Winston Churchill
Birth:30 November 1874Blenheim Palace, United Kingdom
Died:January 24, 1965 (aged 90)London, United Kingdom
Nationality:British
Occupation:Politician
Occupation:Prime Minister (1940-1945 then 1951-1955)
Other posts:Conservative MP (1900) First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915 then 1939) Secretary of War (1917-1922)
Sir Winston Leonard Alexander Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire - 24 January 1965 at Hyde Park Gate, London), was a British statesman.
A Conservative MP in 1900, several times Minister, then First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915), finally Prime Minister (1940-1945 and 1951-1955), leader of the Conservative Party, he was the animator of the effort to British war in World War II, and one of the propagandists of the Allied victory over the Axis. He was also Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.
Young years
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on November 30, 1874 at Blenheim Palace. In his memoirs, he writes that it was at Blenheim Palace that he made “the two most important decisions of my life:to be born and to marry. I have never regretted either of them. ". He remained loyal to this palace all his life, returning there regularly, even for his honeymoon. And it is in the cemetery of Blandon, just next to the castle of his ancestors that he rests, next to his parents. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Jennie Jerome. His father was himself the son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, while his mother was the second daughter of a wealthy New York businessman, Leonard Jerome. His family background had a beneficial influence on his military and then political career. He knew how to use all the resources offered to him by family ties to get himself sent to the front lines where, as a young soldier, he was sure to find the glory he so eagerly sought. When he entered politics, it was his cousin, the reigning Duke of Marlborough, who paid all his campaign expenses.
Winston Churchill began his studies at Harrow school, a highly rated public school[1]. Despite his assertions in his Memoirs, there were not such bad school results. He liked to present himself as an unloved child, handicapped by a limited education, which allowed him to pass for a man whose success was due only to his solitary efforts. At Harrow school, however, he was directed to the military section, where the less intelligent pupils were sent. He did it three times to enter the Sandhurst Military Academy. He became Lieutenant of the "4th Regiment of Queen's Hussars" in 1895, just after the death of his father.
Eight months after being commissioned, he was sent as an observer to Cuba, then torn apart by the Spanish-American war. He took the opportunity to send reports on the operations to the Daily Telegraph, and thus make a little money. As much as he could, he tried to combine his obligations as an active officer with those of a war correspondent. He then used all the resources of his family connections to get himself sent to where something was going on.
* On the northwest frontier of India in 1897, which the British Empire had consolidated since 1879, he took part in the conquest of Burma. During his stay in India, he supplemented his education by reading Greek philosophers and classical historians. Churchill drew from it a very deep historical culture which served him all his life.
* In Sudan in 1898, when Lord Kitchener's army conquered it to ensure the security of Egypt, he distinguished himself at Omdurman during one of the last cavalry charges in military history .
In 1899 he left the army and stood in a by-election at Oldham. Candidate of the Conservative Party, he was defeated there. He then left for South Africa where he was a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. British possessions then surrounded the Transvaal, a country belonging to the descendants of Dutch settlers, the Boers. The lure of gold and diamonds in this region led to war between the United Kingdom and the Boers. It lasted from 1899 to 1902, and ended with the annexation of Boer territories to the Empire. Winston Churchill was taken prisoner by the Boers (1899) after the armored train he was traveling in derailed near Colenso. His spectacular escape earned him headlines around the world. His experiences on these various fronts enabled him to write four books and give a number of lectures. He took the opportunity to denounce the weakness of the organization of the British army, which triggered the first controversy of his career, of which he was the origin. He had been able to save 10,000 pounds in 1901, a high sum for the time.
In early 1908, he married Clémentine Hozier, with whom he had a son and 4 daughters, one of whom died in infancy.
Political career
Beginnings
In 1900 he was first elected to Parliament, as the Conservative MP for the constituency of Oldham. Then, in the election of 1904, he was re-elected, but this time as a member of the Liberal party. He served as Minister of Commerce in 1908. In 1909, Churchill fell out with his family and social circles by his position in favor of the People's Budget which considerably increased the tax on the estates of the Lords. Then, in 1910-1911, he was Minister of the Interior. During this period, he forged close ties with David Lloyd George. Finally, in 1911, just before the First World War, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and from 1911 to 1915 he modernized the British fleet considerably. In 1913, he added a provision to the Mentally Handicapped Act, which instituted a program of forced sterilizations for eugenic purposes.
In July 1914, Churchill received Albert Ballin, president of the Hamburg-Amerika Line and warned him against a possible British intervention:"My dear friend, do not force us to go to war!" he told her. However, the British Cabinet was divided on the attitude to adopt vis-à-vis the crisis:Churchill was a determined supporter of France, Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, a determined supporter of neutrality, Sir Edward Grey, Secretary at the Foreign Office leaned more towards France, as for Prime Minister Asquith, he was careful not to take a position. Without obtaining prior Cabinet approval, as demanded by Lloyd George, Churchill mobilized the fleet, recalled 40,000 reservists and sent them from the English Channel to the North Sea to avoid a raid by the Reich fleet in the English Channel. Indeed, Churchill feared both the impossibility for Great Britain to come to the aid of France and the possibility for Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz to repeat Admiral Togo's raid at Port-Arthur in 1904 by attacking by surprise the British Navy. Of this, Churchill said, "The Commander of the Home Fleet is the only one who can lose the war in an afternoon!" ". When this mobilization became known, either the Cabinet ratified Churchill's decision or the government fell, which would have given an unfortunate impression of indecision in such a serious crisis. The partisans of intervention prevailed, the pacifists gave in and the most resolute of them resigned; following which, the Foreign Secretary issued an ultimatum to Germany to immediately evacuate Belgium.
The First World War was not the happiest for Winston Churchill. There was a very controversial role that almost ended his career. Churchill, then pressed by the Russians who wanted to see Turkish pressure in the Caucasus diminish, and anxious to circumvent the bloody stalemate on the Western Front, proposed to organize a large expedition, the Dardanelles Expedition. The offensive launched by a timorous Allied command failed on March 18, 1915 in front of Canakkale. It was then that a ground invasion was ordered. Four British divisions landed at Cape Helles. They tried to establish a bridgehead at the peninsula of Gallipoli, but following three terrible clashes, the soldiers were recalled. A second landing was attempted, this time at Cape Sulva. Again, this new plan did not work, and on January 9, 1916, the Allied troops were evacuated. The Dardanelles expedition resulted in 144,000 wounded or killed. This monumental failure forced Churchill, the scapegoat, to step down as first Lord of the Admiralty.
After his resignation, he commanded a battalion in France. Before the end of the war, he was repatriated to the United Kingdom and became Secretary of War from 1917 to 1922.
The inter-war period
After the Great War, he spoke out for reconciliation with Germany (unlike Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau) and also denounced Bolshevism (or communism) which had taken power in Russia. He warns:“Of all the tyrannies of history, the Bolshevik tyranny is the worst, the most devastating, the most degrading”[2]. Later, he even compared the Bolsheviks to "a band of bloodthirsty baboons dancing on smoking ruins!". This announcement was intended to raise global awareness of the events taking place in Russia.
In 1921, Churchill became Secretary of State for the Colonies and had two particularly thorny issues to deal with:the Irish Question and the Near East.
In Ireland, he first practiced a very firm policy of repression against Sinn Fein, recruiting auxiliaries called Black and Tans who sowed terror there. Then, as he showed several times in his life, he changed his mind and entered into a negotiation with Michael Collins, one of the leaders of the IRA and he was the main architect of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which allowed the birth of the Irish Free State.
In the Middle East, he had to manage the disappointment of the Arabs and of Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, who did not admit the violation of the promises made by Lawrence, in the name of Great Britain and who substituted British domination for a Ottoman rule. Churchill took Lawrence as an adviser. The latter had him adopt three measures to ease tensions:withdraw control of Mesopotamia (Iraq and Kuwait) from the India Office, transform the mandate of the League of Nations to Great Britain on Iraq into an alliance treaty , replacing the British army, perceived by the Arabs as an occupying force, by the RAF, more discreet and just as effective.
From 1922 to 1924, he was removed from parliament following the collapse of the Liberal Party. In 1924, he returned again as a Conservative MP, he then held the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer[3] of the government and took the disastrous decision to re-peg the pound sterling to gold, which caused a catastrophic recession. The economist Keynes drew from it a pamphlet The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill.
A little later, in 1926, he strongly contributed, through public appearances, to triggering the social crisis, during which he fought fiercely against the unions. He was again removed from parliament in 1929 because of the defeat of the Conservatives. Suffering from appendicitis, he was unable to campaign; also, after his defeat, he had words "I found myself in a few days without a seat in Parliament, without political friends and... without an appendix!" .
During the 1930s, he devoted himself mainly to writing. Churchill will remain a lifelong returned journalist. He will write many articles or hold conferences on all subjects, both on what was close to his heart and on anything. Indeed, his sybarite way of life (champagne, whiskey, cigars, table open to many people) cost him dearly. He will even write a novel, while strongly advising his friends, not without humor, not to read it.
During this "crossing the desert" Churchill took advantage of his notoriety to build a network of informants from the senior civil service and thus feed his interventions in the Commons as well as his conferences, mainly on the Nazi danger. The operation of this network was semi-clandestine and its informants would certainly have been deposed if successive governments had discovered it. General de Gaulle, between 1946 and 1958, set up a comparable network of private informants within the senior civil service who kept him informed of the progress of nuclear research for military purposes.
He opposed the autonomy of the Indies by treating on this occasion Gandhi of "half-naked fakir" and he will support Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936 before changing his mind about him and the step away as Governor of the Bahamas in 1940, because he feared he would be manipulated by Hitler or the pacifists. He soon realized the Nazi threat to the United Kingdom, and when discussing the Defense Budget for 1936 and 1937, while in Kingdom reserve, he felt it appropriate to increase military appropriations by at least £50 million (+40%) because:“As peaceful as it may be, the German government faces a terrible dilemma. Going forward is bankruptcy. Stopping the movement is unprecedented unemployment. Germany has no alternative means of utilizing its labor force:neither the means of trading with colonies, nor the means of conquering markets peacefully”.
In September 1938, he pleaded for action by France, the United Kingdom and the USSR during the Czech crisis. He condemned the Munich agreements signed by Neville Chamberlain and delivered one of his most famous speeches in Parliament during which he pronounced this sentence:“You had the choice between dishonor and war; you have chosen dishonor and you will have war”. He was the first to insist on real rearmament. It did not immediately win popular favor, but it rallied growing support.
In 1939, following the declaration of war on Germany after it had invaded Poland, Chamberlain had to appoint him, for the second time, First Lord of the Admiralty. Less than thirty minutes after his appointment, all the ships of the British fleet had received the message "Winston is Back!" .
Prime Minister during the war
Following the lame beginnings of the allies, but above all because of his own landing at Narvik which aimed to cut off the iron road to the Germans, and which, like Gallipoli, had not worked, he was, on May 10 1940, appointed Prime Minister. Indeed, Neville Chamberlain took responsibility for the failure and offered his resignation, whitewashing Churchill at the same time and leaving this born warrior the mission to lead the war. During the dark days of the Battle of Britain, Churchill's impassioned speeches urged the British to continue the fight. To be absolutely sure that the French fleet did not fall into the hands of the Germans, he ordered an attack on the Atlantic fleet anchored at Mers el Kébir. He developed a fruitful collaboration with President Roosevelt. This "alliance" provided him with significant military and moral support from the United States. Throughout the war he occupied an important place in the Allied military coordination. He was, like Dwight D. Eisenhower, reluctant to launch the troops on the Atlantic Wall because he feared a breach in the secrecy of the plan, if it had happened, the troops during the Normandy landings would have been headed for death, no less. It reminded him of the Battle of the Dardanelles. Despite everything, the secret of the expedition was well kept and the troops gradually set foot in France, the Luftwaffe nailed to the ground.
In the Allied peace conferences, Churchill occupied a leading role, however, he took part only in the first negotiations of Potsdam, because he was not re-elected in the elections of July 1945. He strongly criticized the reforms of the "state providence” established by his successor. In his famous 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri, he warned the free world against Soviet expansionism and coined the phrase "Iron Curtain".
He was also the first to have put the Hugolian idea of the "United States of Europe" back on the agenda during a speech in Zurich on September 19, 1946 and to chair the Hague Congress in 1948, then the European Movement.
On January 1, 2006, archival documents dating from 1942 to 1945 were made public, in which discussions between government cabinets were detailed. They reveal that Winston Churchill, in April 1945, had considered a death sentence by electric chair and without trial for Hitler and key Nazi leaders, if captured alive. Moreover, in January 1943, Winston Churchill put forward the idea of letting Gandhi die if the latter went on a hunger strike while he was a prisoner of the British during the Second World War.
Second term
He was reinstated as Prime Minister from 1951 to 1955, but his failing health prevented him from leading the country as dynamically as during his first term. After 1955, Churchill devoted his last years to painting and writing. He died on January 24, 1965, at the age of 90. A state funeral was organized in his honor, these had been planned for several years under the code name "Hope Not". He is buried in the Bladon family tomb, just a few miles from Blenheim Palace, his birthplace.
The writer
In 1932, Churchill participated in an anthology of uchronia directed by Johan Squires. He composes an innovative text for the theme of changing the course of history. He imagines a world in which the Confederates have won the Civil War. In this world, it features a Southern historian who imagines what the world would be like if the Northerners had won.
In 1953 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his work as a historian and memoirist, for his qualities as an orator, and undoubtedly above all as a tribute to the man who led the British resistance during the war. On this occasion, the King of Sweden declared:"Fortunately there is no Nobel Prize for painting, we would have had to give it to him!".
In 1963, he became an honorary citizen of the United States of America. He is the first to receive this distinction.
Quotes
* Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few:never in the history of human conflict have so many men been so indebted to so few. About the Battle of Britain Airmen
* We shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. Speech before the House of Commons, June 4, 1940 after Dunkirk