Winston Churchill

"Churchill" redirects here. For other uses, see Churchill (disambiguation).

The Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC PC (Can)
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 26 October 1951 – 7 April 1955
Monarchs	George VI Elizabeth II
Deputy	Anthony Eden
Preceded by	Clement Attlee
Succeeded by	Sir Anthony Eden
In office 10 May 1940 – 27 July 1945
Monarch	George VI
Deputy	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	Neville Chamberlain
Succeeded by	Clement Attlee
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 6 November 1924 – 4 June 1929
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Philip Snowden
Succeeded by	Philip Snowden
Home Secretary
In office 19 February 1910 – 24 October 1911
Prime Minister	H. H. Asquith
Preceded by	Herbert Gladstone
Succeeded by	Reginald McKenna
Personal details
Born	(1874-11-30)30 November 1874 Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England
Died	24 January 1965(1965-01-24) (aged 90) Hyde Park Gate, London, England
Political party	Conservative Liberal
Spouse	Clementine Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman, orator and strategist, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army. A prolific author, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his historical writings.

During his army career Churchill saw combat with the Malakand Field Force on the Northwest Frontier, at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan and during the Second Boer War in South Africa. During this period he also gained fame, and not a small amount of notoriety, as a correspondent. At the forefront of the political scene for almost sixty years, Churchill held numerous political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary during the Liberal governments. In the First World War Churchill served in numerous positions, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. He also served in the British Army on the Western Front and commanded the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. During the interwar years, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led Britain to victory against the Axis powers. His speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled Allied forces. After losing the 1945 election, Churchill became the leader of the opposition. In 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister before finally retiring in 1955. Upon his death, he was granted the honour, by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, of a state funeral which saw one of the largest assemblies of statesmen in the world.

Family and early life

Winston Churchill's father - Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill

A descendant of the famous Spencer family, Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, like his father, used the surname Churchill in public life. The Spencer family had adopted the Churchill surname in the 18th century to highlight their descent from John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Winston's father, Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough was a politician while his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jennie Jerome) was the daughter of American millionaire Leonard Jerome. Churchill was born two months premature in a bedroom in Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire on 30 November 1874. He arrived eight months after his parents' hasty marriage, and had one brother, John Strange Spencer-Churchill.

Churchill had an independent and rebellious nature and generally did poorly in school, for which he was punished. He entered Harrow School on 17 April 1888, where his military career began. Within weeks of his arrival, he had joined the Harrow Rifle Corps. Churchill earned high marks in English and history; he was also the school's fencing champion. He was rarely visited by his mother (then known as Lady Randolph), but wrote letters begging her to either come to the school or to allow him to come home. Churchill also had a very distant relationship with his father and Churchill once remarked how they barely talked to each other. Due to his lack of parental contact Churchill became very close to his nanny, Elizabeth Anne Everest, whom he used to call "Woomany".

Speech impediment

See also: List of stutterers

Churchill described himself as having a "speech impediment", which he consistently worked to overcome. After many years, he finally stated, "My impediment is no hindrance." Although the Stuttering Foundation of America has claimed that Churchill stammered, the Churchill Centre has concluded that he lisped. Churchill's impediment may also have been cluttering, which would fit more with his lack of attention to unimportant details and his very secure ego. Weiss suggests that Churchill may have "excelled because of, rather than in spite of, his cluttering."

Marriage and children

Mary Soames, the Churchills' youngest daughter.

Churchill met his future wife, Clementine Hozier, in a ball at the Crewe House, home of the Earl of Crewe and his wife, Margaret Primrose (daughter of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery), in 1904. In 1908, Hozier and Churchill met again at a dinner party hosted by Lady St Helier. Churchill found himself seated alongside Hozier at the dinner party, and they soon began their lifelong romance. On August 10 1908, Churchill proposed to Hozier in a house party in Blenheim, in a small Temple of Diana. On September 12, 1908, Hozier and Churchill were married in Church of St. Margaret, Westminster. The church was packed; the Bishop of St Asaph conducted the service. In March 1909, the couple moved to a house in 33 Eccleston Square. On July 11 1909, in London, their first child was born: Diana Churchill. After the pregnancy, Clementine moved to Sussex to recover, while Diana stayed in London with her nanny. On May 28 1911, Churchill's second child, Randolph Spencer Churchill, was born in 33 Eccleston Square.

After the start of World War I, on October 7 1914, their third child, Sarah Churchill was born in the Admiralty House. The birth was marked with anxiety for Clementine, as Winston had been sent to Antwerp by the Cabinet to "stiffen the resistance of the beleaguered city" prior to the birth. Four days after the official end of World War I, Clementine gave birth to her fourth child, Marigold Frances Churchill, on November 15, 1918. In the early months of August, the Churchills' children were entrusted to a French nursery governess in Kent named Mlle Rose. Clementine, meanwhile, travelled to Eaton Hall to play tennis with Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster and his family. While still under the care of Mlle Rose, Marigold had a cold, but was reported to have recovered from the illness. As the illness progressed with hardly any notice, it turned into septicaemia. Following advice from a landlady, Rose sent for Clementine. However the illness turned fatal on August 23 1921, and Marigold was buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery three days later. On September 15 1922, the Churchills' last child was born, Mary Churchill. Later that month, the Churchills bought the Chartwell Manor, a house that would be Winston's home until his death in 1965.

Service in the Army

Sandhurst

After Churchill left Harrow in 1893, he applied to attend the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. However it took three attempts before Churchill passed the admittance exam. Once there, Churchill did well and graduated eighth out of a class of 150 in December 1894. He was immediately commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars on 20 February 1895. In 1941, he received the honour of Colonel of the Hussars. Churchill was accused of buggering other students while at Sandhurst, which ended with Churchill filing a libel case against the accuser. The accuser withdrew the charges and settled with Churchill for a sum of £400.

War correspondent

Churchill's pay as a second lieutenant in the 4th Hussars was £300. However Churchill believed that he needed at least £500 to support a style of life in keeping with other officers of the regiment. According to biographer Roy Jenkins, this is why Churchill took an interest in war correspondence. When Churchill finished training he asked to be posted to areas of action in which, against all etiquette, he earned additional income as a roving war correspondent for the London newspapers.

Lord Deedes explained to a gathering of the Royal Historical Society in 2001 why Churchill went to the front line: "He was with Grenadier Guards, who were dry [without alcohol] at battalion headquarters. They very much liked tea and condensed milk, which had no great appeal to Winston, but alcohol was permitted in the front line, in the trenches. So he suggested to the colonel that he really ought to see more of the war and get into the front line. This was highly commended by the colonel, who thought it was a very good thing to do."

In 1895, Churchill travelled to Cuba to observe the Spanish fight the Cuban guerrillas; he had obtained a commission to write about the conflict from the Daily Graphic. To Churchill's delight, he came under fire for the first time on his twenty-first birthday. Churchill had fond memories of Cuba as a "...large, rich, beautiful island..." Churchill soon received word that his nanny, Mrs Everest, was dying; he then returned to England and stayed with her for a week until she died. He wrote in his journal "She was my favourite friend." In Churchill's My Early Life he wrote: "She had been my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole of the twenty years I had lived." In early October 1896, he was transferred to Bombay, India. He was considered one of the best polo players in his regiment and led his team to many prestigious tournament victories.

About this time he read Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man, a classic of Victorian atheism, which completed his loss of faith in Christianity and left him with a sombre vision of a godless universe in which humanity was destined, nevertheless, to progress through the conflict between the more advanced and the more backward races. When he was posted to India and began to read avidly, to make up for lost time, Churchill was profoundly impressed by Darwinism. He lost whatever religious faith he may have had through reading Edward Gibbon, he said and took a particular dislike, for some reason, to the Catholic Church, as well as Christian missions. He became, in his own words, "a materialist to the tips of my fingers," and he fervently upheld the worldview that human life is a struggle for existence, with the outcome the survival of the fittest. This philosophy of life and history Churchill expressed in his one novel, Savrola. He passed for a time through an aggressively anti-religious phase, but this eventually gave way to a more tolerant belief in the workings of some kind of divine providence.

Malakand

A young Winston Churchill on a lecture tour of the United States in 1900

In 1897, Churchill attempted to travel to both report and, if necessary, fight in the Greco-Turkish War, but this conflict effectively ended before he could arrive. Later, while preparing for a leave in England, Churchill heard that three brigades of the British Army were going to fight against a Pashtun tribe and he asked his superior officer if he could join the fight. He fought under the command of General Jeffery, who was the commander of the second brigade operating in Malakand, in what is now Pakistan. Jeffery sent fifteen scouts and Churchill to explore the Mamund Valley; while on reconnaissance, they encountered an enemy tribe, dismounted from their horses and opened fire. After an hour of shooting, their reinforcements, the 35th Sikhs arrived, and the fire gradually ceased and the brigade and the Sikhs marched on. Hundreds of tribesmen then ambushed them and opened fire, forcing them to retreat. As they were retreating four men were carrying an injured officer but the fierceness of the fight forced them to leave him behind. The man who was left behind was slashed to death in front of Churchill’s eyes; afterwards he wrote of his killer, "I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man". However the Sikhs' numbers were being depleted so the next commanding officer told Churchill to get the rest of the men and boys to safety.

Before he left he asked for a note so he would not be charged with desertion. He received the note, quickly signed, and headed up the hill and alerted the other brigade, whereupon they then engaged the army. The fighting in the region dragged on for another two weeks before the dead could be recovered. Churchill wrote in his journal: "Whether it was worth it I cannot tell." An account of the Siege of Malakand was published in December 1900 as the The Story of the Malakand Field Force. He received £600 for his account. During the campaign, he also wrote articles for the newspapers The Pioneer and The Daily Telegraph. His account of the battle was one of his first published stories, for which he received £5 per column from The Daily Telegraph.

Sudan and Oldham

File:WinstonChurchillRiverWar.jpg

The River War was published in 1899, a year after Churchill's first published work The Story of the Malakand Field Force

Churchill was transferred to Egypt in 1898 where he visited Luxor before joining an attachment of the 21st Lancers serving in Sudan under the command of General Herbert Kitchener. During his time he encountered two future military officers, whom he would later work with, during the First World War: Douglas Haig, then a captain and Earl Jellicoe, then a gunboat lieutenant. While in the Sudan, Churchill participated in what has been described as the last meaningful British cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898. He also worked as a war correspondent for the Morning Post. By October 1898, he had returned to Britain and begun his two-volume work;The River War, an account of the reconquest of the Sudan published the following year. Churchill stood for parliament in 1899 as a Conservative candidate in Oldham in a by-election, which he lost, coming third.

South Africa

After Churchill's failure to win the election in Oldham, he went to South Africa in 1899 to report on the Second Boer War. On 12 October 1899, the war between Britain and the Boer Republics broke out in South Africa. Churchill was captured and held in a POW camp in Pretoria. Churchill escaped from the prison camp and travelled almost 300 miles (480 km) to Portuguese Lourenço Marques in Delagoa Bay, with the assistance of an English mine manager. His escape made him a minor national hero for a time in Britain, though instead of returning home, he rejoined General Redvers Buller's army on its march to relieve the British at the Siege of Ladysmith and take Pretoria. This time, although continuing as a war correspondent, Churchill gained a commission in the South African Light Horse Regiment. He was one of the first British troops into Ladysmith and Pretoria. In fact, he and the Duke of Marlborough, his cousin, were able to get ahead of the rest of the troops in Pretoria, where they demanded and received the surrender of 52 Boer prison camp guards.

In 1900, Churchill returned to England on the RMS Dunottar Castle, the same ship on which he set sail for South Africa eight months earlier, and published books on the Second Boer War including London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton's March, which he then marked by a small tour of the United States

Early years in Parliament

Churchill's election poster for the 1899 by-election in Oldham, which he lost. A year later he won the seat following the 1900 general election.

He again stood for Oldham in the 1900 general election He won but before taking his seat in the Houses of Parliament he embarked on a speaking tour throughout Britain and the United States, raising £10,000 for himself.

In Parliament, Churchill became associated with a faction of the Conservative Party led by Lord Hugh Cecil , the Hughligans.. During his first parliamentary session, Churchill opposed the government's military expenditure. and Joseph Chamberlain who proposed extensive tariffs intended to protect Britain's economic dominance, . His own constituency effectively deselected him, although he continued to sit for Oldham until the next general election. After the Whitsun recess in 1904 Churchill crossed the floor to sit as a member of the Liberal Party. As a Liberal, he continued to campaign for free trade. When the Liberals took office, with Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister, in December 1905, Churchill became Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies dealing mainly with South Africa after the Boer War.

From 1903 until 1905, Churchill was also engaged in writing Lord Randolph Churchill, a two-volume biography of his father which was published in 1906 and received much critical acclaimHowever, filial devotion caused him to soften some of his father's less attractive aspects.

He won the seat of Manchester North West in the 1906 general election.

When Campbell-Bannerman was succeeded by Herbert Henry Asquith in 1908, Churchill was promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Under the law at the time, a newly appointed Cabinet Minister was obliged to seek re-election at a by-election and Churchill lost his seat but was soon elected in another by-election at [[Dundee (UK Parliament constituency)|Dundee constituency

As President of the Board of Trade he supported David Lloyd George, the newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, in opposition to the huge expenditure for the construction of Navy dreadnought warships proposed by then First Lord of the Admiralty, Reginald McKenna and in the Liberal reforms In 1908 he introduced the Trade Boards Bill setting up the first minimum wages in Britain, In 1909 he set up Labour Exchanges to help unemployed people find work. He helped draft the first unemployment pension legislation, the National Insurance Act of 1911.

Churchill's most notable role in these reforms was his assistance in passing the People's Budget.becoming the President of the Budget League, an organisation set up in response to the oppositions 'Budget protest League'.The budget included the introduction of new taxes on the wealthy to allow for the creation of new social welfare programmes. Churchill's biographer William Manchester called the "People's Budget" "a revolutionary concept" because it was the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth to the British public. After the bill was sent to the Commons in 1909 and passed, it went to the House of Lords, where it was subsequently vetoed. The Liberals then fought and won two general elections in January and December of 1910 to gain a mandate for their reforms. The budget was then passed following the Parliament Act of 1911.

In 1910, Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary. His term as Home Secretary was to prove controversial, after his responses to the Siege of Sidney Street and the dispute at the Cambrian Colliery and the suffragettes.

Winston Churchill (highlighted) at Sidney Street, 3 January 1911

In 1910, a number of coal miners in the Rhondda Valley began what has come to be known as the Tonypandy Riot. The Chief Constable of Glamorgan requested that troops be sent in to help police quell the rioting, and Churchill, when he learned that the troops were already travelling, allowed them to go as far as Swindon and Cardiff Churchill, however, blocked the actual use of troops. fearing a repeat of the 1887 Bloody Sunday in Trafalgar Square. On 9 November, the Times criticized this decisionIn spite of this, the rumour persists that Churchill had ordered troops to attack, and Churchill's reputation in Wales and in Labour circles never recovered.

In early January 1911 Churchill arrived onsite at the Siege of Sidney Street in London. There is some uncertainty as to whether Churchill attempted to give operational commands onsite, a biographer Roy Jenkins comments that the reason he went was because "he could not resist going to see the fun himself" and that he did not issue commands. His role and presence attracted much criticism After an inquest, Arthur Balfour remarked, "He [Churchill] and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing but what was the Right Honourable gentleman doing?"

Churchill's proposed solution to the suffragette issue was a referendum on the issue but this found no favour with Herbert Henry Asquith and woman's suffrage remained unresolved until after the First World War.

Churchill in 1912 as First Lord of the Admiralty

In 1911, Churchill was transfered to the office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he held into World War I. He gave impetus to several reforms efforts, including development of naval aviation (he undertook flying lessons himself),, the construction of new and larger warships, the development of tanks, and the switch from coal to oil in the Royal Navy, .

World War One

on 5th October 1914 Churchill went to Antwerp which the Belgian government proposed to evacuate. The Royal Marine Brigade was there and at Churchill’s urgings the 1st and 2nd Naval Brigades were also committed. Antwerp fell on 10th October with the loss of 2500 men.

At the time Churchill was attacked for squandering resources. Its likely that his actions prolonged the resistance by a week ) and that this time saved Calais and Dunkirk. .The more damaging attack -made inside and outside Cabinet was that Churchill was seeking publicity instead of running his department. .

Churchill was involved with the development of the tank, which was financed from naval research funds.. Churchill then headed the Landships Committee which was responsible for creating the first tank corps and, although a decade later development of the battle tank would be seen as a tactical victory, at the time it was seen as misappropriation of funds.

In 1915, Churchill was one of the political and military engineers of the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles during World War I. Churchill took much of the blame for the fiasco, and when Prime Minister Asquith formed an all-party coalition government, the Conservatives demanded Churchill's demotion as the price for entry. For several months Churchill served in the sinecure of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

On 15 November 1915 he resigned from the government, feeling his energies were not being used. and while remaining an MP, he served for several months on the Western Front commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, under the rank of Colonel. During this period, his second-in-command was a young Archibald Sinclair who later led the Liberal Party. In March, Churchill returned to England after he had become restless in France and wished to speak again in the House of Commons.

Return to power

In December 1916, Asquith resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by David Lloyd George.. In July 1917, Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions, and in January 1919, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. He was the main architect of the Ten Year Rule, a principle that allows the Treasury to dominate and control strategic, foreign and financial policies under the assumption that "there would be no great European war for the next five or ten years".

A major preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Churchill was a staunch advocate of foreign intervention, declaring that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". He secured, from a divided and loosely organised Cabinet, intensification and prolongation of the British involvement beyond the wishes of any major group in Parliament or the nation — and in the face of the bitter hostility of Labour. In 1920, after the last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles when they invaded Ukraine.

He became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1921 and was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which established the Irish Free State. Churchill was involved in the length negotiations of the treaty and to protect British maritime interests, he engineered part of the Irish Free State agreement to include three Treaty Ports—Queenstown (Cobh), Berehaven and Lough Swilly—which could be used as Atlantic bases by the Royal Navy. As President of the Board of Trade, he introduced a bill in 1908 (enacted in 1909) setting up the first minimum wages in Britain, mandating rates for both time- and piece-work for 200,000 workers in several industries. This "Trade Boards Bill", Churchill told his wife on April 28 1909 "passed without a division." The next major Liberal reform was aimed at the setting up of Labour Exchanges to help unemployed people find work. Churchill at the Board of Trade directed the government effort to pass the bill, which passed in May 1909. Churchill was also a strong advocate of the governments proposals for unemployment insurance and he helped formulate the bill that was to pass with his support as the National Insurance Act of 1911.

Churchill's most notable role in these reforms was his assistance in passing the People's Budget. The budget included the introduction of new taxes on the wealthy to allow for the creation of new social welfare programmes. Churchill's biographer William Manchester called the "People's Budget" "a revolutionary concept" because it was the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth to the British public. At the time the Budget was discussed in 1909 he did feel some ambiguity over it. But despite his doubts about its effectiveness, he launched himself into the fight for the budget and accepted the presidency of the Budget League, an organisation set up in response to the oppositions 'Budget protest League'. After the bill was sent to the Commons in 1909 and passed, it went to the House of Lords, where it was subsequently vetoed. The Liberals than fought and won two general elections in January and December of 1910 to gain a mandate for their reforms. The budget was then passed following the Parliament Act of 1911.

Home Secretary

In 1910, Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary. His term as Home Secretary was to prove controversial, after his responses to the Siege of Sidney Street and the dispute at the Cambrian Colliery. Furthermore the suffragettes affected Churchill throughout his Home Secretaryship (Churchill himself was accosted with a whip by Theresa Garnett, a suffragette in 1909). Churchill's proposed solution was a referendum on the issue but this found no favour with Herbert Henry Asquith and woman's suffrage remained unresolved until after the First World War. In 1910, Churchill commented to Asquith that

The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate...I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.

Winston Churchill (highlighted) at Sidney Street, 3 January 1911

In 1910, a number of coal miners in the Rhondda Valley began what has come to be known as the Tonypandy Riot. Initially, the Chief Constable of Glamorgan requested that troops be sent in to help police quell the rioting, and Churchill, when he learned that they had been started, allowed them to go as far as Swindon and Cardiff and authorized the commanding General to advance further if he should judge it necessary. Churchill, however, blocked the use of troops fearing a repeat of the 1887 Bloody Sunday in Trafalgar Square. On 9 November, the Times leader criticized this decision, saying that responsibility for the "renewed rioting late last night...will lie with the Home Secretary [Churchill]" for countermanding the Chief Constable's request for troops. In spite of this, the rumour persists that Churchill had ordered troops to attack, and Churchill's reputation in Wales and in Labour circles never recovered.

In early January 1911 Churchill arrived onsite at the Siege of Sidney Street in London. There is some uncertainty as to whether Churchill attempted to give operational commands onsite, a biographer Roy Jenkins comments that the reason he went was because "he could not resist going to see the fun himself" and that he did not issue commands. A famous photograph from the time however shows the impetuous Churchill at the scene, peering around a corner to view a gun battle between cornered anarchists and Scots Guards. His role and presence attracted much criticism. The building under siege caught fire and Churchill supported the decision to deny the fire brigade access, forcing the criminals to choose surrender or death. After an inquest, Arthur Balfour remarked, "He [Churchill] and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing but what was the Right Honourable gentleman doing?" The significance was that the wole vastly publicised affair increased Churchills already incipient reputation for being a frenetic and far from calm home secretary.

First Lord of the Admiralty

Churchill in 1912 as First Lord of the Admiralty

In 1911, Churchill was transfered to the office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he held into World War I. He gave impetus to reform efforts, including development of naval aviation (he undertook flying lessons himself), the development of tanks, and the switch from coal to oil in the Royal Navy, a massive engineering task, which depended on securing Mesopotamia's oil rights.

File:0242.jpg

Winston Churchill, as the British Colonial Secretary, in Ottoman Damascus, 1912.

On 5th October 1914 Churchill went to Antwerp which the Belgian government proposed to evacuate and surrender to the Germans. The Royal Marine Brigade was there and at Churchill’s urgings the 1st and 2nd Naval Brigades were also committed. Churchill proposed to resign from the Admiralty and take executive command of the newly formed Royal Naval Division which incorporated the Marine and Naval Brigades. His offer was rejected by Cabinet and Antwerp fell on 10th October with the loss of 2500 men.

At the time he was attacked for squandering resources. His defence was that it had prolonged resistance in Antwerp by five days and occupied five German divisions . Its more likely that his actions prolonged the resistance by a week (Belgium had proposed surrendering Antwerp on 3rd October) and that this time saved Calais and Dunkirk.

Churchill was involved with the development of the tank, which was financed from naval research funds. After witnessing a demonstration in which an armoured tractor successfully cut through a barbed wire entanglement, Churchill and Lloyd George decided that tanks could prove useful. Churchill then headed the Landships Committee which was responsible for creating the first tank corps and, although a decade later development of the battle tank would be seen as a tactical victory, at the time it was seen as misappropriation of funds. The tank was deployed too early and in too small numbers, much to Churchill's annoyance. He wanted a fleet of tanks used to surprise the Germans under cover of smoke, and to open a large section of the trenches by crushing barbed wire and creating a breakthrough sector.

In 1915, Churchill was one of the political and military engineers of the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles during World War I. Churchill took much of the blame for the fiasco, and when Prime Minister Asquith formed an all-party coalition government, the Conservatives demanded Churchill's demotion as the price for entry. For several months Churchill served in the sinecure of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. However on 15 November 1915 he resigned from the government, feeling his energies were not being used.

He then rejoined the army, though remaining an MP, and served for several months on the Western Front commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, under the rank of Colonel. During this period, his second-in-command was a young Archibald Sinclair who later led the Liberal Party. Although Churchill did spend some time behind the front, visiting leaders such as Field Marshal Sir John French, Churchill led his battalion into the trenches on the 27 January 1916. In March, Churchill returned to England after he had become restless in France and wished to speak again in the House of Commons.

Return to power

In December 1916, Asquith resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by David Lloyd George. The time was thought not yet right to risk the Conservatives' wrath by bringing Churchill back into government. However, in July 1917, Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions, and in January 1919, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. He was the main architect of the Ten Year Rule, a principle that allows the Treasury to dominate and control strategic, foreign and financial policies under the assumption that "there would be no great European war for the next five or ten years".

A major preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Churchill was a staunch advocate of foreign intervention, declaring that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". He secured, from a divided and loosely organised Cabinet, intensification and prolongation of the British involvement beyond the wishes of any major group in Parliament or the nation — and in the face of the bitter hostility of Labour. In 1920, after the last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles when they invaded Ukraine.

He became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1921 and was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which established the Irish Free State. Churchill was involved in the length negotiations of the treaty and to protect British maritime interests, he engineered part of the Irish Free State agreement to include three Treaty Ports—Queenstown (Cobh), Berehaven and Lough Swilly—which could be used as Atlantic bases by the Royal Navy. Under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement the bases were returned to the newly constituted Éire in 1938.

Career between the wars

Second crossing of the floor

In 1920, as Secretaries of State for War and Air, Churchill was responsible for quelling the rebellion of Kurds and Arabs in British-occupied Iraq. In October 1922, Churchill underwent an operation to remove his appendix. Upon his return, he learned the government was in difficulty and a General Election was looming. The Liberal Party was now beset by internal division which affected Churchill's ability when campaigning. At one meeting, he was only able to speak for 40 minutes before he was barracked by a section of the audience. He came only fourth in the poll and lost his seat at Dundee to the prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour, quipping later that he left Dundee "without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix".

Churchill stood for the Liberals again in the 1923 general election, losing in Leicester, but over the next few months he moved towards the Conservative Party in all but name. His first electoral contest as an Independent candidate, fought under the label of "Independent Anti-Socialist", was a narrow loss in a by-election in the Westminster Abbey constituency — his third electoral defeat in fewer than two years. However, he stood for election yet again several months later in the General Election of 1924, again as an Independent candidate, this time under the label of "Constitutionalist" although with Conservative backing, and was finally elected to represent Epping. The following year, he formally rejoined the Conservative Party, commenting wryly that "Anyone can rat [betray], but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat."

Chancellor of the Exchequer

Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw Britain's disastrous return to the Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the miners' strike that led to the General Strike of 1926. His decision, announced in the 1924 Budget, came after long consultation with various economists and the board of the Bank of England. He held a dinner at which the economist John Maynard Keynes, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Otto Niemeyer and others argued the case. This decision prompted Keynes to write The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, arguing that the return to the gold standard at the pre-war parity in 1925 (£1=$4.86) would lead to a world depression. Interestingly, the pamphlet did not criticise the decision to return to the gold standard per se. However, the decision was generally popular and seen as 'sound economics' although it was opposed by Lord Beaverbrook and the Federation of British Industries.

File:Churchill 5.jpg

Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1927

Churchill later regarded this as the greatest mistake of his life; he stated he was not an economist and that he acted on the advice of the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman. However in discussions at the time with former Chancellor McKenna, Churchill acknowledged that the return to the gold standard and the resulting 'dear money' policy was economically bad. In those discussions he maintained the policy as fundamentally political - a return to the pre-war conditions in which he believed. In his speech on the Bill he said "I will tell you what it [the return to the Gold Standard] will shackle us to. It will shackle us to reality."

The return to the pre-war exchange rate and to the Gold Standard depressed industries. The most affected was the coal industry. Already suffering from declining output as shipping switched to oil, as basic British industries like cotton came under more competition in export markets, the return to the pre-war exchange was estimated to add up to 10% in costs to the industry. In July 1925 a Commission of Inquiry reported generally favouring the miners, rather than the mine owners' position. Attached to the report was a memorandum from Sir Josiah Stamp stating that the increased difficulties in the coal industry could be entirely explained by the "immediate and necessary effects of the return to Gold".

Baldwin, with Churchill's support proposed a subsidy to the industry while a Royal Commission prepared a further report. During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns be used on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, and, during the dispute, he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country." Furthermore, he controversially claimed that the fascism of Benito Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world," showing, as it had, "a way to combat subversive forces" — that is, he considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat of Communist revolution. At one point, Churchill went as far as to call Mussolini the "Roman genius… the greatest lawgiver among men."

It was not only the return to the Gold Standard that later economists, as well as people at the time, criticised in Churchill's time at the Treasury. Rather it was his budget measures which, even given the consensus at the time that the budgets should be balanced were attacked as assisting the generally prosperous rentier banking and salaried classes (to which Churchill and his associates generally belonged) at the expense of manufacturers and exporters which were known then to be suffering from imports and from competition in traditional export markets. However his 1925 budget was well received by the public and enhanced Churchill's prestige within the government.

Political isolation

The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 General Election. Churchill did not seek election to the Conservative Business Committee, the official leadership of the Conservative MPs. Over the next two years, Churchill became estranged from the Conservative leadership over the issues of protective tariffs and Indian Home Rule, which he bitterly opposed. He further distanced himself from the party as a whole by his political views and by his friendships with press barons, financiers and people whose characters were seen as dubious. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931, Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He was at the low point in his career, in a period known as "the wilderness years".

Churchill wrote a biography of his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in the mid 1930s

He spent much of the next few years concentrating on his writing, including Marlborough: His Life and Times — a biography of his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough — and A History of the English Speaking Peoples (though the latter was not published until well after World War II). Close parallels can be seen between Churchill's views of Marlborough as a war leader advocating firm policies surrounded by politicians and a wider public who attacked both him personally and his policies and Churchill's own stand against appeasement.

Though badly hurt when he was struck by a car in New York City on a North American speaking tour, he wrote a profitable article about the experience. He wrote many other articles, collections of speeches and several books- some such as his Great Contemporaries of lasting worth. He supported himself largely by his writing and was one of the best paid writers of his time.

Nevertheless he was still in financial difficulties, having lost most of his American investments in the Wall Street Crash. He was criticised for holidaying in the Rivieria and America as the guest of such people as Lord Beaverbrook, William Randolph Hurst and for drinking and gambling with people such as Brendan Bracken and, until his early death Lord Birkenhead. These attacks were not new; in 1922 Churchill had brought a successful libel action against Lord Alfred Douglas who had accused Churchill of giving a deliberately false account of the Battle of Jutland at the request of Sir Ernest Cassel. During the trial it emerged Cassel, whose company remained Churchill's publisher, had paid for some of the furnishings of Churchill's London residence.

His political views, set forth in his 1930 Romanes Election and published as Parliamentary Government and the Economic Problem (republished in 1932 in his collection of essays "Thoughts and Adventures") involved abandoning universal suffrage, a return to a property franchise, proportional representation for the major cities and an economic 'sub parliament'.

Indian Independence

See also: Simon Commission and Government of India Act 1935

During the first half of the 1930s, outspoken opposition towards the granting of Dominion status to India became one of Churchill's major political focuses. Churchill was one of the founders of the India Defence League, a group dedicated to the preservation of British power in India. In speeches and press articles in this period he forecast widespread British unemployment and civil strife in India should independence be granted. The Viceroy Lord Irwin who had been appointed by the prior Conservative Government engaged in the Round Table Conference in early 1931 and then announced the Government's policy that India should be granted Dominion Status. In this the Government was supported by the Liberal Party and, officially at least, by the Conservative Party.

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Though he would later come to respect Mohandas Gandhi (pictured), Churchill opposed him and the Indian Independence movement in the 1930s, arguing that the Round Table Conference "was a frightful prospect".

Churchill denounced the Round Table Conference. He spoke at public meetings in Manchester and Liverpool in January and February 1931, respectively. At both he forecast widespread unemployment into the millions and other social and economic problems in England if India became self-governing. Though he would come to respect Mohandas Gandhi, especially after Gandhi "stood up for the untouchables", at a meeting of the West Essex Conservative Association specially convened so Churchill could explain his position he said , "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle-Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace...to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor." He called the Indian Congress leaders "Brahmims who mouth and patter principles of Western Liberalism."

In Parliament on 26th January 1931 he attacked the Government's policy saying that the Round Table Conference "was a frightful prospect" and that he would support "effective and real organisms of provisional and local government in the provinces." He returned to the Parliamentary attack on 13th March. Baldwin answered him by quoting Churchill's own speech in winding up the debate for the Lloyd George Coalition government on Amritsar massacre in which Churchill defended the cashiering of General Reginald Dyer. Baldwin continued by challenging Churchill and his other critics to depose him as leader of the Conservative Party.

There were two incidents which damaged Churchill's reputation greatly within the Conservative Party in the period. The first was his speech on the eve of the St George by-election in April 1931. In a secure Conservative seat, the official Conservative candidate Duff Cooper was opposed by an independent Conservative. The independent was supported by Lord Rothermere, Lord Beaverbrook and their respective newspapers. Both press barons had tried to urge specific policies on the Conservative Party—Rothermere opposed Indian home rule, Beaverbrook pressed for Tariff Reform under the slogan Empire Free Trade. Churchill's speech at the Albert Hall had been arranged before the date of the by election had been set. But he made no attempt to change the date and his speech was seen as a part of the Press Baron's campaign against Baldwin. This was reinforced by Churchill's personal friendship with both but especially with Beaverbrook who wrote "The primary issue of the by-election will be the leadership of the Conservative Party. If..(the independent candidate wins) Baldwin must go". Baldwin's position was strengthened when Duff Cooper won and when the civil disobedience campaign in India ceased with the Gandhi-Irwin Pact.

The second issue also affected Churchill's reputation. On 16th April 1934 Churchill claimed in Parliament that Sir Samuel Hoare and Lord Derby had pressured the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to change evidence it had given to the Joint Select Committee considering the Government of India Bill in June 1933. On 18th April he successfully moved the matter be referred to the House of Commons Privilege Committee. He tried to cross-examine witnesses before the Committee, contrary to normal procedure. Churchill himself gave evidence and Austen Chamberlain criticised the manner in which he gave it. Churchill's evidence was little and the inquiry reported to the House that there had been no breach. The report was debated on 13th June. Churchill was unable to find a single supporter in the House and the debate ended without a division. Leo Amery accused him of pressing the matter to bring the government down stating "at all costs he had to be faithful to his chosen motto:'Fiat justicia, ruat caelum". Churchill responded saying "translate it" at which point Amery remarked "I will translate it into the venacular If I can trip up Sam [Hoare] the government's bust".

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Churchill encountered difficulties with the government of Stanley Baldwin (pictured), in particular over the idea of Indian independence. He once bitterly remarked of Baldwin that "it would be better had he never lived".

Churchill permanently broke with Stanley Baldwin over Indian independence and never held any office while Baldwin was Prime Minister. In the index to the Gathering Storm, Churchill's first volume of his history of World War II, he records Baldwin "admitting to putting party before country" for his alleged admission that he would not have won the 1935 Election if he had pursued a more aggressive policy of rearmament. Churchill selectively quotes a speech in the Commons by Baldwin and gives the false impression that Baldwin is speaking of the general election when he was speaking of a by election in 1933 and omits altogether Baldwin's actual comments about the 1935 election "we got from the country, a mandate for doing a thing [a substantial rearmament programme] that no one, twelve months before, would have believed possible". This canard had been first put forward in the first edition of Guilty Men but in subsequent editions (including those before Churchill wrote the Gathering Storm) had been corrected.

Churchill continued his campaign against any further transfer of power to Indian nationalists. He continued to predict conflict in India and mass unemployment at home. His speeches often quoted nineteenth-century politicians and his own policy was to maintain the existing Raj. Some historians see his basic attitude to India as being set out in his book My Early Life (1930).. Historians also dispute his motives in maintaining his opposition. Some see him as trying to destabilise the National Government. In this they follow Amery (see above) and Lloyd George who believed that with MacDonald ill and Churchill leading the Conservative right-wing Baldwin would have had to form a new Coalition in which both he and Churchill would have had key ministries.

Some historians also draw a parallel between Churchill's attitudes to India and those towards the Nazis. For example Manfred Weidhorn in the introduction to the American edition of India (a collection of Churchill’s speeches on the topic) writes. "... Machiavelli sheds light on Churchill. The Italian notes that virtues and vices are often symbiotic rather than antithetical. Thus people say, 'Hannibal was a great general - too bad he was cruel', when the likelihood is that Hannibal was great in part because he was cruel. So here we have to consider the probability that Churchill was great in 1940 in part because he was too pugnacious, stubborn, deluded, and conservative (in the deepest sense) to be able to adjust to the New Order in Europe - traits he had shown in the matter of India".

German Rearmament

Beginning in 1932 when he opposed those who advocated giving Germany the right to military parity with France, Churchill spoke often of the dangers of Germany's rearmament. He later, particularly in The Gathering Storm, tried to portray himself as being for a time, a lone voice calling on Britain to strengthen itself to counter the belligerence of Germany. However Lord Lloyd was the first to so agitate.

Churchill's attitude toward the fascist dictators was ambiguous. In 1931 he warned against the League of Nations opposing the Japanese in Manchuria "I hope we shall try in England to understand the position of Japan an ancient state...On the one side they have the dark menace of Soviet Russia. On the other the chaos of China four or five provinces of which are being tortured under Communist rule". In contemporary newspaper articles he referred to the Spanish Republican government as a Communist front, and Franco's army as the "Anti red movement". He supported the Hoare-Laval Pact and continued up until 1937 to praise Mussolini. In his 1937 book Great Contemporaries, Churchill wrote: "One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievements. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable (as Hitler) to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations". Speaking in the House of Commons, in 1937, he said "I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and Nazism, I would choose communism". In the same work, Churchill expressed a hope that despite Hitler's apparent dictatorial tendencies, he would use his power to rebuild Germany into a worthy member of the world community.

Churchill's first major speech on defence on 7th February 1934 stressed the need to rebuild the Royal Air Force and to create a Ministry of Defence; his second, on 13th July urged a renewed role for the League of Nations. These three topics remained his themes until early 1936. In 1935 he was one of the founding members of "Focus" a group which also included Sir Archibald Sinclair, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Wickham Steed and Professor Gilbert Murray. Focus brought together people of differing political backgrounds and occupations who were united in seeking 'the defence of freedom and peace'. Focus led to the formation of the much wider Arms and the Covenant Movement in 1936.

Churchill was holidaying in Spain when the Germans reoccupied the Rhineland in February 1936 and returned to a divided England&mdahs;Labour opposition was adamant in opposing sanctions and the National Government was divided between advocates of economic sanctions and those who said that even these would lead to a humiliating backdown by Britain as France would not support any intervention. Churchill's speech on 9th March was measured and praised by Neville Chamberlain as constructive. But within weeks Churchill was passed over for the post of Minister for Co-ordination of Defence in favour of the Attorney General Sir Thomas Inskip.

This surprising appointment—it surprised Inskip as much as anyone—came despite advice to Baldwin to broaden his cabinet. Historians have variously seen it as Baldwin's caution in not wanting to appoint someone as controversial as Churchill, as avoiding giving Germany any sign that the United Kingdom was preparing for war and as avoiding someone who had few allies in the Conservative Party and was opposed as a war monger by some people in England. Whatever the reason it was a severe blow to Churchill.

In June 1936 Churchill organised a deputation of senior Conservatives who shared his concern to see Baldwin, Chamberlain and Halifax. He had tried to have delegates from the other two parties and later wrote "If the leaders of the Labour and Liberal oppositions had come with us there might have been a political situation so intense as to enforce remedial action". As it was the meeting achieved little, Baldwin arguing that the Government was doing all it could given the anti-war feeling of the electorate. But it showed that more Conservatives shared Churchill's views—he was less isolated then he had been earlier.

Abdication Crisis

Main article: Abdication Crisis of Edward VIII

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The response of Churchill in the Abdication Crisis of King Edward VIII (pictured) caused severe damage to Churchill's political reputation.

In June 1936 Walter Monckton told Churchill that the rumours that King Edward VIII intended to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson were true. Churchill then advised against the marriage and said he regarded Mrs Simpson's existing marriage as a 'safeguard'. In November he declined Lord Salisbury's invitation to be part of a delegation of senior Conservative backbenchers which met with Baldwin to discuss the matter. On 25th November he, Atlee and Sinclair met with Baldwin and were told officially of the King's intention and asked whether they would form an administration if Baldwin and the National Government resigned should the King not take the Ministry's advice. Both Atlee and Sinclair said they would not take office if invited to do so. Churchill's reply was that his attitude was a little different but he would support the government.

At the time Churchill was seen as an alternative leader. As Lord Beaverbrook wrote "he has emerged as a leader of a big armaments anti-German movement in politics, hostile to the Government".

The Abdication crisis became public, coming to head in the fist fornight of December 1936. At this time Churchill publicly gave his support to the King. The first public meeting of the Arms and the Covenant Movement was on 3rd December. Churchill was a major speaker and later wrote that in replying to the Vote of Thanks he made a declaration 'on the spur of the moment' asking for delay before any decision was made by either the King or his Cabinet. Later that night Churchill saw the draft of the King's proposed wireless broadcast and spoke with Beaverbrook and the King's solicitor about it.

On 4th December he met with the King and again urged delay in any decision about abdication. On 5th December he issued a lengthy statement implying that the Ministry was applying unconstitutional pressure on the King to force him to make a hasty decision. On 7th December he tried to address the Commons to plead for delay. He was shouted down. Seemingly staggered by the unanimous hostility of all Members he left.

Churchill's reputation in Parliament and England as a whole was badly damaged. Some such as Alistair Cooke saw him as trying to build a King's Party. Others like Harold Macmillan were dismayed by the damage Churchill's support for the King had done to the Arms and the Covenant Movement. Churchill himself later wrote "I was myself smitten in public opinion that it was the almost universal view that my political life was ended."

Historians are divided about Churchill's motives in his support for Edward VIII. Some such as A J P Taylor see it as being an attempt to 'overthrow the government of feeble men'. Others such as Rhode James see Churchill's motives as entirely honourable and disinterested, that he felt deeply for the King.

Return from Exile

Churchill later sought to portray himself as an isolated voice warning of the need to rearm against Germany. While it is true that he had little following in the House of Commons during much of the 1930s he was given considerable privileges by the Government. The “Churchill group” in the later half of the decade consisted only of himself, Duncan Sandys and Brendan Bracken. It was isolated from the other main factions within the Conservative Party pressing for faster rearmament and a stronger foreign policy. In some senses the ‘exile’ was more apparent then real. Churchill continued to be consulted on many matters by the Government or seen as an alternative leader .

Even during the time Churchill was campaigning against Indian independence, he received official and otherwise secret information. From 1932, Churchill’s neighbour, Major Desmond Morton with Ramsay MacDonald's approval, gave Churchill information on German air power. From 1930 onwards Morton headed a department of the Committee of Imperial Defence charged with researching the defence preparedness of other nations. Lord Swinton as Secretary of State for Air, and with Baldwin’s approval, in 1934 gave Churchill access to official and otherwise secret information. Swinton did so, knowing Churchill would remain a critic of the government but believing that an informed critic was better then one relying on rumour and hearsay.

Churchill was a fierce critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler and in a speech to the House of Commons, he bluntly and prophetically stated, "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war."

Role as wartime Prime Minister

"Winston is back"

After the outbreak of the World War II Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the War Cabinet, just as he was in the first part of World War I. The Navy, according to myth, sent out the signal: "Winston is back." In this job, he proved to be one of the highest-profile ministers during the so-called "Phony War", when the only noticeable action was at sea. Churchill advocated the pre-emptive occupation of the neutral Norwegian iron-ore port of Narvik and the iron mines in Kiruna, Sweden, early in the war. However, Chamberlain and the rest of the War Cabinet disagreed, and the operation was delayed until the successful German invasion of Norway.

Bitter beginnings of the war

Churchill wears a helmet during an air raid warning in the Battle for Britain in 1940

On 10 May 1940, hours before the German invasion of France by a lightning advance through the Low Countries, it became clear that, following failure in Norway, the country had no confidence in Chamberlain's prosecution of the war and so Chamberlain resigned. The commonly accepted version of events states that Lord Halifax turned down the post of Prime Minister because he believed he could not govern effectively as a member of the House of Lords instead of the House of Commons. Although traditionally, the Prime Minister does not advise the King on the former's successor, Chamberlain wanted someone who would command the support of all three major parties in the House of Commons. A meeting between Chamberlain, Halifax, Churchill and David Margesson, the government Chief Whip, led to the recommendation of Churchill, and, as a constitutional monarch, George VI asked Churchill to be Prime Minister and to form an all-party government. Churchill's first act was to write to Chamberlain to thank him for his support.

Churchill's greatest achievement was his refusal to capitulate when defeat seemed imminent, and he remained a strong opponent of any negotiations with Germany throughout the war. Few others in the Cabinet had this degree of resolve. Although there was an element of British public and political sentiment favouring negotiated peace with a clearly ascendant Germany, among them the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, Churchill nonetheless refused to consider an armistice with Hitler's Germany. Churchill's skillful use of rhetoric hardened public opinion against a peaceful resolution and prepared the British for a long war. Coining the general term for the upcoming battle, Churchill stated in his "finest hour" speech to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940, "I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin." By refusing an armistice with Germany, Churchill kept resistance alive in the British Empire and created the basis for the later Allied counter-attacks of 1942-45, with Britain serving as a platform for the supply of Soviet Union and the liberation of Western Europe.

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Winston Churchill walks through the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, 1942

In response to previous criticisms that there had been no clear single minister in charge of the prosecution of the war, Churchill created and took the additional position of Minister of Defence. He immediately put his friend and confidant, the industrialist and newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook, in charge of aircraft production. It was Beaverbrook's business acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production and engineering that eventually made the difference in the war.

Churchill's speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled British. His first speech as Prime Minister was the famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat". He followed that closely with two other equally famous ones, given just before the Battle of Britain. One included the words:

we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The other:

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour'.

Churchill with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Field Marshal Alan Brooke, 1944

At the height of the Battle of Britain, his bracing survey of the situation included the memorable line "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", which engendered the enduring nickname "The Few" for the Allied fighter pilots who won it. One of his most memorable war speeches came on 10 November 1942 at the Lord Mayor's Luncheon at Mansion House in London, in response to the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Churchill stated:

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Without having much in the way of sustenance or good news to offer the British people, he took a political risk in deliberately choosing to emphasise the dangers instead.

"Rhetorical power," wrote Churchill, "is neither wholly bestowed, nor wholly acquired, but cultivated." Not all were impressed by his oratory. Robert Menzies, who was the Prime Minister of Australia, said during World War II of Churchill: "His real tyrant is the glittering phrase so attractive to his mind that awkward facts have to give way." Another associate wrote: "He is . . . the slave of the words which his mind forms about ideas. . . . And he can convince himself of almost every truth if it is once allowed thus to start on its wild career through his rhetorical machinery."

Relations with the United States

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Churchill at the Cairo Conference in 1943

Churchill's good relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt secured vital food, oil and munitions via the North Atlantic shipping routes. It was for this reason that Churchill was relieved when Roosevelt was re-elected in 1940. Upon re-election, Roosevelt immediately set about implementing a new method of providing military hardware and shipping to Britain without the need for monetary payment. Put simply, Roosevelt persuaded Congress that repayment for this immensely costly service would take the form of defending the USA; and so Lend-lease was born. Churchill had 12 strategic conferences with Roosevelt which covered the Atlantic Charter, Europe first strategy, the Declaration by the United Nations and other war policies.

Winston Churchill at the Quebec conference in 1944.

After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Churchill's first thought in anticipation of U.S. help was, "We have won the war!" On 26 December 1941 Churchill addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, asking of Germany and Japan, "What kind of people do they think we are?" Churchill initiated the Special Operations Executive (SOE) under Hugh Dalton's Ministry of Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and fostered covert, subversive and partisan operations in occupied territories with notable success; and also the Commandos which established the pattern for most of the world's current Special Forces. The Russians referred to him as the "British Bulldog".

Churchill's health was fragile, as shown by a mild heart attack he suffered in December 1941 at the White House and also in December 1943 when he contracted pneumonia. Despite this, he travelled over 100,000 miles (160,000 km) throughout the war to meet other national leaders. For security, he usually travelled using the alias Colonel Warden.

Churchill on his visit to America addresses a joint session of the United States Congress, 1943

Churchill was party to treaties that would redraw post-World War II European and Asian boundaries. These were discussed as early as 1943. Proposals for European boundaries and settlements were officially agreed to by Harry S Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam. At the second Quebec Conference in 1944 he drafted and, together with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed a toned-down version of the original Morgenthau Plan, in which they pledged to convert Germany after its unconditional surrender "into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character." Churchill's strong relationship with Harry Truman was also of great significance to both countries. While he clearly regretted the loss of his close friend and counterpart Roosevelt, Churchill was enormously supportive of Truman in his first days in office, calling him, "the type of leader the world needs when it needs him most."

Relations with the Soviet Union

Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference, with Roosevelt and Stalin beside him

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill, a vehement anti-Communist, famously stated "If Hitler were to invade Hell, I should find occasion to make a favourable reference to the Devil," regarding his policy toward Stalin. Soon, British supplies and tanks were flowing to help the Soviet Union.

The settlement concerning the borders of Poland, that is, the boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union and between Germany and Poland, was viewed as a betrayal in Poland during the post-war years, as it was established against the views of the Polish government in exile. It was Winston Churchill, who tried to motivate Mikołajczyk, who was Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, to accept Stalin's wishes, but Mikołajczyk refused. Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the transfer of people, to match the national borders. As he expounded in the House of Commons on 15 December 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, insofar as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions." However the resulting expulsions of Germans was carried out by the Soviet Union in a way which resulted in much hardship and, according to a 1966 report by the West German Ministry of Refugees and Displaced Persons, the death of over 2,100,000. Churchill opposed the effective annexation of Poland by the Soviet Union and wrote bitterly about it in his books, but he was unable to prevent it at the conferences.

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Churchill secretly meets with President Ismet Inönü at the Yenice Station 15 miles (24 km) outside of Adana in south-east Turkey, on January 30, 1943

During October 1944, he and Eden were in Moscow to meet with the Russian leadership. At this point, Russian forces were beginning to advance into various eastern European countries. Churchill held the view that until everything was formally and properly worked out at the Yalta conference, there had to be a temporary, war-time, working agreement with regard to who would run what. The most significant of these meetings were held on October 9 1944 in the Kremlin between Churchill and Stalin. During the meeting, Poland and the Balkan problems were discussed. Churchill recounted his speech to Stalin on the day:

Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don't let us get at crosspurposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety per cent predominance in Rumania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?

Stalin agreed to this, ticking a piece of paper as he heard the translation. In 1958, five years after the recount of this meeting was published (in The Second World War), authorities of the Soviet denied that Stalin accepted the "imperialist proposal".

Dresden bombings controversy

Main article: Bombing of Dresden in World War II

Between February 13 and February 15 1945, British and the U.S. bombers attacked the German city of Dresden, which was crowded with German wounded and refugees. Because of the cultural importance of the city, and of the the number of civilian casualties close to the end of the war, this remains one of the most controversial Western Allied actions of the war. Following the bombing Churchill stated in a top secret telegram:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed ... I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive."

On reflection, under pressure from the Chiefs of Staff and in response to the views expressed by Sir Charles Portal (Chief of the Air Staff,) and Arthur Harris (AOC-in-C of Bomber Command,) among others, Churchill withdrew his memo and issued a new one. This final version of the memo completed on April 1 1945, stated:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so called 'area-bombing' of German cities should be reviewed from the point of view of our own interests. If we come into control of an entirely ruined land, there will be a great shortage of accommodation for ourselves and our allies ... We must see to it that our attacks do no more harm to ourselves in the long run than they do to the enemy's war effort.

Ultimately, responsibility for the British part of the attack lay with Churchill, which is why he has been criticised for allowing the bombings to happen. The German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to [area] bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime" and writing in 2006 the philosopher A. C. Grayling questioned the whole strategic bombing campaign by the RAF presenting the argument that although it was not a war crime it was a moral crime and undermines the Allies contention that they fought a just war.

On the other hand, it has also been asserted that Churchill's involvement in the bombing of Dresden was based on the strategic and tactical aspects of winning the war. The destruction of Dresden, while horrific, was designed to expedite the defeat of Germany. As the historian Max Hastings said in an article subtitled, "the Allied Bombing of Dresden": "I believe it is wrong to describe strategic bombing as a war crime, for this might be held to suggest some moral equivalence with the deeds of the Nazis. Bombing represented a sincere, albeit mistaken, attempt to bring about Germany's military defeat." Furthermore British historian, Frederick Taylor asserts that "All sides bombed each other's cities during the war. Half a million Soviet citizens, for example, died from German bombing during the invasion and occupation of Russia. That's roughly equivalent to the number of German citizens who died from Allied raids. But the Allied bombing campaign was attached to military operations and ceased as soon as military operations ceased."

The Second World War ends

Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had been won, 8 May 1945

In June 1944 the Allied Forces invaded Normandy and pushed the Nazi forces back into Germany on a broad front over the coming year. After being attacked on three fronts by the Allies, Germany was soon defeated. On May 7, 1945 at the SHAEF headquarters in Rheims the Allies accepted Germany's surrender. On the same day in a BBC news flash John Snagge announced that May 8 would be Victory in Europe Day. On Victory in Europe day Churchill broadcast to the nation that Germany had surrendered and that a final cease fire on all fronts in Europe would come into effect at one minute past midnight that night. Afterwards Churchill told a huge crowd in Whitehall: "This is your victory." The people shouted: "No, it is yours", and Churchill then conducted them in the singing of Land of Hope and Glory. In the evening he made another broadcast to the nation asserting the defeat of Japan in the coming months. The Japanese later surrendered on August 15, 1945.

After World War II

Main article: Winston Churchill's later life

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Churchill on the campus grounds of Westminster College with President Harry Truman in 1946

Although Churchill's role in World War II had generated him much support from the British population, he was defeated in the the 1945 election. Many reasons for this have been given, key among them being that a desire for post-war reform was widespread amongst the population and that the man who had led Britain in war was not seen as the man to lead the nation in peace.

For five years he was to serve as the Leader of the Opposition. During these years Churchill continued to have an impact on world affairs. In 1946 he gave his Iron Curtain speech which spoke of the USSR and the creation of the Eastern Bloc. He declared:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.

Churchill also argued strongly for British independence from the European Coal and Steel Community (which he saw as a Franco-German project). He saw Britain's place as separate from the continent, much more in-line with the countries of the Commonwealth and the Empire and with the United States, the so-called Anglosphere.

Second term

Main article: Mau Mau Uprising

Main article: Malayan Emergency

Churchill with American General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery at a meeting of NATO in October 1951, shortly before Churchill was to become Prime Minister for a second time

After Labour's defeat in the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His third government—after the wartime national government and the brief caretaker government of 1945 — lasted until his resignation in 1955. His domestic priorities in his last government were overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crises, which were partly the result of the continued decline of British military and imperial prestige and power. Being a strong proponent of Britain as an international power, Churchill would often meet such moments with direct action. One example was his dispatch of British troops to Kenya to deal with the Mau Mau rebellion. Trying to retain what he could of the Empire, he once stated that, "I will not preside over a dismemberment."

This was followed by events which became known as the Malayan Emergency. In Malaya, a rebellion against British rule had been in progress since 1948. Once again, Churchill's government inherited a crisis, and Churchill chose to use direct military action against those in rebellion while attempting to build an alliance with those who were not. While the rebellion was slowly being defeated, it was equally clear that colonial rule from Britain was no longer plausible.

Churchill also devoted much of his time in office to anglo-american relations and although Churchill did not get on well with President Eisenhower, Churchill attempted to maintain the special relationship with the United States. He made four official transatlantic visits to America during his second term as Prime-Minister.

Later life

Main article: Later life of Winston Churchill

Churchill with Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent in 1954

In June 1953, when he was 78, Churchill suffered a stroke after at 10 Downing Street. News of this was kept from the public and from Parliament, who were told that Churchill was suffering from exhaustion. He went to his country home, Chartwell, to recuperate from the effects of the stroke which had affected his speech and ability to walk. He returned to public life in October to make a speech at a Conservative Party conference at Margate. However aware that he was slowing down both physically and mentally, Churchill retired as Prime Minister in 1955 and was succeeded by Anthony Eden. Upon his resignation, the Queen offered him a dukedom but he declined the offer. Over the coming years Churchill spent less time in parliament. He continued to serve as an MP for Woodford until he stood down for the last time at the 1964 General Elections.

Churchill spent much of his retirement at his home Chartwell in Kent. He purchased it in 1922 after his daughter Mary was born.

In 1959, he became Father of the House, the MP with the longest continuous service: he had already gained the distinction of being the only MP to be elected under both Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. On July 24 1964, Churchill was present in the House of Commons for the last time and recieved a resolution by the House in his honour.

Churchill spent most of his retirement at his Chartwell House in Kent and at his home in Hyde Park Gate, in London. As Churchill's mental and physical faculties decayed, he began to lose the battle he had fought for so long against the "black dog" of depression. In 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, acting under authorisation granted by an Act of Congress, proclaimed Churchill the first Honorary Citizen of the United States. Churchill was however physically incapable of attending the White House ceremony. As his family life grew more despondent (he was unable to resolve the love–hate relationship between himself and his son) Churchill was also to suffer a further two strokes during the 1960's. On 15 January 1965, Churchill suffered another stroke, this time a severe cerebral thrombosis that left him gravely ill. He died at his home nine days later, at age 90, shortly after eight o'clock on the morning of Sunday 24 January 1965, coincidentally 70 years to the day after his father's death.

Funeral

The Grave of Winston and Clementine Churchill at St Martin's Church, Bladon

By decree of the Queen, his body lay in state for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul's Cathedral. This was the first state funeral for a non-royal family member since 1914, and no other of its kind has been held since. As his coffin passed down the Thames on the Havengore, dockers lowered their crane jibs in a salute. The Royal Artillery fired a 19-gun salute (as head of government), and the RAF staged a fly-by of sixteen English Electric Lightning fighters. The funeral also saw the largest assemblage of statesmen in the world until 2005.

In the fields along the route, and at the stations through which the train passed, thousands stood in silence to pay their last respects. At Churchill's request, he was buried in the family plot at St Martin's Church, Bladon, near Woodstock, not far from his birthplace at Blenheim Palace.

Churchill as historian, writer and painter

Main articles: Winston Churchill as historian and Winston Churchill as writer

Aside from his work as a politician, Churchill was a prolific writer, writing over 25 stories, biographies and histories. His first published book was The Story of the Malakand Field Force. It detailed an 1897 military campaign on the Northwest Frontier (an area now part of Pakistan and Afghanistan). Churchill would go on to write and research other works. These included other accounts of conflicts which he witnessed such as London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (Boer War) and the The River War (Sudan conflict). Two of his largest undertakings included his nobel prize winning six-volume history on The Second World War and a A History of the English-Speaking Peoples; a four-volume history covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914).

Churchill was also a prolific painter and took great pleasure in it, especially after his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915. He continued his hobby throughout his life and created dozens of paintings, mostly landscapes.

Statue of Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Bond Street, London

Honours

Main article: Honours of Winston Churchill

Aside from receiving the great honour of a state funeral, Churchill also received numerous awards and honours, including being made the first Honorary Citizen of the United States. Churchill received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his numerous published words, especially his six edition set The Second World War. In a 2002 BBC poll of the "100 Greatest Britons", he was proclaimed "The Greatest of Them All" based on approximately a million votes from BBC viewers. Churchill was also rated as one of the most influential leaders in history by Time magazine.

Churchill's cabinets

• Churchill War Ministry (May 1940–May 1945)
• Churchill Caretaker Ministry (May–July 1945)
• Churchill's Third Cabinet (October 1951 – April 1955)

References

Primary sources

• Churchill, Sir Winston. His life through his paintings, David Coombs, Pegasus, (2003)
• Churchill, Winston. The World Crisis (six volumes, 1923–31), 1-vol edition (2005); on World War I
• Churchill, Winston. The Second World War (six volumes, 1948–53)
• Gilbert, Martin, ed. Winston S. Churchill: Companion 15 vol (14,000 pages) of Churchill and other official and unofficial documents. Part 1: I. Youth, 1874-1900, 1966, 654 pp. (2 vol); II. Young Statesman, 1901-1914, 1967, 796 pp. (3 vol); III. The Challenge of War, 1914-1916, 1971, 1024 pp. (3 vol); IV. The Stricken World, 1916-1922, 1975, 984 pp. (2 vol); Part 2: The Prophet of Truth, 1923-1939, 1977, 1195 pp. (3 vol); II. Finest Hour, 1939-1941, 1983, 1328 pp. (2 vol entitled The Churchill War Papers); III. Road to Victory, 1941-1945, 1986, 1437 pp. (not published, 4 volumes are anticipated); IV. Never Despair, 1945-1965, 1988, 1438 pp. (not published, 3 volumes anticipated). See the editor's memoir, Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian's Journey, (1994).
• James, Robert Rhodes, ed. Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963. 8 vols. London: Chelsea, 1974, 8917 pp.
• Soames, Mary, ed. Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill 1998, 702 pp.
• Quotations database, World Beyond Borders.
• The Oxford Dictionary of 20th century Quotations by Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-860103-4)

Secondary sources

• Michael R. Beschloss, (2002) The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 p. 131.
• Geoffrey Best. Churchill: A Study in Greatness (2003)
• Blake, Robert. Winston Churchill. Pocket Biographies (1997), 110 pages
• Blake, Robert and Louis William Roger, eds. Churchill: A Major New Reassessment of His Life in Peace and War Oxford UP, 1992, 581 pp; 29 essays by scholars
• John Charmley, Churchill, The End of Glory: A Political Biography (1993). revisionist; favors Chamberlain; says Churchill weakened Britain
• John Charmley. Churchill's Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940-57 (1996)
• Richard Harding Davis, Real Soldiers of Fortune 1906, early biography. Project Gutenberg etext
• Martin Gilbert Churchill: A Life (1992) (ISBN 0-8050-2396-8); one volume version of 8-volume life (8900 pp); amazing detail but as Rasor complains, "no background, no context, no comment, no analysis, no judgments, no evaluation, and no insights."
• Sebastian Haffner, Winston Churchill 1967
• P. Hennessy, Prime minister: the office and its holders since 1945 2001
• Christopher Hitchens, "The Medals of His Defeats," The Atlantic April 2002.
• James, Robert Rhodes. Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939 (1970), 400 pp.
• Roy Jenkins. Churchill: A Biography (2001)
• François Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle 1981 ISBN 0-00-216328-4.
• Christian Krockow, Churchill: Man of the Century by 2000 ISBN 1-902809-43-2.
• John Lukacs. Churchill : Visionary, Statesman, Historian Yale University Press, 2002.
• William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory 1874-1932, 1983; ISBN 0-316-54503-1; The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932-1940, 1988, ISBN 0-316-54512-0; no more published
• Robert Massie Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War (ISBN 1-84413-528-4); ch 40-41 on Churchill at Admiralty
• A. Montague Browne, Long sunset 1995
• Henry Pelling, Winston Churchill (first issue) 1974, (ISBN 1-84022-218-2), 736pp; comprehensive biography
• Rasor, Eugene L. Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965: A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated Bibliography. Greenwood Press. 2000. 710 pp. describes several thousand books and scholarly articles.
• Stansky, Peter, ed. Churchill: A Profile 1973, 270 pp. essays for and against Churchill by leading scholars

External links

Works by Winston Churchill at Project Gutenberg

• Winston Churchill Memorial and Library at Westminster College, Missouri
• Churchill College Biography of Winston Churchill
• Books written by Churchill
• Key records about Winston Churchill at The National Archives of the United Kingdom
• The locations of correspondence and papers of Knight Statesman and Historian, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill at the The National Archives of the United Kingdom
• Imperial War Museum: Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. Comprising the original underground War Rooms perfectly preserved since 1945, from which Churchill ran the War, including the Cabinet Room, the Map Room and Churchill's bedroom, and the new Museum dedicated to Churchill's life.
• Collected Churchill Podcasts and speeches
• The Churchill Centre website
• Churchill and the Great Republic. Exhibition explores Churchill's lifelong relationship with the United States.
• War Cabinet Minutes (1942 - 42), (1942 - 43), (1945 - 46), (1946 - 46)
• The Real Churchill (critical) and a rebuttal
• A Rebuttal to "The Real Churchill
• Online bibliography of books on Churchill

Speeches

• EarthStation1: Winston Churchill Speech Audio Archive
• Churchill's Speeches