Module Components

• Overview
• Assignments

Topics

• Introduction to Winston Churchill
• Churchill’s Pivotal Moments
• Churchill’s Finest Moment
• Leadership Lessons from the “Darkest Hour”

NURS 696 - Leadership Analysis: A Cinematic Approach

Module 2: Darkest Hour

Overview

During the early days of World War II, with the fall of France imminent, Britain faces its darkest hour as the threat of invasion looms. As the seemingly unstoppable Nazi forces advance, and with the Allied army cornered on the beaches of Dunkirk, the fate of Western Europe hangs on the leadership of the newly-appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. While maneuvering his political rivals, he must confront the ultimate choice: negotiate with Hitler and save the British people at a terrible cost or rally the nation and fight on against incredible odds. 

The story unfolds with the drama of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill assuming power during the Nazi invasion of France in May 1940. Churchill’s predecessor, the sickly Neville Chamberlain, had lost confidence of the English people and the British government. His appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the disastrous first nine months of World War II seemed to have all but lost Britain the war.

Churchill was asked to become prime minister on the very day that Hitler invaded France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The armies of all three democracies — together larger than Germany’s invading forces — collapsed within days or a few weeks.
About a third of a million British soldiers stranded in a doomed France were miraculously saved by Churchill’s bold decision to risk evacuating them by sea from Dunkirk, France, where most of what was left of the British Expeditionary Force had retreated.

Churchill’s greatest problem was not just saving the British army, but confronting the reality that with the German conquest of Europe, the British Empire now had no allies.
The Soviet Union had all but joined Hitler’s Germany under their infamous non-aggression pact of August 1939. The United States was determined at all costs to remain neutral. Just how neutral is emphasized by Churchill’s sad phone call with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR cleverly assures Churchill that in theory he wants to help while in fact he can do nothing.