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    Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain's Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940
    Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain's Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940
    Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain's Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940
    Audiobook10 hours

    Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain's Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940

    Written by John Kelly

    Narrated by Gordon Greenhill

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    “WWII scholar John Kelly triumphs again” (Vanity Fair) in this remarkably vivid account of a key moment in Western history: The critical six months in 1940 when Winston Churchill debated whether England should fight Nazi Germany—and then decided to “never surrender.”

    London in April, 1940, is a place of great fear and conflict. The Germans have taken Poland, France, Holland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia. The Nazi war machine now menaces Britain, even as America remains uncommitted to providing military aid. Should Britain negotiate with Germany? The members of the War Cabinet bicker, yell, and are divided. Churchill, leading the faction to fight, and Lord Halifax, cautioning that prudence is the way to survive, attempt to usurp one another by any means possible. In Never Surrender, we feel we are alongside these complex and imperfect men, determining the fate of the British Empire, and perhaps, the world.

    Drawing on the War Cabinet papers, other government documents, private diaries, newspaper accounts, and memoirs, historian John Kelly tells the story of the summer of 1940. Kelly takes readers from the battlefield to Parliament, to the government ministries, to the British high command, to the desperate Anglo-French conference in Paris and London, to the American embassy in London, and to life with the ordinary Britons. We see Churchill seize the historical moment and ultimately inspire his government, military, and people to fight. Kelly brings to life one of the most heroic moments of the twentieth century and intimately portrays some of its largest players—Churchill, Lord Halifax, Hitler, FDR, Joe Kennedy, and others. Never Surrender is a fabulous, grand narrative of a crucial period in World War II and the men and women who shaped it. “For lovers of minute-by-minute history, it’s a feast” (Huffington Post).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 20, 2015
    ISBN9781480515697
    Author

    John Kelly

    John Kelly, who holds a graduate degree in European history, is the author and coauthor of ten books on science, medicine, and human behavior, including Three on the Edge, which Publishers Weekly called the work of ""an expert storyteller."" He lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for Never Surrender

    4.5/5

    45 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      If you're intristing in the days of early Battelle or Britain they're is no better book then this one.Congtat to the author
    • 5/5
      I enjoy this book. Much detail than an overview of the whole war. This drills down on this fateful year.
    • 5/5
      Very interesting, riveting, well-paced and the narrator was excellent in telling the story.
    • 4/5
      John Kelly surfaced on my radar with his 2015 release Never Surrender. I hadn’t heard of him before, although I note he has produced a couple of interesting narrative histories, one on the Black Plague and the other on the Irish potato famine. He began his writing career with a title on clinical trials in the 1990s. His new title heads away from matters medical, instead focussing on the diplomatic and political intrigue of Britain in the first year of World War 2.
      Kelly draws on a variety of sources - memoirs, letters, newspapers, diaries as well as other histories. He weaves these together with well written, well paced writing that swoops with aplomb from the telling detail to the bigger picture. The story is a fascinating one. British foreign policy in the 1930s was characterised by appeasement - a well known story. This book explains the rationale and context behind this policy well, avoiding the easy criticism of hindsight. As the London Illustrated News stated, “So vast is the cost of victory, no price can be too high to pay for avoiding the necessity of war.” Kelly puts Churchill’s criticism in context, and throughout the book acknowledges both his strengths and weaknesses in one of the best and least partisan accounts of him that I have read. Kelly sums him up well: “To the politicians, who knew Churchill more intimately, he was the witty, gifted, impulsive, erratic polymath who had two bad ideas for every good one and was unable to tell the difference between them.” Kelly acknowledges Churchill’s propensity for emotive prose and speech as sometimes a drawback, but often a strength in inspiring the public. Additionally Churchill’s biggest good idea was his most important - his commitment to a new policy of total victory. Kelly acknowledges his contribution effectively.
      The book takes us through the drama of Chamberlain’s downfall. The political intrigue and unlikelihood of the outcome is told grippingly. The prompt for the gripping events of May was the failed Norwegian counter-invasion by the Allies. Kelly writes that “in interview after interview, the soldiers spoke of inferior British airpower, inferior British tactics, inferior British organisation, leadership, and equipment, or no equipment at all”. Yet Chamberlain’s downfall was not a foregone conclusion, and indeed Churchill could easily have been subjected to blame, embarrassment and humiliation. The opprobrium that had tainted him since the 1915 Gallipoli invasion could easily have been reinvigorated. It is to the credit of the politicians who gradually formed the bloc opposing Chamberlain that they recognised Churchill’s imperfections, but also realised he was the best choice for a war leader. Untainted with the policies of appeasement he was a credible choice, however Labour would not move a motion of confidence in the government unless they were sure of widespread Conservative dissention. David Lloyd George, an incredibly smart operator who had been Prime Minister in the First World War was a credible candidate as well, but made clear that he could not accept a mandate for victory - he told his aide “we have made so many mistakes that we are not in nearly so good a position”. I was kept on the edge of my seat through chapters 5 and 6 as the drama surrounding the leadership unfolded.
      The remainder of the book tells the story of Churchill’s early war leadership. He was able to use his undoubted skills of prose and oratory to powerfully convey Britain’s new goal, a goal he had set: “Victory, victory at all costs! Victory however long and hard the road may be”. The drama of Dunkirk, the tragic fall of France and Churchill’s careful sidelining, then dismissal of proposals for negotiation mainly promoted by Lord Halifax and Lloyd George are beautifully conveyed.
      Kelly returns again and again throughout the book to the possibilities of a British negotiated settlement. Without adopting the benefit of hindsight he makes it clear that this was a quite conceivable viewpoint, made all the more viable as one reads his vivid description of the Wehrmacht’s seemingly unstoppable victories, and the perception that Hitler was almost supernatural in realising his will. Even in late May, after the appeasers had been sidelined, Halifax was articulating at cabinet that “it is no longer a question of imposing complete defeat on Germany but of safeguarding our own empire and, if possible, that of France”. The book describes Churchill’s subtle treatment of these views before his final rejection of them. To convince the US to provide essential aid it was essential to combat the view that Britain did not have the will to fight, or would soon fall. In late May Churchill had a war strategy - Britain alone remaining fighting and prevailing in a “great air battle with Germany”. It was the brilliance and foresight along with Churchill’s tenacity in sticking to it, highlighted well in the book, that along with his morale building oratory made him a great war leader.
      Never Surrender tells the story of Churchill’s critical efforts well, building a credible narrative with careful attention to the subtleties of the sources which highlights the contingency, decision making and personalities that made all the difference in the pivotal year of 1940 between accommodation, defeat for Britain or eventual victory over Germany. It is a compelling story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A fascinating look at perhaps the most important decision any government has made in the last 100 years. Though inferior to the masterful Five Days in London, May 1940 by John Lukacs, this work covers a longer period of time and attempts a broader, longer look. Kelly's skill is a storyteller, and he makes a narrative of the chronological facts.
    • 5/5
      Never Surrender – And we never did!John Kelly has written an excellent narrative history which all history lovers will enjoy reading and learning from. What is important about this book is that it charts the first six months of 1940 while the phoney war was taking place and high politics in Britain and the internal debates could have sent the country in another direction. It must be remembered that at the time Churchill was on the outside and Lord Halifax was pushing for the country to negotiate with Hitler.At the time of this internal debate inside Britain my own Grandfather had already fought, been captured and escaped to France with remnants of the Polish Army. These debates that the British Cabinet had would affect not just the British, but all those gathering at the ports hoping to enter the safety of Britain. It must be remembered at this time the Soviet Union had joined with the Nazis to crush Poland and Germany was turning westward looking to France and the Benelux countries.Kelly covers the pre-war attempts of Chamberlain and his French counterparts to try and ensure peace and their ever failing attempts. The book starts with the 1919 Victory Parade and everything that arose from 1919, while giving a narrative from there to the war, this book does not feel like a narrative of those events but an examination.So we are able to see Churchill not only on the outside of Cabinet, but importantly a Political Outsider, irrelevant to everyone in power. Even his warnings of the ever growing problems of 1930s Germany were ignored in the name of peace and appeasement, which reflected the majority view of the time.With the events happening on mainland Europe in the spring of 1940 saw the rise of Churchill from irrelevance to the man who would be called on to lead Britain. At the same time we read portrayals of all the major political figures in early 1940 and how those early months not only shaped Britain but the British attitude to the Germans and war.John Kelly has drawn upon the use of the War Cabinet Papers now available to be researched, as well as other government documents of the time. He also makes excellent use of newspapers, private diaries and memoirs, which add some of the colour to this outstanding history book.While giving a broad brush to the history of the time and the politics this book is also a great vindication of Churchill and the decision that Britain had to standalone, who stirred the British people to stand and fight. Which they did, when others were too busy making money from the war, but that is another story.An excellent history for all those that want to learn more of that period and of how Churchill came to rise once again.