Vancouver Province
for May 12, 2000

It really was so very long ago. May 1945 when the Second World War in Europe ended. And without one man, it would have ended differently.

That’s a mighty bold statement to make - how can one possibly say that an epochal event like a world war depended upon one man?

Because it did. But to see how and why it did one must go back another five years yet to the 24^th through to the 28^th of May 1940.

A little background first. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill – the last name was properly hyphenated for he was a Spencer, of Princess Diana’s family too – had warned about Hitler when in 1930, back from a trip to Germany to research his biography of his ancestor, the great Duke of Wellington, he saw the Brown Shirts roaming the streets looking for Jews to bait. And he warned his countrymen and he warned them again and again.

When Neville Chamberlain made a deal with Hitler at Munich in the fall of 1938 he was hailed a hero by all – except Churchill who said it was an "unmitigated defeat". "Do not", he said in the Commons when they tried to shout him down "suppose that this is the end. 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 moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time." That was the 5^th of October 1938.

By March the next year the much maligned Churchill, whom the London Times pilloried and in whose constituency there was a move to delist him, was utterly vindicated as Hitler, in breach of the Munich agreement, marched into Prague. By September 1939 Britain was at war, with Churchill back as First Lord of the Admiralty. By May 10, 1940, with the Wermacht pouring into France and the Lowlands almost unopposed, Britain, and as it turned out the world, turned to Winston Churchill. But it was those five days in May 1940 – the 24^th-28^th that told the story. And it’s brilliantly told by John Lukacs in Five Days in London now a best seller.

The British Expeditionary Force was trapped at Dunkirk. The Peace Party, led by Lord Halifax (who was preferred by many including the King to replace Chamberlain when Churchill got the premiership on May 10^th) saw continuing the war as folly. France was finished. The BEF, being evacuated from Dunkirk by everything that floated from small yachts to warships had to leave all its equipment behind. The Royal Air Force and the Navy were all that was left and surely that would never be enough, especially if the French fleet fell into Nazi hands. It was time to make peace and let Hitler turn on the real foe, Russia with whom Hitler had made a devil’s pact nine months before.

Churchill, the only man who understood that Hitler was a one off – a mad genius with whom no bargain could safely be made – saw clearly the defeat of Russia as being an even bigger catastrophe than the fall of France even though it would have meant the end of communism.

But the cabinet was divided. And Churchill was not a dictator – he was simply the first amongst equals who could be turfed out in a moment.

He prevailed, ironically because Chamberlain, so reviled for his part in Munich, had seen for himself that Churchill had been right all along. Dying of cancer, Chamberlain swung the Conservative Party, much less enthusiastic about Churchill than Labour, behind the Prime Minister.

Yet it surely was hopeless. The army was without equipment. The Wermacht had slaughtered all that faced them. The Luftwaffe vastly out manned the Royal Air Force. Only pluck and luck could save the western world – it was that serious.

Could one man make the difference?

In fact he did. Against all the odds Churchill rallied the world. After reciting all the perils he said this – "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that it the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand year, men will still say. ‘This was their finest hour.’"

They did; and it was. And without one man, Churchill, it wouldn’t have been.

Of that there can be no question.