Five Minutes In Berlin: July 19, 1940 — The Day That Decided The Fate Of Europe by Donald Crawford

FIVE MINUTES IN BERLIN HITLER’S conquest of Norway, France and the Low Countries in the first six months of 1940 left Britain facing the German threat alone, and with Winston Churchill, its new prime minister, preaching defiance to the world. Britain, he pledged, would never surrender, and the English- speaking world, including the United States, would join together in the struggle to free the occupied territories from the Nazi grasp. But was a long-drawn struggle the only way in which peace could be restored, and Europe’s future secured? After the fall of France and the ‘miracle’ of Dunkirk which rescued the British army from surrender, Churchill’s answer to that was unequivocal: despite the imminent danger of German invasion — ‘Hitler must break us in this island or lose the war’ — there was no alternative for the free world, led by Britain, but to fight on until final victory. Or was there a better way? The British-born royal duke damned as ‘the traitor peer’ by his cousin King George V in the last war certainly thought there was, if only he could somehow persuade Hitler to heed his advice...and change the course of history.