.. n advances.
When France surrendered to Germany on June 22, England began to defend against a German invasion. Churchill made more insightful speeches to help prepare the English public for a difficult war. Should the invader come to Britain, there will be no placid lying down of the people in submission before him as we have seen, alas, in other countries.We shall defend every village, every town, and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved(Jones 42) On July 3, Churchill ordered the seizer or destruction of all French fighting-ships to stop the ships from falling into German hands. The same day German air attacks began on Britain.
England underwent three months of intense German air attacks that England tried to stop using their own air force. During the bombings, Churchill visited bombed areas and saw to it that generous compensation was paid to the people who lost houses or businesses.Churchills good relations with Roosevelt paid off in August 1940 when Parliament arranged to lease British bases to the United States in exchange for the ability to buy vital materials like steel on credit. In 1941 a German attack on Russia in June and a Japanese attack on the United States in December gained Britain two new allies.
On December 26, 1941, while in Washington D.C. for a speech to the American Congress about an alliance, Churchill suffered a mild heart attack. He did not return to England for another twenty days.
In January 1943, Churchill met Roosevelt at Casablanca in Morocco. There they made a decision to demand unconditional surrender from Germany, Italy, and Japan. The danger was that this would make the enemy resist longer but in fact, Churchill very soon explained that unconditional surrender did not mean brutal treatment of defeated enemies. He told the House of Commons on 22 February 1944: Unconditional surrender means that the victors have a free hand. It does not mean that they are entitled to behave in a Barbarous manner, nor that they wish to blot out Germany from among the nations of Europe (Jones 50) After meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in November of 1943 at the Tehran Conference, the big three agreed that D Day would take place at the beach of Normandy, France in early June of 1944.
June 6, 1944 the allies landed in France and took control of the beach.Germany began to worry and started to fire their new weapon, the rocket, on London on September 8. The Yalta Conference, held in February of 1945, was the last time Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met before the war ended. The United States agreed to give Stalin anything he wanted in Europe for their support against Japan. Churchill also confirmed an agreement with Stalin, giving him control of Rumania and Bulgaria. The war had finally taken its toll on Franklin on April 13, 1945 when he died.
After hearing this, Churchill later wrote, When I received these tidings I felt as if I had been struck a physical blow(Jones 56).Franklins death put more pressure on Churchill to end the war with Germany. The war with Germany ended on 8 May 1945. Surrounded by cheering crowds of Londoners, Churchill made one of his shortest speeches from a balcony in Whitehall: God bless you all. This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this.
Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.Everyone has tried. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy, have in any way weakened the independence resolve of the British nation. God bless you all.
(Jones 56) On July 26, 1945 the results from the general election came in. The Labour Party had won. Churchill resigned as Prime Minister that night in disgust.He became the Leader of the Opposition.
One of his first major speeches as the Leader of the Opposition was made in support of the Americans decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan. There are voices which assert that the bomb should never have been used at all. I cannot associate myself with such ideas. Six years of total war have convinced most people that had the Germans or Japanese discovered this new weapon, they would have used it upon us to our complete destruction with the utmost alacrity. (Jones 57) While out of office, Churchill kept busy by making speeches, painting, and writing.In 1946, he made his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri that explained how Europe had been separated by the Russian government.
This speech had a strong affect on the American publics few of Russia. In 1947, the Royal Academy accepted two of Churchills paintings, and in 1948 the first volume of his The Second World War was published. In 1949, Churchill suffered from several strokes after attending the first Consultative Assembly for Western Europe at Strasbourg. News of the strokes was kept from the media to avoid the thought of an unfit leader for the Conservatives.Then in 1951 the Conservatives won the election and Churchill was made Prime Minister once again. As Prime Minister he ended nationalization of the steel and auto industries but maintained most other socialist measures instituted by the Labour government (Churchill).
In the April of 1953, Queen Elizabeth II made Churchill Knight of the Garter, which made him Sir Winston Spencer Churchill. Two months later Churchill had another stroke and slowly recovered. In the October of 1953 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. On April 5, 1955 Churchill resigned as Prime Minister for health reasons. He wrote the first volume of History of the English Speaking Peoples in 1956 and also won the Charlemagne Prize for contributing to European unity.In 1963, the United States made Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States.
Then on January 24, 1965, Sir Winston Spencer Churchill died of a stroke at the age of ninety. Queen Elizabeth II ordered that he should be given a state funeral with a magnificent procession. Winston Churchill was an important leader who helped England through two World Wars. Militarily and politically he helped to push England to two important victories over Germany that would have changed the shape of Europe forever.His strong will and stubbornness helped the British public fight the long hard battle against Germany without giving into defeat.
As a war correspondent in London during the worst days of the blitz, I saw what one great human being namely, Winston Churchill could do to hold together a nation literally on the verge of being annihilated. I heard him speak in Parliament a dozen times, and I saw him in the streets after nights of incessant bombing. The valiant spirit of this man fused the ruined city and the shattered populace into one rocklike symbol of defiance. (Reynolds 165) Sir Winston Spencer Churchill will always be known in England as a great war leader and hero. Bibliography Works Cited Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer 1874-1965. http://tceplus.
com/churchil.htm. 23 May 2000 Coolidge, Olivia.Winston Churchill An Intimate Portrait. New York: Harcourt, Bruce & World, Inc, 1965.
Gilbert, Martin. Winston Churchill. New York: The Dial Press, Inc, 1967.Jones, Madeline. Churchill.
London: Batsford Academic, 1980. Manchester, William. The Last Lion. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1983.
Reynolds, Quentin. Winston Churchill.New York: Random House, 1963. History Essays.
