ABSTRACT
The news that German forces were flooding into the Netherlands and Belgium on the morning of 10 May 1940, coming on top of the bloodless occupation of Denmark and the pre-emption of Allied strategy in Norway, led Neville Chamberlain reluctantly to accept the necessity of forming a National Coalition government. As the Labour Party proved unwilling to serve under his leadership, he summoned Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill to Downing Street. Halifax, whom Chamberlain would have preferred, said it would be difficult for him, as a peer, to control the parliamentary situation in a war such as this. So the choice fell on Churchill.
