In the summer of 1940, Britain’s military was in dire straits. After the humiliation of defeat, withdrawal, and evacuation from Dunkirk, many soldiers had been able to make it back home. But most of their transport, equipment, and artillery had been abandoned in France.
The country faced the threat of invasion from what seemed like an all-conquering army that had already stormed through Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. Britain’s army chiefs scrambled to re-order and re-equip the men who had survived the evacuation, while the Battle of Britain was fought out above their heads in the skies of southern England.
But the country’s new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who had only been in office since May, had other ideas. During that ‘Spitfire Summer’ of 1940, he set up a series of organisations that were not aimed at defence but at taking aggressive action against the enemy.
