Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain's Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940
John Kelly
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 1476727988
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“WWII scholar John Kelly triumphs again” (Vanity Fair) in this remarkably vivid account of a key moment in Western history: The critical six months in 1940 when Winston Churchill debated whether England should fight Nazi Germany—and then decided to “never surrender.”
London in April, 1940, is a place of great fear and conflict. The Germans have taken Poland, France, Holland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia. The Nazi war machine now menaces Britain, even as America remains uncommitted to providing military aid. Should Britain negotiate with Germany? The members of the War Cabinet bicker, yell, and are divided. Churchill, leading the faction to fight, and Lord Halifax, cautioning that prudence is the way to survive, attempt to usurp one another by any means possible. In Never Surrender, we feel we are alongside these complex and imperfect men, determining the fate of the British Empire, and perhaps, the world.
Drawing on the War Cabinet papers, other government documents, private diaries, newspaper accounts, and memoirs, historian John Kelly tells the story of the summer of 1940. Kelly takes readers from the battlefield to Parliament, to the government ministries, to the British high command, to the desperate Anglo-French conference in Paris and London, to the American embassy in London, and to life with the ordinary Britons. We see Churchill seize the historical moment and ultimately inspire his government, military, and people to fight. Kelly brings to life one of the most heroic moments of the twentieth century and intimately portrays some of its largest players—Churchill, Lord Halifax, Hitler, FDR, Joe Kennedy, and others. Never Surrender is a fabulous, grand narrative of a crucial period in World War II and the men and women who shaped it. “For lovers of minute-by-minute history, it’s a feast” (Huffington Post).
Les Anormaux: Les meurtres par euthanasie en Allemagne (1939-1945)
Unpatriotic History of the Second World War
France and Flanders and been slaughtered. There was no other word for it; but the truth was too unbearable, so as the casualty lists mounted, the human need to find meaning in death, especially young death, had, with some help from the British government, turned the great carnage into the “Great Sacrifice.” Posters of a dead Tommy lying at the foot of the crucified Christ abounded, and rare was the school assembly that did not include a recitation of Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Soldier”: If I
House chanted. Chamberlain tried to talk through the taunts, which only made the taunters shout louder. The Speaker banged his gavel again: “Honorable Members are anxious to hear the prime minister.” No one believed that. “Missed the bus! Missed the bus! Missed the bus!” “I will not allow it!” The Speaker banged his gavel a third time. By the time Chamberlain reached the tenth paragraph of his speech, the Egyptian ambassador had fallen asleep, Henry Channon was close to tears, and the
to Never Again. The British public, said one senior politician, would be “strongly suspicious of any preparations made in peacetime with a view to large-scale military commitments on the Continent.” In addition the dominions, which had contributed so much to the British war effort in 1914–18, were either growing isolationist—Canada and South Africa—or becoming burdens themselves. Australia and New Zealand looked to Britain for protection against Japan. Finally, there was the empire: the work of
divisions). Facts must be faced, Weygand told the committee: All chance of victory or even of survival has passed. Now France fights only for reputation. It would be the duty of the army “to fight until the [Somme–Aisne] line [is] completely broken in order to save our honor.” Should the national government retreat to the provinces if the Germans drive on Paris? Reynaud asked. No, said Weygand, who had no idea he had just stepped into a trap. The answer confirmed Reynaud’s suspicion that the
activity along the Norwegian coast had increased notably, and the Kriegsmarine was collecting motorboats in Hamburg, Bremen, and other German port towns. When Pound said the Germans had also left one line of approach to the coast open when they mined the coastal waters of southern England, Churchill became agitated: “We should not hesitate to contaminate our beaches with gas if this course was to our advantage. . . . We have the right to do what we want with our territory.” Pound sounded less
