Churchill at War (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

Sieg Heil!
Sieg Heil!
It took Armageddon
to make me Prime Minister.
Now I am determined that power shall be
in no other hands but my own.
You lads
got everything you need?
Good.
What's this?
They call them tommy guns, sir.
Thompson machine guns.
The Americans included some
in their shipment of rifles.
Same as in their gangster movies.
We'll be ready for the Huns now,
I dare say.
Yes, Prime Minister.
Those we don't drown in the sea,
we'll hit with one of these, eh, Pug?
May I?
Ooh.
- How many of these arrived?
- Just a few hundred, sir.
See to it that some of them
are at each coastal defense site.
Let the people
see we are armed to the teeth.
I'll make sure of it,
Prime Minister.
Sir?
The Germans had struck
their long-awaited blow.
The invasion of the Low Countries
and France had begun.
Churchill's got
the most challenging entrée
of any leader in modern history.
He has got
a military catastrophe unfolding.
The day Churchill becomes Prime Minister,
that's the day that,
now the crisis begins.
The invasion of the Low Countries,
Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg, and France,
begins on the 10th of May.
So right away, he's on the spot.
A slowly gathered, long
pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us.
Four or five millions of men
met each other in the first shock
of the most merciless of all the wars
of which record has been kept.
One of the real problems with leadership
is when you're full of self-pity.
You know, "Why me? How come this couldn't
have happened under somebody else?"
Churchill never seemed
to have that kind of self-pity.
When Churchill takes the stage,
in a way, it's a leader's dream.
The situation is very black and white.
Right? We are good. Hitler is bad.
We're gonna stand up to him.
Black and white.
Shoulder arms!
Churchill makes himself
not just Prime Minister,
but also Minister of Defense.
Because the lesson that Churchill took
from the Dardanelles crisis
in the First World War
was that it had failed because
no one person had been in overall charge.
At last, I had the authority
to give directions over the whole scene.
I thought I knew a good deal about it all,
and I was sure I should not fail.
- Hip, hip
- Hurray!
I don't know about destiny.
All I know is he got thrown into
a difficult situation and dealt with it.
My experiences
in those first days were peculiar.
One lived with a battle
upon which all thoughts were centered,
and about which nothing could be done.
I cannot remember
how all the hours were spent.
Luxembourg
will surrender within hours.
Netherlands will surrender in five days.
Belgium will surrender in 18 days.
And it's shocking
because it is expected that France,
France who has a world-class army,
who has better tanks than the Germans
and more of them,
they should be able to hold
for months, if not years.
The French army is collapsing.
A mighty German armored thrust
is punching through the French army
and is going to reach the Channel coast,
dividing the Allied armies in half.
The War Cabinet
is almost in constant session.
You can imagine them sitting there
in these smoke-filled rooms
as these dispatch riders are bringing in
sort of successions of telegrams
and increasingly bad news from France.
The French are evidently
cracking, and the situation is awful.
Churchill put himself at
significant risk on a number of occasions.
He kept flying over to Paris,
holding meetings with the French
prime minister, trying to rally them.
Churchill says,
"I was sure I should not fail."
Almost everybody else
thought that he might fail.
Randolph Churchill, his son,
was sitting in the bathroom
while Churchill was shaving,
and he says, "I am sure we shall win."
And Randolph says, "How do you know?"
And Churchill says,
"I shall drag the Americans in."
"I shall drag the Americans in."
America is safely ensconced
on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The US has been going through its own
troubles with the Great Depression,
and there is very much an isolationist
point of view in the United States.
We went over in the last war,
and those people have
gotten themselves into another one.
It's a them problem, not an us problem.
When Churchill becomes Prime Minister,
he's got this existing
line of communication to Roosevelt.
They've already exchanged telegrams.
He can now attempt to build on that.
Most secret and personal.
We expect to be attacked here ourselves,
and are getting ready for them.
If necessary,
we shall continue the war alone,
and we are not afraid of that.
But I trust you realize, Mr. President,
that the voice and force
of the United States may count for nothing
if they are withheld too long.
You may have a completely subjugated,
Nazified Europe established
with astonishing swiftness,
and the weight
may be more than we can bear.
And Roosevelt writes back
a kind of hedging response,
and punts, and says,
"I'd like to help you,
but I really need Congress' approval."
Churchill is, in his head
and to his advisors, saying,
"This guy's the President of the US,
and he really needs to ask Congress?"
"Like, he can't do this himself?"
But that is where FDR is.
In May 1940, Britain's armies
and the armies of France
are cut off from each other,
almost surrounded,
driven back to the sea, humiliated.
The German army are encroaching
all the time, getting closer and closer.
If the British Expeditionary Force
was surrounded and captured
by the Germans,
which it very easily could have been,
then that would be pretty much game over
for Britain in the Second World War.
The Luftwaffe dominated the skies
which meant they were
gonna be able to strafe and bomb
any rescue fleet that was put together.
The British army
and a chunk of the French army
were rapidly being trapped in this pocket
in northeastern France,
around the port of Dunkirk.
And that pocket around Dunkirk
began to be squeezed.
Tell the French we cannot spare
any more of our aircraft.
Right, sir.
Behind the scenes,
he had this terrible dilemma.
Boulogne and Calais are nearly lost.
If they fall, that leaves us only
one option to get our men out, Dunkirk.
Operation Dynamo, yes.
Ferry our boys home,
or as many as we can.
Yes, sir.
But the harbor at Dunkirk is
not deep enough for our destroyers,
and it's littered
with sunken ships already.
Well, we'll need the smaller boats then,
ones that can reach the beach.
They'll be smaller targets
for the Luftwaffe.
We'll lose massive amounts of equipment
if we evacuate now, sir.
It'll have to be left behind.
Trucks and tanks are replaceable.
An army of men is not.
Have the small vessel pool at the ready.
Yes, sir.
And how many can you really save?
Maybe
45,000, if the weather holds.
Forty-five out of nearly 400,000?
We'll lose our army.
You won't be able to stop an invasion.
Churchill's trying
to convince the Cabinet
to stay in this war against Hitler.
He is a threat unlike any we've faced
in the last thousand years.
This is not Napoleon.
This is not Kaiser Wilhelm.
Hitler is different,
because he's a twisted, demonic lunatic.
He's a genocidal maniac.
Winston, now is the time to negotiate.
If Hitler invades
My dear Lord Halifax, if Hitler invades,
we shall fight him with
broken beer bottles if necessary.
Yes, very colorful, Winston,
but it doesn't
We've got to hold on, Edward.
Surely you know
what negotiating with that man means.
It means accepting
the terms of the conquered,
and we are not yet conquered.
Hitler would demand our navy
and turn us into a slave state.
No!
When the Americans come in
But the Americans
aren't coming in, Winston.
You have to be realistic.
We must negotiate now.
In May 1940, peace negotiations
were seriously considered
over nine meetings of the War Cabinet.
It could've happened.
Churchill thinks,
"We are not cutting a deal."
Some things are more important,
and this is it.
It was a remarkable act of moral courage
to stand and say,
"No, we are not compromising with evil."
If this long island story
of ours is to end at last,
let it end only when each one of us
lies choking in his own blood
upon the ground.
You've got to imagine
what the world would have been like
if Winston Churchill had not been there
in that smoke-filled room in May 1940.
Imagine a sort of
Monty Python hand coming down,
taking Churchill out of the equation.
It is really all too plausible to imagine
that Britain would have
done a deal with Hitler.
Loads of people wanted it.
Loads of important Conservative
politicians like Halifax wanted it.
Now, that would have been a disaster
for humanity of unparalleled proportion.
European civilization would have been lost
to an odious, racist,
anti-Semitic tyranny.
Take Churchill out, it's a nightmare.
Never give in.
Never, never, never, never.
In nothing, great or small,
large or petty.
Never give in, except to convictions
of honor and good sense.
Never yield to force.
Never yield to the apparently
overwhelming might of the enemy.
It's that decisiveness
that we find attractive in the man.
So, late May,
Churchill greenlights Operation Dynamo.
The fate of Winston Churchill,
the fate of Europe,
and possibly the fate of the free world
hang in the balance.
There are hundreds of thousands of Brits
that need to be evacuated from Dunkirk,
under enormous pressure.
The expectation,
at least initially, was
we hoped to get about 45,000 men out.
This is already a disaster.
The question is, how big of a disaster?
He recognizes that the risk is great
and that this is a decisive operation,
depending on what happens here.
A call was put out
for any civilian vessels
to take part in this evacuation.
A number of appeals
for recruits have been issued today.
The Admiralty want men
experienced in yachts or motorboats.
They needed
shallower craft that could get close.
So they ended up with this fleet
of paddle steamers,
barges, pleasure boats.
Everyone who had
a boat of any kind,
steam or sail, put out for Dunkirk.
And the preparations were now aided
by volunteers on an amazing scale.
Between the 26th of May
and the 4th of June,
they won't pull 45,000 out.
They'll pull 338,000 out.
Over 200,000 British and over 100,000
of their allies and partners.
In the midst of our defeat,
glory came to the island people,
united and unconquerable.
And the tale of the Dunkirk beaches
will shine in whatever records
are preserved of our affairs.
There's national sweat equity
in making this work.
When they are able to rescue
their professional army,
and many of their allies,
this is viewed as a miracle.
People are elated at the prospect.
A very optimistic picture
was put on that evacuation,
how the victorious
British Expeditionary Force
had been withdrawn to fight another day.
I mean, that's how it was painted.
But the fact is, all of their equipment,
their vehicles, their tanks,
their artillery, were lost.
How are you going to
keep the British army functioning?
The reality is that in June 1940,
Britain is isolated.
It's lost nearly all
its European continental allies.
German forces now dominate
the Channel coast.
Hitler's armies are now 20 miles away
from the White Cliffs of Dover.
The Germans can see Britain
across the English Channel.
Within six weeks, we were
to find ourselves alone, almost disarmed,
with triumphant Germany at our throats,
with the whole of Europe
open to Hitler's power.
Churchill has no honeymoon.
Within weeks of taking office,
Churchill will face
probably the greatest crisis
that Britain has faced
in its modern history.
The great fear is, now that Germany
has occupied the better part of France,
that they're next.
And really, they are
the only country left to face Germany.
It was imperative to explain,
not only to our own people,
but to the world, that our resolve
to fight on was no mere despairing effort.
In the summer of 1940,
Churchill is winning the war of words.
He does it through mobilizing the English
language and sending it into battle.
We must be very careful
not to assign to this deliverance
the attributes of a victory.
Wars are not won by evacuations.
Churchill takes this great moment,
you know, Dunkirk and the evacuation,
and dampens down any sense of euphoria,
because he's giving people
this reality check.
Even though large tracts of Europe
and many old and famous states
have fallen, or may fall,
into the grip of the Gestapo
and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule,
we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end.
We shall fight in France.
We shall fight on the seas and oceans.
Hear, hear.
We shall fight with growing confidence
and growing strength in the air.
Hear, hear.
We shall defend our island,
whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on the beaches.
We shall fight on the landing grounds.
We shall fight in the fields
and in the streets.
We shall fight in the hills.
We shall never surrender.
Yes! Hear, hear!
The "Fight on the beaches" speech
is actually a great example
of how Churchill used communication
to advance his leadership.
You could argue
that he had three audiences:
the British public,
Hitler,
and his most important audience,
Franklin Roosevelt
and the American people.
And what he was trying to convey
to Franklin Roosevelt
was that, "We are in it to win it."
"We are not gonna capitulate."
And even if,
which I do not for a moment believe,
this island was subjugated and starving,
then the new world,
with all its power and might,
steps forth to the rescue
and the liberation of the old.
"The new world
in all its power and might."
That's Franklin Roosevelt.
It ends on a plea and a prayer
that if they're going to undo
what Hitler's done,
he needs FDR.
His strategy was just to hang on.
And he had to somehow inveigle
the United States to come in.
Churchill is known for pitching the UK
as this kind of plucky island
standing alone
against these grave fascist powers.
Um, but the reality is
Britain had an empire behind it.
And I think America was skeptical
of that narrative,
that Britain wasn't the underdog
that it makes itself out to be.
There are many essential
services calling now for recruits.
The local defense volunteers.
Churchill had to act immediately
after the evacuation from Dunkirk.
He needed, essentially,
to militarize the nation.
I think of that summoning up
of the war spirit.
I think of the spirit of the women
who got involved in the war effort.
The young men conscripted
and signing up on behalf of their nation.
And, indeed, I think of my parents
and their generation across empire,
and in this case, the Caribbean,
being called to fight.
France has fallen.
And it is an incredibly dark day.
It's bleak.
After the collapse of France,
the question which arose in the minds
of all our friends and foes was,
will Britain surrender too?
The Battle of France is over.
The Battle of Britain is about to begin.
The whole fury and might of the enemy
must very soon be turned on us.
He painted a picture of the world
with these remarkable cadences
in speeches written in psalm form,
almost as if they were poetry.
Churchill is crystal clear
about the values of freedom, of liberty.
And in that sense,
he speaks to this era as well,
where we have to be crystal clear
about the values worth fighting for.
Hitler knows that
he will have to break us in this island
or lose the war.
If we can stand up to him,
all Europe may be free,
and the life of the world may move forward
into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail,
then the whole world,
including the United States,
will sink into the abyss
of a new dark age,
made more sinister
by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves
to our duties,
and so bear ourselves
that, if the British Empire
and its Commonwealth
last for a thousand years,
men will still say,
"This was their finest hour."
It's the "fake it till you make it" form
of communication and leadership,
but it's effective,
because if you can, with your words,
assert that the British people
will keep fighting,
that no matter what comes,
we are not going to stop,
the people have no choice but to say,
"Okay, yeah, we're gonna do that."
In many ways,
he'd always been a wartime orator
in search of a war, and now he's got one.
It's one of the speeches
that we all now look back on
and think is one of the greatest speeches
of the 20th century.
Interestingly, the British people
did not hear him initially deliver it.
Instead, he recorded it
for delivery on the radio,
and the British public thought
that his delivery was awful.
People thought he was drunk.
One person sent a telegram
to Downing Street
suggesting that he lie down,
and maybe he was drunk.
But one story is that
he sounded this way
because he had a cigar in his mouth
the entire time
he was reading this speech.
Of course, later on,
it took on its own mythology.
It's a bit like a Beatles song.
You don't remember first hearing it
because it's just always there
in the background.
At a moment
when your morale could be the lowest
because it really does seem like
we are not big enough to fight this guy,
Churchill comes in and says, "We are."
He found ways of stirring people,
making them feel
that they were going to win.
We shall break up and derange
every effort which Hitler makes.
You are flesh
The difference between
Hitler's speeches and Churchill's speeches
was Hitler made you feel that
Hitler, he, Hitler, could do anything.
Churchill made you feel
that you were capable of doing anything.
So France sued for peace,
leaving Britain
to continue the war on its own.
The problem that Churchill
and the British Empire faced was
where now did the loyalty
of the French Empire lie?
At all costs, at all risks,
in one way or another,
we must make sure that the navy of France
did not fall into wrong hands
and then perhaps bring us
and others to ruin.
All the operation of government
went underground during the war,
and he was down there deciding,
for instance,
whether they had to butcher
the French fleet.
If our code breakers are correct,
the Germans are now using
French naval code.
Which means they either already have
control of the French fleet
or will have soon.
It's unlikely the Nazis will dismantle
a perfectly good fleet of warships,
no matter what Hitler says.
I think we can safely ignore
anything coming from him.
Or the French, at this point.
So we must seize their navy
or destroy it.
Why in God's name
haven't we done it already?
There are many reasons,
Mr. Beaverbrook.
They may still
turn their ships over to us, for one.
You think Hitler
will let them leave their ports?
Hitler demands they turn over the fleet.
If they refuse,
they burn Marseille to the ground.
If they refuse again, they burn Lyons.
And so on.
There's really no choice in the matter.
Admiral Somerville is in command
of the attack force.
He's requested we avoid use of force
at all costs.
The man served
with the French in the last war.
As did I.
As did we all.
This is a hateful decision.
If the French refuse
to surrender their ships,
scuttle them, or join us
sink them.
The French had been
only yesterday our dear allies,
and our sympathy
for the misery of France was sincere.
On the other hand, the life of the state
and the salvation of our cause
were at stake.
Churchill gave
the French navy an ultimatum.
"You can sail your fleet
to Canada and be on our side,
or you can scuttle the ships."
And of course,
France chooses none of those options
because that's not
in keeping with their national interests.
After days of agonizing,
Churchill took the decision
that he would have to attack French ships
in this port in North Africa.
This is
a very difficult thing to do to an ally,
but it's one of those other hard calls
that Winston Churchill has to make.
And so the Royal Navy sinks
the French navy.
It was Greek tragedy,
but no act was ever more necessary
for the life of Britain
and for all that depended upon it.
And 1,300 French sailors lost their lives.
Here was this Britain,
which so many had counted down and out,
striking ruthlessly
at her dearest friends of yesterday
and securing
undisputed command of the sea.
It was made plain that
the British War Cabinet feared nothing
and would stop at nothing.
Our party consisted of only seven members.
It already had two principles.
It looked like Britain
was going to be invaded any moment.
At the time,
if you were in Britain,
that threat was very real, very imminent.
France had fallen.
England is next, and the thing
that'll happen is the invasion of England,
or from the German side,
"Operation Sea Lion."
Hitler looks at the situation
in the summer of 1940,
and first off,
he's hoping Britain is going to surrender.
What's Britain got left to fight for?
But because of Churchill,
Britain doesn't do that.
He says, "There can be no peace
with Adolf Hitler."
Churchill was
a very stubborn person.
At the time of huge pressure
when others would have cracked,
he managed to stay focused.
One of the ways
to bring this war to a speedy end
is to convince the enemy, not by words,
but by deeds,
to strike heavy and unexpected blows.
Mr. Churchill has
repeatedly declared that he wants the war.
I am fully aware that
the continuation of this war will only end
with the complete destruction
of one of us.
Mr. Churchill may believe
it will be Germany.
I know it will be England!
Before you invade Britain,
you have to destroy the British Air Force.
You have to gain air superiority.
And so Hitler launches
the Battle of Britain to do just that.
Winston's best hope is
RAF Fighter Command.
Just as the war had broken out,
they had state-of-the-art aircraft
coming into service
Had the Hurricane and the Spitfire.
There's also 30,000 coastal
watchers in 1,000 observation posts.
There's people working radars,
people working anti-aircraft artillery.
There's people working searchlights
and barrage balloons,
mechanics who keep airplanes
back in the air,
people at the production facilities
that are producing aircraft
to replace the ones that get shot down.
And the first mass air raid on Britain
came in what they dubbed "Eagle Day."
This is an effort
by the Luftwaffe, the German air force,
to shoot down British aircraft,
to destroy airfields and runways.
We're talking about 1,000 aircraft
coming over the British coast.
We're talking about hundreds of
British fighters going up to fight them.
At the height of the Battle of Britain,
Spitfires were attacking German planes
in the skies above southern England,
and you see them sort of looping
and swerving and attacking each other.
Britain could not have been in more peril.
Someone described it once as
the country was hanging on by its eyelids,
expected to be invaded any single day.
The country held its breath
because it thought
the Blitzkrieg was about to come
across the English Channel.
Churchill would invite generals
and cabinet ministers to work at Chequers,
the prime ministerial country residence.
And they would try and find a moment
to reduce the stress a little bit.
Hmm.
Oh, for heaven's sake, Winston,
stop waving that thing around
in the house.
When the Huns invade,
they won't take me alive.
I expect every member of this household
to take one dead German with them.
I, for one, intend to take several.
Do you expect them to invade before lunch?
If not, put it away.
Before lunch or after,
doesn't matter, Clemmie.
The point is they're coming,
and we must all be ready to face them.
I spoke to Cornwall over at III Corps.
Says he's got a new motto
to get them back in shape.
Hitting, not sitting.
Prime Minister, do you hear?
Hitting, not sit
I heard you.
What did he say
about their readiness to fight?
Well, they need more equipment.
What? More equipment?
Yes. There. Page six.
100% complete in personnel,
rifles and mortars.
How am I supposed to run this war
if I don't have accurate reports?
You tell Cornwall from me,
I want the proper numbers
in my hands tomorrow morning.
Action this day!
Now, don't be a bully, Winston,
for heaven's sake.
Churchill was a demanding boss.
And he could bark at people.
He was quite terrifying.
And he was
such a larger-than-life character,
it was quite difficult sometimes
for anyone to argue against him.
Most people would just retreat.
Everybody recognized that
Churchill was a hugely eccentric figure.
Winston Churchill never wanted
to waste a minute,
and so he would dictate to his secretaries
from the bathtub.
Churchill invented
what was called the siren suit,
which was an all-in-one
velvet sort of onesie
um, that he would wear
over his normal clothes.
And it had big pockets for his cigars,
and he felt very comfortable in it.
He was a bit camp.
He loved hats.
He loved to wear different uniforms.
He was a bit of a play actor, after all.
He knew that all of his life
had been preparation
for this moment on the world stage,
and he was going to turn in
a great performance.
What have you got there, Thompson?
The gardener says the Germans have been
dropping them all over London, sir.
"Wanted for incitement to murder."
Good.
We have their attention, haven't we?
So this is German propaganda,
the famous picture of Winston Churchill
holding a tommy gun.
It was an effort
to make him look like a gangster.
But everybody in the US said,
"That's an American-made tommy gun.
Awesome."
So it totally backfires in the sense of,
they see in Winston Churchill
someone that they can relate to.
There's this enormous pressure.
This air war taking place
in England's skies.
You would just see
these unending vapor trails
of German bombers and their escort
fighters passing overhead.
And you would just see
wave after wave after wave of aircraft,
and it would be truly terrifying.
And then the Luftwaffe had a mishap.
A bomber got lost
and accidentally bombed London.
The sporadic raiding of London
towards the end of August
was promptly answered by us
in a retaliatory attack on Berlin.
Churchill understood PR.
He understood diplomacy.
He understood politics.
And it was the biggest possible statement
that even while the Brits were
penned up in their island,
worrying about defending their own coast,
they were still able to strike
the enemy capital, Berlin.
I believe that nothing
impressed or disturbed Hitler so much
as his realization
of British wrath and willpower.
In his heart, he was one of our admirers.
Now, pompous Hermann Göring
had always promised Hitler
Berlin would never be bombed,
enemy bombers would never reach it.
That was not true.
You see,
they will attack us on a large scale.
We will wipe out their cities.
And Hitler is pissed off.
The hour will come
when one of us will break.
And it will not be
National Socialist Germany.
And you get a kind of slow escalation,
a tit-for-tat.
Hitler's furious that
bombs have fallen on Berlin,
and they kind of egg each other on.
And so now this will start to shift.
They'll look from targeting
the Royal Air Force
to targeting the British population.
It's a momentous decision.
An evacuation of children
from the danger zones
of England and Scotland carried on.
The hope is, if you inflict
enough damage on London,
maybe the Brits surrender,
maybe there's a revolution,
maybe people rise up against Churchill
'cause they don't wanna be part of this.
The Bletchley Park decoders
had informed Churchill
that a major raid was imminent
because they'd cracked
the German communication codes.
Our fate now depended
upon victory in the air.
I drove over to Uxbridge
and arrived at the group headquarters.
My wife and I were taken down
to the bomb-proof operations room
50 feet below ground.
And they went down all these steps
to see people pushing
little kind of models around,
representing squadrons, airplanes, ships,
German formations coming in,
on a huge map.
If you're an RAF pilot,
you're probably tired
from the night before,
then you got a call
from the control center.
"Heads up, observers have found scores
of German aircraft crossing the border."
"Radars confirm it's true."
Forty plus, 60 plus, 80 plus,
this is the number of German planes
they see crossing the border.
And what Churchill sees is the commander
calling each of the individual squadrons
to up their readiness
until finally he launches them.
There was a wall
where there was a line of red lights,
and each red light denotes a squadron.
When the red light comes on,
the squadron is in the air.
It got to the point
where all the red lights were on.
I became conscious
of the anxiety of the Commander.
Hitherto I had watched in silence.
I now asked,
"What other reserves have we?"
There are none.
You're talking
to a controller who says,
"Hey, we're gonna
vector you in this direction
for you to set up the intercept that
you might come down out of the sun."
And then finally you roll in.
Now all of a sudden
it's a massive dogfight.
Aircrafts trying to find 1v1 advantage.
Everywhere you turn, there's danger
and somebody else in trouble.
The RAF Fighter Command
had committed
everything it had to that air battle.
And it was brought to breaking point.
The odds were great.
Our margins small.
The stakes infinite.
Ultimately the day ends
with the British claiming 180 kills.
It ends up being about 58
and 20 severely damaged.
But this is what breaks the back
of the German effort
to conduct daylight strikes over England.
September 15th
was the crux of the Battle of Britain.
That same night,
our bomber command attacked in strength.
It was touch and go for the RAF.
But because RAF Fighter Command
weathered that storm,
it clearly signaled
the Germans were not going to win.
And that's why 15th September is
celebrated as the Battle of Britain Day.
You go walking sometimes
in the hills beyond Canterbury,
and you will come across
small, little homemade crosses,
lovingly tended spots
which are a reminder, constantly,
of a Hurricane, or a Spitfire,
and a pilot that lost their life.
The Battle of Britain is there.
The gratitude of every home
in our island, in our empire,
goes out to the British airmen
who, undaunted by odds
and wearied in their constant challenge
and mortal danger,
are turning the tide of the world war
by their prowess and by their devotion.
Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to so few.
It's in September 1940,
with the autumn gales
coming up the Channel,
the days shortening,
the famous British winter on the way,
that Hitler reluctantly decides
he cannot invade Britain this year.
He decides to abandon
military attacks on the RAF
and take up terror bombing of London.
It's so dangerous to go by day
that instead the Germans switch
to going by night.
This attack on London is the start
of what's known as the Blitz.
When the Blitz started, London
had 57 consecutive nights of bombing.
Let's just take that in for a second.
It seemed like it was never going to end.
The British people
remember it as the time
when they were thrown into the front line,
when it was men, women, and children
cowering in shelters as German bombs
rained down on them night after night.
City blocks destroyed,
enormous firestorms created,
precious historical sites destroyed,
20,000 British people killed
by the end of 1940
from the German bombing.
They had terrible trouble
keeping my grandfather safe
because he always had
this enormous personal courage.
You know, he was supposed to be
in the bomb shelter,
but he was up on the roof,
much to everybody's horror.
The experience of remaining
on the roof night after night under fire
with no protection but a tin hat
soon became habitual.
I felt, with a spasm of mental pain,
a deep sense of the strain and suffering
that was being borne throughout
the world's largest capital city.
Civilian populations
were under attack in London.
He was particularly well-prepared
to stand in the breach
and say, "You've gone that far,
but you will go no farther."
And he was genuinely willing
to die for that.
By going out and walking the streets,
and seeing the damage,
and having cups of tea with people
that lost their houses in the Blitz,
lost loved ones,
Churchill projected the image
of calm determination.
He had this rare ability to
understand the power of his own narrative
and how to shape a brand around him.
And it's still those symbols
that people remember him for,
you know, the hat, the cigar,
the bulldog, the voice.
These indiscriminate bombings of London
are, of course,
a part of Hitler's invasion plan.
What he has done
is to kindle a fire in British hearts
which will glow long after all traces
of the conflagrations he has caused
in London have been removed.
The bombing was being
broadcast by Edward R. Murrow and others.
I'm standing on a rooftop
looking out over London.
And so people, suddenly,
in a farm in Kansas
could be listening in real time
to the bombs going off.
The lights are swinging over
in this general direction now.
We shall have the sound of guns
in the immediate vicinity.
Just There they are.
It's an incredibly sympathetic message
to say, "People with your values
who speak your language
are being bombed
by this horrific person, Adolf Hitler."
Winston Churchill knows, perhaps,
the only savior of the world
is going to be the United States.
It must have stung for Churchill.
The British Empire, on its own,
was not able to defeat the Nazis.
He had to hang on.
When the bombardment first began,
the idea was to treat it with disdain.
In the West End, everybody went about
their business and pleasure,
and dined and slept as they usually did.
And the darkened streets were crowded
with casual traffic.
People were shuddering with fear that
this was the end of the European order
and perhaps of democracy.
Somehow, Winston had to
keep a nation going through all of this,
to give a nation belief
that victory could be possible,
survival even could be possible.
Because you looked out of the window,
and you couldn't imagine it could be.
I was deeply anxious
about the life of the people of London.
The greater part of whom stayed, slept
and took a chance where they were.
How long would it go on?
How much more would they have to bear?