Winston Spencer Churchill

Early career

Born at Blenheim Palace, near the town Woodstock, Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill was a descendant of the first famous member of the Churchill family: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (whose father was also a "Sir Winston Churchill").
Winston's politician father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough: Winston's mother was Jennie Jerome (née Jeanette Jerome) of Brooklyn, New York,a daughter of American millionaire Leonard Jerome.
In 1893 he enrolled in the Royal Military College. He graduated two years later ranked eighth in his class. He was appointed Second Lieutenant in the 4th Hussars cavalry. In 1895, he went to Cuba as a military observer with the Spanish army in its fight against the independentists. He also reported for the Saturday Review.


A young Churchill

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In December 1916, Asquith fell and was replaced by Lloyd George, however the time was thought to not yet be right to risk the Conservatives' wrath by bringing Churchill back into government.

However in July 1917 Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions. After the ending of the war Churchill served as both Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air (1919-1921).

Churchill suggested chemical weapons be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He said "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effects should be good, and it would spread a lively terror."  Churchill was also a staunch advocate of foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War, declaring that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle." He became Secretary of State for the Colonies 1921 and was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 which established the Irish Free State.

In October 1922, Churchill underwent an operation to remove his appendix. When he came to he learnt that the government had fallen and a General Election was looming. The Liberal Party was now beset by internal division and Churchill's campaign was weak. He lost his seat at Dundee, quipping that he had lost his ministerial office, his seat and his appendix all at once. The victorious candidates for the two-member seat included the Prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour.

Churchill stood for the Liberals again in the 1923 general election, but over the next twelve months he moved towards the Conservative Party, though initially using the labels "Anti-Socialist" and "Constitutionalist". Two years later in the General Election of 1924 he was elected to represent Epping (where there is now a statue of him) as a "Constitutionalist" with Conservative backing.

The following year he formally rejoined the Conservative Party, commenting that "Anyone can rat [change parties], but it takes a certain ingenuity to rerat." He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw the UK's return to the Gold Standard.

During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used on the striking miners.

Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, and during the dispute he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country."

Furthermore, he was to controversially claim that the Fascism of Benito Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world", showing as it had "a way to combat subversive forces" - that is, he considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat of Communist revolution.

The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 General Election. In the next two years Churchill became estranged from the Conservative leadership over the issues of protective tariffs and Indian Home Rule. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931 Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He was now at the lowest point in his career in a period known as 'the wilderness years.'

He spent much of next few years concentrating on his writing, including the History of the English Speaking Peoples (which was not published until well after WWII). He became most notable for his outspoken opposition towards the granting of independence to India. Soon though, his attention was drawn to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Germany's rearmament. For a time he was a lone voice calling on Britain to re-arm itself and counter the belligerence of Germany. Churchill was a fierce critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.

He was also an outspoken supporter of Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis leading to some speculation that he might be appointed Prime Minister if the King refused to take Baldwin's advice and consequently the government resigned. However this did not happen and Churchill found himself isolated and in a bruised position for some time after this.
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Role as Wartime Prime Minister

At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty On Chamberlain's resignation in May, 1940, Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and formed an all-party government.

In response to previous criticisms that there had been no clear single minister in charge of the prosecution of the war, he created and took the additional position of Minister of Defence.

He immediately put his friend and confidant, the industrialist and newspaper baron Max Aitken, (Lord Beaverbrook) in charge of aircraft production. It was Aitken's astounding business acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production and engineering that eventually made the difference in the war.

His speeches at that time were a great inspiration to the embattled United Kingdom. His famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech was his first as Prime Minister. He followed that closely, before the Battle of Britain, with "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."

His good relationship with U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. Churchill initiated the Special Operations Executive (SOE), under Hugh Dalton's Ministry of Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and fostered covert, subversive and partisan operations in occupied territories with notable success; and also the Commandos which establish the pattern for most of the world's current Special Forces. The Russians referred to him as the "British Bulldog."

However, some of the military actions during the war remain controversial. Churchill was at best indifferent and perhaps complicit in the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 which took the lives of at least 2.5 million Bengalis.

Japanese troops were threatening British India after having successful taken neighboring British Burma. Some consider the British government's policy of denying effective famine relief a deliberate and callous scorched earth policy adopted in the event of an successful Japanese invasion. The bombing of Dresden shortly before the end of the war, a mostly civilian target with many refugees from the East and of alleged little military value. However, bombing of Dresden was effectively the help for the Soviet ally.

Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Churchill at the Cairo Conference in 1943 Churchill was one of the driving forces behind the treaties that would re-draw post-WWII European and Asian boundaries.

The boundary between North Korea and South Korea were proposed at the Yalta Conference, as well as the expulsion of Japanese from those countries. Proposals for European boundaries and settlements were discussed as early as 1943 by Roosevelt and Churchill; the settlement was officially agreed to by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam (Article XIII of the Potsdam protocol).
One of these settlements was about the borders of Poland, i.e. the boundary between Poland and Soviet Union, so called Curzon line and the Germany and Poland, so called the Oder-Neisse line.

Despite the fact, that Poland was the first country that resisted Hitler, Polish borders and government were determined by Great Powers without asking the voice of Polish government.

Polish soldiers, during Battle of England the only allies of England, felt betrayed. The faith of an ally Poland, and enemy Germany, was decided basically in the same manner.

As part of the settlement was an agreement to transfer of remaining citizens of Germany from the area. (Transfer of Poles didn't need to be approved). The exact numbers and movement of ethnic populations over the Polish-German and Polish-USSR borders in the period at the end of World War II is vastly difficult to determine.

This is not least because, under the Nazi regime, many Poles were replaced in their homes by the conquering Germans in an attempt to consolidate Nazi power. In the case of the post-WWII settlement, Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the transfer of people, to match the national broders.

As Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble...A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions..."

Although the importance of Churchill's role in World War II was undeniable, he produced many enemies in his own country. His expressed contempt for ideas such as public health care and for better education for the majority of the population in particular produced much dissatisfaction amongst the population, particularly those who had fought in the war. Immediately following the close of the war in Europe Churchill was heavily defeated at election by Clement Attlee and the Labour Party.
Winston Churchill was an early supporter of the pan-Europism that eventually lead to the formation of the European Common market and later the European Union (for which one of the three main buildings of the European Parliament is named in his honor).

 Churchill was also instrumental in giving France a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (which he supported in order to have another European power to counter-balance the Soviet Union's permanent seat).

At the beginning of the Cold War he coined the term the "Iron Curtain," a phrase that entered the public consciousness after a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri when he famously declared "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere."

A stroke in June of that year led to him being paralysed down his left side. He retired because of his health on April 5, 1955 but retained his post as Chancellor of the University of Bristol.

During the next few years he revised and finally published a History of the English Speaking Peoples in four volumes. In 1956 he was awarded the Karlspreis of the city of Aachen in Germany, for his idea of a United States of Europe.

In 1959 Churchill inherited the title of Father of the House, becoming the MP with the longest continuous service - since 1924. He was to hold the position until his retirement from the Commons in 1964, the position of Father of the House passing to Richard Austen Butler.


Last Days

On January 15, 1965 Churchill suffered another stroke - a severe cerebral thrombosis - that left him gravely ill. He died nine days later on January 24, 1965. This was exactly 70 years to the day after his father's death.

His body lay in State in Westminster Hall for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul's Cathedral. This was the first state funeral for a commoner since that of Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar in 1914. It was Churchill's wish that, if de Gaulle outlived him, that his (Churchill's) funeral procession should pass through Waterloo station. As his coffin passed down the Thames on a boat, the cranes of London's docklands bowed in salute.
At Churchill's request, he was buried in the family plot at Saint Martin's Churchyard, Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England.


Writings

Churchill was also a notable historian, producing many works. Some of his twentieth century writings such as The World Crisis (detailing the First World War) and The Second World War are highly autobiographical, telling the story of the conflict.

Initially Churchill used the name Winston Churchill for his books. However early on he discovered that there was also an American writer of the same name, who had been published first. So as to prevent the two being confused, they agreed that the American would publish as Winston Churchill, and the Englishman as Winston Spencer Churchill (sometimes abbreviated to Winston S Churchill).


Some of Churchill's works

The River War - Published in 1899 (2 vols) Kitchner's reconquest of the Sudan in 1898. Also published in a 1 vol abridged edn.

Savrola - Churchill's only novel. Published in 1900

Lord Randolph Churchill - A two volume biography of his father.

The World Crisis 6 volumes covering the Great War

My Early Life - An autobiography covering the first quarter century of his career.

Marlborough - A biography of his ancestor, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough Published in 4, 6, and 2 volume editions.

The Second World War 6 volumes (sometimes reprinted as 12)
A History of the English Speaking Peoples

The Scaffolding of Rhetoric - a 1,763-word essay on oratory; unpublished, written 1897.
Painting as a Pastime- a short appreciation of painting.


Quotes

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

"There is no such thing as a good tax."

"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon."

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

"We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last."

"The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult."

"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put."

"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."

Bessie Braddock: "Sir, you are drunk."
Churchill:  "Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober."

Nancy Astor: "Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison."
Churchill:  "If I were your husband I would take it."

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

"Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened."

"If you are going to go through hell, keep going."

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."

"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."

"If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law."

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else."

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public."

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."

"A sheep in sheep’s clothing." (On Clement Atlee)

"A modest man, who has much to be modest about." (On Clement Atlee)

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter."

"The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is."

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."

"Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen."

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."

"Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong."

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others."

"The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong."

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

"Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war."

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others."

"The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult."

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

"You ask, What is our policy? I will 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 with one word: 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."

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the 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."

"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 life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, 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 lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour!"


Miscellany

Churchill College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, was founded in 1960 as the national and commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill.
The Churchill tank, a heavy infantry tank of World War II, was named in his honor.