S8 Ep274: THE FALL OF FRANCE AND THE FLIGHT OF HESS Colleague Charles Spicer. As the German army overran France and the Low Countries in May 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and began utilizing the intelligence Christie had provided through Vansittart.

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🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

THE FALL OF FRANCE AND THE FLIGHT OF HESS Colleague Charles Spicer. As the German army overran France and the Low Countries in May 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and began utilizing the intelligence Christie had provided through Vansittart. The summer of 1940 also saw the publication of Guilty Men, a polemic that unfairly blamed appeasers for the war, simplifying a complex history and embedding a narrative of betrayal in the public consciousness. Across the Atlantic, Lord Lothian, having turned against Germany, successfully persuaded Roosevelt to support Britain, crucial for the war effort. The narrative touches on the bizarre flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland, who sought the Duke of Hamilton—a figure connected to the Fellowship—in a deluded attempt to negotiate peace between the two nations. NUMBER 14
1946 HANGED WILHELM FRICK AT NUREMBERG

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0:00.0	I'm John Batchel with Charles Spicer.
0:07.8	His book is filled with information that is critical to understand these tragic years,
0:14.3	1933 to 1945 and then afterwards.
0:18.5	We're still scarred by the decisions made or not made by the men we're
0:23.4	talking about and their adversaries in Berlin and Moscow and France, all this, all of Europe,
0:30.8	and it comes back when Europe's in a war and you see how you're in a fog. You don't know what the
0:35.9	future is. Well, that was the case here in May of
0:38.4	1940 when the British Expeditionary Force, the Belgian surrendered, the British Expeditionary Force,
0:45.5	is now in full retreat. The French Army have not provided adequate coverage, and the Germans
0:52.1	have launched a savage and extremely effective attack.
0:56.2	Sometimes using the tanks they got from the Skoda armaments, definitely using the artillery.
1:01.2	And they're overrunning France, Belgium very quickly.
1:04.4	The Belgian army surrenders.
1:06.0	And the British Army, the famous Dunkirk retreat.
1:09.3	However, at this point, the prime minister changes hands
1:15.2	from Chamberlain to not Halifax, but to Churchill. And we've not talked about
1:22.5	work Winston Churchill much at this point because this is the rest of the story. But I want to take this moment, Charles,
1:29.1	to characterize Churchill. He knew about Christy, Conwell Evans, and Tenet. Did he account for
1:35.3	their information? Did he also endorse it? Yes. It seems very clear that he received a lot of
1:44.0	Christie's information in particular via
1:46.7	VanCetart because he and VanCetart had remained close. They were the two, with Duff Cooper,
1:51.6	they were two of the three leading anti-appeasers consistently in the late 30s. And he had a source of
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