Winston Churchill
Discover Winston Churchill — the British leader whose defiant wartime leadership rallied Britain against Nazi Germany during its darkest hour.
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was the British politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister during World War II (1940–1945 and again 1951–1955). His defiant leadership during Britain's darkest hours — the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz — rallied the nation and helped save Western democracy from fascism.
Churchill's career before 1940 was remarkably varied and checkered. He served as First Lord of the Admiralty, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and held numerous other positions. His warnings about Hitler in the 1930s — dismissed as warmongering at the time — proved prophetic. When Chamberlain's appeasement policy failed and Hitler invaded Western Europe, Churchill became prime minister in May 1940.
His wartime speeches — 'We shall fight on the beaches,' 'Their finest hour,' 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few' — were masterpieces of rhetoric that sustained British morale during the most dangerous period in the nation's history. As a strategist, he forged the alliance with Roosevelt and reluctantly with Stalin, helped plan the North African, Italian, and Normandy campaigns, and shaped the postwar settlement. Churchill's legacy, like the British Empire he championed, is complex — he held racist views about Indians and other colonial subjects — but his wartime leadership remains one of the defining achievements of the 20th century.
Lessons covering this topic
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