Three Days in May

I think this one was very good and very interesting history wise.

I just read this article more about my own opinion later.


ARTS & ENTERTAINMENTJANUARY 11, 2012
True, or False?
By GRAHAM STEWART

London

When in 2002 the BBC organized a viewers' poll to find the "Greatest Briton," there was some surprise that William Shakespeare managed only fifth place but none that Winston Churchill came out on top. The legacy of the British Empire, which at its peak stretched over a quarter of the world, went unrecognized: None of the soldiers and governors that created it made the top 100.


Keith Pattison
Warren Clarke as Winston Churchill in 'Three Days in May.'

It may seem contradictory that Britons appear to regard their country's imperial legacy with indifference while lauding the memory of a 20th-century statesman who believed so passionately in it. Yet enduring admiration for Churchill is based not on a balanced assessment of his 62-year parliamentary career. Rather, it rests primarily upon his determination for Britain to fight on against Nazi Germany in May 1940. With France on the verge of capitulation, Italy joining the fray on Germany's side, Stalin honoring his nonaggression pact with Hitler and no sign or even likelihood that the U.S. might enter the conflict, the chips were hardly stacked in Britain's favor when Churchill made one of the greatest gambles in history. The result was incontrovertibly his country's "finest hour," and by prolonging the conflict made the eventual Allied victory over Nazism possible.

Now London's theatergoers are being treated to a dramatic exploration of the making of that fateful decision, Ben Brown's "Three Days in May," which is billed as revealing the extent to which there was actually a "wobble" at the top. Did Churchill and his colleagues fleetingly consider a negotiated peace with Hitler? Might this be the moment that theater finally succeeds in reversing Churchill's "V for victory" hand gesture, rudely flicking it back at the great man in the British equivalent of the American single-finger salute?

Thus far, deference-free dramatists intent on toppling Britain's wartime prime minister from his pedestal have met with little success. There was a minor fuss in 1967 when the National Theatre's production of Rolf Hochhuth's "Soldiers" was canceled, though it ultimately made it to the London stage the following year. Mr. Hochhuth's efforts to indict Churchill for permitting the bombing of German cities got lost amid the play's absurd contention that the 1943 plane crash that killed Gen. Władysław Sikorski, the Free Polish leader, was actually a hit job ordered by Churchill. Mr. Hochhuth was influenced in peddling this nonsense by his friend David Irving, the sometime historian and now prominent Holocaust denier. Liberals who supported the "Soldiers" production in 1967 would probably be less keen to be seen promoting Mr. Irving's conspiracy theories nowadays.

It may also be doubted whether there is much demand for a revival of Howard Brenton's "The Churchill Play" (1974). In it, Mr. Brenton sought to pin his perception that Britain was heading toward a police state on what he regarded as the invidious myth of Churchill's greatness and the lie of British wartime unity.

The creator of "Three Days in May," Mr. Brown, shows himself to be very different from Messrs. Hochhuth and Brenton. Rather than treat a dead statesman as a useful dummy with which to practice the ventriloquism of modern discontents, the playwright has limited himself to bringing dramatic illumination to past events he has troubled himself to properly research.

Some may wonder whether the effort to accurately portray five aging men sitting around the War Cabinet table makes for great theater, though the reviews have generally been favorable. For the most part, this attempt to render truth rather than make-believe on a West End stage certainly deserves to be applauded. The accusation that the playwright has revealed nothing of substance about the political power-play between Churchill and the senior members of his cross-party coalition government that could not have been gleaned from the work of any serious historian writing on the subject during the past 30 years misses the point. The fact that the play's depiction of events has surprised critics and public alike ably demonstrates how good drama reaches audiences that even excellent historians struggle to touch.

At the heart of those War Cabinet discussions and of Mr. Brown's script is the divide between the resilient prime minister and his foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. The latter—seeing the peril Britain is in if it fights on without allies—argues that an appeal should be sent to Mussolini to see if he can broker an agreement with Hitler that would allow Britain to extract itself from the war—which had started in September 1939—on terms that would not compromise its fundamental sovereignty.

The seeming prospect of almost the entire British Expeditionary Force being wiped out or taken prisoner as the German Army advances toward the English Channel weighs in Halifax's favor. With the two Labour Party members of the War Cabinet prepared to fight on but politically out of their depth, Churchill realizes that he has to appear to take seriously his foreign secretary's proposal not only to prevent Halifax's damaging resignation but also that of Churchill's predecessor as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who is still in the War Cabinet and as leader of the Conservative Party could bring the government down and sue for peace.

Having read the critical War Cabinet minutes and also the private papers of its participants, I can verify the basic accuracy of Mr. Brown's portrayal. Necessarily, he has had to invent the dialogue in two tête-à-têtes Churchill has with Halifax and Chamberlain. I was not convinced that in reality Chamberlain would have conceded to Churchill that signing the Munich Pact with Hitler in 1938 was an error—a point upon which Chamberlain remained stubborn in his diary and family correspondence despite the policy's ultimate failure.

Elsewhere, however, Mr. Brown presents an authentically nuanced picture of Halifax's not dishonorable reasoning for seeking the soft option. Most compellingly paradoxical of all, this play demonstrates how it was that the old appeaser, Chamberlain, ended up playing such a pivotal role in supporting Churchill's insistence that "nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished."

Not only does "Three Days in May" end up showing, once again, Churchill's greatness in the moment of deadliest peril, but it even demonstrates how those among his colleagues who wobbled were far more complex than the well-worn caricatures would have us believe. Given the constraints of dramatic representation, that is no small achievement.

Mr. Stewart is the author of "Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry"(Overlook).

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