I Never Heard This Story

I was passing through the channels, being lazy, killing time and I caught the very end of an episode of the PBS series "Secrets of the Dead"

Churchill's Deadly Decision
About this Episode
July 3, 1940. After only 54 days into office, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered his Navy to take control of French ships, or destroy them if the French refused to relinquish control. What led to this unprecedented and controversial attack was a dramatic series of events that saw France being overrun by the Nazis in a matter of weeks, Roosevelt fearing that Britain would fall just as quickly, and Churchill needing a way to prove otherwise.

THIRTEEN’s Secrets of the Dead explores the dark side of Britain’s fight against the Nazis in Churchill’s Deadly Decision, premiering nationally on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). With eye-witness accounts and testimonies from British and French sailors who were involved in the attack, recently unclassified documents between Churchill and Roosevelt, and actual notes from British War Cabinet meetings, the film takes viewers through the harrowing chain of events that led up to the attack, and into the crucial hours during which it actually took place. Actor Liev Schreiber (Taking Woodstock and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) narrates.

Read the rest here. I thought it sounded really interesting, so I have to catch the whole episode.