(dramatic music) (narrator) May 1940.

Darkness had descended upon the world.

Germany and her allies controlled large swaths of Europe.

Japan had invaded china and was looking to expand her empire further.

Britain and Empire were under threat.

(Winston Churchill) But if anybody likes to play rough we can play rough too.

(narrator) In this fractured world Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the Untied Kingdom.

He did so with a clear goal, victory.

Now we are at war and we are going to make war until the other side have had enough.

(narrator) This is the story of the man who led Britain and her empire through one of the darkest moments in its history.

This is Winston Churchill's War.

♪ In September 1939, Germany led by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party invaded Poland.

France, Britain and the Commonwealth dominions were quick to declare war on Germany.

But could do little to directly support their beleaguered Polish ally.

Sixteen days later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east taking advantage of the instability to annex their own territory.

By October, all of Poland was occupied and Germany was making plans for further advancements in Europe's west.

The Second World War had begun.

A war that would plunge the world into conflict for over six years.

♪ By the spring of 1940, Nazi Germany had launched successful offensives across Western Europe.

Adolf Hitler and his fascist ally, Benito Mussolini, now dominated much of mainland Europe and Hitler had his sight set on Great Britain.

♪ The British Empire faced a menace greater than any she had faced in centuries.

♪ Against this threat, Britain's newly appointed Prime Minster, Winston Churchill, resolved to fight to the end.

He and the British Empire were determined to wage war against the monstrous tyranny.

This was a decision that profoundly shaped the outcome of the Second World War and would come to define a man who had himself believed that he was destined to lead his nation.

(Winston Churchill) Let's stop your heart.

All will come right out of the depths of sorrow and of sacrifice.

Will be born again, the glory of mankind.

(narrator) How did Churchill come to fulfill his self appointed destiny?

Did class, opportunity and good fortune predetermine his fate?

Or did a combination of will, drive and ambition keep him on his course?

It was the life he lived before the war that had prepared Churchill for the struggles and toil that arrived in 1940.

The successes and the failures that helped and hindered as he led his nation's fight through years of war.

♪ Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace in 1874.

The same year as the first impressionist art exhibition.

This was a fitting coincidence for a man who would later develop a passion for painting.

It was a passion shared by another key 20th century figure.

A figure who's life and actions would become intertwined with Churchill's own.

Adolf Hitler.

Although Hitler was born 15 years after Churchill both would be defined by their actions in the Second World War.

Their fates would converge in 1940 but their lives began very differently.

♪ Born in Austria in 1889, Hitler was the son of a civil servant and a doting mothing.

Up until the First World War, Hitler was a man in search of purpose.

Winston Churchill, by contrast, was born into the English aristocracy.

(Dr. Brendon) Churchill was an extraordinary mixture of English aristocrat and American tycoon.

His father was the younger son of the Duke of Walburga.

His mother was the daughter of Lennie Jerome who was an amazing American speculator who won and lost fortunes all the time.

He was a strange mixture of this immensely distinguished English family and American gambler.

(orchestral music) ♪ (narrator) Churchill's father, Lord Randolph Churchill was inattentive and largely emotionally absent despite young Winston's many childhood pleas in letters from boarding school.

♪ As a child, Churchill did not easily fit within the conventional frameworks of schooling.

♪ He was not lacking in intellect but Latin gave him trouble and mathematics was a challenge.

♪ His early career in the British army was equally unconventional.

He possessed a strong sense of self beyond the institution.

But more than that, he considered himself a man destined for bigger things.

(Dr. Brendon) He had a supreme self confidence.

At age 21 he was telling people that he was destined to become Prime Minster of England and they believed him.

He had this ambition but he also had a staggering capacity for work.

He read, he prepared himself.

He educated himself for this political career and he said even at that early age, he was intending to beat his sword into an undispatched box and succeed in parliament.

♪ (narrator) Churchill also longed for battle and adventure.

During the Second World War, he sought out opportunities to travel as close as he could to the battle field.

These impulses had begun as a young adult.

♪ In the 1890s, Churchill worked as a writer and war correspondent as well as actively serving in the British Army in Cuba, India, Sudan and South Africa.

♪ Even in his early years, he found ways to successfully meld war with words.

♪ (Professor O'Shaughnessy) Churchill had already established his reputation before the end of the Victorian era with his early books, the Malakand Field Force The River War and so fourth and he had been straight from the start, a master of the condensed epigrammatic phrase.

In fact, his early rhetoric is better, it's far more muscular than his later rhetoric in World War II.

(piano music) (narrator) Churchill's initial experience in politics was not a success.

In 1899, he ran as a conservative candidate in a by-election in the seat of Oldham but did not win.

The next year, in the general election, he managed to secure a seat by a slim margin.

He took his seat in November 1900 while Queen Victoria still reigned over Britain and the Empire.

♪ It was here during his early days in the House of Commons where Churchill refined his rhetorical ability which would later fortify the nation at war in 1940.

(Winston Churchill) Indeed, now that I come to think of it, it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education.

In politics.

Dialectic, rhetoric and one or two other things.

(Professor Toye) He was very good at the prepared, set oration.

He knew this himself, he wasn't particularly good at being spontaneous.

(Winston Churchill) I've learned a lot in these 31 years.

Many things have happened to the world.

(Professor Toye) His technique from the earliest days in politics was to memorize long and detailed speech.

Early in his career, in 1904, he was in the House of Commons.

He was almost all the way through his speech and then suddenly, he had kind of a brain freeze, couldn't remember what he was going to say, sort of stuttered a few words and sat down.

From then on, he almost always worked from a text.

(narrator) In 1904, Churchill crossed the floor shifting his allegiance from the conservatives to the liberal party and as Churchill continued to build his political career he also sought and found happiness in his personal life.

Clementine Hozier first met Winston Churchill at a ball in 1904.

(orchestral music) She later recalled he hadn't said a word to her in their first encounter.

He just stood and stared.

♪ Winston proposed at his birthplace, Blenheim Palace in August 1908.

And they were married the very next month at Saint Margaret's Westminster.

♪ In the wars and political storms to come Clementine remained a beacon of strength and support.

Britain may have stood alone in those dark days of 1940 but Churchill certainly did not.

(lively music) In July 1914, European tensions transformed into war.

(intense music) ♪ Churchill had become First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911.

With the First World War underway this position as the political head of the Royal Navy was strategically important.

♪ Churchill's role in the failed Gallipoli Campaign in 1915 earned him infamy that lives on to the present day.

The plan to use the Royal Navy to try to force passage through the Dardanelles sail a fleet to bombard Constantinople and force Turkey out of the war ended in object failure.

The land campaign that followed also ended in defeat and withdrawal in January 1916 after eight months of fighting.

♪ The blame for the failed Gallipoli Campaign was largely laid at Churchill's feet.

♪ In May 1915, shortly after the failure at Gallipoli Prime Minister Asquith formed a new government with the conservatives.

They insisted Churchill lose his position as First Lord of the Admiralty.

And he ultimately resigned from the government.

♪ Churchill now turned his attention to what contribution he might make as a soldier.

♪ In early 1916, Churchill took command of the Sixth Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers and was sent to serve on the Western front.

The battalion he led had been savaged in the Battle of Loos the previous September and morale was low.

As Lieutenant colonel Churchill entered the trenches with his men at Ploegsteert on the Belgium front in late January 1916.

Where the unit was subject to shell fire and suffered causalities.

After a short stint of leave in London in March Churchill returned to the battlefield but he returned as a man in two minds.

Feeling the pull of politics once again.

♪ When it was clear that his unit would be absorbed into another with someone else in command Churchill resigned as commission in May 1916.

♪ In mid-1917, Churchill secured a position as Minister of Munitions.

The First World War was a war of machines, air craft, artillery and armor all came to the fore on Europe's battlefields.

The experience at the end of the First World War has shown what a combination of weapon systems could do.

It was no longer about artillery and infantry individually it was about infantry, armor, aircraft, intelligence, artillery, underground mines, everything you could think of working in harmony to try and break any future deadlock.

♪ (narrator) Churchill understood this.

He had promoted the value of the tanks since early 1915 when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he has established the Landship Committee.

♪ By 1918, Churchill's instincts on the potential of the tank were proven right.

The infantry and armored corps had learned to work more effectively together and tanks became a key element of the British war effort.

♪ During his ten year of Minister of Munitions he also briefly met Franklin Roosevelt.

In July 1918, they both attended a dinner in the banquet hall of Gray's Inn, London.

When the two met again years later, Churchill had forgotten their earlier encounter.

Roosevelt had not and he did not have fond memories of it.

Roosevelt recalled that Churchill had acted like a stinker.

♪ Churchill and Roosevelt were not the only future leaders whose experiences in the First World War would inform their leadership in the second.

Adolf Hitler also served in the war.

♪ Perhaps for the first time in his life Hitler found purpose in the Bavarian Army in the First World War.

He served on the Western Front and was considered a good soldier.

In 1918, when news of the German surrender reached him Hitler was in hospital recovering from a mustard gas attack.

(Professor Hett) So in 1919, Hitler is staying with the army.

Biographers of Hitler always say that the army was really the only home he had ever had, at least as his childhood.

He starts in the course of 1919 to develop a career as a political education officer for the army, they ask him to give lectures to troops on politics and this is where he discovers the one thing he could really do and he wrote, "I found I could speak."

♪ (narrator) One topic on which Hitler spoke about at length was the Treaty of Versailles and the stab in the back legend.

The contention that the war had been lost not on the battlefield but because of internal -descent on the home front.

-The stab in the back was a common currency among all Germans.

They all thought they'd be betrayed.

This was the kind of normative discourse.

But the Nazis gave it a special prominence.

They were planting this idea of grievance and betrayal in the German people and they did it very effectively.

(narrator) Signed at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference the Treaty of Versailles had imposed severe penalties on Germany.

Including loss of territory, restrictions on the military and reparations in the billions.

♪ Churchill had also attended the Paris Peace Conference as Secretary of State for Air and War.

Though he was not directly involved in the peace talks he was involved in discussions about the shape of the post-war world.

♪ In February 1921, Churchill became Secretary of State for the colonies.

He held responsibility for all colonial dependences of the United Kingdom.

Including areas of the Middle East under British influence.

In the wake of the war and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire national boarders across the region were being redrawn by the British and the French.

(Dr. Pennell) Winston Churchill's Colonial Secretary by this stage brings together military officials, colonial officials, interested parties to literally sit down over the course of the conference to put all of their ideas on paper and to come up with the arrangements that will become the boundaries that we recognize today.

(narrator) Churchill's knowledge of the history and culture's of the area did not run deep.

And this lack of a nuanced understanding by Churchill and his British and French peers had serious consequences in the creation of nation's boarders.

Including Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

(Dr. Pennell) Iraq is the most artificial of all the states that are created because essentially they are lumping together three very distinct provinces of Baghdad, Basrah and Mosul.

Saying you are now a single state.

But the inhabitants of those provinces don't necessarily see or recognize themselves as being within a single nation state.

And many of the issues to do with sectarian violence that are ongoing in Iraq to this day stem out from this.

♪ (narrator) In 1922, Churchill lost his seat at a general election.

Despite the efforts of Clementine who had campaigned for him while he was ill with appendicitis.

♪ At the age of 47 Churchill was out of government.

But by 1924, he had rejoined the ranks of the conservatives.

A move that put him back in government.

And in a position of significant authority as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The position his father had once held.

Churchill's father had been Chancellor of the Exchequer and he'd made a great fuss about the decimal points which he called "Those damn dots" and Churchill didn't have much more of a clue about those damn dots than his father had.

He wasn't very good at finance at all.

(narrator) The return to the gold standard was Churchill's defining action in this role.

The gold standard was a system which linked the currency directly to a fixed quantity of gold.

The decision is often criticized.

Some suggesting it a mark of incompetence.

But Churchill was not lax in his role.

He did not make the decision lightly and had in fact, resisted it.

He even hosted a dinner party with key economic advisors further integrating the issue.

(Dr. Brendon) He took advice, in the end, he took the wrong advice.

Retuning Britain to the gold standard.

Largely as an expression of political virility.

He wanted the pound to be strong but it was too strong and it undermined the economy and it perhaps helped to make the depression more severe, perhaps even to have helped cause the depression.

(narrator) The return to the gold standard did strengthen the pound but this made UK exports uncompetitive and caused widespread unemployment.

♪ The outcome was not a good one for Churchill or the economy.

But the incident tells us something of the man who would lead Britain in war.

Hosting dinner late into the night foreshadowed the many late night discussions he would hold during the Second World War.

♪ It also suggested he was willing to rely on expert advice even if he disagreed with it.

♪ Churchill's experience as Chancellor also offered him another chance to hone his oratory.

His budget speeches were quite the spectacle.

His speeches as Chancellor, his budget speeches which went on and on and on sustained by copious drafts of whiskey were the most brilliant entertainment that you could possibly hear.

I mean, they were absolutely wonderful.

Everybody loved him for these really witty accounts of what he was going to do to the economy.

But in practice, he didn't live up to the rhetoric.

♪ (narrator) In May 1929, Churchill's time as Chancellor came to an end with a victory of the Labor Party under Ramsay MacDonald.

The 1930s are often called Churchill's wilderness years.

Although he remained a sitting MP he turned his attention to writing and to furthering his publication record.

A number of issues dominated his focus in this period and one in particular showed him to be out of step with the modern world.

♪ His position on India and his suborn resistance to the growing clamor for independence was an obsession that marked him as a dated imperialist.

♪ (Winston Churchill) Things are going from bad to worse.

Great mismanagement and weakness are causing unrest and disturbance to 300 million primitive people whose well being is in our care.

We require to have a clear, practical (inaudible) and to peruse it with courage and with conviction.

♪ (narrator) Mahatma Gandhi had become the influential leader of the Independence Movement after 1918.

Promoting nonviolent noncooperation.

♪ In Britain and in parliament views on the independence of India -began to diverge.

-So this argument starts to come out between people like Churchill who were really, if you like the representatives of deep imperialism, India was there as a British possession forever.

If the British didn't rule over India India would just fall apart and he famously said "India is no more elation than the equator."

That is had no meaning as a nation.

So he completely dismissed Indian nationalism.

I feel that the Indian danger will raise a crisis equal in importance to the greatest events in the history of Great British.

(Professor Khilnani) So on the one hand people liked Churchill, on the other hand, some of the more pragmatic liberal and labor politicians who realized that at some point you would have to start -to devolve power.

-And finally I hope that by our labors together India will possess the only thing which she now lacks.

Full responsibility for their own government.

♪ (narrator) Churchill was particularly dismissive of Gandhi.

♪ To Churchill Gandhi was an enemy of empire.

(Dr. Brendon) The Tory Party was gradually moving towards a position of giving tranches of independence to India, first of all, prudential independence and perhaps eventually becoming a free dominion to join Canada and Australia.

Churchill hated this it was anathema to him.

♪ (Professor Toye) So a lot of effort that Churchill spent in politics up until 1935 was in trying to defeat the British government Government of India Bill which was to extend a measure of self government to India.

And there was, it's got to be said, an element of racism in his attitude towards India.

He talked about Gandhi as a half-naked fakir and used really rather horrible terms towards the Indians.

Called the a foul race and so on.

He was holy on the wrong side of the flow of history.

(intense music) (narrator) At the same time, he was also delivering perspective warnings about the rise of the far right in Germany.

♪ (Professor Toye) We don't know the exact point of which he first heard the name Hitler but we can say that prior to Hitler seizing power he was certainly aware of Hitler and was reading news reports coming out of Germany and was concerned about the threat that he potentially posed, he was concerned about Hitler's antisemitism.

(narrator) Churchill watched as Hitler, who had found his voice on the battlefields of the western front, began using it in a political sphere.

♪ (Professor Toye) So at the same time that he was starting to warn about the dangerous of Germany and to advocate British rearmament he was also engaged in this parallel, an ultimately unsuccessful effort, to defeat reform in India.

So the way Churchill liked to tell his story in his memoir was to very much emphasis his efforts to combat the Nazis and to downplay his efforts with respect to India.

♪ (narrator) Hitler's rise to power began in a shattered post-war Bavaria.

He joined the German Workers Party in 1919.

In 1920, the party changed it's name to the Nationalists, Socialists German Workers Party.

Better known to history as the Nazis.

By 1921, he was its leader.

♪ In 1929, the depression caused economic instability.

And Hitler used it to strengthen the Nazi Party.

♪ In 1932, Hitler won 36 percent of the vote in the presidential election against Hindenburg.

And he used his strong position to his advantage.

In the negotiations that followed he held firm.

He would take the role of Chancellor of Germany -and nothing less.

-Hitler absolutely had an all or nothing approach to gaining power.

One of the real skills that Hitler had in politics was a brilliant sense of timing.

He had the nerves to wait, not jump too soon at an opportunity in which he might be closed out of power and not be able to do what he wanted to do.

So he was willing to wait until that was in fact handed to him in late January 1933.

♪ (narrator) President Hindenburg had made a fatal mistake in thinking he could control Hitler in some kind of partnership but Hitler's ambition to become dictator burned as fiercely as the fire than engulfed the Reichstag a month after he accepted the Chancellorship.

♪ He quickly executed a plan to gain full control.

In March 1933, the Enabling Act passed.

Which gave Hitler dictatorial powers.

The German parliament had underestimated the rising dictator and they were not alone in doing so.

(Professor Overy) Chamberlain and other western politicians made pretty much the same kind of miscalculation.

They looked at him and thought, you know, what is this man.

Can we really take him seriously?

Could he possibly be a threat?

Is this somebody perhaps we could manipulate?

We could bring him to the conference table and discuss things with him and so on and so on.

But he was a phenomenon, Hitler.

Nobody quite like him in the 1930s.

(speaking German) ♪ (narrator) In 1930, Churchill wrote an essay on Hitler revealing conflicting thoughts.

He admired his love for country and what he called Hitler's vital force in achieving his goals.

He also understood the frustration Germans felt at the punitive reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

♪ Even so, he recognized the darkness of the man.

(Dr. Brendon) Churchill was extremely perceptive about Hitler.

Some people have said that he recognized the devil in Hitler because he had a bit of devil in himself.

But very, very early on he talked about the menace that Hitler represented.

The militarism, the belligerence, the hostility to the Jews, the crushing of any democratic elements in Germany and worse of all, as far as Churchill was concerned, the threat of a revival of the First World War.

♪ (narrator) While Churchill's warnings on appeasement went unheeded for some time in parliament they did not go unnoticed in Germany.

(Professor Toye) Churchill wrote an article which was published in 1935 in a British magazine called The Strand Magazine called The Truth About Hitler.

It was a somewhat ambiguous article in some ways but towards the end of the article he strongly denounced the Night of the Long Knives and Hitler's murder of his former collaborators in 1934.

He had some really quite strong and violent language and the Germans immediately reacted by banning this article.

♪ (narrator) Churchill's fears about Hitler were well founded.

The darkness he feared did indeed rise.

♪ (Dr. Brendon) By the late 1930s, Churchill's prophecies were being seen to be realized because in 1936 we've got Hitler marching into the Rhineland, tearing up the Treaty of Locarno, the Anschluss with Austria and then eventually the gobbling up of Czechoslovakia into two slices.

So Churchill was often wrong, one might almost say that he was almost invariably wrong, but he was right when it mattered and that was the crucial thing about it.

♪ (narrator) As Hitler's powers grew domestic issues in Britain also called Churchill's attention.

One such issue was the abdicated of King Edward VIII in 1936.

It was an affair that scandalized the empire.

The king had fallen for a married women, Wallis Simpson and he would willingly give up his role and duty as sovereign for a life with his great love.

Churchill had known Edward since before the First World War and Edward had often sought his advice.

Churchill sympathized with the king but he did not support the abdication.

Churchill, as one of the leaders of the opposition, pushed the government for more time so Edward could reconsider his decision.

But Edward's mind was made up and in December 1936, he made history.

(man) By instrument of abdication dated the tenth day of December instant his former majesty, King Edward VIII did declare his irrevocable determination to renounce the thrown for himself and his descendants.

God save the King.

(narrator) In a speech following the abdication Churchill warned of potential external threats to empire.

"Danger gathers upon our path" he cautioned.

Urging all to support the King's successor and ensure a strong united empire.

♪ But Britain and in particular, its members of parliament were not united in the plan against German aggression.

I'm going to meet the German Chancellor because the situation seems to me to be one in which discussions between him and me may have useful consequences.

(narrator) In 1938, the Munich Agreement made clear the rifts in opinion on German appeasement.

(announcer) Look at this shot in which you'll see the statesmen all together, Mussolini, Hitler, Daladier and the camera pans over to Mr. Chamberlain on the right.

It is two o'clock in the morning and agreement has been reached.

(narrator) In the Munich Agreement Germany, Italy, France and Britain agree to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia.

♪ There was of course significant opposition and anger about the Munich Agreement within some elements of the conservative party against the anti-appeasers, Churchill and his circle, Eden and his circle.

(Professor Napier) Churchill suddenly regarded the Munich agreement as a sellout of Czechoslovakia by Britain and France.

In parliament, he even went so far to say Czechoslovakia could've done better negotiating by itself rather than involving Britain and France in the negotiations.

He believed that only the threat of a declaration of war would've prevented the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

(narrator) Churchill's opposition to the agreement was not to suggest he was actively seeking war but rather, seeking to stop Hitler.

♪ (Dr. Gottlieb) No one was saying that they wanted war.

Churchill wasn't saying what he wanted was war.

There were just different roads to peace that they were proposing.

But what they were really saying was we need to fight this war at some point.

We can't keep on giving in to Hitler.

(narrator) For many, the sacrifice of the Sudetenland was a step too far in appeasement.

(Dr. Gottlieb) Even though we should give due regard to the fact that Chamberlain and appeasement was popular around the world, there was a real sense of shame and embarrassment at what Britain had done.

At how it had abandoned an worthy ally in the Czechs and what was going on behind the scenes.

♪ (narrator) During the interwar period Churchill also warned of the threat of Bolshevism and the influence of soviet leader, Joseph Stalin.

♪ The Soviet Union had formed in the wake on the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Stalin emerged as the undisputed leader in 1929.

He had his former rival for the leadership, Leon Trotsky, expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929.

And in 1940, assassinated.

♪ After the First World War, Churchill was obsessed by what had happened in Russia in 1917, the Russian Revolution.

He saw the Bolsheviks as a danger, similar to that of the Jacobins in the 18th century.

As revolutionaries who were going to overthrow not just the Russian order but the world order.

They apposed a threat to humanity, to civilization.

♪ (narrator) Churchill's concerns about the threat of communism were deeply engrained.

His suspicions and mistrust of Stalin would endure throughout the Second World War.

But he was also a pragmatist.

As the threat of Germany grew Churchill recognized the Soviet Union might serve as a useful ally.

During the 1930s he's actually potentially willing to work with the Soviet Union.

You can see that he now saw the Nazis as a greater threat than the Bolsheviks and was prepared potentially, at least, to work with the lesser evil.

♪ (narrator) The interwar period was a time of immerging leaders jockeying for power and position.

Germany had Hitler.

The Soviet Union, Stalin.

And Italy had Mussolini.

♪ (Dr. Brendon) Churchill's initial response to Mussolini when he heard about him was what a swine Mussolini is but Clementine, his wife, went out and met Mussolini and was very intoxicated with him.

He was a mesmeric character, Mussolini.

And Churchill too became rather addicted to Mussolini when he met him and he felt that he was going to save Italy.

Particularly save Italy from the Communists.

(speaking Italian) His disillusionment came in 1935 with Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and after that, his opinion of him continued to slide until eventually Mussolini joined the Axis and in due course joined Hitler in the war.

♪ (narrator) Not all the leaders on the world stage in the interwar years were a potential threat to Britain.

♪ Churchill was also forging an important political relationship with a powerful ally, in Franklin Roosevelt and the United States.

♪ (Dr. Woolner) Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt is one of the great stories of the Second World War cause it was Roosevelt who initiated that relationship.

He wrote to Churchill in September of 1939 when Churchill was still First Lord of the Admiralty and of course Roosevelt was a great naval enthusiast and was excited by the fact that thing strong character was now in charge of the Royal Navy.

This started this remarkable correspondence and relationship between the two of them that would last throughout the Second World War.

♪ (narrator) Churchill admired much about Roosevelt.

His sense of social justice and he thought him a man of composure who was equally as capable of action.

A statesman of world renowned.

But he also viewed some of Roosevelt's social reforms with suspicion.

Though they would share a common goal and enemy they had deeply contrasting world views.

(Dr. Woolner) It's a fascinating story, I mean, they really enjoyed each other's company but they came from two different universes.

Churchill was kind of a Victorian figure.

He was a great believer in the British Empire.

Roosevelt frankly detested Colonialism and found that aspect of Churchill's world view really reprehensible.

(narrator) In the years to come, Churchill would work closely with Roosevelt and Stalin in the fight against the Axis and in that partnership he would be forced to confront a shifting reality.

Where the views of the Prime Minister of the British Empire were becoming less central to the changing power dynamics of the new world.

(intense music) ♪ In September 1939, the Second World War broke out in Europe.

Germany had invaded Poland and two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany.

(announcer) The faithful hour of eleven has struck and Britain's final warning to Hitler, having been ignored, a state of war once more exists between Great Britain and Germany.

(narrator) This marked the start of the Phony War.

A period of almost eight months with the only action seen by British forces was at sea.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appointed Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, the same position he had occupied in the First World War.

Churchill took a very aggressive approach as the First Lord of the Admiralty.

He was the youngly hawk, if you'd like, in the Chamberlain ministry which was made up of all the ministers that were there during Munich.

Churchill immediately instigated a program to increase the size of the British Army.

(Winston Churchill) Anyone can see that public opinion is growing in favor of compulsory national service in all its forms and especially in the highest form.

(Professor Napier) He wants to modernize the Royal Navy and he was very much about action, you know, immediate action.

(narrator) This action ultimately translated to a military strategy which instead of attacking Germany head on, favored a peripheral approach.

In early 1940, Churchill's focus has shifted to Scandinavia.

Hitler was shipping high grade iron ore from Sweden to Germany via Norway.

-Churchill wanted to stop him.

-He was very anxious to interrupt the supply of iron ore from Norway.

Which had been a tactic used by the British in the First World War.

So he was very aggressive.

(narrator) The Royal Navy under Churchill's direction mined the approaches to Norway and planned the British landing force.

(Professor Napier) That aggression ultimately led to the German invasion of Norway.

Germany had never planned to invade Norway but when Churchill ordered the release of the British prisoners from the Altmark Hitler became convinced, somewhat hypocritically, that Britain would do whatever it liked in Norway and therefore, Norway was a liability.

(narrator) In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

British troops landed in Norway but were quickly forced to retreat.

♪ The campaign was considered a grave failure.

♪ On the seventh of May 1940, in a lengthy debate, the House of Commons discuss the matter.

Prime Minister Chamberlain dismiss suggestions of parallels with the Gallipoli Campaign in the First World War.

Churchill was a key player in the Norway debacle and claimed complete responsibility.

But the blows of many in the House of Commons were aimed at Prime Minister Chamberlain.

♪ The opposition argued that the failure in Norway was representative of other broader failures.

Former conservative cabinet minster, Leo Amery, concluded his speech by demanding Chamberlain's resignation.

"In the name of God, go."

It was clear his support as leader within government was floundering.

Destiny was on Churchill's doorstep but it was not yet certain.

(suspenseful music) ♪ (Dr. Gottlieb) There was no inbuilt inevitability about Churchill replacing Chamberlain in 1940.

In fact, most people assumed that Chamberlain's successor from the anti-appeasement point of view would be either Anthony Eden or Lord Halifax who was Chamberlains foreign secretary.

(narrator) With Anthony Eden out of the picture due to his resignation from government the choice for a successor came down to two men.

♪ Churchill or Lord Halifax.

And ultimately, Halifax took himself out of contention.

On the tenth of May 1940 Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister.

♪ At the age of 65, Churchill had finally met his destiny.

He would lead his nation in war.

The result was not one the public might've expected.

(Dr. Gottlieb) Churchill was not in the picture for most people.

Mass observation and the gallup polls, they both asked these questions who most people thought would replace Chamberlain if for any reason he didn't carry on as war leader and the consensus was never that it would be Churchill.

In fact, it was either Halifax or Eden who always won those polls.

(narrator) Churchill may not have been the Prime Minister the polls predicted but in that moment he was the man that Britain needed.

The nation needed a leader.

Someone who had a plan, who had their vision and could convince people that he was sincere when he said that Britain could win.

♪ (narrator) Soon, he would confront ever worsening crisis.

The evacuation of Dunkirk.

The fall of France.

And the Battle of Britain.

And at his nation's darkest hour Churchill turned towards the United States in the hope of a powerful ally joining the free.

In 1940, his hour had arrived and Churchill was ready and willing when the bells tolled.

(orchestral music) ♪