ABSTRACT
A particularly impressive feature was the elaborate scheme of demolitions, whereby every bridge, road, rail or canal, throughout a deep belt of territory behind the frontier, was prepared for blowing up, with a permanent guard on duty beside each of them. The clear implication was that the ‘fighting ministers’, as opposed to those in the home field, would have less responsibility than ever before. But what intrigued – and angered some – much more than this vital arrangement, was that Churchill had included in his administration many of the former ‘Munichites’. The Dunkirk operation, thanks to a courageous rearguard action, a determined French resistance at Lille, civilian co-operation with ships, and to a miscalculation by Hitler, was proving unexpectedly and dramatically successful. Churchill’s solution to France’s misery was a union of the two nations. This plan had been hatched between Charles de Gaulle and the Foreign Office, an unlikely parentage; but then it was an unlikely hour.
