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 "Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few," said Winston Churchill after the British Royal Air Force defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe in 1940-1941 over the skies of London. Churchill’s words apply equally well to his own life. With brilliant political charisma, determination, and decisive leadership, Churchill took the British from the verge of defeat in World War II to an almost glorious victory five years later. His role in this conflict changed the course of history to the betterment of individual freedom and human rights, thus making Churchill one of the most pivotal figures of the twentieth century.
Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, to Lord Randolph Churchill and the New Yorker, Jennie Jerome, at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. The young Winston began his life in contact with politics and prominent figures like his father, a well-known Tory politician. His childhood was sad except for the love of his nanny, Mrs. Everest. He did poorly in school until he graduated at the top of his class from the Royal Military Academy in 1895. That year, Churchill joined a regiment called the 4th Hussars, with which he traveled to Cuba and to India. In India, Churchill began to report on the war, and in 1898, he began to write articles on the Cuban War for the Daily Graphic. In 1898, he also went on a campaign to the Nile, and he described the expedition in his book, The River War.
In 1899, after losing a house election in England, Churchill left home to report on the war in South Africa. There, he gained fame after getting captured by and escaping from the Boers. When he returned, he was elected in 1900 to the House of Commons as a Conservative, though the influence of his Tory father on Winston’s ideas and speech was evident. He soon became friends with Lord Balfour, the Conservative leader, and this friendship gave Churchill some political notoriety. However, in 1904, the two parted ways when Churchill joined the Liberal Party after disagreeing with Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, and other conservatives on the issue of a trade tariff. By 1908, Churchill earned a Cabinet position under the prime ministry of Asquith, and in the same year he married Clementine Hozier.
By 1908, Churchill sat on the Board of Trade, fighting for labor legislation and minimum wage laws. He campaigned next to Lloyd George to garner support for their position on these issues, and the two also campaigned together to restrict the power of the House of Lords via the Parliament Act of 1911. By the end of 1911, Churchill shifted interests and became an Admiral in the British Navy. At this time, German aggression in Morocco convinced him of the need to strengthen British naval power and to ally with France in the event of a war. In 1914, the ensuing Great War was no surprise for Churchill, and he fiercely encouraged opposition to Germany. His campaign in the Dardanelles to break the Western Front stalemate was a failure that nearly cost him his reputation; after this campaign, he was called off and sent to Gallipoli. In November 1915, he resigned from government service and joined the Army in active duty in France.
In 1917, Churchill’s fortune improved. A report on the Dardanelles expedition showed that Churchill was not entirely at fault for the failure, and the Conservatives included him in the coalition government of Lloyd George. It was not until 1919, however, that Churchill returned to a cabinet position as the Secretary of War. While he made some important contributions at his post, in 1922 Churchill fervently spoke out against the Turkish attack of the Dardanelles and supported British military involvement in the affair. The British public did not support any such military involvement, and Churchill soon found himself without this job when the coalition government lost that year’s elections.
No longer the Secretary of War, Churchill retook his pen in 1922 to begin writing his accounts of the Great War in The World Crisis. When he returned to politics in 1923, he lost to conservatives by presenting himself as a free trade, anti-Bolshevik, liberal leader. In 1924, however, Stanley Baldwin offered Churchill the post of chancellor of Exchequer, a position Churchill used to promote his laissez-faire economic ideas. The low point of this post occurred when he returned England to the gold standard, as this action triggered high inflation and ultimately the gold miners’ strike of 1926. When Baldwin’s government fell in 1929, Churchill found himself excluded from all parties. Baldwin refused to give him back office in 1935, but allowed Churchill to participate in national security committees that sought to increase the power of the Royal Air Force.
During the years following, Churchill fiercely spoke against Nazi Germany and warned about the imminent dangers of fascism. He declared anyone who opposed Hitler a friend of Great Britain -- even a socialist. However, not even Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain listened. As the war broke out, Churchill served again as Admiral during the ‘phony war’ period of 1940. When Chamberlain resigned following Hitler’s invasion of the Low Countries in May, the British people saw that the only leader who could unify the country and lead Britain to victory was Churchill. His first action as Prime Minister was to appear before Parliament, where he warned that he had nothing to offer but "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" and promised that the British people would fight the Germans on "land, houses, streets, [and] never surrender". Churchill assumed the post of Prime Minister shortly thereafter, and his first task was to keep British spirits up during the 1940 Battle for London. Following this battle, Churchill became not only an inspirational cheerleader for the British people but also a determined leader present at coast defenses, fighter headquarters, and anti-aircraft stations. Using his military experience from World War I, Churchill ordered key attacks against German submarines in the North Sea, and he also succeeded in weakening the German navy and cutting off supplies to Germany from the Atlantic for a limited time.
Countless hard decisions fell upon Churchill during the years that followed. He commanded an attack on the French fleet in order to prevent the Nazis from taking over the British; he sent troops to defend Greece and the Mediterranean; and he declared that even his national economic or political concerns were not as important for the nation as victory. He also succeeded in securing American support for the fight in the Atlantic Ocean months before the United States officially declared war on Germany and Japan in response to the Pearl Harbor attack. By 1941, before the United States entered the war, Churchill had convinced Roosevelt to help the British fight the war in the Atlantic. And with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the invasion of Russia by Hitler in 1942, Churchill viewed the military aggressions as an opportunity to form an alliance with Roosevelt and Stalin.
The next years of the war saw Churchill focused on forming the Grand Alliance between these parties, but rivalry between the British and American leaders prevented Churchill from keeping British interests completely aligned with those of the United States -- a point Stalin did not hesitate to exploit. Churchill also failed to convince Roosevelt of the need to send troops into Eastern Europe to fill the void left by the Nazis before the Soviets could take over. Nonetheless, Churchill did play a major role in subsequently coordinating the British effort to help the American campaigns in Africa, Sicily, Italy (all 1943), and Normandy (1944). By June of 1944, France was liberated, and the British and Americans made a march toward Germany. While still directing the British war effort during this time, Churchill also continued to press for the formation of the Grand Alliance. During a meeting in Postdam in 1945, just a few months before Germany’s surrender in May, Churchill found out that his party had lost the elections, and he had to return to England, defeated at home and in the international arena.
For the next few years following the war, Churchill vigorously called for a unified Europe, and he warned in his 1946 "iron curtain" speech about the threat of communism. From 1951 to 1954, he became Prime Minister again, seeking to improve relations with the United States, even though the Suez Canal crisis impeded him from succeeding completely. Some achievements were realized, though, including his commitment of British aid to the United States for the Korean War effort. His health forced him to retire in 1955, and he died in his London home in 1964 after nine years of receiving awards and distinctions, including the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Churchill’s long and brilliant political career is a virtuous example of courage, valor, and determination. His role in England before and during the Second World War was crucial, as he actively sought to fight for the British people and their interests. This was even more evident with the outbreak of the war, in which he took a central role. Without his help and the courage he instilled in the British people, the war effort of England might have truly collapsed in front of Hitler’s army. Instead, a decisive victory was scored with Churchill’s guidance, and the world was freed from fascism.
Click to buy the Collected Works of Sir Winston Churchill (in 2 volumes)
Click to buy Churchill's The Second World War
Click to buy the audio cassette Churchill in His Own Voice
Click to buy The Churchill War Papers: Never Surrender May 1940 - December 1940, The Ever Widening War: 1941
Click to buy Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965: A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated Bibliography
Click to buy the video The Legends Series: Winston Churchill
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