Though Beaverbrook did not welcome the British declaration of war on the Reich on 3 September 1939, he had newspapers take an ultra-patriotic line in supporting the war effort, not least because he knew the vast majority of his readers supported the war. During the Second World War, in May 1940, his friend Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, appointed Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production. Beaverbrook was given almost dictatorial powers over all aspects of aircraft production. In June 1940, Beaverbrook went with Churchill in a desperate mission to Tours to meet the French government with the aim of keeping France in the war. The French Premier, Paul Reynaud, was against an armistice with Germany and in favor of continuing the war from Algeria, but the strongest voice in the French cabinet was that of Marshal Philippe Pétain, the revered "Victor of Verdun", who argued for an immediate armistice. Churchill devised a scheme for an Anglo-French Union as a way to keep France in the war, which Beaverbrook was strongly opposed to. Unlike Churchill, Beaverbrook did not see any particular importance of keeping France in the war, and was much more indifferent to the prospect of France being defeated than was the prime minister, arguing that Britain still had the Commonwealth and the empire. Churchill's viewpoint that if France were occupied, it would shorten the flying time of the Luftwaffe to bomb Britain from hours to minutes and allow the Kriesgmarine to use the French Atlantic ports to attack shipping the Western Approaches made no impression on Beaverbrook. The plans for an Anglo-French union fell flat when Pétain - who regarded the plan for a union as a way for the British to seize France's colonial empire - persuaded the French cabinet to reject it.
