1942: Churchill's Real Darkest Hour

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Most people think that Britain's worst moment of the war was in 1940 when the nation stood up against the threat of German invasion. Yet, eighty years ago, Britain stood at the brink of defeat. In 1942, a string of military disasters engulfed Britain in rapid succession, including the collapse in Malaya; the biggest surrender in British history at Singapore and the passing of three large German warships through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight.

Taylor Downing, historian, writer and broadcaster, joins Dan on the podcast to draw the startling parallels between events in 1942 and today. They discuss just how unpopular Churchill became in 1942 against the backdrop of a new low of public morale, the two votes attacking his leadership in the Commons and the emergence of a serious political rival. As people began to claim that Churchill was not up to the job and that his leadership was failing badly, it was 1942 that was in fact Britain’s real darkest hour.

If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit.
0:04.3	80 years ago, 1942, the war was going badly for Britain and the US, particularly in the
0:13.2	first six months.
0:15.0	In this episode of the podcast, I taught Taylor Downing, he's the author of a new book about
0:18.1	1942.
0:19.1	He's written many wonderful books before.
0:20.1	He's been on this podcast before.
0:21.8	He is a historian, he's a filmmaker.
0:24.1	He is a legend, a wonderful, wonderful historian, a wonderful history communicator.
0:29.4	And we start by talking about Churchill's very personal crisis.
0:33.0	80 years ago, over Christmas, in 1941, he had a heart attack whilst staying at the White
0:38.0	House.
0:39.0	He was certainly not in a good way physically or mentally, and the defeats kept piling
0:42.9	up in Asia, in North Africa, in the size of Battlefield, which was, of course, the Battle
0:48.7	of the Atlantic, the naval war folks.
0:51.5	And as Taylor shows, Churchill came under really very severe criticism inside the UK,
0:55.9	and arguably his position as Britain's warlord was threatened.
1:00.2	Such an interesting topic.
1:01.2	This little chipping away, little looking inside the Churchill myth, fascinating.
1:05.9	How close did Churchill come to losing his job in 1942?
1:10.3	Taylor Downing will tell us.
1:11.9	If you like to watch documentaries about the Second World War, then let me tell you.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.