We explain who Winston Churchill was and what his role was in World War II. We also explain his beginnings in politics and his importance in British public life.
Winston Churchill was a key figure in the war against Hitler’s Germany.
Who was Winston Churchill?
Winston Churchill was a British politician, military officer, statesman and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in two stages: between 1940 and 1945 (during the Second World War) and between 1951 and 1955.
Churchill He was one of the most important public figures of the 20th century.His long political career spanned from his first election as a member of parliament in 1900 to his last period as prime minister, which ended in 1955. He belonged to the British Conservative Party, of which he was leader between 1940 and 1955, although for a time he was part of the Liberal Party (between 1904 and 1924).
Its historical significance was mainly due to its role in the Second World War (1939-1945), when led the United Kingdom in its fight against Adolf Hitler’s GermanyHe also stood out as a writer of speeches, articles and books, including a novel entitled Savrola and a six-volume book on the history of World War II. In 1953 received the Nobel Prize of Literature.
In his later years, between 1959 and 1964, he held the title of “Father of the House” in the House of Commons of the British Parliament, but he remained retired from political activity. He died on 12 January 1965, at the age of 90.
Personal life of Winston Churchill
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill He was born at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England, on 30 November 1874. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a British Conservative politician descended from the first Duke of Marlborough. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was a prominent figure born in New York, the daughter of an American financier.
From the age of seven, Winston Churchill attended boarding schools. In 1888 he entered Harrow School and his father decided that he should follow a military career. He managed to enter the Royal Military College SandhurstHe graduated in 1895, the same year his father died, and was assigned as a second lieutenant in the 4th Hussar Regiment.
He served in the military in Cuba, India and Sudan. and wrote reports that became books. Thus began his career as a writer. In 1899 he gave up his military career and devoted himself to politics. In 1908 he married Clementine Hozier, with whom he had five children: Diana, Randolph, Sarah, Marigold and Mary.
Churchill’s beginnings in politics
Following the failure of the attack on the Dardanelles, Churchill left the Admiralty and served in the army.
Winston Churchill He began his political career as a Conservative Party candidate for the British Parliament. for the borough of Oldham. Having gained notoriety in 1899 for his writings on the war in South Africa, he was elected to Parliament in 1900 and began his parliamentary activity in 1901.
In 1903 he opposed the tariff reform proposed by Joseph Chamberlain, colonial secretary of the conservative government, and instead defended free trade. In 1904 He distanced himself from his party and joined the Liberal Partyfrom where he criticised both Chamberlain and the British Prime Minister, the Conservative Arthur Balfour.
He continued his parliamentary work as a member of the Liberal Party until 1922 and also held positions in the Liberal governments headed by Herbert Henry Asquith (1908-1916) and David Lloyd George. (1916-1922). As President of the Board of Trade (1908-1910), He supported social reforms such as the eight-hour work day for miners. and the creation of boards to set minimum wages and combat unemployment with state-run job banks.
As First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915), he was responsible for securing a larger budget for the British Navy in order to cope with the growing naval power of Germany. When the First World War (1914-1918) began, Churchill ordered the naval mobilization. In 1915, Churchill planned the Allied attack on the Dardanelles but the failure of the operation weakened his position.
In May 1915 he was removed from the Admiralty and in November He decided to join the army. He served on the Western Front. until May 1916 and was then appointed Minister of Munitions. When the war ended, he was successively appointed Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for the Colonies, until the end of the coalition government headed by the Liberal Party in 1922.
Churchill in the interwar period
Churchill opposed the policy of appeasement in the face of German expansionism.
In 1924 Churchill was again elected to Parliament for the Conservative Party and served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s government until 1929. During the interwar period, Churchill continued to defend economic liberalism but had a conservative political attitude..
His measures against the general strike of 1926, his support for Edward VIII (who came to the throne in 1936 but abdicated after a constitutional crisis sparked by public rejection of his marriage to a twice-divorced American woman) and His sympathy for Francisco Franco in the context of the Spanish Civil War made him very unpopular among the British working class..
On the other hand, Churchill’s warnings against the Hitlerian threat and his position in favour of the rearmament of the United Kingdom They clashed with a largely pacifist public opinion in the 1930s and with the general attitude of the British political leadership.
Removed from active politics and isolated within his party, He was a staunch critic of the policy of appeasement by Neville Chamberlain (British Prime Minister between 1937 and 1940). His comment on the Munich Pact signed in 1938 between the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Nazi Germany was that it was “a total and absolute defeat.”
Churchill encouraged the search for a grand alliance with the Soviet Union and France to curb Nazi expansionism. The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 put an end to that hope.
Churchill in World War II
Churchill was largely the architect of the alliance with the United States and the Soviet Union.
Following the German annexation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Churchill’s long-held stance of toughness towards Germany proved to be the correct one. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and, following the German invasion of France in 1940, he was appointed Prime Minister.
Churchill formed a government of national unity in which he also played the role of Minister of Defence. In his first speech to the House of Commons on 13 May 1940, He claimed that he had nothing to offer the British people “except blood, sweat and tears.” After this famous speech, He succeeded in uniting the British people in their war effort against Hitler..
Since the beginning, Churchill sought an alliance with the United StatesHis personal relationship with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt facilitated the progressive American involvement. In August 1941, at his first meeting with Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, the two signed the Atlantic Charter, a common declaration of principles.
Despite his anti-communist stance, Churchill He also sought an alliance with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.which was made possible when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. Churchill was, to a large extent, the architect of the “Grand Alliance” between the United States, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United Kingdom that led to Allied victory in World War II.
As British Prime Minister, Churchill participated in various Allied conferences throughout the war. However, in 1945 he was defeated in the elections by the Labour Party’s Clement Attlee, who replaced him at the Potsdam Conference that was taking place at that time.
Churchill’s final years
Churchill out of government He played a prominent role as a standard-bearer for European unity and a supporter of a policy of firmness towards the Soviet Union. He served as Prime Minister for the last time between 1951 and 1955. On 5 April 1955 he was forced to resign due to ill health and was replaced by fellow Conservative Anthony Eden.
In his later years, Churchill continued to write and was a “father of the House” in the House of Commons, although he remained retired from political activity. In April 1953, He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and in April 1963 He was declared an honorary citizen of the United States by the US Congress. He died on 24 January 1965 at his home in London, aged 90. He was given a state funeral and buried in a family grave at Bladon, Oxfordshire.
Famous speeches by Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill gave some of the most famous speeches of the 20th centuryIn one of them, addressed to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940, three days after taking office as British Prime Minister during World War II, Churchill used the famous expression “I have nothing to offer but blood, effort, tears and sweat” (popularly summarized as “blood, sweat and tears”).
In a speech in March 1946, after the end of World War II, Churchill used the term “iron curtain”which became popular during the Cold War to refer to the division of Europe into two blocks (one Eastern or communist and one Western or capitalist). On September 19, 1946, he gave a speech at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) in which He proposed the creation of a United States of Europea message that influenced the process that led years later to the birth of the European Union.
Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons
“Blood, effort, tears and sweat”
“We must remember that we are in the preliminary stages of one of the great battles of history, that we are acting at many points in Norway and Holland, that we are ready in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuing, and that many preparations have to be made here and abroad. In this crisis I hope I may be forgiven if I do not go into great detail in addressing the House today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are concerned with political reconstruction will fully appreciate the total lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to proceed. I would say to the House, as I have said to all who have joined this Government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
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