Churchill’s Enemies 1927-1940 is John Harte’s ninth book to be published. It was released in the UK by Pen & Sword Military at the end of May 2025. Other of his books previously published by them are The Race For The Atom Bomb: How Soviet Russia stole the plans of the Manhattan Project. It was followed by Churchill’s Challenges. His challenges and his enemies were very largely the rise of dictators who believed in force; Benito Mussolini in Italy, General Franco in Spain, and Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. Coupled with the Nazis was the so-called “Hitler of the Middle East;” the Mufti of Jerusalem who collaborated with Hitler in Berlin. Churchill’s Enemies ends with his appointment as wartime prime minister.

Young Winston’s first fight against Islamist fanatics and slave traders was as a second lieutenant of the cavalry in The River War in the Sudan in 1898. As Minister For Munitions in 1917, his main challenge was preventing Communism from spreading over Russia’s borders up to and after the end of the civil war in 1923. That was the year when Hitler failed in his attempt to overthrow the Bavarian Government in Germany. But the rise to total power of his Nazi Party would result in Churchill’s continual warnings to subsequent governments of the dangers in disarming while allowing Germany to rearm.

Harte has now had five of his books about Winston Churchill published. He has written three more about different episodes in Churchill’s life, including his service as peacetime prime minister from 1951-1955. His eighth book about Churchill features his retirement to the Riviera after resigning, his state funeral in 1965, and subsequent prime ministers of Britain who led the country downhill by their policies which resulted in Great Britain’s position as global leader eroding into today’s crisis. No other historian has written as many as eight books about Sir Winston Churchill, except for his official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert, who died in 2015. Apart from John Harte’s own researched and personal involvement, his books have also benefited by historian Gilbert’s scholarship. See John Harte’s website here.

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