By 1940 the high tide of German victories seemed to presage a ruthless, nightmarish Nazi hegemony over the European continent, a possibility Winston Churchill warned might sink the world “into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” Yet by early July, the new prime minister had solved some of the most daunting problems a statesman has ever confronted: the collapse of France, British political opposition to a continuation of the war, relations with the United States and the technological threat represented by the Luftwaffe’s blind bombing capabilities. Churchill had set Britain, and eventually the United States, on a path toward the destruction of Nazi Germany.

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May 9, 1940. Late in the afternoon three of Britain’s most powerful politicians—Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill—gather in a room. No stenographers are present, but Chamberlain’s diary and the memoirs of Halifax and Churchill sketch out how their discussion likely progressed. The meeting would determine who would be the next prime minister and thus chart Britain’s perilous course over the next several years and perhaps for decades to come.

Chamberlain had just watched in humiliation as more than 100 Conservative members of parliament voted against his government. Clearly, he could no longer serve as Britain’s leader. But who would succeed him? As head of the Conservative Party, Chamberlain holds the decisive vote. In the meeting he first offers the position to Halifax, who had supported the government’s appeasement policy throughout the late 1930s and claims widespread support among the Conservative majority, which has dominated the House of Commons since 1935.

Yet, the prime minister’s offer is conditional: Chamberlain would remain in government and head the House of Commons, while Churchill would run the war. Halifax would lead the government in the House of Lords. In effect, he would assume a titular position. He turns down the offer. As Halifax later explained to Sir Alexander Cadogan, the No. 2 man in the Foreign Office: “If I was not in charge of the war, and if I didn’t lead in the House [of Commons], I should be a cipher.” Chamberlain clings to the hope he can remain in office—that is, until the refusal of Labor Party leaders later that afternoon to join a unity government.

And so Churchill becomes prime minister under the most inauspicious of circumstances—a fact he fully appreciates. As he remarked to his detective guard after receiving his appointment from King George VI: “God knows how great the [task] is. I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.”

Many of Britain’s elite are initially hostile to his assumption of office, including the king himself, Halifax, most of those who had supported Chamberlain’s dismal appeasement policy, many of Britain’s leading military figures, most Conservative members of parliament and others who simply mistrust the new PM’s judgment. The first time Churchill walks into the House as prime minister, the Conservative benches maintain a grim silence, while they greet Chamberlain with cheers. Churchill retorts by informing the party’s chief whip that a similar demonstration in future will force him to seek a popular election, which, given the Conservatives’ failed foreign policy, would result in a political disaster for them.

For the next two months, Churchill would tread warily through the political minefields while making a series of ruthless decisions, such as dropping arch appeaser Samuel Hoare from the cabinet and shipping him off to Spain as British ambassador. Ironically, one of Churchill’s major supporters would be Chamberlain, who came to realize Britain could reach no accord with Adolf Hitler, an opinion Halifax did not share—which may have played in Chamberlain’s offer of a nominal prime ministership.

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