Winston Churchill
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2020
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
80 years ago this week, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and his calamitous handling of the Norway campaign. On the same day, Adolf Hitler launched a monumental assault on Western Europe. It was the toughest first week in office a Prime Minister has ever faced. We're marking this historic event with a podcast from our archive - the entirety of which is available exclusively to History Hit subscribers. In this podcast, I visited the house of Churchill's biographer, Andrew Roberts, to look at some previously unseen historic material - a fascinating insight into the world of the great man.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, folks, Dan Snow here. |
| 0:01.6 | I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. |
| 0:06.1 | I'd love for you to be there. |
| 0:07.5 | Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years. |
| 0:14.1 | You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. |
| 0:17.5 | Look forward to seeing you there. |
| 0:24.1 | Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. 80 years ago this week, Winston Spencer |
| 0:30.0 | Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He did so after the previous |
| 0:35.4 | Prime Minister lost support right across all parties in the House of Commons. |
| 0:39.9 | Neville Chamberlain was forced to resign, ostensibly for his handling of the Norway campaign. |
| 0:44.4 | The day Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, Adolf Hitler, |
| 0:47.0 | launched his massive assault on Western Europe, on France and the low countries. |
| 0:52.2 | Within hours of the assault being launched, it was clear that Britain and |
| 0:54.5 | France were breaking, it's a very different kind of challenge to the one they'd faced during the |
| 0:57.6 | First World War, fast-moving German armoured thrust, gigantic aerial bombardment, pounded |
| 1:04.3 | defences, fast-moving German columns, pushed at extraordinary speed all along the front and in particular a gigantic undetected thrust |
| 1:14.7 | through the Ardenne, through the hilly country of the Ardenne prized open the back door to France |
| 1:19.0 | and sliced the Allied armies in half. It was a catastrophe in the making. It was the grimmest first |
| 1:26.5 | week of being a prime minister |
| 1:27.7 | of any prime minister I can think of. Winston Churchill responded by making a series of speeches, |
| 1:34.7 | a series of addresses in the House of Commons. They've gone down as some of the finest speeches |
| 1:37.8 | in the history of the English language. It began 80 years ago this week with the speech |
... |
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