Churchill spent months in Washington DC, cultivating the friendship of President Roosevelt and conspiring to ensure that it couldn't happen. Churchill's fear was not based on impending doom, but on the possibility that if he failed the U-Boats could win. He knew what to do about it. He did it. He won.
But Churchill had to depend on Roosevelt for that victory. Knowing the nastiness of American politics, which looks on the surface to be more orderly than British politics, but tends to the politics of personal destruction, knowing that Roosevelt was violating the Constitution in several ways that if discovered would definitely cause him to be removed from office, knowing that if that happened the Republican isolationists of the time would take power and Britain would fall, he was justifiably afraid things might not work out the way he planned.
After all, Churchill himself narrowly won the victory in the 1930's with King Edward wanting to throw in with the Nazis and morph Britain into a proto-Nazi state. Churchill, standing almost alone (as usual) built the alliances that finally pressured royalty into forcing Edward's abdication "for the woman I love":rotfl::rotfl:and exile to Canada. Afterward, in spite of our ambassador to Britain, Joe Kennedy's Hitler loving, there was no talk of throwing in with the Germans.
So Churchill had been there before. He knew the end was not guaranteed. His previous experience was that of paying the price and gaining victory against fearsome odds. I have no doubt that although he chose to say he was afraid of the U-Boats he was confident that he was able to gain the victory. The key to that victory was the entry of the US. Roosevelt's illegal moves to help the British guaranteed entry of the US, Pearl Harbor or no Pearl Harbor.
American escorts were already killing U-Boats and we were already in the war before December 7, 1941. Even after December 7, 1941, official US policy was that we hold the line against the less threatening Japanese while we annihilate the more dangerous Nazis. Then we were going to focus on the Japanese. The reason for that policy? Churchill and Roosevelt. The moment Hitler decided to fight them with unrestricted submarine warfare, he was doomed.
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