- Alternate meanings: Churchill
(disambiguation)
The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG (November 30, 1874 - January 24, 1965) was a
British politician, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World
War II.
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.
The first notable appearance of Winston Churchill was as a war correspondent in the second Anglo-Boer
war between Britain and self-proclaimed Afrikaaners in South Africa. He was captured in a Boer
ambush of a British Army train convoy, but managed a high profile escape and eventually crossed the South African border to
Lourenço Marques (now Maputo in Mozambique). Churchill used the status achieved to begin
a political career which would last a total of sixty-five years, first standing for Parliament in 1899 and serving as an MP in the House of Commons from
1900 to 1922 and from 1924 to 1964. At first a member of the Conservative Party, he 'crossed the floor' in 1904 to join the Liberals.
A young Churchill
Winston Churchill (highlighted) at Sidney Street, 3 January 1911
In the 1906 general election, Churchill won
a seat in Manchester. In the Liberal government of Henry Campbell
Bannerman he served as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. Churchill soon became the most prominent member of the
Government outside the Cabinet, and when Campbell Bannerman was succeeded by Herbert Henry Asquith in 1908, it came as little surprise when
Churchill was promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Under the law at the time, a newly appointed Cabinet
Minister was obliged to seek re-election at a by-election. Churchill lost his Manchester seat to the Conservative William
Joynson-Hicks, but was soon elected in another by-election at Dundee. As President of the Board of Trade he pursued radical
social reforms in conjunction with David Lloyd George, the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1910 Churchill was promoted to Home
Secretary, where he was to prove somewhat controversial. A famous photograph from the time shows the impetuous Churchill
taking personal charge of the January 1911 Sidney Street Siege, peering around a corner to view a fierce gun battle between cornered anarchists
and Scots Guards. His role attracted much criticism. Arthur Balfour asked, "He [Churchill] and a photographer were both risking
valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing but what was the Right Honourable gentleman doing?"
In 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he would hold into the First World War. He was one of the political and military engineers of the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles
during World War I, which led to his description as "the butcher of
Gallipoli". When Asquith formed an all-party coalition government, the Conservatives demanded Churchill's demotion as the price
for entry. For several months Churchill served in the non-portolio job of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, before resigning from the government
feeling his energies were not being used. He rejoined the army, though remained an MP, and served for several months on the
Western Front. During this period his second in command was a young
Archibald Sinclair who would later lead the Liberal Party.
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 the 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.
Role as Wartime Prime Minister
Dwight D. Eisenhower with Winston Churchill during World War II
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
established 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 successfully 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. Churchill supported the bombing of Dresden shortly before the end of the war; Dresden was a mostly civilian
target with many refugees from the East and of allegedly little military value. However, the bombing was helpful to the allied
Soviets. Churchill was party to treaties that would re-draw post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. The boundary between
North Korea and South
Korea was proposed at the Yalta Conference, as well as the
expulsion of Japanese forces 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 the Soviet Union, the so
called Curzon line, and between Germany and Poland, the 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 the Great Powers without asking the voice of the Polish government in exile. Poles who had fought
alongside Britain throughout the war felt betrayed. Churchill himself opposed the effective annexation of Poland by the Soviet
Union and wrote bitterly about it in his books, but he was unable to prevent it at the conferences.
As part of the settlement was an agreement to transfer the 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 extremely 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."
Second Term
Churchill during his second term
Following Labour's defeat in the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. In 1953 he was awarded two major honours. He was knighted and
became Sir Winston Churchill and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as
well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values". 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.
Family
On September 2, 1908, at the
socially desirable St. Margaret's,
Westminster, Churchill married Clementine Churchill (April 1, 1885-December 12, 1977), a dazzling but largely penniless beauty whom he met at a dinner party that March. (He had proposed to actress
Ethel Barrymore, but was turned down). They had five children:
Diana (July 11, 1909-1963); Randolph;
Sarah (October 7, 1914-September 24, 1982, who became an actress, co-starring with Fred Astaire in
the film Royal Wedding); Marigold (November 15, 1918-August 23, 1921); and
Mary (b. September 15, 1922), who has written a book
on her parents.
Clementine's mother was Lady Ogilvy (1852-1925), second wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier and daughter of the 7th Earl of Airlie. Clementine's paternity, however, is open to healthy debate. Lady Blanche was well known for
sharing her favours and was eventually divorced as a result. She maintained that Clementine's father was Capt. William George "Bay" Middleton, a noted horseman. But Clementine's
biographer Joan Hardwick has
surmised that all Lady Blanche's "Hozier" children were actually fathered by her sister's husband, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford (1837-1916, better known as a grandfather of the infamous Mitford sisters of the 1920s). Churchill's son, Randolph, and grandson, Winston, both followed him into Parliament.
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 abreviated to Winston S Churchill).
Churchill's works include:
- 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 - Six 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 - used as the basis of the
BBC radio series This Sceptred
Isle
- The Scaffolding of Rhetoric - a 1,763-word essay on oratory;
unpublished, written 1897.
- Painting as a Pastime- a short appreciation of painting
Quotes
See Winston Churchill Quotes
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. Churchill is
believed by several writers to have suffered from bipolar disorder
and in his last years, Alzheimer's disease; certainly he
suffered from fits of depression that he called his "black
dogs", Some researchers also believe that Churchill was dyslexic, based on the difficulties he described himself having at
school. However, the Churchill Foundation strongly refutes this (Source: http://www.winstonchurchill.org ).
The United States Navy destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill
(DD-81) is named in his honour. Churchill was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United
States.
Churchill was voted as "The Greatest Briton" in 2002 "100 Greatest Britons" poll sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public. He was also named Time
Magazine "Man of the Half-Century" in the early 1950s.
The American song writer Jerome Kern was christened Jerome because his
parents lived near a park named Jerome Park. This park was in turn named after Churchill's grandfather (the father of Churchill's
mother Jennie Jerome)
Churchill's War Cabinet, May 1940 - May 1945
Changes
- August 1940: Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production, joins the
War Cabinet
- October 1940: Sir John
Anderson succeeds Neville Chamberlain as Lord President. Sir Kingsley
Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, enter the Cabinet.
- December 1940: Anthony Eden succeeds Lord Halifax as Foreign Secretary.
Halifax remains in the Cabinet as Ambassador to the United States.
- May 1941: Lord Beaverbrook ceased to be Minister of Aircraft Production, but remains in the Cabinet.
- June 1941: Lord Beaverbrook becomes Minister of Supply, remaining in the Cabinet.
- 1941: Oliver
Lyttelton enters the Cabinet as Minister Resident in the Middle East.
- 4 February 1942: Lord Beaverbrook becomes Minister of War Production, his successor as Minister of Supply is not in the War
Cabinet.
- 19 February 1942: Beaverbrook resigns. Clement Attlee becomes Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and Deputy Prime
Minister. Sir Stafford Cripps succeeds Attlee as Lord Privy Seal and takes over the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Churchill.
Sir Kingsley Wood leaves the War Cabinet, though remaining Chancellor of the Exchequer.
- 22 February 1942: Arthur Greenwood resigns from the Cabinet.
- March 1942: Oliver Lyttelton fills the vacant position of Minister of
Production ("war" was dropped from the title). Richard Gardiney Casey (a member of the Australian Parliament) succeeds Oliver Lyttelton
as Minister Resident in the Middle East.
- October 1942: Sir Stafford Cripps retires as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons and leaves the War Cabinet.
His successor as Lord Privy Seal is not in the Cabinet, Anthony Eden takes the additional position of Leader of the House of
Commons. The Home
Secretary, Herbert Stanley Morrison, enters the
Cabinet.
- September 1943: Sir John
Anderson succeeds Sir Kingsley Wood as Chancellor of the Exchequer, remaining in the War Cabinet. Clement Attlee succeeds
Anderson as Lord President, remaining also Deputy Prime Minister. Attlee's successor as Dominions Secretary is not in the
Cabinet.
- November 1943: Lord Woolton enters the Cabinet as Minister of Reconstruction.
Winston Churchill's Caretaker Cabinet, May - July 1945
Winston Churchill's Third Cabinet, October 1951 - April 1955
Changes
- March 1952: Lord Salisbury succeeds Lord Ismay as Commonwealth Relations Secretary. Salisbury remains also Lord Privy Seal.
Lord
Alexander succeeds Churchill as Minister of Defense.
- May 1952: Henry Crookshank succeeds Lord Salisbury as Lord Privy Seal. Salisbury remains Commonwealth Relations Secretary.
Crookshank's successor as Minister of Health is not in the Cabinet.
- November 1952: Lord Woolton becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Lord Salisbury succeeds Lord Woolton as Lord
President. Lord Swinton succeeds Lord Salisbury as Commonwealth Relations Secretary.
- September 1953: Florence Horsbrugh, the Minister of Education, Sir Thomas Dugdale, the Minister of
Agriculture, and Gwilym
Lloyd George, the Minister of Food, enter the cabinet. The Ministry for the Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel, and Power, is
abolished, and Lord Leathers leaves the Cabinet.
- October 1953: Lord Cherwell resigns as Paymaster General. His successor is not in the Cabinet.
- July 1954: Alan
Lennox-Boyd succeeds Oliver Lyttelton as Colonial Secretary. Derick Heathcoat Amory succeeds Sir Thomas Dugdale as Minister of Agriculture.
- October 1954: Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, now Lord Kilmuir, succeeds Lord Simonds as Lord Chancellor. Gwilym Lloyd George
succeeds him as Home Secretary. The Food Ministry is merged into the Ministry of Agriculture. Sir David Eccles succeeds Florence Horsbrugh
as Minister of Education. Harold Macmillan succeeds Lord Alexander as Minister of Defense. Duncan Sandys succeeds Macmillan as Minister of Housing and Local Government. Osbert Peake, the Minister of Pensions
and National Insurance, enters the Cabinet.
External links
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