When Britain Saved the West: The Story of 1940 by Robin Prior (review)

Winston Churchill popularized the idea that 1940 was the pivotal moment in World War II. A recurring theme in his early wartime speeches was that Nazi Germany represented an existential threat not just to Great Britain and its Empire, but to Western Civilization as a whole. Britain’s survival, he proclaimed, offered the only hope that the states of continental Europe would one day be liberated, and that the United States would never have to face a Nazi war-machine that controlled the resources of all Europe. It is difficult today to argue with this judgment. If Britain had been beaten in 1940, or if British leaders had accepted a compromise peace that reduced Britain to a vassal state, the outcome of the war would have been very different.

Robin Prior, an Australian historian best known for his work on the British army in World War I, presents the Churchillian interpretation of 1940 with gusto. The book focuses on the key events that, in Prior’s opinion, ensured Britain’s survival as an independent state. Not surprisingly, Churchill emerges as the central figure in the narrative. It was not Britain that saved the West in 1940: it was Churchill’s Britain. The first threat to the nation’s survival, Prior argues, was Neville Chamberlain, the onetime champion of appeasement, whose lacklustre performance as prime minister during the “phoney war” demonstrated his unfitness to lead the nation at this critical time. Churchill, then serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, is the only figure in the government to emerge with any credit. It was not until he became prime minister in May 1940 that Britain had a leader who understood the consequences of defeat — and was ready to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to win. The decisive moment came soon afterward. With the defeat of France, Britain was in a seemingly hopeless strategic position. Many leading figures, including Chamberlain and another former appeaser, Lord Halifax — both members of Churchill’s War Cabinet — were willing to consider a negotiated peace. Prior recounts in detail how the new prime minister skillfully outmanoeuvred members of his own government to ensure that Britain did not enter into talks with Hitler.

The remainder of the book concentrates on Britain’s survival in the months to follow. Like most historians, Prior concludes that Britain’s position was actually much stronger than it appeared to contemporaries, especially after the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. The Royal Navy’s overwhelming superiority was probably sufficient, in his view, to ensure that any attempt to transport an army to British shores would have ended in disaster for the Germans. No one appreciated this better than the Germans themselves. Their attempt to neutralize the Royal Air Force, considered an essential precondition for invasion, ended in failure. The three chapters Prior devotes to the Battle of Britain take a conventional view of the campaign. Despite its formidable numerical superiority, the Luftwaffe suffered from numerous handicaps, many of them self-inflicted. Nor was it any better placed to bomb Britain into submission. In a chapter devoted to the Blitz, Prior is rightly dismissive of the idea that the German air force possessed the resources either to destroy British morale or cripple its war effort.

When Britain Saved the West is a skillful retelling of the well-known narrative of British sacrifice and heroism in the darkest hours of the war. Prior’s conclusions will not surprise anyone familiar with recent scholarship on Britain and World War II, and they were not meant to. The book is intended for a predominantly non-academic audience. The author only strays into controversial territory near the end of the volume when he turns to the United States. Prior maintains that American aid to Britain in 1940 was shamefully inadequate. While Britain was fighting selflessly to save “the West,” the Americans extracted the one-sided Destroyers-for-Bases...