There is a legend, as Hastings says, of a united Britain in the summer months of 1940 which stood firm against Hitler and, eventually, having formed the key alliances with the US and the USSR, defeated him. That was a reality and it would all have been different if another man had been prime minister. If the political faction seeking a negotiated peace had prevailed then Britain, crucially, would have been out of the war. Hitler might then have won the war. In May 1940, Churchill understood that even the mere gesture of considering peace terms would have a disastrous impact on the country and his policy of fighting on would have been irretrievably compromised.