Andre Koenig Koenig itibaren Ancuyá, Ancuya, Nariño, Colombia
"Of course, whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall fight on" said Winston Churchill, 28 May 1940. Well, of course, we know that is what happened. But it may not have been what happened if Churchill had not persevered in his insistence that any other path would lead to disaster. Lukacs recounts, from the perspective of 1999, the deliberations of the War Cabinet from Friday, 24 May 1940, through Tuesday, 28 May 1940. Churchill had been prime minister for only two weeks. The German army was quickly vanquishing the French, Belgians and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Italy was expected to enter the war as a German ally very soon. France might fall and reach a separate peace with Germany--it did. The BEF might be annihilated or captured at Dunkirk--it was not. Lord Halifax, a powerful member of the War Cabinet, wanted to negotiate with the Germans, using Mussolini as mediator. Churchill's position as PM was precarious enough that he could not immediately defy Halifax. Lukacs chronicles the War Cabinet discussions, the newspaper coverage of the war, the morale of the British people and the likely thoughts of Hitler during these crucial days. It is surprising to learn that Hitler never came closer to winning World War II, and winning it on his terms, than he did during these five days. If Halifax and the other defeatists had overcome Churchill's resolve, Hitler would have been the acknowledged ruler of all of Western Europe. Churchill's accomplishment was huge. Britain could not win the war by itself; it needed the help of the United States and Soviet Union to defeat National Socialism, "the greatest threat to Western Civilization," even greater than Communism, of the twentieth century. However, Britain and Churchill could have lost the war during May 1940 if they had chosen a negotiated peace with Hitler. Here are the final lines of the book: "At best, civilization may survive, at least in some small part due to Churchill in 1940. At worst, he helped to give us--especially those of us who are no longer young but who were young then--fifty years. Fifty years before the rise of new kinds of barbarism not incarnated by the armed might of Germans or Russians, before the clouds of a new Dark Age may darken the lives of our children and grandchildren. Fifty years! Perhaps that was enough."