Winston S. Churchill was one of the great orators of the 20th century, possessing an eloquence that inspired even amid crushing defeat. Anyone can stir passions by rejoicing in a triumph, but only a Churchill could lift spirits and inspire courage in the face of humiliating disaster.
On May 13, 1940, as British and French forces crumbled before the attacking German armies throughout Europe, Churchill, Britian’s new prime minister, stood up in the House of Commons and declared, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”
He spelled out the goals of his government:You ask, what is our policy? I will say it is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime....You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
He used his words like warriors, sending them into battle against a brutish enemy. His defiant “We shall never surrender!” roused his countrymen both at home and in the battlefield.
Britain held on, held out, and in the end, won.
Young Winston S. Churchill
The future British statesman was born in 1874 at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. His father, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was English; his mother was a famous American beauty. Many years later, addressing Congress in Washington, Churchill mused that if it had been the other way around, and his father had been an American and his mother English, “I might have gotten here on my own.” The congressmen loved it.
Young Churchill attended Harrow and Sandhurst, the British military academy. A budding journalist, he covered the Cuban rebellion against Spain in the late 1890s and the Boer War in South Africa from 1899 to 1902, where he was captured by the Boers, and later escaped. He served in the army, but turned to politics as his chosen career. He won a seat in parliament as a Conservative and held several government posts. During the early years of World War I, he was named First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the British military debacle at the Dardanelles (the strait between Europe and Asian Turkey), he was relieved of the Admiralty post. Later in the war he was Minister of Munitions. He held other government positions after the war.
War Comes to Europe
During the 1930s, Churchill viewed Adolf Hitler (Number l) as a threat to European stability. He spoke out openly on the floor of Parliament, opposing appeasement of the Nazi dictator. “England,” he warned after a perceived government sellout, “has had to choose between dishonor and war. She chose dishonor. She will get war.” After the German invasion of Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Number 66) announced that England was at war with Germany. Churchill was again named First Lord of the Admiralty. The happy word went out to the British fleet around the world: Winnie’s back.
In May 1940, following a series of British military defeats to the Germans, Chamber-lain stepped down and Churchill succeeded him as prime minister. That same month, the German blitzkrieg struck deep into the heart of France, trapping more than 338,000 British forces around the port of Dunkirk. The troops were evacuated back to England, leaving most of their weapons behind on the French beaches. France fell and as Great Britain stood alone against the Nazi war machine, Churchill vowed to fight on.
Preparing to invade England, Hitler ordered his bombers to obliterate British cities. The British, valiantly defended by the Royal Air Force, would not yield, forcing Hitler to abandon any plans for invading England. Despite his country men’s bravery, Churchill knew that the only hope for defeating Germany lay with America. He began corresponding with President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Number 2). The American leader, determined to help Great Britain prevail, sidestepped America’s neutrality acts to provide military assistance to the British.
In 1941, a year after France fell, Hitler tore up an anti-aggression pact and attacked the Soviet Union. Churchill’s decision was to provide Joseph Stalin (Number 4) with as much help as possible. The old Tory and the Communist dictator made strange bedfellows, but the war against Hitler came first. The Führer had once boasted that Germany could defeat any conceivable combination of powers, but the Churchill-Stalin duo was probably made a pair that Hitler could not have imagined.
England Gains an Ally as America Enters the War
As the year 1941 moved into autumn, relations between the United States and the Axis powers continued to deteriorate. In the Atlantic, American ships were being targeted and sunk by Nazi submarines. In the Pacific, relations between American and Japanese diplomats were on the verge of breaking down because of Japanese aggression in the area.After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler honored his pact with Japan and declared war on the United States. The deep friendship between America and Great Britain now became a strong and necessary military alliance.
Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was part of a broad strategy throughout the Pacific. Churchill looked on in horror as British military bases at Hong Kong and Singapore fell to the Japanese. He was concerned about Australia and New Zealand. But President Roosevelt ordered Douglas MacArthur (Number 8) to leave the doomed Philippines for Australia to take command of all Southwest Pacific forces. Japan had to be kept at bay while major efforts were directed against Hitler in Europe.
The Mediterranean region also troubled Churchill. The Suez Canal, Gibraltar, and North Africa were critically important to the Allies’ strategies. But after British forces routed Germany’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein, Egypt, American and British troops invaded French North Africa, trapping German forces and prompting their surrender.
After victory in North Africa, the Allies invaded Italy. Although Italy was on the European continent, this attack was not regarded as a true second front. That would come nine months later with the Normandy invasion.
As the war continued, problems arose between the Western Allies and the Soviets. Poland was of special concern to Churchill. It was the invasion of Poland that brought England and France into the war with Nazi Germany in the first place. Now came a whole host of issues: What was to be the nature of its government and its national army? When would free elections be held?
Churchill wanted to bring up these issues at Big Three conferences with Stalin, but Roosevelt preferred to wait until after the war to settle them. Besides, the Red Army was viewed as important in tying up Japanese forces during the forthcoming invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Churchill Exits as the Curtain Falls
In the spring and summer of 1945, the cast of characters among the Allied leaders changed dramatically. Roosevelt died, to be succeeded by Harry S Truman (Number 14). England voted out the Conservative Party of war leader Churchill, voting in the Labor Party of Clement Attlee. Of the original Big Three, only Stalin remained.
A year after the war ended, Churchill warned of an “Iron Curtain” drawn across the center of Europe by the Soviet Union. The Cold War had begun.
In 1950, Churchill became Time magazine’s Man of the Half Century. The following year, Churchill regained his position as prime minister. He wrote the multi volume history, The Second World War, and won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1953. He died in 1965, having served six British monarchs, from Queen Victoria to Queen Elizabeth II.
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