear greatly, the storm will not pass.
It will rage and it will roar
ever more loudly
ever more widely.
German surprise attacks
against Denmark and Norway
caught the British off-guard.
There's a major naval war,
and Britain and France are
unceremoniously expelled from Norway.
At this point,
Neville Chamberlain's policy
of appeasement is seen
as a complete and utter disaster.
All political confidence
in the government's collapsed.
The public in Britain
was angry with Chamberlain.
His closest allies
in the Cabinet recognized
that the time was up, and he had to go.
Neville Chamberlain has to resign
and find the next Prime Minister.
The problem is, of course,
becoming Prime Minister at that point
is a poisoned chalice.
You know, who-who would want the job?
That narrows it down to a choice
between the Foreign Secretary,
Lord Halifax,
a dove who supports appeasement,
and Churchill, the hawk.
So it's whether you're going to have
someone within the Commons
still trying to find
a negotiated way out of this crisis,
or whether you're going to go with
someone who is going to fight.
On the 9th of May, 1940,
four men met at Number 10.
The first was Neville Chamberlain,
the outgoing Prime Minister.
Then there was the Chief Whip,
David Margesson.
The next was Lord Halifax.
And finally, of course,
Winston Churchill himself.
There's been
an enormous amount of speculation
about exactly what was said
at that meeting.
I do not recall
the actual words used,
but this was the implication,
that the duty that would fall upon me
had, in fact, fallen upon me.
Churchill claimed
that after a long silence,
everybody agreed
that it had to be Churchill. Um
What actually happened
was the same thing that had happened
all the way through Churchill's life.
He demanded the job.
And on the evening of the 10th of May,
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister.
Winston Churchill,
the man who always believed,
even in his "wilderness years,"
that one day he would
become Prime Minister,
one day he would lead his country
He's now been given that opportunity.
The day Winston Churchill
becomes Prime Minister,
that's the day that
the Germans invade the Low Countries.
And to the rest of the world, it's scary.
The German Blitzkrieg attack,
the "Sickle-Scythe Maneuver" it's called,
just utterly crushed the Allied forces.
It's literally 125 years
since Britain has actually been threatened
by this prospect of invasion,
and that fact has become
impossible to deny.
The Nazis were coming.
The British public was quite terrified.
The British people need
a call to action to inspire people.
Churchill is trying to convince
politicians and a big chunk of the public
to stay in this war against Hitler.
The fate of Winston Churchill,
the fate of Europe,
and possibly the fate of the free world,
hang in the balance in May 1940.
I would say to the House,
as I've said to those
who've joined this government,
I have nothing to offer,
but blood,
toil,
tears,
and sweat.
We have before us
an ordeal of the most grievous kind.
We have before us many, many long months
of struggle and suffering.
You asked, "What is our policy?"
I will say,
it is to wage war,
by sea,
land,
and air,
with all our might
and with all the strength
that God can give us.
To wage war against a monstrous tyranny
never surpassed in the dark and lamentable
catalog of human crime.
That is our policy.
You ask, "What is our aim?"
I can answer in one word.
Victory.
Victory at all costs.
Victory in spite of all terror.
Victory, however long and hard
the road may be.
For without victory,
there is no survival.
All I hope
is that it is not too late.
I'm very much afraid it is.