It is amazing that Churchill was a voice in the wilderness for so long, and that even after Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia and invasion of Poland, Chamberlain and Halifax still believed you could still negotiate with such an evil and unbalanced megalomaniac. Both men believed that it was possible to do a deal with Hitler, even though many of the horrors of his totalitarian regime had been clearly evident since his ascent to power in 1933 – the annexation of independent European territories, the menacing party rallies, the aggressive military parades, the brutal storm troopers, the racial persecution, and the concentration camps.

Now he had taken over as Prime Minister, his determination to combat Hitler was opposed by two of his most senior colleagues –the PM he replaced, Neville Chamberlain, and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. He had always attracted much criticism - a lot of it from his own party. He had only been in the job since May 10th and his position was far from secure. The five days took place from the morning of Friday 24th May until the evening of Tuesday 28th May – during which Winston Churchill and his six strong War Cabinet discussed the possibility of either negotiating a peace with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler or to continue the war with Germany – even though the British army was now encircled at Dunkirk in northern France and the Germans seemed poised to invade the British Isles, only a few miles away across the English Channel.Ĭhurchill, who had warned against the increasing menace of Nazi Germany throughout the 30’s, was now Prime Minister. They certainly all contributed, but in ‘Five Days In London May 1940’, John Lukacs suggests that the most crucial of all took place before any of them – namely Britain’s determination to continue the fight against Nazi Germany in May 1940 – when Hitler had already invaded Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway, and France was also about to fall to ‘a monstrous tyranny’, as Churchill described Hitler’s regime in Germany. Some of the crucial factors which led to an allied victory in World War II included Hitler’s ill advised invasion of Russia in 1941, Japan’s reckless Some of the crucial factors which led to an allied victory in World War II included Hitler’s ill advised invasion of Russia in 1941, Japan’s reckless decision to take on America in the same year, and the unsound tactics of the Luftwaffe in the air war over Britain in the Summer of 1940.

Five days in london may 1940