Five Days in London Quotes

“Churchill understood something that not many people understand even now. The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler. Hitler not only succeeded in merging nationalism and socialism into one tremendous force; he was a new kind of ruler, representing a new kind of populist nationalism.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“Churchill did not for a moment believe that Britain and the Empire could continue to exist across from a Europe entirely dominated by Germany.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“Churchill, after taking office, said to me: ‘We will come through in triumph but we may lose our tail feathers”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“Churchill and Britain could not have won the Second World War; in the end America and Russia did. But in May 1940 Churchill was the one who did not lose it.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“And now came the walk in the garden, about which, alas, we have no account either from Halifax or from Churchill.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“What is significant in this discourse is that the “Suggested Approach” involving Mussolini and Italy no longer figures in Halifax’s argument. His question was, simply and bluntly, Would Churchill consider any peace terms, at any time? And now Churchill thought that he could not answer with a definite no: “He would not join France in asking for terms; but if he were told what the terms offered were, he would be prepared to consider them.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“Bismarck’s once-acid comment to the effect that Italy had a good appetite but poor teeth was largely forgotten.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“Hitler was a revolutionary and not a traditionalist, but in many ways he superseded these increasingly antiquated categories.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“Although today it is considered shameful and craven, the policy of appeasement once occupied almost the whole moral high ground. The word was originally synonymous with idealism, magnanimity of the victor and the willingness to right wrongs.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“Briefly put: that which is public is not necessarily popular, and opinion is not necessarily the same thing as sentiment.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“On 10 May Hankey wrote to his son: “The net result of it all is that today, when the greatest battle of the war and probably the greatest battle of our history has begun, when the fate of the whole Empire is at stake, we are to have a Government of politicians, … quite a number of whom are perfectly futile people.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“What decided the matter for him was his own judgment that within a Halifax cabinet Churchill the warrior would be unmanageable. Late in the afternoon of 10 May Churchill went to Buckingham Palace, and returned as prime minister.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“was Halifax’s idea to accord with Sir Stafford Cripps’s”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940

“It was thus that in 1940 [Hitler] represented a wave of the future. His greatest reactionary opponent, Churchill, was like King Canute, attempting to withstand and sweep back that wave. And––yes, mirabile dictu—this King Canute succeeded: because of his resolution and—allow me to say this—because of God’s will, of which, like every human being, he was but an instrument. He was surely no saint, he was not a religious man, and he had many faults. Yet so it happened.”
― John Lukacs, Five Days in London: May 1940