The quiet peace of 1940

London, 9 May 1940. Norway has fallen, the Commons has revolted, and Neville Chamberlain must go. In the cabinet room he puts the succession to the two candidates: Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, whom the King and most of the party prefer, and Winston Churchill. Halifax, pleading that a peer cannot lead from the Lords, stays silent through the long pause and lets the premiership fall to Churchill. The next morning Germany invades France. Three weeks later, with France dying, Halifax argues in the War Cabinet for exploring Mussolini's mediation. Churchill carries the room against him, and Britain fights on alone.

In the timeline recorded here, the long pause ends the other way. Halifax has spent the night persuaded by the party managers that the Lords problem can be lawyered away, and when Chamberlain looks at him, he accepts. The red dispatch box passes to the tall, quiet man the establishment always wanted. Churchill takes the Admiralty and the duty of being right too loudly. The next morning the German army goes through the Ardennes, and the new prime minister meets the worst month of the century with a diplomat's instincts, in a diplomat's hands.