The Darkest Hour

"The Darkest Hour" is a phrase used to refer to an early period of World War II, from approximately mid-1940 to mid-1941. While widely attributed to Winston Churchill, the origins of the phrase are unclear. The phrase The phrase "the darkest hour" for this period, drawing on the proverb that "the darkest hour is just before the dawn", is usually ascribed to Winston Churchill, though there is no evidence he coined the phrase. Churchill had used a similar phrase at the time, though at the time he was referring specifically to the situation of France rather than to the United Kingdom. In his 'finest hour' speech, on 16 June 1940, Churchill described the collapse of France following the German invasion as "the darkest hour in French history"; he had used similar terms when meeting with members of the Supreme War Council a week earlier. Writing after the war, in 1949, he described the period just before Dunkirk as "the darkest moment", and the period 1940–41 generally as "the darkest hours".