GETTING TO THE PARTY

It was war time. The Germans may not have invaded, but the Blitz had rained hundreds of thousands of bombs on Britain’s cities, bringing destruction on a scale never before witnessed by a civilian population. There was rationing – of food, drink, petrol – of everything, it seemed. Abroad, Britain had suffered one disaster after another: Norway, Dunkirk, the loss of the Channel Islands, Crete, the debacle of Dakar. Her lifeline, the convoys from America, were suffering such losses that Hitler’s promise to slowly strangle Britain into submission looked sure to become a reality.  In short, things were not going well.  The future looked rather bleak. Read more…

The Victory That Should Never Have Happened
The German triumph in the west in 1940 truly was one of the most incredible victories ever in all history, yet has been shrouded in myth to such an extent that the outcome is now widely regarded to have been nothing less than expected.  In popular historiography, the ultra-modern, highly-trained and overwhelming German armed forces crushed all before them, employing the brilliant all-arms strategy of ‘Blitzkrieg’.  General Gamelin, commander in chief of the French forces, told Churchill that the reason for their defeat was, “Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of method.”  In fact, only the last was true. Read more…