Sir, Halifax and Churchill were not so far apart in May 1940 as Daniel Finkelstein suggests(Apr 26). They agreed that the war should be ended through a negotiated settlement; the demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender was adopted as policy only in 1943. Both wanted to preserve the British empire. Churchill said that “if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies he would jump at it”.
As Andrew Roberts puts it in his biography of Halifax, but for Hitler’s blunders of declaring war on both Russia and the US in 1941, the war might well have stayed unwinnable for Britain.
The two men had to ask themselves whether tolerable conditions for peace could be found.