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Darkest Hour. What was fact. What was fiction ? Good analysis by British Historian
What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Darkest Hour
By John Broich
Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour and the real Winston Churchill.
Focus Features and Imperial War Museums.
Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour is a piece of historical fiction that undertakes a serious historical task: to present Winston Churchill and the British people’s choice to stand up to Hitler as just that … a choice. In hindsight, after eventual victory, the decision to fight against the Germans can appear a foregone conclusion. Since we all like to imagine that we personally would never fold to the Nazis, it can be hard to understand that reasonable people, most of whom had no love for Hitler, seriously considered a truce in spring 1940, during the days depicted in the film. To their eyes, fighting on after the approaching fall of France would only delay the inevitable at the cost of mass civilian slaughter. Better to come to terms now while they still had the leverage of an army and aircraft factories.
However, the film does invent a few details in order to make this very dramatic time even more dramatic. As a British historian who teaches and writes about World War II, I break this all down below.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/12/08/what_s_fact_and_what_s_fiction_in_darkest_hour.html
What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Darkest Hour
By John Broich
Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour and the real Winston Churchill.
Focus Features and Imperial War Museums.
Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour is a piece of historical fiction that undertakes a serious historical task: to present Winston Churchill and the British people’s choice to stand up to Hitler as just that … a choice. In hindsight, after eventual victory, the decision to fight against the Germans can appear a foregone conclusion. Since we all like to imagine that we personally would never fold to the Nazis, it can be hard to understand that reasonable people, most of whom had no love for Hitler, seriously considered a truce in spring 1940, during the days depicted in the film. To their eyes, fighting on after the approaching fall of France would only delay the inevitable at the cost of mass civilian slaughter. Better to come to terms now while they still had the leverage of an army and aircraft factories.
However, the film does invent a few details in order to make this very dramatic time even more dramatic. As a British historian who teaches and writes about World War II, I break this all down below.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/12/08/what_s_fact_and_what_s_fiction_in_darkest_hour.html