The British people loved him, and he took their trust seriously. At all hours, he would pad through the halls of the official residence in brilliantly flowered dressing gowns, stabbing a dead cigar in the air when he wanted to make a point. If the phone rang while he was in the bath, he would climb naked and dripping from the tub to retrieve it from his private secretary. For one thing, he favored working during his twice-daily bath. It’s true that Churchill did things differently.

“Apparently,” said the secretary of the interior, “he is very unreliable under the influence of drink.” The US government was also leery of working with Churchill.

The key message here is: From day one, Churchill was clear on his goal: getting American help.įor their part, the Americans weren’t at all interested in sending their young men, yet again, to the battlefields of Europe. Churchill knew he couldn’t win the war without the Americans. Now all Churchill had to do was convince his country and, just as importantly, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that the UK had a chance. But unlike Chamberlain – and essentially everyone else – Churchill was brazenly confident that Britain could win the coming war. Any observer would have said that Britain had no chance against the massive Nazi war machine. War was coming to the British people, whether they liked it or not.Ĭhurchill came to power after Parliament passed a vote of no confidence in Neville Chamberlain, who had tried to appease Hitler’s expansionist tendencies. The Nazi army had invaded France, Britain’s ally. By May 1940, the writing was on the wall.

Book the splendid and the vile