The train would travel to the coast, and then the party would sail by ship to meet the French government and sign the Act of Union. In London, Churchill boarded a train along with leaders of the major parties, ready for a rendezvous with destiny. вЂњDoes he agree to this? Did Churchill give you this personally?вЂќ De Gaulle handed the receiver to Churchill, who assured Reynaud that he approved. According to one eyewitness, вЂњHis eyebrows went up so far they became indistinguishable from his neatly brushed hair.вЂќ Reynaud suddenly interrupted de Gaulle. Reynaud listened to the proposal for a Franco-British Union with mounting excitement, as he scribbled down the details. But de Gaulle embraced the plan as a grand move to change the course of history: вЂњThe gesture must be immediate.вЂќДЄt 4:30 pm, de Gaulle telephoned Paul Reynaud, the French prime minister, who had fled the advancing Germans, going from Paris to Tours and then Bordeaux. вЂњI was somewhat surprised,вЂќ wrote Churchill, вЂњto see the staid, solid, experienced politicians of all parties engage themselves so passionately in an immense design whose implications and consequences were not in any way thought out.вЂќ Churchill put his doubts aside and told the Cabinet, вЂњIn this crisis we must not let ourselves be accused of lack of imagination.вЂќД¬harles de Gaulle, who had arrived that morning in London, also had qualms about ending the country of France as he knew it. He was swept along by a wave of enthusiasm. On June 16, Churchill was personally skeptical but presented the idea to the all-party British Cabinet. ChurchillвЂ™s private secretary said, вЂњWe had before us the bridge to a new world, the first elements of European or even World Federation.вЂќД®vents moved fast. The two parliaments would be united, presumably with French representatives sitting in the House of Commons in London. There would be joint control of defense, foreign policy, finance, and economic policy. The document stated: вЂњAt this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defense of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves.вЂќ This meant: вЂњFrance and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union.вЂќДЄt a stroke, hundreds of years of constitutional history would be swept away. The goal was to effectively create one country. During the next 48 hours, British and French civil servants drafted a proposal for a вЂњDeclaration on Franco-British Union.вЂќ This was no beefed-up wartime alliance, or a plan for partial integration similar to todayвЂ™s European Union. Catastrophe was about to turn impossibility into official policy. The plan that emerged-to unify Britain and France into a single state-was not entirely new: The idea of integrating the European countries had floated around political circles for a few years, but always seemed fantastical. Defeatism was rife in France, and a dramatic step was needed to encourage the country to keep fighting from its colonies, and to stop the French fleet from falling into German hands. On May 10, 1940, Germany had begun a relentless Blitzkrieg assault on France, and within a month, French resistance had largely collapsed. But the drama of that near-fusion can help explain the origins of European integration-and the reasons why Britain ultimately pulled away from the European Union in the decision we know as Brexit. Although that battle story is fairly well known, the accompanying political drama that almost saw Britain and France merge is now largely forgotten.

This was just two weeks after British and French troops were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, where they had become surrounded by German troops-a story captured in the new Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk. These two great symbols of patriotism and national independence made an incredible agreement: Britain and France should be united into a single country called the вЂњFranco-British Union.вЂќ On June 16, 1940, with Nazi Germany on the brink of crushing France, British prime minister Winston Churchill and French undersecretary of defense Charles de Gaulle met for lunch at the Carlton Club in London.

Hoi4 fascist usa flag