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Everything was bleak.

It had been the most difficult of springs and summer, which was at hand, did not promise

to be much better.

And it could well turn out even worse.

Such was the reality that Winston Churchill, Great Britain and the democracies of the

West faced in June 1940.

In the face of Adolf Hitler's Blitzkrieg, Europe was falling under German domination.

Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and now breathtakingly France itself was in the

grip of Nazi power.

The German war machine strikes again.

Without warning, by air, by land and water, the most terrible at all, Blitzkrieg so far,

a wanton active aggression that has shocked the entire civilized world and a new war terror

for the Western Front.

Britain stood alone.

America remained isolationist, unwilling to project force across the seas to stop the spread

of imperialist and racist German designs.

And the resistance of the British had no more vivid or eloquent embodiment than that of

Winston Churchill, who had become Prime Minister on Friday the 10th of May 1940.

Winston Churchill, who has held more political officers than any living man, is now Prime Minister.

Mr. Churchill now takes over the supreme direction of Britain's war effort at a time when the

war is rapidly moving towards Britain's doorstep.

...