Five Days In London
by John Lukacs
24 through 28 May, 1940 were the critical days when Britain might have fallen down the slippery slope, the m0ment when Hitler might have won. On the 24th, the British Army was encircled at Dunkirk and Churchill’s ten-day-old Ministry was tottering. Five days later, it was not yet the beginning of the end, but Hitler had not won and now he never would.
After Trump, the danger of collaboration is very much in the air. Plenty of people said, in 1938, that things might turn out tolerably. Plenty of people said, in 1939, that sensible German ministers would eventually set things right. Plenty of people said in 1940 that things would be fine, until the same people said that all was lost.