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

Churchill’s Pivotal Moments

Soon after taking office, Churchill runs into two serious crises. One is the seemingly doomed evacuation of the 300,000 British troops who fled to Dunkirk beach from the rapidly approaching German army. It is Churchill who comes up with the plan to evacuate the soldiers using every civilian vessel the army can recruit. This decision comes after an embarrassing phone conversation with U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who – in an exchange we can only hear, not see – insists rather callously on American neutrality in the face of Churchill’s plea for help. But one detail in the conversation, which actually has to do with horses, gives Churchill the idea for the rescue plan.

Saving the Soldiers at Dunkirk

The second crisis involves the Viscount Halifax and Chamberlain’s pressuring of Churchill to negotiate a peace treaty with Hitler, using Mussolini as the middleman, since most of Europe has fallen under Nazi control and an invasion of Britain seems inevitable. This is a shady plot on the part of the ambitious Halifax, because Churchill’s public refusal of such negotiation may be his downfall. (The movie, which avoids historical complexity at all costs, does not hint at the theory that Halifax may also have been a Nazi sympathizer.)

When will the LESSON be Learned??