WATCH: Rare access to Churchill’s War Rooms, frozen in time since WWII

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Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Threat Status Special Correspondent Joseph Hammond gets a behind-the-scenes look at the Churchill War Rooms, where some of World War II’s most important decisions were made.

The map room remains exactly as it was the day the war ended.

We’ve been offered a secret behind-the-scenes look at the Churchill War Rooms. Some of the most important decisions of World War II were made in these rooms.

Winston Churchill is best remembered as the British Prime Minister who steered his nation through its most perilous hour, holding the line against Nazi Germany, when much of Europe had already fallen.

Yet his path to that moment was far from certain.

Born to an American socialite, he had an early promising political career, which gave way to years of controversy that left him sidelined by his own party.

Long before most, he sounded the alarm about the growing danger posed by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

As those warnings proved true, he was swept into power in 1940 as the head of a unique wartime coalition government.

“No one knows where he is. Germans didn’t know that it was somewhere. They knew the work was going on here. And if they’d figured out or be tipped off to where the place was, they could have sent a force of paratroopers and just tried to assassinate Churchill.” —War Room tour guide

The unique map room has been preserved exactly as it was the day the war ended.

The threat of bombing was one that the British government took quite seriously, as was the threat that the Germans might send an elite parachute unit to attack the complex.

As a result, Winston Churchill always carried a personal sidearm whenever he visited the war rooms.

The bedroom used by Winston Churchill on the rare occasions when he slept underground still has the pungent aroma of his cigars in the air, especially behind the desk where he made some of the most important speeches of World War II.