Five Days in London: May 1940

Rating:
Summary: 5 star subject 2 star treatment
Review: A fascinating period in history that begs for a page turning dramatic rendering is here so turgidly presented that it is difficult to stay awake while reading this. The facts are here but the writing is awful.

Rating:
Summary: Don't read this - it's boring
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. I went in with high expectations: I'd never read Lukacs, but my understanding was that his reputation was good. At a minimum, he's published a lot. Moreover, I liked the idea of an events-oriented narrative confined to a short, narrow time frame. What should have been high drama, however, was almost painful to finish. Plainly put, the book is boring.


As for (somewhat) related works: I'm not familiar with Churchill and this period, although I've read a bit of his memoirs and found them pretty good. A recent World War II read that I thought deserved its Pulitzer was Rick Atkinson's An Army at Dawn.

Rating:
Summary: A Focus on a Turning Point
Review: In the entire history of the twentieth century world there are really two years that mark points of inflection; 1914 and 1989. John Lukacs in this short book looks at a key moment towards the middle of this seventy-five years, that being the darkest days of Britain's struggle during the Second World War. Avoiding the historian mind game of "what if", Lukacs looks in detail at a few key days just before the "miracle of Dunkirk", when it seemed all but certain that most of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) would be killed or captured in the channel ports of northern France. This would leave 300,000 British men as German prisoners, and deprive Britain of its only available and trained army elements, while at the same time it faced the near prospect of a German assault by airborne or sea borne troops.

This terrible deluge of military disasters began on the very same day (May 10) as did a new British government of national unity, headed by the largely untrusted Winston Churchill. With limited support in his own party, Churchill had to persuade the War Cabinet, the Cabinet at large, and the Commons to hold out against the Nazis and not to respond to peace initiatives that were then being proffered in secret by a still neutral (technically, at least) Italy.

Lukacs makes the valid point that these events and issues are glossed in Churchill's history of the war, perhaps out of magnanimity to Lord Halifax, who was testing the prospect of negotiations in the War Cabinet. Halifax's view must have seemed most sensible at that hour. Belgium had surrendered. France was being routed. The US could offer no quick (or even certain) military aid to the Allies, and the Churchill/FDR relationship had not yet blossomed. What did Churchill's point of view have going for it? Three points only: 1) Britain was not yet defeated. 2) Hitler's terms were not likely to be worse should Britain subsequently be defeated 3) a view of the war as not merely another European war, but as a struggle for the very future of Western Civilization. This view was Churchill's, and not widely shared at the time. From the perspective of the Millennium, we take for granted that the third point has validity, but in May 1940 only an out-of-date Victorian fool like Churchill could think of the war primarily in these terms. Few as such fools were, within a few months Churchill would find in FDR a fellow Victorian fool who shared his dread of Nazism, and was willing to press his own considerable powers to the limit in order to assist Britain in its elimination. Churchill told the House in May to "prepare for heavy news". The salvation of the BEF at Dunkirk postponed that necessity. Instead, Churchill reported the miracle of Dunkirk to the House in early June. The heavy news would come later that month, when France also surrendered, leaving Britain entirely alone. Yet even then, the key points in favor of Britain continuing the war remained valid.

Churchill, while correct in his convictions, was also lucky in his enemy. Certainly allowing 350,000 men to escape across the Channel from France was both a huge and unnecessary blunder, the first of many such that Corporal Hitler would personally make as a commander in Chief. In the case of Dunkirk, the Fuhrer was concerned about overextending his armor, and overconfident in the ability of Goering's Luftwaffe to control the skies and damage British forces from the air. A second and even more strategic blunder followed soon after. This was to transfer the focus of the Luftwaffe's air attacks to London instead of the British aircraft industries. This decision was firmly set in response to the bombing raid on Berlin by the RAF during early September, which had little effect outside of propaganda (and thus illustrates the immense potential value of such propaganda driven military actions). While London burned and bled, Britain was resupplied and rearmed.

Had the Third Reich captured the BEF at Dunkirk, and/or established air superiority over Britain, the war could well have been lost militarily and ended shortly. Hitler might have pursued his Soviet campaign with a defeated, vassalized Europe at his rear, and not in the context of any "World War". Instead the Nazis struggled simultaneously in Africa, Italy, and finally in France when the ever-present threat of a second front finally came to fruition in 1944.

-Harry Forbes

Rating:
Summary: Peering through a keyhole at history
Review: Lukac's history of Britain's perilous moment of truth is stripped bare of the mythology usually found in World War II history for the vox populi. This is whiskey without the water. A strangely vulnerable Churchill comes across in these pages - tired, too old , and dragging his snail's tail of disasters from Galipoli to his support of Edward the Abdicator. What serendipity led to his summoning to Buckingham, his face splashed with tears, wondering if it was too late? As in almost all of Lukac's works, the multidimensional quality of his insight is truly Shakespearian.

Rating:
Summary: Brief But Self-Indulgent
Review: Lukacs argues that Hitler never came closer to winning WWII than a brief moment in May 1940, when France was falling, Britain's army was seemingly trapped at Dunkirk, and the newly appointed Prime Minister Churchill had not yet stamped his authority over a wavering War Cabinet. It's a good argument, and focusing a short book on five crucial days is a nice approach.

Nevertheless, this book disappoints. It is poorly written (or, more precisely, poorly edited). Instead of setting the stage and then telling the story, Lukacs is constantly hopping back and forth in time, which prevents the "five days" from forming a truly gripping narrative. For such a short book, it is laced with minor repetitions. Most annoyingly, Lukacs keeps launching into half-hearted digressions, which he cuts off with disclaimers like "But this is not the place to discuss X". Any reader will realize that this is a short book and that Lukacs knows much more about every detail than he is able to share with us. Why waste the limited space telling us so?

On the other hand, there are a few digressions which might have been helpful, particularly to readers who are not already steeped in British political history. For example, Lukacs never explains what the "War Cabinet" is, and what constitutional authority it exercises. It is a crucial omission, since the War Cabinet was the principal theater of the struggle between Churchill and Halifax that forms the core of the narrative.

Ultimately, the struggle turns out to be rather gentlemanly--almost sedate--given the stakes. Was it as close a call as Lukacs claims? That depends on whether Halifax's proposal to sound out Germany's peace terms through Mussolini would have ultimately led Britain to give in. Here Lukacs doesn't fully sketch out the argument. Would Germany have offered terms that would have preserved Britain's security and independence, the minimum conditions discussed by the War Cabinet? Churchill thought no. Halifax thought probably not, but worth a try. If the Germans weren't prepared to offer such terms, would the Churchill-Halifax dispute really have mattered? It's hard to tell, because Lukacs barely addresses the question of German intentions.

Overall, a decent, thought-provoking read. But I suspect the editor showed too much deference to an eminent historian, and failed to whip this into the excellent book it could have been.

Rating:
Summary: Great Story but Desperately in Need of An Editor
Review: Lukacs insists in this title and others he has written that the darkest days of the 20th century were in May of 1940, when Hitler and Nazi Germany were a mere day or two away from conquering continental Europe. The fate of the world rested with Great Britain, and the struggle between Halifax, Churchill and Chamberlain would decide the history of the world for the next 50 years and beyond.

Heavy stuff, and absolutely absorbing, but the narrative could most definitely have been spruced up. I agree with other reviewers when they state that it appears that the edtior must have been intimidated by working with Mr. Lukacs and did little to change his prose. The book reads like a first draft, not a complete volume, and the copious amount of footnotes should have been worked into the main body of the text. The way the book stands now it feels unfinished, although the actual events discussed are impossible to find uninteresting if British history or the history of the Second World War is what the reader is looking for.

John Lukacs tells a great story, but it could have been a classic if it were more diligently edited.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible, terrible writing on a great subject
Review: One of the most compelling times in history is turned into a nightmare of footnotes, turgid writing, and phony melodrama. At one point the author makes fun of Chamberlain as being a holdover from the Victorian era, yet the writing in this book has all the bad points of writing from that era, and by someone who clearly thinks that he is the greatest historian of this era. You would do better with any of the other hundreds of books on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Story
Review: This book is hard to put down. I have read it twice and will, no doubt, read it again.

It is the story of a 5 day period when freedom hung in the balance. In May, 1940, as France was collapsing, British leaders were debating whether Britain would fight on or sue for peace. Winston Churchill, the newly installed prime minister wanted to fight on, but forces within the government and within the Conservative party wanted to treat with Hitler. Politically, Churchill's position was shaky. In the end, he prevailed, but he would probably have agreed with Wellington that it was a near run thing.

Lukacs writes beautifully. His treatment of the players in the 20th Century's most critical drama is fair and understanding. Anyone who is interested in the Second World War should read this book. Anyone who values freedom must read it. Had Britain made peace with Hitler, there would have been no Normandy invasion and Europe would not be free today. How close we came to the abyss is both frightening and educational.

Rating:
Summary: More Than the Title Suggests
Review: This is a political history of a pivotal one-week period on the uphill side of World War II. Filled with much detail drawn from contemporary accounts, it represents a huge amount of research. It brims with interesting tidbits; You get a real sense of what went on at the highest level of British government in those dark, foreboding days when France was collapsing before the Nazi juggernaut and the BEF was falling back towards the Channel with nary a counter-punch. If there is a weakness in this book, though, it is the implied presumption that the reader is already familiar with the key players. >In the end, this is not a book just about Churchill (whom Lukacs clearly admires and, rightly so, finds truly heroic) or his stiffening of the British spirit. It is also a book supporting a central theme in the worldview Lukacs developed over his career. Lukacs holds that "Churchill understood something that not many people understand even now. The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler. BR>This book is more than its title suggests. More than just fine history, it is history with a message. The last three pages in particular are worth the time it takes read the whole book. I wonder if we in the West are not at such a juncture today. Five stars for this one, Mr. Lukacs.

Rating:
Summary: A short but fascinating and enjoyable book
Review: This is a short book but one I predict you may want to reread.We all know the story of how Winston Churchill rallied the British people in their darkest hour when they stood alone against nazi tyranny.What we did''nt know was how close it all came to falling apart, untilnow.John Lukacs one of the best Historians of the world war II era has by using recently released British archives shown us how the most crucial five days in the history of western civilization occured between May 24-29 1940 when the ''men of Munich''the defeatists in Churchill's cabinet began pressuring Him to seek a negotiated settlement with Hitler. This book is the story of how Churchill by the sheer force of His will and personality resisted them and finally won the inner cabinet struggle to continue the war. Had anyone else been Prime Minister it is highly unlikely that they could have pulled this one off. And the world of today would be one that none of us could scarcely imagine. A great book.