Titans of History

After moving into politics Churchill was elected a Conservative MP, but in 1904 he scandalized his party by crossing the floor to join the Liberals. He also married his wife Clementine that year, and for the rest of his long life she was to provide him with unwavering support—and frank criticism when she felt it was necessary. Churchill became home secretary in 1910 and First Lord of the Admiralty the following year. During the First World War, Churchill ensured the fleet was ready but took the blame for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, which cost the lives of 46,000 Allied troops. He resigned to serve at the Western Front, returning to become Lloyd George’s minister of munitions in 1917.

In 1919–21 Churchill was secretary of state for war and air, then, switching allegiance to rejoin the Conservatives, chancellor of the exchequer in 1924–9. In the 1930s he was out of office again, almost in political exile, but from the backbenches he foresaw the dangers of Hitler and German rearmament. His warnings were ignored by the appeasing government of Neville Chamberlain and much of the press. It was not until the Second World War broke out that he returned to favor and was brought into the War Cabinet, returning to his old position as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939: “Winston’s back!,” the Admiralty signaled to the fleet.

When, in May 1940, Chamberlain resigned in the face of the Nazi onslaught on western Europe, there was a political feeling that Britain should make peace with Hitler. In one of the clearest cases of how one man can change history and save not just a nation but a way of life, Churchill insisted on defiance, and he became prime minister. He rose to the occasion. Just after becoming prime minister he addressed Parliament:

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat … What is our policy? … to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime…. What is our aim? … 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.

With British troops evacuated from Dunkirk and a German invasion of the homeland apparently inevitable, Churchill told the House of Commons: “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.” Two weeks later, as he announced the fall of France, he again addressed the House: “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.’”

He kept his nerve as the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, making a Nazi invasion impossible. In the Cabinet war rooms, Churchill directed the war with energy and imagination, whether traveling abroad to visit troops and foreign leaders or holding meetings from his bed in the morning and pushing his exhausted officials until 3 or 4 a.m., drinking large volumes of champagne and brandy as he worked. He worked hard to develop a good relationship with President Roosevelt, and he engaged positively with Stalin, despite his innate dislike of communism. At a series of summit conferences, he agreed with both leaders not only the strategy against Hitler but also the shape of the postwar world.

In the election held in July 1945 after the defeat of Germany, Churchill and the Conservatives lost power. The following year he described, presciently, the “Iron Curtain” now descending across a Cold War Europe. He returned as prime minister from 1951 to 1955. He turned down the offer of a dukedom but the “greatest living Englishman” remained an Edwardian romantic imperialist with an Augustan style and vision, although he never lost his impish wit. When his grandson once asked him if he was the greatest man in the world, he replied, “Yes! Now bugger off!” When accused of drinking too much, he responded, “I’ve taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” His writing was as fine as his leadership; he was the only political leader in history to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. On his death in January 1965, Churchill received a state funeral, an honor rarely accorded those outside the royal family.

IBN SAUD

1876–1953