The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. It is not clear when it became firmly associated with the United Kingdom specifically, or attributed to Churchill. A little before Churchill's speech, it was being used to describe the current situation in sources as widely spread as the leader column of the Berwick Advertiser (30 May) and the New Zealand parliament (13 June). However, presumably due to the proverb, use of the phrase was widespread at the time. 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". 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. Ĭhurchill 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. 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. While widely attributed to Winston Churchill, the origins of the phrase are unclear.
" The Darkest Hour" is a phrase used to refer to an early period of World War II, from approximately mid-1940 to mid-1941.
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