Winston Churchill
| Born | 30 Nov 1874 |
| Died | 24 Jan 1965 |
| Nationality | United Kingdom |
| Category | Government |
Contributor: C. Peter Chen
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born to politician Lord Randolph Churchill and daughter of a New York businessman Jennie Jerome in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock. His grandfather was a duke. After a rather lonely childhood at boarding school, he attended the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and joined the Fourth Hussars in 1895. He served at British colonies of India and Sudan, and spend a good deal of effort chasing down wars and battles (some as an observer, but he participated in several). He left the British Army in 1899 and became a war correspondent for the Morning Post. Writing was something he enjoyed; by this time he had already published a number of books.
After failure to become elected in 1899, Churchill entered politics in 1900 as a Conservative, the party his father served; however, four years later, he switched to the Liberal Party. In 1906 he won the election for North West Manchester and became a member of the new Liberal government as the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies. In 1908 he became President of the Board of Trade in Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet. Then in 1910 he became Home Secretary. During his early political career, he was dedicated to reforms. In Oct 1911, his political career crossed path with his former military career once again when he became First Lord of the Admiralty; in this role he became an early proponent of naval aviation in Britain and used his influence to establish the Royal Naval Air Service and the Air Department at the Admiralty. He himself took flying lessons to show his enthusiasm. He was also a key figure in the reconfiguration of the British naval forces, switching from the use of coal to oil, hence modernizing the fleet. To accompany this engineering reconfiguration, he was also instrumental in securing oil in Iraq for Britain.
Churchill always placed himself in the center of attention no matter what he did, which made him the successful politician that he was. In 1899, when he was still in his twenties, journalist G. W. Steevens met him on the sea-bound from India to Britain, and commented that Churchill might become, among other things, "the founder of a great advertising business."
In WW1, Churchill joined the War Council, but was removed after being blamed for the failure for the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915; namely, it was for the disaster at Gallipoli. Churchill was not completely to blame for the Gallipoli disaster, however. Even at that time, the Turks were already preparing the evacuation of their capital, knowing that they could not withstand a British invasion. The Dardanelles plan was sound, but it was the incompetent field commanders that botched the job, and Churchill became the scapegoat. Frustrated over the transfer to civilian government, he resigned his post and rejoined the British Army. He was recommissioned and commanded a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned to government work at the invitation of Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He served under George in various positions, including Colonial Secretary where he was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which established the Irish Free State. In the same role, however, he was also enveloped in controversy for the use of tear gas against Iraqi and Kurdish rebels during the inter-war years. He argued:
Despite his statement, the controversy likely contributed to the Liberal Party's division and defeat in the 1922 General Election. In 1924, Churchill joined the Conservative Party once again and returned to government work until 1929. During this time, in the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer, he took the advice of the Governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman and attempted to return Britain to the Gold Standard; it was a disaster that resulted in deflation and unemployment. This decision was later regarded by Churchill as one of the worst decisions he had made in his life. Between 1929 and 1933, he focused mainly on his writings, though he continued to provide voice against a movement to grant India independence. A major work published during this time was the World Crisis, a six-volume work spanning across 1923 to 1931 on the First World War. "Magnificently written," praised William Manchester, "it is enhanced by the presence of the author at the highest councils of war and in the trenches as a battalion commander." "'After it', the British historian Robert Rhodes James writes, 'anything must appear as anticlimax.'"
As a writer with his background, his writings, whether short articles or research papers, fetched high prices, but his Chartwell mansion had a high upkeep. As a result, he actually lived from month-to-month, sometimes without adding savings to his bank accounts. At Chartwell, he entertained guests of high social statuses often, though to say he conversed with his guests was not the correct way to put it; most of the time at the dinner table Churchill, with his glass of champagne, did all the talking, whether it was politics, philosophy, history, or culture. The glass of champagne was not typically his first drink of the day. He tended to drink from early on in the day. Weak brandy and scotch typically accompanied him in the day time, and dinners were never complete until champagne or sometimes wine was served. Though he always had alcohol in his system, he was rarely, if ever, drunk. "A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced; the imagination is stirred; the wits become more nimble", he said, though beyond the single glass the effect became that of a "comatose insensibility". As a writer, the most intense part of his work day did not start until perhaps ten in the evening. Ideas gathered throughout the day were processed in his head, with the addition of whatever his many research assistants turned up, and dictated to the typist on duty that evening. Churchill was not known to be a good employer to his assistants. He demanded perfection, and rarely complimented for jobs well done. Once a servant stood up to him after a series of mistreatment from Churchill, and Churchill said "[y]ou were very rude to me." The servant responded "[y]es, but you were rude, too." Churchill finally wrapped up by saying, matter of factly, "[y]es, but I am a great man!"
In 1933, Churchill became active in politics again. He highly criticized Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy regarding the increasingly demanding Adolf Hitler, while preaching that Britain should mobilized her military. In fact, Churchill had already been following Hitler's career closely. By that year, he had already published several appraisals of him. "His perception [on Hitler] was exceptional", said William Manchester, "an extraordinary number of his peers were completely hoodwinked." Meanwhile, Churchill had also laid the foundation of an exceptional spy network in Germany; his knowledge of Germany at this time surpasses that of the Parliament simply because the Parliament did not wish to be bothered with all the military intelligence. One valuable source of Churchill's was Major Desmond Morton, who allowed Churchill to know of the German preparation to establish the Luftwaffe long before Hitler allowed the new air force branch to be known. He was not always perfect, of course. One of his biggest weaknesses, despite his intuitiveness of warfare on the strategic level, was his misconception on the tactical level. He foresaw the upcoming war as one that would continue to be fought in the trenches; he doubted that tanks "will ever again see the palmy days of 1918.... Nowadays the anti-tank rifle and the anti-tank gun have made such great strides that the poor tank cannot carry thick enough skin to stand up to them." Similarly, just like most military scientists in Britain at that time, he underestimated the usefulness of aircraft; the idea that small aircraft could sink well-armored capital ships was rather ridiculous to him. He commented that "even a single well-armed vessel will hold its own against aircraft." Because of this misunderstanding, he lobbied against the investment in the development and purchase of fighter aircraft, and instead he wanted to channel the funds into the army and the navy. Had his lobbying succeeded, the Battle of Britain would have been fought by the British at a significant disadvantage. Although one must also point out that despite his lack of support for research for new fighters, he did lobby for large investments in Britain's air defense systems that included the coastal radar system that were so critical in the eventual British victory in the Battle of Britain during the war.
At this time, the common British sentiment was to allow Germany to regain its sense of national pride through rearmament, and when the aggression had been appeased, an international disarmament would then take place; many British politicians even viewed Germany as a strong ally to halt the Communist revolutionary expansion. Churchill knew that popular sentiment was wrong, and tried hard to sway the Parliament the other way. "If a dog makes a dash for my trousers," he said regarding to his wish for a pre-emptive strike against Germany, "I shoot him down before he can bite." He failed to influence his colleagues. One after the other, Austria, Sudetenland, and then the remainder of Czechoslovakia were annexed by Germany by strong-arm diplomacy. It was after the fall of Czechoslovakia that Churchill began to gather more support among the public. Within a month of Czechoslovakia's annexation, Saturday Evening News called for Churchill's appointment into the cabinet, Sunday Pictorial informed him that 97% of 2400 responses from a recent news article on him agreed that he must be given a portfolio, and 375 professors from every single British university signed a letter to the Times "strongly urging" Churchill's appointment to an important cabinet post. By May 1939, the News Chronicle published a poll conducted by that newspaper about Churchill: 56% of those surveyed wanted him in the cabinet and only 26% opposed the idea. Despite public opinion, that did not happen until the war had already broken out. It was after the German invasion of Poland in Sep 1939 before he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In Berlin, when Hermann Göring heard of this appointment, he knew that Britain's transformation from an appeaser to a fighter was on the horizon. He reported dropped into a chair heavily when he heard the news, and said "Churchill in the Cabinet. That means war is really on. Now we shall have war with England." Fully realizing that he was Germany's top public enemy, Churchill never left the Admiralty without a pistol and a suicide pill in his pen; he knew that if he was ever captured and interrogated by the Germans, the consequences would be catastrophic.
Even during this period, he did not stop writing. It was his passion. During the entire prelude to war in Europe, while knee-deep in intelligence reports from Germany, he was also spending hours upon hours researching and dictating his multi-volume work History of the English Speaking Peoples. "Writing a long and substantial book," he said later on in his life, "is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in your mind." Writing such substantial books envigorated him instead of tiring him. It seemed as if unleashing his creative side gave him all the relaxation he needed from the intense politics of the late 1930s. Perhaps because of the current European situation, his writings, including History of the English Speaking Peoples, focused largely on war. "It is very hard to transport oneself into the past when the future opens its jaws upon us", Churchill said. He wrote that the years between 1830 and 1860, when both Britain and United States made great strides forward from a societal point of view, "thirty years when nothing happened." Industrial Revolution was similarly glanced over in a mere paragraph. Contrastingly, wars were described in great depth. "But that is how he saw life", said Manchester, "as a struggle between the forces of light and the powers of darkness.... Wars, to Winston, were of immense historic importance; like Carlyle and Nietzsche, he believed that armed conflict was a natural state of man."
Five months after the war with Poland began, he became the chairman of the Military Coordinating Committee. On 8 May 1940 Chamberlain resigned due to a lack of confidence in his government, and Churchill was appointed the replacement by King George VI on 10 May. Upon acquiring the position, he made a statement which included one of the most famous quotes out of the WW2-era.
Self-appointed a second-role of Minister of Defense, one of Churchill's war time policy was to maintain a front in North Africa to protect Britain's colonial holdings in the Middle East, while expanding the front into the Balkans. He deeply believed that an Allied Balkans peninsula would present a dagger into Axis Europe, while in the long run it might also become a stronghold against Communist expansion, something he had devoted himself against since its infancy in Russia in 1919. That strategy became a failure when Hitler decided to send in troops to aid the Italian invasion of Greece; however, in hindsight, the move drew some German units into the Balkans, which likely delayed the launch of the German invasion of Russia. During the Battle of Britain, Churchill spent effort in inspiring the British people at the face of German attacks. "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be," he said in a speech, "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." Additionally, Churchill's war time policy also focused on swaying the United States to enter the war against Germany. In Mar 1941, Franklin Roosevelt's Lend-Lease Agreement began to provide Britain with much needed supplies on credit, but the isolationist United States would not enter the war until Dec 1941 when Japan attacked her Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. During the war, he was also actively meeting with world leaders on behalf of his nation. Dwight Eisenhower, who worked closely with Churchill during the war, had utmost respect for the British Prime Minister. Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs:
"An inspirational leader, he seemed to typify Britain's courage and perseverance in adversity and its conservatism in success. He was a man of extraordinarily strong convictions and a master in argument and debate. Completely devoted to winning the war and discharging his responsibility as Prime Minister of Great Britain, he was difficult indeed to combat when conviction compelled disagreement with his views. In most cases problems were solved on a basis of almost instant agreement, but intermittently important issues arose where this was far from true. He could become intensely oratorical, even in discussion with a single person, but at the same time his intensity of purpose, made his delivery seem natural and appropriate. He used humor and pathos with equal facility, and drew on everything from the Greek classics to Donald Duck for quotation, cliché, and forceful slang to support his position."
"I admired and liked him."
Of course, the working relationship between Churchill and Eisenhower was not without disagreements. One such episodes occurred when Operation Neptune, the naval phase of the Normandy invasion, was about to be launched. Churchill requested to accompany the landing operations; the request was naturally denied immediately by Eisenhower. Churchill responded with his intent to overrule Eisenhower. "Since this is true it is not part of your responsibility, my dear General, to determine the exact composition of any ship's company in His Majesty's Fleet", he said to Eisenhower, "by shipping myself as a bona fide member of a ship's complement it would be beyond your authority to prevent my going." Eisenhower expressed that this would unnecessarily add to his personal burden, but the Prime Minister refused to budge. When George VI heard of it, he cleverly noted that if Churchill felt compelled to accompany the landing force, then he, as the King of the United Kingdom, should share equal duty and privilege of leading the British and Commonwealth troops as well. After the King's comments were made known to Churchill, he discontinued his request to personally lead the landing forces.
Churchill lost his position after losing the 1945 General Election. In Mar 1946 he made his famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, United States. He suffered a stroke in Aug 1946 but continued to lead the Conservative Party by hiding his health condition from the public. He returned to the seat of Prime Minister once again in 1951, but his health led to his retirement on 5 Apr 1955. Some notable events he faced during this term as Prime Minister include the US-Britain backed coup under Fazlollah Zahedi in Iran, the Mau-Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and the continuing rebellion against British rule in Malaysia.
Churchill passed away in 1965 as a result of a severe cerebral thrombosis. Churchill, who published numerous books during his lifetime, received the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1953 for his six-volume The Second World War; in the same year, he was also made a Knight of the Garter. In 1955, he was offered Dukedom as the first Duke of London, but he declined. In 2002, a poll conducted by the BBC found him to be "the greatest" figure in British history.
Sources: Crusade in Europe, the Last Lion, Spartacus Educational, Wikipedia.
Famous Quote(s)
- "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
- "When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast."
» To King George VI on a cold morning after the king offered him a drink - "With Germany arming at breakneck speed, England lost in a pacifist dream, France corrupt and torn by dissension, America remote and indifferent... do you not tremble for your children?"
» 1 Jan 1935 - "Singapore... could only be taken after a siege by an army of at least 50,000 men... its not considered possible that the Japanese...would embark on such a mad enterprise"
» 1 Jan 1940 - "You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
» Speech in the House of Commons, 13 May 1940 - "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. War's are not won by evacuations."
» 4 Jun 1940 - "We shall go on to the end, 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, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old."
» Speech in the House of Commons, 4 Jun 1940 - "Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. 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.'"
» Speech in the House of Commons, 18 Jun 1940 - "The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power."
» Speech in the House of Commons on the RAF, 20 Aug 1940 - "Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: Put your confidence in us.... We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job."
» Radio broadcast, 9 Feb 1941 - "Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorised into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine - which we and the rest of the civilised world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing - cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces.... So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation."
» Radio broadcast on German invasion of Russia, 22 Jun 1941 - "Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
» Speech at Harrow School, 29 Oct 1941 - "The most dangerous moment of the War, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black."
» On the Indian Ocean Raid, 5 Apr 1942 - "It was an experience of great interest to me to meet Premier Stalin.... It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own. Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humour which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind. I believe I made him feel that we were good and faithful comrades in this war - but that, after all, is a matter which deeds not words will prove."
» Speech at the House of Commons, 8 Sep 1942 - "I have not become the King?s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."
» Speech at Lord Mayor of London's luncheon, 10 Nov 1942 - "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
» Speech at Harvard University, 6 Sep 1943 - "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us."
» Speech at the House of Commons on rebuilding the House Chamber after bombing, 28 Oct 1943 - "The object of presenting medals, stars, and ribbons is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them. At the same time a distinction is something which everybody does not possess. If all have it it is of less value.... A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow."
» Speech at the House of Commons, 22 Mar 1944 - "I have left the obvious, essential fact to this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies."
» Speech at the House of Commons, 2 Aug 1944 - "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."
» On the Dresden bombing, 1 Mar 1945 - "The very first thing the President did was to show me the new Presidential Seal, which he had just redesigned. He explained, 'The seal has to go everywhere the President goes. It must be displayed upon the lectern when he speaks. The eagle used to face the arrows but I have re-designed it so that it now faces the olive branches? what do you think?' I said, 'Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle's neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand.'"
» Conversation with Truman, 4 Mar 1946 - "There is less there than meets the eye."
» On Attlee to Truman, 4 Mar 1946
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Winston Churchill, 1935
4 Nov 2005 09:30:51 AM
Winston Churchill was the best man in British WW2 history :-)
4 Jan 2006 02:47:59 PM
He is even probably the greatest man of the 20th century. Time magazine named him man Man of the Half-Century, but failed to make him Person of the Century probably because the believed that he was too political incorrect.
4 Jan 2006 02:51:32 PM
Edit: I forgot too congraulate you, C. Peter Chen with a great article.
2 Dec 2007 01:21:26 AM
"...and the continuing rebellion against British rule in Malaysia." - Nonsense! The Malaya conflict (1948-1960) was fought against Chinese backed Communist Guerrillas. It was nothing at all to do with a Rebellion against British Rule. Malaya became a free and independent member of the British Commonwealth in 1957.
8 May 2009 05:17:02 PM
"We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us. And may I say across the havoc of war, a great general." Commenting on Rommel
Winston Churchill
25 May 2009 11:50:36 AM
"Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.
If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free...
But if we fail, the world will sink into the abyss of a new dark age."
Winston Churchill
May 1940
27 May 2009 07:38:23 PM
"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil"
Delivered before the House of Commons.
Winston Churchill
14 Jun 2009 07:36:19 PM
"V" for victory was the idea of a Belgian refugee in London, named Victor De Laveleue
he urged his countrymen to chauk the letter
"V" in all public places.
Winston Churchill also used the two-finger
"V" sign for victory.
14 Jun 2009 07:44:00 PM
Millions of listeners in occupied Europe and
at great risk to themselves listened to the
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation. The
program was introduced by the first measure of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony the three dots,
and three dashes for Victory.
In Hollyword many movie producers, would use
the fifth symphony's dots and dashes in many
of its W.W.II movies.
6 Nov 2009 05:00:58 PM
"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile
hoping it will eat him last".
-Winston Churchill-
"Never,never never believe any war will be
smooth and easy,or that anyone who embarks
on the strange voyage can measure the Tides
and Hurricanes he will encounter.
The statesmen who yields to war fever must
realize that once the signal is given, he
is no longer the master of policy, but the
slave of unforseeable and uncontrollable
events".
-Winston Churchill-