5 Days in London – John Lukacs

The five days in question are in May 1940, and London could have been reduced to Whitehall. Lukacs’ argument is that Britain could easily have sued for peace at this juncture and Hitler would have accepted, leaving Europe overwhelmed by the Nazi forces and surely eventuating in the fall of the UK itself. This is not the moment when we won the war, but the moment we didn’t lose it.

Lucky Churchill was around to forcefully argue for a continuation of the fighting, in the face of his own Foreign Minister, the well-meaning but hopelessly misguided Halifax. Chamberlain was effectively the decisive swing voter.

I’m very far from being a historian, but I found the argument both convincing and chilling.