After firing The 1940s and 1950s

Abstract

The course of the Second World War was such that British troops were involved in campaigns in the Far East, in Africa, and in Italy as well as just across the British Channel. Indeed the land operations across the Channel were restricted to the few first desperate months of failure to resist the German advance into France, which culminated in the surrender of France in 1940 and the swift evacuation of British troops from the ports and beaches, and to the massive landings of invasion forces in Normandy four years later for the steady advance into Germany that brought about Hitler’s defeat. In the interim the Second World War was a matter of bombing and counter-bombing from the air, of service in far-off fields, and of convoy-running over seas mined and infested with submarines. Sir Winston Churchill assumed a personal authority as Prime Minister from 1940 which enabled him, with his gift of rhetoric, to give passing events the character of movements in a shapely drama whose issue was that of civilisation’s survival. As the dismal withdrawal from France in 1940 gave place to the air Battle of Britain by day and the bombings of our cities by night, there was not much to sustain public morale except Churchill’s stirring phrases about what was owed to the few by the many and the privilege of serving the nation in its finest hour.