Episode Information

This ambitious, striking film tells an astonishing story which challenges our understanding of the Second World War and our perception of world-renowned leaders. Driven by the insights of leading international academics, illustrated by vivid archive materials and remarkable original documents, Churchill’s Bid to Abolish Britain takes us to the heart of the darkest days in British and French history and features a cast of major historical personalities - Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Marshal Pétain and more.

It brings to life a desperate crisis, a weekend where events moved with frightening speed. It shows that those events had immediate worldwide consequences - and continue to resonate in the 21st century. It tells a startling, forgotten story. The story of how Winston Churchill tried to abolish Britain. Here’s the context. In the dreadful summer of 1940, with Britain’s French allies on the brink of surrender to the Nazis, Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill backed an audacious plan to keep France in the war – and her navy and colonial armies out of German hands.

The plan was drafted in London in little more than a day, without reference to Parliament or King George VI, then delivered to the French Government on the afternoon of Sunday 16 June. It is only 268 words long, but the key passages jump off the page: "Britain and France shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-British Union….with joint organs of defence, foreign, financial, and economic policies. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain, every British subject will become a citizen of France. ” Experts from Britain, France, the US and Australia discuss the background to this ambitious, astonishing plan – and explain why it backfired spectacularly, triggering the final fall of France to the Nazis.