An May 13, 1940, when Winston Churchill delivered his first speech as British Prime Minister, Vienna and Prague, Warsaw, Copenhagen and Oslo had already fallen. Hitler had been able to occupy capital after capital because France, Great Britain and the rest of the world were frozen in shock. When Churchill rose to speak in the House of Commons, his predecessor Chamberlain had just fallen. He had tried unsuccessfully to appease Hitler for a long time. He hadn’t wanted his voters to make sacrifices for a cause that many at the time still believed was not theirs. For this reason he had long told the British, and probably himself, the comfortable fairy tale that one could tame Hitler without making great sacrifices.
Chamberlain was wrong. Soon German tanks rolled on Paris too, and Chamberlain fell. In London, Churchill now came to the pulpit and said: “I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, sweat and tears.” He was honest and he trusted that the British would accept that.