![]() You ask, what is our policy? I can 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. “We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Churchill told the House of Commons in his first speech as prime minister. Chamberlain was pushed out of office, and Winston Churchill took his place as prime minister in May 1940. In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement giving Germany a chunk of Czechoslovakia – “throwing a small state to the wolves,” Churchill scolded – in exchange for a promise of peace.Ī year later, however, Hitler broke his promise and invaded Poland. Likewise, the British government ignored Churchill’s warnings and did all it could to stay out of Hitler’s way. ![]() Especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Churchill spent a great deal of time warning his countrymen about the perils of German nationalism, but Britons were weary of war and reluctant to get involved in international affairs again. Churchill Between the Warsĭuring the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill bounced from government job to government job, and in 1924 he rejoined the Conservatives. After nine months and 250,000 casualties, the Allies withdrew in disgrace.Īfter the debacle at Gallipoli, Churchill left the Admiralty. In an attempt to shake things up, Churchill proposed a military campaign that soon dissolved into disaster: the 1915 invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.Ĭhurchill hoped that this offensive would drive Turkey out of the war and encourage the Balkan states to join the Allies, but Turkish resistance was much stiffer than he had anticipated. Noting that Germany was growing more and more bellicose, Churchill began to prepare Great Britain for war: He established the Royal Naval Air Service, modernized the British fleet and helped invent one of the earliest tanks.ĭespite Churchill’s prescience and preparation, World War I was a stalemate from the start. In 1911, Churchill turned his attention away from domestic politics when he became the First Lord of the Admiralty (akin to the Secretary of the Navy in the U.S.). His work on behalf of progressive social reforms such as an eight-hour workday, a government-mandated minimum wage, a state-run labor exchange for unemployed workers and a system of public health insurance infuriated his Conservative colleagues, who complained that this new Churchill was a traitor to his class. Four years later, he “crossed the chamber” and became a Liberal. That same year, Winston Churchill joined the House of Commons as a Conservative. (News of Churchill’s daring escape through a bathroom window made him a minor celebrity back home in Britain.)īy the time he returned to England in 1900, the 26-year-old Churchill had published five books. In 1899, the London Morning Post sent him to cover the Boer War in South Africa, but he was captured by enemy soldiers almost as soon as he arrived. In 1896, he went to India his first book, published in 1898, was an account of his experiences in India’s Northwest Frontier Province. Battles and BooksĪfter he left Sandhurst, Churchill traveled all around the British Empire as a soldier and as a journalist. Instead, in 1893 young Winston Churchill headed off to military school at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was educated at the Harrow prep school, where he performed so poorly that he did not even bother to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. (Rich American girls like Jerome who married European noblemen were known as “dollar princesses.”)ĭid you know? Sir Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six-volume history of World War II.Ĭhurchill was born at the family’s estate near Oxford on November 30, 1874. ![]() His mother, born Jennie Jerome, was an American heiress whose father was a stock speculator and part-owner of The New York Times. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was descended from the First Duke of Marlborough and was himself a well-known figure in Tory politics in the 1870s and 1880s. Winston Churchill came from a long line of English aristocrat-politicians.
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