1942: Winston Churchill and Britain's Darkest Hour Taylor Downing
Taylor Downing is a historian, writer, and broadcaster. He has written several best-selling books and has produced more than 200 television documentaries many of which have won awards.
His latest book "1942: Winston Churchill and Britain's Darkest Hour" explores the theory that this was Winston Churchill’s darkest hour. British Heritage Travel caught up with Taylor recently to discuss this idea and explore it a little more.
Taylor, in your opinion, what is it about Winston Churchill that makes him such a compelling figure in British, and indeed world, history?
“I would argue that it’s rare in history that you get a round peg in a round hole, that in a particular time the right person is in the right place doing the right job at the right time, and that was certainly the case with Winston Churchill. When he became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940 - the day that Hitler launched his invasion of France, Belgium, Holland and three million were fighting for the continent - many people would have been intimidated at the challenge ahead, but Churchill in his famous phrase said that day that he felt he was walking with destiny, that all his life had geared up to this moment and challenge. And I think that partially because he had a military background.
"He fought in the British Army in the 1890s, he’d been involved in the Boer War - taken prisoner and escaped, he’d fought on the Western Front and he commanded a battalion of the Scots Fusiliers in 1916 and he had been very involved, he’d written a lot of military history, so in terms of military affairs he felt very equipped for the challenge ahead. He also had a very strong sense of England’s destiny, that at times in European history England had to come to the rescue of the continent, as he saw it, whether this was against Louis XIV; when his great ancestor John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough fought against Blenheim or against Napoleon in the early 19th century of whether it was now, in his time, against Hitler.
"He felt that England’s role was fighting back against tyranny in Europe, and that gave him the inspiration and the motivation to give the speeches that he gave through the course of 1940 that really helped inspire a nation to fight on when the difficulties were immense and defeat must have seemed pretty likely and I think that’s rare, that you get somebody who can provide really strong, genuine leadership at a time like this and I think that’s what makes him such a compelling and fascinating figure in 20th-century history.”
What particularly was it about the events of 1942 that interested you so much?
“Well having said that, about Churchill being the right man at the right time, what interested me so much about 1942 was how bad the situation became. Usually, historians gloss over the events of 1942, the history of the Second World War and Churchill’s role in it goes from the heroic moments in 1940 on a gradual path towards victory in 1945 but it wasn’t like that. There was a big dip in popularity and in what he was doing in 1942 - it was a year of terrible military defeats: the surrender at Singapore; the collapse in Burma; the passing of three German warships right through the straits of Dover in broad daylight which was a humiliation for the Royal Navy; a defeat in North Africa; a surrender in Tobruk - when a big British force, a big Imperial Force actually - South Africans and Australians and others - surrendered to a much smaller German force and in a democracy, military defeat creates political crisis.
"And it was the political crisis following the military failures of 1942 that particularly interested me, and so I would certainly argue that 1942 was Britain's darkest hour in the Second World War, this was the moment when not just defeat, but in Churchill’s own words “defeat is one thing but disgrace is another” and the British army performed so poorly against the German and Italian forces in Europe and the Japanese forces in the Far East that this really was Britain’s darkest hour.”
What do you consider to be Churchill’s finest hour?
“I would say his finest hour was the obvious one, 1940. After the collapse of France came the Battle of Britain which morphed later in The Blitz on Britain and it really was the first time for several hundred years that Britain really did face the possibility of an invasion from a powerful continental foe. And I think Churchill used his speeches to uplift the nation, to give them a sense of purpose, a sense of destiny and to remind people that this wasn’t a one-off - it was a sense of destiny where Britain had held out and fought against tyranny on the continent and he gave people the sense that yes, not only can we win but we should win, this is a struggle between barbarism and democracy, between good and evil. That’s what you need from a good leader, he called it in 1940, he called Britain’s struggle its finest hours and I think I would agree that that was not only the nation’s finest hour but his as well.”
During your research for the book, what aspect of what you discovered surprised you the most?
“It took about 18 months to research and write the book, and I think the thing that surprised me the most, having said all these great things about how important Churchill was and what a great man he was, was the real hostility against him among many many people in the course of 1942. When things started to go wrong his support crumbled very quickly, and I used a particular archive, the Mass Observation Archive, which was a group that went out and recorded literally what people were saying - in queues and in canteens. They asked people to speak to their neighbours and write down what they said, other people kept diaries and I was very surprised at how much hostility there was towards Churchill and how widespread the hostility was against him in 1942.
"But then of course what happened is in October / November 1942 finally came victory at El Alamein - at the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa. General Montgomery’s Eighth Army finally defeated the German/Italian forces led by Field Marshal Rommel and this really was a turning point battle. There were other turning point battles in the war, like Stalingrad and so on, but for Britain this was a turning point battle and finally, Churchill got what he needed - a military victory and success on the battlefield. This brought back popularity, people again started to see him as a who could win battles and who could win the war. There was a huge revival in his popularity, back to the high levels of 1940 and the road was set from 1943 for two years of hard bitter fighting but the ultimate victory did seem increasingly certain.”
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