Did you know that Winston Churchill once almost got knifed by an anti-Semitic Frenchwoman?

By the 10th of June 1940, two million people had fled Paris, and the French government left the city with them.

Both the British and French armies had been conclusively outmanoeuvred the German army, which had feinted an attack on France through the Low Countries of Holland and Belgium, only to strike at the heart of the country through the Ardennes Forest.

This two pronged attack had effectively encircled the Allied armies on the northern French coast and annihilation seemed imminent.

French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud went south toward the Loire and established himself at the Château de Chissay near Tours.

Interestingly, he did not bring his estranged wife with him out of danger, and instead brought his mistress, the Countess Hélène de Portes.

De Portes had what many considered a malevolent influence over Reynaud, and Reynauld’s senior contemporaries disliked her in the extreme.

Charles de Gaulle called her “The Turkey.”

Winston Churchill called her “The Parrot.”

Sir Robert Vansittart called her “a poisonous and promiscuous troll.”

The American journalist Vincent Sheehan described her as “neither chic, charming, nor intelligent.” He wrote that she behaved as if she had a right to govern France.

De Portes compounded her shortcomings in personality with a strong streak of anti-Semitism, as well as sympathy to fascism.

She urged Reynaud to dismiss his generals and seek an armistice with Germany.

On 11 June, Winston Churchill flew to France to meet the French leadership.

He met them near Orléans and later at Tours.

The French leaders were divided. Churchill - having risen to the the occasion he would describe as Britain’s “finest hour” and with no interest in making peace with men for whom he had nothing but contempt - urged them to continue the fight.

He proposed making a defensive stand in Brittany, but French general Weygand rejected the idea. Marshal Pétain - French hero of the First World War - also opposed continued resistance.

Weygand argued that Britain should send all its fighter aircraft to France if there was to be any hope of further resistance in this decisive battle. Churchill refused this demand and said the decisive battle would come when Germany attacked Britain. He declared that Britain would fight on regardless of what happened in France.

Undeterred, Churchill returned to Tours the next day, an impressive physical feat for a man of his age in the middle of war, not to mention the discomfort of 1940s military air transport.

He arrived at the airfield and finding no officials waiting, went to lunch before meeting Reynaud at the town hall. Churchill again urged France to continue the war, even from North Africa if necessary. Pétain believed this would destroy France.

Charles de Gaulle, recently appointed Under-Secretary of State for War, was the sole French supporter of Churchill’s position, and Churchill recognized him immediately as a “man of destiny.”

It was during this meeting that Hélène de Portes burst into the room. She shouted that France was bleeding to death and lunged at Churchill, trying to scratch his face and punch him. She was restrained by Churchill’s bodyguard, Walter Thompson, who dragged her out.

When Thompson performed a search, she was found to be carrying a knife.

It goes without saying that had Churchill suffered a serious injury or death while the British army and the whole of France were in the process of collapse, world history would have been unequivocally altered.

Less than two days after the incident, German forces entered Paris, the city having been declared open to save it from destruction.

By evening, a swastika flew over the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. The fall of Paris became a symbol of Allied catastrophe.

Reynauld, meanwhile, fell into bed in despair where he made an unfortunate discovery. While he and his ministers had been working at finding a solution to their country’s greatest ordeal, his girlfriend Hélène de Portes had been stealing official correspondence from their British allies at the stenographer’s office and sharing them with other defeatist elements within the French government and then secreting them in the bed she shared with the French premier himself.

She had also been working behind the scenes to have American government representatives in France recommend that Reynauld surrender to the Allies.

Disgusted and infuriated, Reynauld later threw a glass of water over her in public.

Winston Churchill - who enjoyed a devoted five decade marriage to his own wife Clementine - went on to successfully resist Nazi tyranny and at the turn off the millennium was voted the greatest Briton in history by a thankful British public