Posted: Sunday, May 4, 2014 12:01 am

Bruce’s History Lessons: Winston Churchill’s silence was Europe’s salvation

This week (May 9) in 1940, in a meeting between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Churchill did something he had rarely, if ever, done before. He kept his mouth shut. In doing so, he probably saved western civilization, and certainly Europe, from being overrun by Nazi Germany.

To set the stage, by May of 1940, the British people had lost confidence in Chamberlain’s leadership. Desperate to avoid a European war, Chamberlain had repeatedly “appeased” Adolf Hitler — given in to Hitler’s demands to expand the German empire into Eastern Europe — which, rather than satisfy Hitler, only increased his lust for more “lebensraum” (living space) for his “master race” of Aryan Germans. As a result, Chamberlain could no longer serve as prime minister.

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