In the midst of the United Kingdom’s darkest days, Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood as a pillar of light for the men and women of his country.
His resolute voice carried over the airwaves, promising victory over Nazi tyranny at a point where the UK remained all but alone in its opposition of Hitler.
BORN A WARRIOR
Winston Churchill was born two months premature at his aristocratic family’s home of Blenheim Palace in 1874.
Soon after, the family moved to Ireland, where Churchill’s grandfather had been appointed to the ultimate position of Viceroy. It was there that he first fostered his affinity for the armed services, as he watched the soldiers parade around the family’s lodgings.
His parents were socialites, and had little time to care for their son. So it was that Churchill’s nanny, Elizabeth Ann Everest, became his closest confidant. She tried to inspire him to read and write, but he showed little interest.
Churchill’s dislike of education continued during his schooling. At St George’s School he scored lowest in his class, and received strict physical punishment from the faculty as a result. His parent’s received a letter labelling their son “a regular pickle”.
Over the next seven years, Churchill was sent to three private schools in an attempt to improve his attitude. The last of these, the Harrow School, was home to the Harrow Rifle Corps, a group Churchill was eager to join. In his entrance exam, he scored highest in his division to history, and did so well in maths that he was included in the advanced program. He was admitted to the school, but continued to receive poor grades, even as his teachers remarked on his extraordinary potential. “He is a remarkable boy in many ways, and it would be a thousand pities if such abilities were made useless by habitual negligence.”
Churchill hated Harrow, and begged his parents to visit him. Eighteen months after first enrolling, his father finally came. Surveying the toy soldiers in correct military formation aside his son’s bed, Churchill’s father asked “Would you like to go into the Army?” Churchill nodded an emphatic yes. “…I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar. However that may be, the toy soldiers turned the current of my life. Henceforward all my education was directed to passing into Sandhurst (the British school for infantry and cavalry).”
LEARNING THE WORLD
In 1890, Churchill passed his preliminary exam for Sandhurst, but failed three times in later years to complete the full test. He finally joined the calvary in 1983 (as it meant he didn’t need to learn maths), and graduated eighth in a class of 150 in 1984.
Unhappy with the pay, and seeking a way to improve his social standing, Churchill leveraged her family’s position in order to become a war correspondent.
He first travelled to Cuba, where he covered the Cuban War of Independence. During this time, he stayed at the home of American politician Bourke Cockran, who greatly influenced Churchill’s oratory finesse and interest in political systems. Here too he started smoking Havana cigars, and would rarely be seen without one for the rest of his life.
In 1895, Churchill’s father died at the age of 45. Seeing his father’s early death as a hint of his future, Churchill vowed to make his mark on the world immediately.
He transferred to India, where he was involved in the bloody, elongated Siege of Malakand, about which he would write one of his most renowned accounts of war. This was followed by stints in the Middle East and Africa.
ENTERING POLITICS
Churchill returned home to contest the seat of Oldham in the 1900 general election.
He initially joined the government as a Conservative, but was quickly met with adversity within the party for his views on tax reform, “To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle.”
In 1904, he crossed the floor to join the Liberals, where he campaigned for a responsible, not representative government, in an attempt to limit its responsibility in provinces like South Africa, where race relations were tense.
It was one of many factors that defined Churchill as a pragmatic member of government who cared little for those in opposition to the British empire. He gained prominence over the next 15 years in roles such as President of the Budget League and as Home Secretary, where his decisions often resulted in public controversy and condemnation. Not that it mattered to him.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
WORLD WAR I
Churchill retired from politics for the first time in 1915, in order to focus his efforts on Allied victory in World War I. As a battalion commander, he was integral in the defence of Antwerp, and worked in the development of tanks, but was publicly denounced for his heavy involvement in the failed Gallipoli landing.
Much of his time after was spent promoting Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. He saw the Bolsheviks as a dire threat to international interests, a view which further isolated from from the government, especially the Labour party, the members of which he considered socialists.
IN THE WILDERNESS
Churchill retired from the military at age 50, and rejoined politics in reaction to the election of Britain’s first Labour government. He declared himself a Constitutionalist, but rejoined the Conservatives soon after regaining his chair in Epping.
He held the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer for five years, after which he found himself isolated from the party once again.
So followed ‘the wilderness years’, the low point in Churchill’s career. He spent most of his time focused on his writing, while adding his voice to controversial topics from Indian independence (he was firmly against Ghandi), and the abdication crisis of 1936 in which the government opposed the marriage of King Edward VIII to an American divorcee.
But it was Facist Germany that soon concerned Churchill most.
STRENGTH
Initially seeing Hitler as a potential ally against Soviet Russia, Churchill changed his mind in the early 1930s, and called for the nation to rearm against the Nazi threat. He argued bitterly with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who leant towards appeasing the German dictator.
Soon enough, World War II was declared. Chamberlain resigned from his position, and it was Churchill that the UK turned to for leadership.
Much of the public desired peace with Germany, but Churchill would not stand for it. He gathered his allies, and stood firm, though he was often privately pessimistic about the Allies’ chances of victory. “You and I will be dead in three months time,” he told his chief advisor in June, 1940.
A few days later he delivered the third of his ‘finest hour‘ speeches to the government, exclaiming that the battle for Britain would soon begin.
A year later, an American journalist wrote, “The responsibilities which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing effect upon him. Not at all. The last time I saw him, while the Battle of Britain was still raging, he looked twenty years younger than before the war began … His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people”.
And so it was. Even in the midst of The Blitz in 1940-1941, Churchill was the greatest source of hope the British populace could hope to find.
“… we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and 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.”
He found solace in whiskey and cigars as the country toiled through a long, gruelling war, much of it spent with few allies at their sides.
LATER CAREER
In 1945, Europe celebrated the end of World War II, but Churchill kept his eye on Russia, fearing the communists planned to spoil the party.
America had high hopes that their alliance with Stalin’s Russia would remain strong, but Churchill doubted it would be so. He would be proved correct in the not too distant future.
Four days after the war ended, Churchill lost the general election. He spent the next six years in opposition, during which time he travelled to America to warn against the communist threat through his famous Iron Curtain speech.
In 1949, Churchill suffered a stroke, but was reappointed as Prime Minister for the last time in 1950. He suffered a second stroke in 1953 (the same year he won the Nobel Prize for Literature), and his health continued to deteriorate from that point on, though he remained in leadership for another two years, and another 11 in politics.
Winston Churchill died on January 24, 1965 at the age of 90, exactly 70 years after the death of his father.
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While he has been gone over 50 years, Churchill’s words still resonate today. Though he was often vicious in his condemnation of those who weren’t like him, his love for his homeland and passionate defence of his people during one of the lowest times in human history will stand as inspiration for many generations of leaders to come.