Their Finest Hour

The Battle of France was over, and the Allies had lost.

The evacuation of the British Army from Europe had been more successful than anyone had dared hope - the entire British Expeditionary Force and an additional 120,000 French troops were rescued - but at the cost of their equipment. The most advanced British divisions had travelled to Europe to stop Hitler - and now their tanks, trucks, and artillery sat in the Dunkirk sand.



With the British regulars so weakened, the resources of the British Empire were harnessed to defend the home island. The Royal Navy still maintained enough control of the sea to allow convoys of men and materiel to slip into Britain from Canada, India, and Australia.

But was it enough? For the first time since Napoleon's rule of France, Britain lay under threat of invasion. Britain scrambled to find such basic equipment such as rifles for its soldiers. France was on the brink of surrender; the rest of Europe was under Nazi occupation. Even now, Hitler was collecting barges to carry out his Operation Sea Lion. The next step: neutralize the outnumbered Royal Air Force. With the Luftwaffe controlling the skies, the Royal Navy coould be driven off and the invasion could proceed.

Outgunned, outnumbered, underquipped, and alone, Britain faced its darkest hour. But there was still hope. The Royal Air Force was making ready, and they had the advantage of fighting over home territory. As long as they shot down Germans at a greater rate than they sustained losses, they had a chance. As long as Britons kept faith, they had a chance.



"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to the House of Commons, June 18, 1940