Churchill's Rise (1/3): The Phoney War, Norway, and the Man They Didn't Trust

Churchill wasn't the obvious choice to lead Britain in 1940. He was the risk.In Part One of our three-episode series on how Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, we set the stage for the crisis of May 1940. Why was Britain sleepwalking through the Phoney War? Why had Churchill spent the 1930s politically isolated — warned about Hitler while his colleagues dismissed him? And how did the Norway campaign — a disaster Churchill himself helped shape — somehow accelerate his path to power?This episode covers Churchill's wilderness years, Neville Chamberlain's fatal complacency, the Norway debacle, and the quiet fracturing of Conservative confidence that would bring down a Prime Minister with an overwhelming majority.Part of a three-episode series: The Nine Days That Made Churchill.