World War I
In the years prior to World War I (1914-1918), economic and political tensions grew among Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. The British government was concerned about the build-up of the German navy and believed that war was inevitable. Therefore war came as no surprise to Churchill. Of all the Cabinet he was the most insistent on the need to resist Germany. On August 2nd 1914, as war clouds gathered, Churchill conducted a test mobilization of the naval fleet. When the test was over Churchill ordered the fleet to remain concentrated in readiness. That decision meant that when war broke out Britain was ready to act quickly. On July 28 after Austria declared war on Serbia, the fleet proceeded to its war station at Scapa Flow, Britain’s principle Naval Base, Located in the Orkney Islands n Northern Scotland. Britain joined the growing international conflict. Throughout the war, the navy’s presence in the North Sea dominated and contained the German Fleet.
In October 1914, when Antwerp was falling, he characteristically rushed in person to organize its defence. When it fell the public saw only a disillusioning defeat, but in fact the prolongation of its resistance for almost a week enabled the Belgian Army to escape and the crucial Channel ports to be saved. Although he was unable to save the city his intervention stiffened Belgian resolve and slowed the German advance until Allied lines became firmer. This reduced the threat to Britain and saved some territory from coming under German control. During this time, Churchill realized that barbed wire and machine guns were not sufficient tools to break the stalemate on the western front and he worked on developing armoured fighting vehicles to break the deadlock and end the slaughter. These armoured fighting machines were given the alias tanks. At the Admiralty, Churchill’s partnership with Admiral Sir John Fisher, the first sea lord, was productive both of dynamism and of dissension. In 1915, when Churchill became an enthusiast for the Dardanelle’s expedition as a way out of the costly stalemate on the Western front, he had t proceed against Fisher’s disapproval. The campaign aimed at opening the Dardanelle’s Strait, controlled by the Ottoman Empire, to give the Allies a direct route to Russia through the Black Sea. Such a move would bring much-needed supplies to the Russian armies and eliminate the Ottomans from the war. When the naval attack failed and was called off on the spot by Admiral J.M. de Robeck, the Admiralty war group and Asquith both supported de Robect rather than Churchill. Churchill came under heavy political attack, which intensified when Fisher resigned. Preoccupied with departmental affairs, Churchill was quite unprepared for the storm that broke about his ears. He had no part at all in the manoeuvres that produced the first coalition government and was powerless when the Conservatives, with the sole exception of Sir William Maxwell Aitken (soon Lord Beaverbrook), insisted on his being demoted from the Admiralty to the duchy of Lancaster. There he was given special responsibility for the Gallipoli Campaign (a land assault at the straits) without, however, any powers of direction. Reinforcements were too few and too late, there were delays and leadership was incompetent; the campaign failed and casualties were heavy; evacuation was ordered in the autumn.
Because of the failed Dardanelle’s campaign, Churchill was demoted from the Admiralty in May 1915 and given a minor cabinet post. It was the greatest reverse to date in his political career. This left Churchill very unhappy. His wife later told his biographer Martin Gilbert, "I thought he would die of grief." In the difficult months that followed his demotion, Churchill began to paint. This hobby became a source of pleasure for over forty years.
In November 1915 Churchill resigned from the government and returned to soldiering, seeing active service in France as lieutenant colonel of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. Although he entered the service with zest, army life did not give full scope for his talents. In June 1916, when his battalion was merged, he did not seek another command but instead returned to Parliament as a private member. He was not involved in the intrigues that led to the formation of a coalition government under Lloyd George, and it was not until 1917 that the Conservatives would consider his inclusion in the government. In March 1917 the publication of the Dardanelle’s commission report demonstrated that he was at least no more to blame for the fiasco than his colleagues.
Churchill's appointment as minister of munitions in July 1917 was made in the face of a storm of Tory protest. Excluded from the Cabinet, Churchill's role was almost entirely administrative, but his dynamic energies thrown behind the development and production of the tank (which he had initiated at the Admiralty) greatly speeded up the use of the weapon that broke through the deadlock on the Western Front. After the first World War ended in 1918 Churchill was appointed to the War Office.
In January 1919 he became secretary of war. As such he presided with surprising zeal over the cutting of military expenditure. The major preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was, however, the Allied intervention in Russia. Churchill, passionately anti-Bolshevik, secured from a divided and loosely organized Cabinet an 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. And in 1920, after the last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles when they invaded the Ukraine.
In 1921 Churchill was appointed to the Colonial Office, where his principle concern was with the mandated territories in the Middle East. For the expensive British forces in the area he substituted a reliance on the air force and the establishment of rulers friendly to British interests; for this settlement of Arab affairs he relied heavily on the advice of T.E. Lawrence. For Palestine, where he inherited conflicting pledges to Jews and Arabs, he produced in 1922 the White Paper that confirmed Palestine as a Jewish national home while recognizing continuing Arab rights. Churchill never had departmental responsibility for Ireland, but he progressed from an initial belief in firm, even ruthless, maintenance of British rule to an active role in the negotiations that led to the Irish treaty of 1921. Subsequently, he gave full support to the new Irish government.
In the autumn of 1922 the rebellious Turks appeared to be moving toward a forcible reoccupation of the Dardanelle’s neutral zone, which was protected by a small British force at Chanak (now Çanakkale). Churchill was foremost in urging a firm stand against them, but the handling of the issue by the Cabinet gave the public impression that a major war was being risked for a too little cause and on inadequate consideration. A political catastrophe ensued that brought the shaky union government down in ruins, with Churchill as one of the worst casualties. Gripped by a sudden attack of appendicitis, he was not able to appear in public until two days before the election, and then only in a wheelchair. He was defeated humiliatingly by more than 10,000 votes. He thus found himself, as he said, all at once “without an office, without a seat, without a party, and even without an appendix.”
In period of recovery and political weakness Churchill turned to his brush and his pen. His painting never rose above the level of a gifted amateur's, but his writing once again provided him with the financial base his independent brand of politics required. His autobiographical history of the war, The World Crisis, netted him the £ 20,000 with which he purchased Chartwell House, henceforth his country home in Kent.
Chartwell House
Churchill returned to politics as an Anti-Socialist. However in 1923 when Stanley Baldwin was leading the Conservatives on a protectionist program, Churchill stood, at Leicester, as a Liberal free trader. He lost by approximately 4,000 votes. Asquith’s decision in 1924 to support a minority Labour government moved Churchill further to the right. He stood as an “Independent Anti-Socialist” in a by-election in the Abbey division of Westminster. Although an official Conservative candidate, who beat him by 43 votes, opposed him Churchill managed to avoid alienating the Conservative leadership and indeed won support from many prominent figures in the party. In the general election in November he won an easy victory at Epping under the thinly disguised Conservative label of “Constitutionalist.” Baldwin offered Churchill the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill accepted. Churchill held this post for the next five years. After Churchill’s re-election in 1924, as a Conservative, Churchill was never without a seat in the House of Commons for the next 40 years.
During the 1930s, when he held no cabinet posts, Churchill lived at his countryseat at Chartwell in Kent and supervised a literary factory of secretaries and assistants who helped him write hundreds of newspaper articles and several more books. He wrote his autobiography My Early Life (1930), which he called "a story of youthful endeavour," and two books of essays, Thoughts and Adventures (1932) and Great Contemporaries (1937). His most sustained writing project during these years was the four-volume Marlborough: His Life and Times (1933-1938), which political philosopher Leo Strauss called "the greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding.”
As Churchill studied his forebear's work in building and maintaining an alliance against the French king Louis XIV in the early 18th century, he turned his attention to current politics and became one of the most forceful and steady critics of the government. He organized opposition to the plan to grant self-government to India, an unpopular stance at a time when the British people wanted relief from the burdens of empire. Later, he concentrated his efforts on opposing the dangerous rise of German military power under the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler. Because most Britons, as well as the government, were focused on domestic affairs, Churchill's warnings about Hitler went unheeded. When Baldwin became prime minister again in 1935, Churchill was not given a cabinet post.
During the late 1930s Churchill’s national popularity declined. In 1936 Churchill was a loyal supporter of King Edward VIII in the controversy surrounding the king's romance with the American Wallis Warfield Simpson, which led to his abdicating the throne. This support cost Churchill heavily in public opinion and further divided Churchill from Prime Minister Baldwin, who was pressing the king to abdicate. At the same time, he continued his unpopular warnings about Germany and Hitler: His newspaper columns were translated into many languages and widely published in Europe, then gathered into a book called Step by Step (1939).
In 1937 Neville Chamberlain became prime minister, and one year later Churchill denounced Chamberlain's Munich Pact, which gave part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Meanwhile, Churchill worked on secret government committees performing defence research. From various informants he pieced together information about German intentions and capabilities - particularly about the growing strength of the German air force, or Luftwaffe, which posed a direct threat to Britain. He also encouraged the development of radar, which helped the country detect activity in the sea or air.
World War II
World War II broke out in September 3rd 1939 when Germany invaded the Polish boarder. On the same day Churchill was appointed to the post in charge of Admiralty. He had previously held this post. During the next eight months Churchill endeavoured to build up the navy, particularly antisubmarine warfare.
The German invasion of the Low Countries, on May 10, 1940, was a big blow adding to the Norwegian Fiasco. This ended public confidence in Chamberlain. Chamberlain resigned. He wanted Lord Halifax to, the foreign secretary, to be his successor. However Lord Halifax wisely declined. It seemed that the only person who would be capable of pulling the nation together at this time. The Labour party, although they disagreed with Churchill’s anti-Socialism, realized his commitment to the Hitler’s defeat. King George VI asked Churchill to become the Prime Minister. Labour and Liberal Leaders agreed to join the Conservatives in a wartime coalition government. This government was headed by a war cabinet of five, which at first included Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, two Labour leaders, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood. Churchill took, in addition to heading the House of Commons, the Ministry of Defence. The Cabinet became an agency of swift decision and the government that it controlled remained representative of all groups and parties. The Prime Minister concentrated on the actual conduct of the war. He delegated freely, but also probed and interfered continuously, regarding nothing as too large or too small for his attention.
British Wartime Coalition Government
In this the entire Parliament played a vital part. If World War II was strikingly free from the domestic political intrigues of World War I, it was in part because Churchill, while he always dominated Parliament, never neglected it or took it for granted. For him Parliament was an instrument of public persuasion.
Churchill set the tone of his leadership in his first report to the House of Commons on May 13th: “I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” It was only the first of his many stirring wartime speeches, which brought the country together and made him famous around the world. He warned members of the hard road ahead and committed himself and the nation to an all out war effort until victory was achieved. Behind this simplicity of aim was an elaborate strategy to which he adhered with remarkable consistency through out the war years. He considered Hitler’s Germany to be the enemy and did everything possible to prevent the distraction of British people from the task of effecting Germany’s defeat. He accepted everyone, even the communists as allies, provided they shared his goal of defeating Hitler’s army. Churchill considered the United States of America to be an indispensable ally and his thoughts were tightly knitted to cultivating and maintaining its support. His thoughts and actions were aimed to win the war and prevent the repeat bloodshed seen during the World War I, re-establish the Europe as a viable, self-determined entity and keep the Commonwealth as the continuing expression of Britain’s World role, with or without the belligerent partnership of United States. To preserve these essentials Churchill was willing to sacrifice any national shibboleths of orthodox economics, of social conventions, of military etiquette or traditions on the altar of victory. He was able to make the Parliament pass legislation placing all “persons, their services and their property at the disposal of the Crown”. The strength of his crusade was responsible for the grant of such sweeping powers seen in modern British history.
The life history of Churchill was a significant integral part of the history of World War II. He was the commander in chief and had direct control over the formulation of policies and the conduct of military operations. Even though not a trained army person, he supervised every aspect of war effort. He set up a personal staff of officers who also served on the war cabinet secretariat, thus establishing a close working relationship between the war cabinet ministers and the minister of defence, the job held by Churchill himself. He thus made the war cabinet ministers believe that they were the main force in the decision, but very cleverly kept all under his direct control. His efforts were designed to match the gravity of the hour. He took some very brave and extremely unpopular decisions during this war.
Churchill took office just as the armoured units of Hitler were breaking into France. When French were unable to stand the assault of the German forces, they requested Churchill to send fighter squadrons to help them. In one of the hardest decisions of World War II he turned the request of the French down in order to preserve the planes for Britain’s own defence. He then made repeated courageous personal visits to France to persuade the French Government to stay in the war and not surrender to the German forces. He even made the offer of Anglo-French union on June 16, 1940 to keep the French in the war. He was concerned about the French warships being added to the German and Italian navies. To avoid this he even asked the French Admiral to join the British fleet or let his ships be demolished. When all attempts to keep the French in the war failed and the risk of German’s getting strengthened by the French warship became real, Churchill made a painful, debateable but very courageous decision to destroy the French fleet and prevent its surrender to Hitler’s forces. These decisions brought Churchill under heavy fire in the Parliament.
The refusal of the French to stay in war was the starting point of the Battle of Britain in 1940.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspects the bomb damage during World War II, early 1940’s
After the fall of France, the Germans mounted a powerful air assault on Britain. The Royal Air Force was able to turn back the powerful German air force, even though they suffered heavy losses. During this period Churchill was the main force. He was in the firing line, at the fighter headquarters, inspecting the coast defences, aircraft batteries, visiting the scenes of bomb damage, talking to the victims of the “blitz”, comforting them, smoking his cigar, giving his V sign, broadcasting frank reports to the nation, laced with touches of grim Churchillian humour splashed with Churchillian rhetoric. These actions of Churchill made him the hero of the people. The nation took him to its heart and they became one in “their finest hour”.
Winston Churchill was able to persuade the President Franklin D. Roosevelt to supply military and economic aid to Britain through the lend-lease programme. His famous saying “ give us the tools and we will finish the job” were believed to be heartening to those who were keen for the English –speaking democracies to mix up. It is possible that this strengthened the unspoken alliance and resulted in the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, which produced the Atlantic Charter, showing the common principles between United States and Britain.
Churchill and Roosevelt at Atlantic Conference
Churchill was not only bold in his speeches, but was brave in his actions. He adhered to his promise that he would accept any one as an ally, even if he were a communist.
When Hitler launched his attack on the Soviet Union, Churchill gave a swift and unequivocal response in his broadcast on June 22, 1941 and insisted, “ The Russian danger -----is our danger”. He pledged aid to the Russian people. He was well aware that this is not likely to be popular with the British people, but he was bold enough to take that step, as he believed it to be the right decision. He was the main force in the creation of a “grand alliance” incorporating the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States. It took until May 1942, to negotiate a 20 years Anglo-Soviet pact of mutual assistance. Churchill was the principle architect in bringing the Grand Alliance into action, when he met Roosevelt soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941. He was able the hammer out a set of Anglo-American accords: the pooling of both countries military and economic resources under combined board and a combined chief of staff; the establishment of unity of command in all theatres of war; and above all an agreement on the basic strategy that the defeat of Germany should have priority over the defeat of Japan. To be able to convince the Unites states to fight the European war in preference to the attack of Japanese on their own country could not have easy, but Churchill made it so.
For a time Roosevelt generally adopted Churchill’s strategic ideas, but after 1943 as United States became more powerful Churchill was increasingly forced to accept American imposed war plan. It appears, Churchill was loosing his grip as a leader. This was also reflected in the British elections in July 1945, after the surrender of the Germans. Although Churchill won his seat, the Conservative Government did not gain the majority in Parliament. The Labour Government gained a majority in Parliament as the British Public sought social and economic reforms that the Conservatives had resisted. Also the electorate did not wish to return to the slump and unemployment of the 1930’s; they also blamed the Conservatives for waiting too long to resist Hitler.
Churchill's place at the Potsdam Conference was taken over by the new prime minister, Labour leader Clement Richard Attlee. Churchill retired as prime minister in deep disappointment. When his wife suggested that his party's defeat might prove to be a blessing in disguise, he replied that, if so, it was certainly well disguised.
The Later Years
After the Labour victory, Churchill began rebuilding the shattered fabric of his party as leader of the opposition. He delivered a series of speeches that encouraged Anglo-American solidarity and the unity of Western Europe against the growing Communist threat. In 1946, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, he defined the barrier thrown up by the USSR around the nations of Eastern Europe as the "iron curtain." He began to write his six-volume work, The Second World War (1948-1954), a comprehensive first-person account of his wartime statesmanship.
In 1951 Churchill's efforts to revitalize the Conservative Party were rewarded, and he again became prime minister. He worked to reduce the danger of nuclear warfare, vainly seeking a summit conference between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. In 1953 Queen Elizabeth II conferred on him the Knighthood of the Garter, and he became Sir Winston Churchill. In the same year he won the Nobel Prize for literature for his historical and biographical works and for his oratory. In November 1954, on Churchill's 80th birthday, the House of Commons honored him on the eve of his retirement. In April 1955 he resigned as prime minister but remained a member of the House of Commons.
In his retirement, Churchill worked on completing A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-1958), a four-volume work begun in the late 1930s but postponed during World War II. He devoted much of his leisure in his later years to his favorite pastime of painting, ultimately producing more than 500 canvases. The Royal Academy of Arts featured his works in 1959. In 1963 the U.S. Congress made Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. Churchill died peacefully at his town house in London, two months after his 90th birthday. Following a state funeral service that was attended by dozens of world leaders at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, he was buried near Blenheim Palace.
Portrait of Sir Winston Churchill towards the end of his life in the early 1960’s
Conclusion and Assessment
Churchill left his mark on all the major events in the 20th century. Churchill was an exceptional wartime leader. This, in a recent poll held by the BBC in January 2000 secured him position one in the table of Britain’s best Prime minister. Churchill had a whole host of other talents. He was a gifted journalist, a biographer and historian, a talented amateur painter, an orator of rare power; a soldier of courage and distinction, Churchill by any standards was a man of unusual versatility.
Churchill once wrote that ‘a man’s life must be nailed to a cross of either thought or of action’. Clearly Churchill’s choice was the active life of politics and, at its climax he led Britain to its ‘finest hour’.
British memorials to Churchill include the establishment of Churchill College at Cambridge University, which houses Churchill’s papers and a prominent statue across from the House of Commons. His story is told in the official biography begun by his son Randolf Churchill and finished by Martain Gilbert. It is the Longest Biography ever written about anyone.
Millions have toured his birthplace at Blenheim Palace, his house at Chartwell, or the Cabinet War Rooms in London- all place that Churchill had left his mark on.
Churchill in some senses was bigger than Britain. People are still fascinated by this man who was ‘easily satisfied with the very best’. Indeed his former School Harrow still remembers him every ten years at Churchill Songs where current and old Harrowians join to sing some of his favourite songs from Harrow.
THE END
A Project about
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Focusing on his Political Career
By Akshay Bhutiani, Newlands
Bibliography
Encarta 1999 Encyclopaedia
Britannica 1999 Encyclopaedia
A Biography of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill by begun by Randolf Churchill and finished by Martain Gilbert.
Other Media
Memorial To Winston Churchill
Churchill with cigar and Bernard Braunch
Churchill waving his hat in the air
Wax model of Sir Winston Churchill
