PrintMay 10, 2012
Two Prime Ministers, Two Americas
Winston Churchill became prime minister of an embattled Great Britain on May 10, 1940. At last, his political exile was over. Also that day, Adolf Hitler launched his blitzkrieg against Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg, and his armored Panzer divisions ripped through the Ardennes forest.
Churchill had been warning against this outcome for a decade. It was Churchill, after all, who foresaw the possibilities of tank warfare in the darkest days of World War I. Surely, Churchill pleaded, there must be a better way to employ brave soldiers than having them "chew barbed wire in Flanders."
Hitler, too, learned the bitter lessons of trench warfare of World War I. Hitler did not spend the 1930s in the political wilderness. He spent those years in rapid rearmament. From the day he became chancellor in 1933 until the day he launched his war against Poland, Hitler wanted nothing so much as revenge. He sought vengeance against the French,...(Read Full Article)
