Review: Five Days in London by John Lucaks

People like to believe that all events and outcomes have one cause. It is common in our western society to oversimplify large-scale events so that they can fit into a small, 230-page softbound book. This is done with reason; it is impossible for one person to comprehend the complexity of events like World War 2 and how they intertwined with and directly affected the world. If anyone could, there would be no need for any books like John Lukacs' Five Days in London, an oversimplified pro-British analysis of why the Allies won the war and why Hitler did not. Though we cannot grasp the complexities behind how and why certain events take place, we still like to pretend that we do. John Lukacs writes his teleological history of May 1940 in the style of a literary book, with each day leading up towards the climax on May 28th, Churchill's coup, therefore simplifying the cause of World War II's outcome into a few meeting and speeches, and ignoring the ostentatious scale and intricacy of the war.

Lukacs' paints the five days as the "hinge of fate", the most important turning point of World War II, more so than all the military victories, the efforts of the Russians, and Hitler's own miscalculations. His thesis bluntly states, "Britain could not win the war. In the end America and Russia did. But in May 1940 Churchill was the one who did not lose it. Then and there...he saved Western civilization" (Lukacs, 189-190). Lukacs' claims that Churchill's resolve is what kept the British strong through the horrible times that would be forthcoming, like the Battle of Britain, the fall of France, and also, had it occurred, the loss of the army at Dunkirk. Lukacs' makes a strong point of the fact that Churchill "had declared that he and Britain would fight on, no matter what happened at Dunkirk" (Lukacs, 196). Also he defends his "hinge of fate" against other turning points in the war, like the Battle of Stalingrad, by claiming that without Britain's resistance, those allied victories would not have even been possible. To Lukacs, the rest of the war, which would soon explode into a large-scale general European war, was made possible by England's resolve and survival.

Lukacs claims that one man, Winston Churchill, and his struggle to hold power in Britain, made World War II winnable for the allies. Lukacs explains Churchill's precarious situation as Prime Minister of England. As fate had it, he became Prime Minister the day that Germany invaded the west, and for the next month he would face disaster after disaster, both militarily and internally. Many thought that he would be out of office within a couple of months, or sooner. May 24th and May 28th are, according the Lukacs, the days where Churchill set to stone his policy of no peace negotiations and the fact that, even without the French and even if Dunkirk was lost, the British would fight on. He had to overcome the powerful voice of Halifax, gain the trust of the British parliament and set the evacuation order for Dunkirk at the dismay of the French. "Churchill's coup" (Lukacs, 162), is painted as the climax of the five days, when Churchill concluded that, if we tried to get any peace terms with Hitler, Britain "should become a slave state, though a British government which would be Hitler's puppet would be set up " (183). Through this coup, Churchill gained the trust of the War Cabinet, and was able to silence the defeatism of Halifax. Therefore Lukacs concludes that Churchill set up the British government for the hard future by setting into stone his strong resolve never to give in.

In all of this, Halifax, the Foreign Secretary and member of the War cabinet, was his strongest adversary. Originally offered the job as Prime Minister, Halifax refused. Lukacs' claims that Halifax felt "within [his] cabinet Churchill the warrior would be unmanageable" (Lukacs, 13). Halifax was a defeatist, and he was worried that Churchill would lead England to ruin. During the five days in question. Halifax makes an attempt to initiate a peace talk between England and Mussolini, with the hope that Mussolini would be able to obtain more favorable terms for the British. He met with the Italian ambassador, and French Premier Reynaud about his proposed peace meeting, and then, piece by piece, he announced his intentions to the War Cabinet. This starts his first real strife with Churchill, with Halifax threatening to leave the cabinet (which would be disastrous to Churchill's government, due to Halifax's immense popularity in Parliament). But Churchill is able to use his statesmen skills to save his Government, by means of his infamous coup, to calm Halifax down. Eventually Churchill politely removed Halifax from the War Cabinet and appointed him as ambassador to the United States. Lukacs believes that, if Churchill had not been able to quiet Halifax, Halifax may have been able to hurt Chamberlain enough and then all might have been lost.

In the background of all this action was the perilous military situation in France and the Low Countries. It took the Germans less than one week to take over The Netherlands. By a week they were already at the English Channel, a feat they had been incapable of achieving in World War I. Soon they had surrounded the Allied army in northeastern France. On May 27th, the Belgians surrendered, and the British Expeditionary Force was in trouble at Calais and Dunkirk. Adding to these problems was the fact that Italy was getting ready to declare war on France and England. This particular event affected the debates of the War Cabinet with the question of how they might be able to stop the Italians from entering the war. Halifax saw peace as the most viable option, while Churchill seemed to believe that there was no way to keep the Italians out without sacrificing British power. Peace was not an option, but hopefully negotiations and even bribery would suffice. With the BEP in danger of being lost, the War Cabinet met with an acerbic urgency that allowed Churchill to further secure his power over not only Parliament but also over the British public.

Unfortunately, there are many holes in Lukacs argument, especially when dealing with the military situation of the war, and especially with his ignorance of the Eastern half of the war. The fact is that the Eastern front of World War II was the deadliest, fiercest, and was where Hitler experienced his first great defeats and was where the war's greatest loss of life took place. Lukacs' claims that "[h]ad Hitler captured Moscow or forced Stalin to seek some kind of Russian capitulation, there is absolutely no evidence that the British (and the Americans) would not have fought on" (Lukacs, 188). That is about all the weight that Lukacs gives to the Eastern front. Had Russia lost, and the Germans able to move the large mass of there army to the west (not to mention the conquering of the Russian oil fields, and vast resource that the Third Reich often was in shortage off), the war would have been drastically different. Hitler's main goal of the war was to conquer Russia. Britain was only an afterthought, a country Hitler did not really want to fight. This typical ignorance of the Eastern front, similar to how the British ignored Russia and then Russia signed a pact with Germany, undermines Lukacs argument.

And moreover, what proof is there that if Hitler beat England that he would have won World War II? As Lukacs himself shows, there were contingency plans, like Roosevelt's oft quoted idea that "if worst came to worst, the British fleet could come over to the Western Hemisphere" (Lukacs, 144). France was already lost. All Britain was providing was a close land base to launch a counterattack from. But Africa could (and would to some degree) serve that purpose. There is no proof that the United States would back out with England gone. Possibly the loss of the mother country would have expedited the USA's entry into the war. This theory follows the same logic that says if Germany had been able to conquer France in the Great War, they would have won, and the hinge of fate there was when the German army tried to take a shortcut to France rather than follow the original plan.
What better way to paint a simple picture of a great event than to have two adversaries trying to counter each other, namely Churchill and Halifax? To add more drama, you have to make it seem like Churchill had to overcome obstacles to obtain his position as Prime Minister. Lukacs paints a picture of Halifax as a stubborn, one viewed defeatist, who is Churchill's chief opponent in the war cabinet. Churchill has the face the precarious situation of having to live with Halifax, because if he leaves the War cabinet that could cause Churchill to lose his own power. But after his infamous coup, the great climax of this story...err history, "[e]xcept for a few unimportant occasions, Edward Halifax no longer chose to oppose Churchill in the War Cabinet" (Lukacs, 202). How convenient for Lukacs that Halifax, stubborn as he was, could be converted so quickly on the basis of one speech to Churchill's side. Almost fits into the book like it would in a movie script.

Lukacs set out too prove his point about the importance of the Five Days in which he speaks of, but he really does not give us much information backing up his thesis until the very end of the book, and even then its very sparing. Though his description of the events of the days in question are very through and give the reader a complete impression of the events taking place not only in England but on the battlefields of France and even in the United States. But, outside of the five days, the only information given is that which backs up this thesis, and the whole book leads up toward the climatic point on the last day. It is almost a surprise ending, whereas some readers are lead to believe that Dunkirk, talked about a lot by Lukacs, will be the determining event. But it is not. Lukacs goes out more to produce a readable mass print book rather than a historical analysis, and that is evident throughout. John Lukacs writes his history of May 1940 in the style of a literary book therefore ignoring the ostentatious scale and intricacy of the war.