Winston Churchill’s selection to the prime ministership on May 10, 1940, was easily one of the bleakest in British history. At dawn that day Hitler’s armies invaded the West and quickly ran overran Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland. France, too, was invaded and by end of June was forced to surrender in the same railway car in Compiègne where the First World War officially ended in 1918.

Neville Chamberlain had long since proven himself an inept war leader, and after the disastrous invasion of Norway by British and French forces in April 1940—that resulted in a humiliating defeat and withdrawal—Chamberlain’s days were numbered. On May 10 he tendered his resignation to King George VI. Although the Norway campaign was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, it was Chamberlain who took the fall, thus opening the door for Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty, to become the new prime minister.

On that historic day the summons to Buckingham Palace came at six p.m. As he was driven the short distance from the Admiralty to the Palace he exchanged no words with his driver and bodyguard, Inspector Walter H. Thompson, but instead sat in unusually silent contemplation. “I was taken immediately to the King,” he later wrote. There were a few awkward moments after “he bade me sit down” and “looked at me searchingly and quizzically,” before inquiring: “I suppose you don’t know why I have sent for you?” Churchill replied, “Sir, I simply couldn’t imagine why,” producing a laugh and the formal, time-honored means by which British monarchs request the formation of a new government. Churchill accepted without further pretense, promising to immediately form a coalition government, form a new War Cabinet consisting of five to six members, and to submit before midnight five names whom he intended to bring into his new government.

Privately, George VI was both disappointed and extremely wary of Churchill and his buccaneer reputation. Although unenthusiastic over Churchill, the King’s misgivings proved short-lived. Churchill quickly won him over by a combination of charm and performance.

As he returned to the Admiralty from his audience with the King, Churchill sat alone and pensive in the backseat of his automobile. The son of Lord Randolph Churchill, who once told him he would never amount to anything, was now prime minister of Great Britain. Quietly accepting Thompson’s congratulations, Churchill was momentarily nearly overwhelmed with the enormity of the task placed squarely into his hands. Tears came into his eyes, and as he turned away he muttered something to himself. Then he set his jaw, and with a look of determination, gained control of his emotions. Yet, despite his steely sense of purpose, Churchill was unable to completely hide the magnitude of what was now his responsibility. “God alone knows how great it is,” he quietly remarked to Thompson. “I hope it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. But we can only do our best.”

Although later that night he admitted to “a profound sense of relief,” for a brief moment, when the elation and triumph of a lifetime dream ought to have otherwise prevailed, Winston Churchill was quite possibly the loneliest man in Britain.

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In the late evening hours of May 10, 1940, Churchill and the British nation began what would prove to be a long, often lonely, but ultimately triumphant ordeal. In the Great War, Churchill had been merely a player; in this war his years of military experience and preparation would serve him well as not only the political leader of his nation—its source of inspiration to resist the terror inflicted upon the British people and their cities—but as its military warlord. The ordeal ahead might well have devastated Britain but for one elderly man’s supreme will to resist. Although he once said: “I know now that it will come to me to deal with Mister Hitler,” Churchill never counted on having to fight a war on two fronts in 1940: to hold back Germany’s attempts to crush Britain, and to fend off those in his own government who would have made peace with the German dictator. It was an incredible challenge he had waited all his life to undertake.

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