ARTICLE: The Duel: Hitler vs. Churchill, 1940

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we frame history. Especially ‘big’ history that covers vast amounts of material, huge swathes of territory and the over-arching narrative we build to explain momentous events. This is partly because our own book, Ring of Fire is out later this week and tries to tell the story, worldwide, of the first few weeks of WW1, but more on that on Friday. For now, think about when you play with a photo on your phone; zooming in and out, cropping off the edges to get it just right. Writing history is just the same, but with words. Who deserves the credit for any given course of events has been a bone of contention that has come up in the mainstream media this week. Today, I want to write about eighty days during the Second World War, and look at how, and why one historian put a frame around them that made it all about two men…

A few weeks ago I picked up something in the Petersfield Bookshop (Join me there on 10th July for a book event if you can, you will love it). Written by John Lukacs and published for the 50th Anniversary in 1990, the book is called ‘The Duel: 10 May - 31 July 1940: The 80-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler.’

Before I look at how he framed history, I think it’s really important to look at who was framing it, because Lukacs’s own background is fascinating and utterly relevant to the way in which he constructed this narrative. It tells us why he made this choice, I think.

He was born in Budapest in 1924 to Jewish parents who converted to Roman Catholicism. He was well educated, specifically with regard to English; and he even spent two summers at a private school in England. He went on to study history at the University of Budapest. Then the war came. When the Nazi’s arrived in 1944, Lukacs found himself forced to serve in a Hungarian labour battalion for Jews. By the end of the year, however, he had deserted and was hiding in a cellar. He remained there till the end of the war, managing to survive both the fate of being deported to a death camp and the Siege of Budapest. In 1946, to escape communism, he emigrated to America.

So the author of this book had skin in the game. He had a very personal reason to despise Hitler. As well as everything that befell him, his parents perished in the war, he never heard from either again. He believed Nazism was ‘the culmination of the dark forces which lurk within modern civilisation,’ but he was also a massive anglophile and an ardent fan of Winston Churchill. He considered Britain’s war-time Prime Minister to be not only an unparalleled statesman, but no less than the saviour of Western Civilisation. The theme of Churchill vs. Hitler in a battle for the future of the world came up time and again in his work. Though he also wrote about the necessity of America joining the war, and the effectiveness of the Soviet Union deciding to oppose Hitler, he fully believed that in 1940, Churchill’s pivotal role in the Battle of Britain laid the groundwork for Allied victory.

So now you know where he was coming from when he sat down to write this book dedicated to one 80-day period at the beginning of the war. And how he viewed both parties. But as a historian, how did Lukacs sell this time-span as one pivotal to the outcome of the Second World War?

One of my favourite things as a historian is stripping away hindsight and dumping the reader in the midst of events when the characters don’t yet know how they will unfold. 10th May 1940 is an evocative moment to choose. ‘Gentlemen,’ Hitler told his flunkies just after dawn, ‘the offensive against the Western Powers has begun.’ At this exact point in time, he stood on the verge of victory. As Lukacs puts it:

‘The greatest adventure in Adolf Hitler's career had now started. It would gather speed at a rate unimagined by anyone, including himself. In less than forty days he would be the master of Europe, perhaps of most of the world. His new German flag would fly from the North Cape to the Pyrenees.’

Hitler poses in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

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