It was on a Tuesday, on the eighteenth day of the month of June, in the year or our Lord 1940. Hitler's war machine was successfully taking over one country after another on the European continent. Two days earlier French Marshal Philippe Petain announced on the radio to the general French public that his intentions were to ask Hitler for an armistice with Germany. In the month of August in the previous year, Stalin's Soviet Russia had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler's Nazi Germany. The United States naively believed that she could stand on the sidelines while the rest of the world was being plunged into a new dark ages. In all of this, Great Britain stood alone.
These were dark times for the old empire who's motto was that the sun never set on it. But, now she had a new secret weapon in her new (well, not actually in age) prime minister. Through his speeches and unwavering resolve, Winston Churchill would help to give the British the courage that they would need to fight against Hitler's blitzkrieg.
It was on this date that Churchill would deliver his "Finest Hour" speech before the British parliament and on the radio.
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