Сообщение про черчилля на английском. Уинстон черчилль краткая биография. Уинстон Черчилль краткая биография

The prominent politician Winston Churchill was born" in 1874.
He is the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and grandson of the seventh Duke of Marl-borough. He was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst and entered the Army in 1895.
In 1900, he entered Parliament and soon became a prominent figure.
He left the Conservative Party and joined the Liberals* ranks because of his opposition to the Prime Minister"s policy. He held different responsible posts.
At the outbreak of war he was First Lord of the Admiralty and was responsible for the speedy mobilization of the Fleet. He later held office as Minister of Munitions and Minister for War.
Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War he became Prime Minister and his heartening leadership and speeches inspired the nation to greater efforts in the darkest days of the war.
Churchill had great literary gifts and he wrote many books, including a life of his father and histories of the First and Second World Wars.

Уинстон Черчилль

Выдающийся политик Уинстон Черчилль родился в 1874 году.
Он сын Лорда Рэндольфа Черчилля и внук седьмого герцога Мальборо. Учился он в Харроу и в Сандхерсте и был призван в армию в 1895 году.
В 1900 году он вошел в состав Парламента и вскоре стал в нем заметной фигурой.
Он вышел из консервативной партии и пополнил ряды либералов из-за несогласия с политикой премьер-министра. Он занимал разные ответственные должности.
Когда началась война, он был министром военно-морских сил и отвечал за немедленную мобилизацию флота. Позже он занимал должности министра по поставкам снаряжения и военного министра.
После начала Второй мировой войны Черчилль стал премьер-министром, его талантливое руководство и пламенные речи вдохновляли народ на подвиги в самые сложные дни войны.
У Черчилля был несомненный литературный талант, он написал много книг, в том числе и книгу о жизни своего отца и истории Первой и Второй мировых войн.

Winston Churchill Essay, Research Paper

Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace, the famous palace near Oxford that was built by the nation for John Churchill, the first duke of Marlborough. Blenheim meant a lot to Winston Churchill. It was there that he became engaged to his wife, Clementine Ogilvy Hozier. He later wrote his historical masterpiece, The Life and Times of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. With English on his father’s side and American on his mother’s, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill expressed the national qualities of both his parents. His name proves the richness of his historic background: Winston, after the Royalist family, who the Churchill’s married before the English Civil War; Leonard, after his remarkable grandfather, Leonard Jerome of New York; Spencer, the married name of a daughter of the first duke of Marlborough, from who the family descended; Churchill, the family name of the first duke, which his descendants maintained after the Battle of Waterloo. All these strands come together in a career that had no resemblance in British history for richness, length, and achievement. Churchill took a leading part in laying the foundations of the welfare state in Britain, in preparing the Royal Navy for World War I, and in settling the political boundaries in the Middle East after the war. In World War II he began as the leader of the United British Nation and Commonwealth to resist the German domination of Europe, as an inspirer of the resistance among free people, and as a prime architect of victory. In this, and in the struggle against communism later, he made himself an essential link between the British and American people, for he saw that the best defense for the free world was for the English-speaking people to come together. (Down 133).

Strongly historically minded, he also had predictive foresight: British-American unity was the message of his last great book, A History of the English-speaking Peoples. He was a combination of a soldier, writer, artist, and statesman. He was not so good as a party politician. He stands out not only as a great man of action, but as a writer of it too. He was a genius; as a man he was charming, happy, and enthusiastic. As for personal faults, he was bound to be a great egoist; so strong a personality was likely to be overbearing.

He was something of a gambler, always too willing to take risks. In his earlier career, people thought him of unbalanced judgment partly from the very excess of his energies and gifts. That is the worst that can be said of him

We know all there is to know about him; there was no disguise. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a younger son of the seventh duke of Marlborough. His mother was Jennie Jerome; and as her mother, Clara Hall, was one-quarter Iroquois, Sir Winston had an Indian strain in him. Lord Randolph, a brilliant Conservative leader who had been chancellor of the exchequer in his 30’s, died when he was only 46, after ruining his career. His son wrote that one could not grow up in that household without realizing that there had been a disaster in the background. It was an early spur to him to try to make up for his gifted father’s failure, not only in politics and in writing, but on the turf.

Young Winston, though the grandson of a duke, had to make his own way in the world, earning his living by his mouth and his pen. In this he had the leadership of his mother, who was always courageous and fearless. Rejoining his regiment, he was sent to serve in India. Here, besides his addiction to polo, he went on seriously with his

education, which in his case was mostly self-education. His mother sent him boxes of books, and Churchill absorbed the whole of Gibbon and Macaulay, and a lot of Darwin.

The influence of these authors is noticed through all his writings and in his way of looking at things. The influence of Darwin is distinct in his philosophy of life: that all life is a struggle, the chances of survival favor the fittest, chance is a great element in the game, and the game is to be played with courage, and every moment is to be enjoyed to the full. This philosophy served him well throughout his long life.

In 1897 he served in the Indian army against the uneasy tribesmen of the North-West Frontier, and the next year his first book surfaced, The Story of the Malakand Field Force. He entertained himself by writing a novel, Savrola, which curiously anticipates later developments in history, war, and in his own mind. On the outbreak of the South African War in 1899, he went out as war correspondent for the London Morning Post. Within a month of his arrival, he was captured when acting more as a soldier than as a journalist, by the Boer officer Louis Botha, who became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa, and a trusted friend.

After being taken to prison camp in Pretoria, Churchill made a dramatic escape and traveled back to the fighting front in Natal. His escape made him world-famous overnight. He described his experiences in a couple of journalistic books and made a first lecture tour in the United States. The proceeds from the tour enabled him to enter Parliament.

On Jan. 23, 1901, Churchill became member of Parliament for Oldham as a Conservative, but he had returned from South Africa sympathetic to the Boer cause, and

his army experiences had made him extremely critical of its command and administration, which he proceeded to attack all along. The tariff proposals of Joseph Chamberlain completed his alienation from the Conservative party, and in 1904 Churchill left the party to join the Liberals. In consequence, he was loathed by the Conservatives for years, and was unpopular with army authorities.

In 1906, he published the official biography, Lord Randolph, a first-class example of his lifelong talent in journalism. In this year, 1908, he married and “lived happily ever after.” During his marriage to Clementine Hozier, they had a son, Randolph, and three daughters, Diana, Sarah, and Mary. He took up painting as a hobby and a comfort, and he remained devoted to it for the rest of his life. His accomplishment in art should not be underestimated.

In 1916, he went back to the army, thoughtfully volunteering for active service on the western front, where he commanded the sixth Royal Scots Fusiliers. But his energy and ability could not be used, and Prime Minister Lloyd George called him back to become minister of munitions. Having lost his seat in Parliament in the 1922 elections, Churchill lived in the political wilderness for the next two years. After various attempts to form an anti-socialist group, he went back to the Conservative party in time to become chancellor of the exchequer in Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s.

He was not happy in this office not at ease with economic affairs. During the whole of this disastrous period of 1929-1939, Churchill was out of office. During these years of political frustration he wrote his major works: Marlborough, the first draft of A History of the English-speaking Peoples, a vivid and characteristic autobiography, My

Early Life, a revealing and expressive book, Thoughts and Adventures, and a volume of brilliant portrait sketches, Great Contemporaries. He also began to collect his speeches and newspaper articles warning the country of the rage to come.

On May 10, 1940, Churchill was called to supreme power and responsibility by an unpredictable rebellion of the best elements in all parties. He, almost alone of the nation’s political leaders, had had no part in the disaster of the 1930’s, and he really was chosen by the will of the nation. For the next five years, he held supreme command, as prime minister and minister of defense, in the nation’s war effort. At this point his life and career became one with Britain’s story and its survival. At first, until 1941, Britain fought alone. Churchill’s task was to inspire resistance at all costs, to organize the defense of the island, and to make it the elevation for a final return to the continent of Europe, whose liberation from Nazi tyranny he never doubted. He breathed a new spirit into the government and a new purpose into the nation. Upon becoming prime minister he told the Commons: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat: You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory.”

Meanwhile he made himself the spokesman for these purposes among all free people, as he made Britain a home for all the faithful remains of the continental governments. These included the Free French, for Churchill had himself picked out Charles De Gaulle as “the man of destiny.” But Churchill’s personal relationship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt was Britain’s lifeline. Britain had lost most of its army equipment in the fall of France and during the evacuation of the British Expeditionary

Force from Dunkirk in June. Roosevelt rushed across the Atlantic with a supply of weapons that made a beginning.

On Oct. 26, 1951, at the age of 77, he again became prime minister, as well as minister of defense. As the Conservatives held a very small majority and Britain faced very difficult economic circumstances, only the old man’s willpower enabled his government to survive. He held on to see the young Queen Elizabeth II crowned at Westminster in June 1953, attending as a Knight of the Garter, an honor he had received a few weeks earlier. In 1953, also, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. On April 5, 1955, in his 80th year, he resigned as prime minister, but he continued to sit in Commons until July 1964. Churchill’s later years were relatively calm.

In 1958 the Royal Academy devoted its galleries to a retrospective one-man show of his work. On April 9, 1963, he received, by special act of the U.S. Congress, the unique honor of being made an honorary American citizen. When he died in London on Jan. 24, 1965, at the age of 90, he was acclaimed as a citizen of the world, and on January 30 he was given the funeral of a hero. He was buried at Bladon, in the little churchyard near Blenheim Palace, his birthplace.

Уинстон Черчилль краткая биография премьер-министра, политического и государственного деятеля Великобритании изложена в этой статье.

Уинстон Черчилль краткая биография

Родился 30 ноября 1874 года в Бленхейме, графство Оксфордшир в состоятельной и влиятельной семье. До 8 лет его воспитанием занималась няня, а потом он обучался в школе в Барайтоне.

Черчилль обучался в престижной школе Хэрроу, где получил отличные навыки в фехтовании. В возрасте 19 лет он поступил в Сандхерстский Королевский военный колледж, после окончания которого отправился служить в Южную Индию.

Недолго он проходил военную службу в гусарском полку – его отправили на Кубу. Там Уинстон был военным корреспондентом, печатал статьи. Затем отправился на военную операцию по подавлению восстания пуштунских племен. По окончанию военных действий вышла книга Черчилля «История Малакандского полевого корпуса». Следующей кампанией, в которой принял участие Черчилль, стало подавление восстания в Судане.

Когда Черчилль уходил в отставку, его знали как превосходного журналиста. В 1899 году он неудачно баллотировался в парламент. Затем, участвуя в англо-бурской войне, попал плен, но смог бежать из лагеря.

В 1900 году был избран в Палату общин от консерваторов. Тогда же вышел роман Черчилля – «Саврола». В декабре 1905 года, если рассматривать краткую биографию Черчилля, им была занята должность заместителя министра по делам колоний.

В 1908 году Черчилль знакомится со своей будущей супругой – Клементиной Хоузьер. В этом же году они обвенчались, и впоследствии у четы было пять детей.

В 1910 году он стал министром внутренних дел, а в 1911 – Первым Лордом адмиралтейства. В 1919 году он получает должность военного министра и министра авиации. В 1920-е годы Черчилль работает в основном в парламенте, занимая различные должности, и увлекается живописью. В 1924 году снова вошел в Палату общин. В том же году стал Канцлером казначейства. После выборов 1931 года основал в составе консервативной партии свою фракцию.

Премьер-министром Великобритании Черчилль избирался два раза. Первый раз в возрасте 65 лет, а второй раз в возрасте 77 лет, когда в 1952 году власть возвращается к консерваторам. Во время его пребывания на посту премьер-министра, в 1941 году Великобритания подписала с СССР соглашение о совместных действиях против фашистской Германии. Затем была подписана Атлантическая хартия с США, к которой позже присоединился и Советский Союз. В 1953 году сама королева Елизавета удостоила политика рыцарским титулом, и он стал сером Уинстоном Черчиллем. Тогда же он удостоился Нобелевской премии в области литературы.

Winston Churchill was one of the greatest politicians of the last century. Apart from being a well-known public figure, Churchill was highly talented and even got a Noble prize in Literature in 1901.

Winston Churchill was born in 1874, Woodstick, in the aristocratic family of the Dukes. Young Churchill was taught at home firstly and then sent to St.George’s school. The boy was rebellious and obviously was not a good student. He continued his study at Harrow School for boys and then entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

After Winston had graduated from college he began to travel as a soldier and as a journalist. He went to India in 1896 and wrote his first book there which told about his experience in India’s Northwest Frontier Province. After India Churchill was sent to South Africa and returned to England only in 1900.

As soon as he came back to England, Winston Churchill joined the House of Commons as a conservative. Several years later he became a liberal. During World War I he was the First Lord of the Admiralty and was responsible for the mobilization of the Fleet.

Later Churchill was Minister of Munitions and Minister of War. Churhill became Prime Minister soon after the outbreak of World War II. He was considered to be one of the greatest orators of all times who inspired the nation by his energy and insistence.

In 1953 Churchill was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth. The great politician died in 1965, one year after retiring from Parliament.

Перевод:

Уинстон Черчилль был одним из величайших политиков прошлого века. Помимо того, что он являлся известной публичной фигурой, Черчилль также был очень талантлив и даже получил Нобелевскую премию в области литературы в 1901 году.

Уинстон Черчилль родился в 1874, в Вудстике, в аристократической семье герцогов. Юный Черчилль сначала обучался дома, а затем был послан в школу Святого Георга. Мальчик был бунтарем и очевидно не был хорошим учеником. Он продолжил свое обучение в школе для мальчиков, а затем поступил в Королевскую Военную академию в Сандхерсте.

После окончания академии Уинстон начал путешествовать в качестве солдата и журналиста. В 1896 году он был в Индии, где написал свою первую книгу о своем нахождении там. После Индии Черчилль был отправлен в Южную Африку и вернулся в Англию лишь в 1900.

Как только он вернулся в Англию, Уинстон Черчилль стал членом консервативной партии в Палате Общин. Несколькими годами позже он перешел на сторону либералов. Во время первой Мировой Войны он был первым Лордом Адмиралтейства и был ответственным за мобилизацию флота.

Позднее Черчилль стал министром по поставкам снаряжения и военным министром. Черчилль стал Премьер-министром вскоре после начала второй Мировой Войны. Он считался одним из величайших ораторов всех времен, который вдохновлял народ своей энергией и упорством.

В 1953 году Черчилль был посвящен в рыцари королевой Елизаветой. Великий политик умер в 1965 году, через год после своего ухода в отставку.

Слова и выражения:

Apart from – кроме, помимо

Duke – герцог

Rebellious – непослушный, мятежный, бунтарский

House of Commons – Палата Общин (Парламент)

Fleet – флот

Munitions – боевые припасы, снаряжение

Outbreak – начало

To retire –уйти в отставку/на пенсию

The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, FRS, PC (30 November 1874 - 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. At various times a soldier, journalist, author and politician, Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most important leaders in British and world history. He won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born at Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Winston Churchill was a descendant of the first famous member of the Churchill family, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Winston"s politician father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough; Winston"s mother was Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jennie Jerome), daughter of American millionaire Leonard Jerome. Neither parent showed young Winston much affection or love.

Churchill spent much of his childhood at boarding schools, including the Headmaster"s House at Harrow School. He famously sat the entrance exam but on confronting the latin paper he carefully wrote the title, his name and the number 1 followed by a dot and could not think of anything else to write. He was accepted despite this, but placed in the bottom division where they were primarily taught English which he excelled at. Today at Harrow there is an annual Churchill essay prize on a subject chosen by the head of the english department. He was rarely visited by his mother, whom he virtually worshipped, despite his letters begging her to either come or let his father permit him to come home. He had a distant relationship with his father despite keenly following his father"s career. Once, in 1886, he is reported to have proclaimed "My daddy is Chancellor of the Exchequer and one day that"s what I"m going to be". His desolate, lonely childhood stayed with him throughout his life.

He was very close to his nurse, Elizabeth Ann Everest (nicknamed "Woom" by Churchill), and was deeply saddened when she died on July 3, 1895. Churchill paid for her gravestone at the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium.

Churchill did badly at Harrow, regularly being punished for poor work and lack of effort. His nature was independent and rebellious and he failed to achieve much academically, failing some of the same courses numerous times despite showing great ability in other areas such as maths and history, in both of which he was placed at times top in his class. But his refusal to study the classics undermined any chance of success at a school like Harrow.

The view of Churchill as a failure at school is one which he himself propagated, probably due to his father"s intense dislike of the young Winston and his obvious readiness to label his son a disappointment. He did, however, become the school"s fencing champion.

Churchill attended the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

Churchill then became a war correspondent in the second Anglo-Boer war between Britain and Afrikaners in South Africa. He was captured in a Boer ambush of a British Army train convoy and thrown into prison. However, he made a daring escape which made him something of a national hero.

Ministerial office.

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 gun battle between cornered anarchists and Scots Guards. His role attracted much criticism. The building under siege caught fire. Churchill denied the fire brigade access, forcing the criminals to choose surrender or death. Arthur Balfour asked, "He 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 gave impetus to military reform efforts, including development of naval aviation, tanks, and the switch in fuel from coal to oil, a massive engineering task, also reliant on securing Mesopotamia"s oil rights, bought circa 1907 through the secret service using the Royal Burmah Oil Company as a front company. The development of the battle tank was financed from naval research funds via the Landships Committee, and, although a decade later development of the battle tank would be seen as a stroke of genius, at the time it was seen as misappropriation of funds. The battle tank was deployed ineptly in 1915, much to Churchill"s annoyance. He wanted a fleet of tanks used to surprised the Germans under cover of smoke, and to open a large section of the trenches by crushing barbed wire and creating a breakthrough sector.

However, he was also 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-portfolio 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 remaining 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.

Return to power.

In December 1916, Asquith resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Lloyd George. However, the time was thought not yet right to risk the Conservatives" wrath by bringing Churchill back into government. However, in July 1917 Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions. After the end of the war Churchill served as both Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air (1919 - 1921). On the possible use of gas weapons (tear gas) in quelling uprisings in the British mandated territories of the former Ottoman Empire, Churchill wrote:

"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected".

During this time (1919 - 21), he undertook with surprising zeal the cutting of military expenditure. However, the major preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Churchill was a staunch advocate of foreign intervention, declaring that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". He secured from a divided and loosely organised Cabinet an intensification and prolongation of the British involvement beyond the wishes of any major group in Parliament or the nation - and in the face of the bitter hostility of Labour. In 1920, after the last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles when they invaded Ukraine. He became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1921 and was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which established the Irish Free State.

Career between the wars.

In October 1922, Churchill underwent an operation to remove his appendix. Upon his return, he learned 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 to prohibitionist, Edwin Scrymgeour, quipping that he had lost his ministerial office, his seat and his appendix all at once. Churchill stood for the Liberals again in the 1923 general election, losing in Leicester, 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 wryly that "Anyone can rat , but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat".

He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw the United Kingdom"s disastrous return to the Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the miners" strike that led to the General Strike of 1926. This decision prompted the economist John Maynard Keynes to write The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, correctly arguing that the return to the gold standard would lead to a world depression. Churchill later regarded this as one of the worst decisions of his life. To be fair to him, it must be noted that he was not an economist and that he acted on the advice of the Governor of the Bank of England, Montague Norman (of whom Keynes said: "Always so charming, always so wrong").

During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machineguns 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 Marlborough: His Life and Times - a biography of his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough - and A 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 (see Simon Commission and Government of India Act 1935).

Soon, though, his attention was drawn to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the dangers of Germany"s rearmament. For a time he was a lone voice calling on Britain to strengthen 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 King 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 politically isolated and bruised for some time after this.

Role as wartime Prime Minister.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In this job he proved to be one of the highest-profile ministers during the so-called "Phoney War", when the only noticeable action was at sea. Churchill advocated the pre-emptive occupation of the neutral Norwegian iron-ore port of Narvik and the iron mines in Kiruna, Sweden, early in the War. However, Chamberlain and the rest of the War Cabinet disagreed, and the operation was delayed until the German invasion of Norway, which was successful despite British efforts.

In May 1940, directly upon the German invasion of France by a surprising lightning advance through the Low Countries, it became clear that the country had no confidence in Chamberlain"s prosecution of the war. Chamberlain resigned, and 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 Lord Beaverbrook in charge of aircraft production. It was Beaverbrook"s astounding business acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production and engineering that eventually made the difference in the war.

Churchill"s speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled United Kingdom. His first speech as Prime Minister was the famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech. He followed that closely with two other equally famous ones, given just before the Battle of Britain. One included the immortal line, "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". The other included the equally famous "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."" At the height of the Battle of Britain, his bracing survey of the situation included the memorable line "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", which engendered the enduring nickname "The Few" for the Allied fighter pilots who won it.

His good relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. It was for this reason that Churchill was relieved when Roosevelt was re-elected. Upon re-election, Roosevelt immediately set about implementing a new method of not only providing military hardware to Britain without the need for monetary payment, but also of providing, free of fiscal charge, much of the shipping that transported the supplies. Put simply, Roosevelt persuaded Congress that repayment for this immensely costly service would take the form of defending the USA; and so Lend-lease was born. Churchill had 12 strategic conferences with Roosevelt which covered the Atlantic Charter, Europe first strategy, the Declaration by the United Nations and other war policies. 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 neighbouring 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 a successful Japanese invasion. Churchill supported the bombing of Dresden shortly before the end of the war; Dresden was primarily a civilian target with many refugees from the East and was of allegedly little military value. However, the bombing was helpful to the allied Soviets.

Churchill was party to treaties that would redraw post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. These were discussed as early as 1943. Proposals for European boundaries and settlements were officially agreed to by Harry S. Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam.

The settlement concerning the borders of Poland, i.e. the boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union and between Germany and Poland, was viewed as a betrayal in Poland during the post-war years, as it was established against the views of the Polish government in exile. Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the transfer of people, to match the national borders. As he expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, insofar 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". The transfers were in the end carried out in a way which resulted in hardship and death for many of those transferred. Churchill 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.

After World War II.

Although the importance of Churchill"s role in World War II was undeniable, he had many enemies in his own country. His expressed contempt for a number of popular ideas, in particular public health care and better education for the majority of the population, 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. Some historians think that many British voters believed that the man who had led the nation so well in war was not the best man to lead it in peace. Others see the election result as a reaction against not Churchill personally, but against the Conservative Party"s record in the 1930s under Baldwin and Chamberlain.

Winston Churchill was an early supporter of the pan-Europeanism that eventually led 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 honour). Churchill was also instrumental in giving France a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (which provided another European power to counterbalance the Soviet Union"s permanent seat). Churchill also occasionally made comments supportive of world government. For instance, he once said:

"Unless some effective world supergovernment for the purpose of preventing war can be set up. the prospects for peace and human progress are dark.If. it is found possible to build a world organization of irresistible force and inviolable authority for the purpose of securing peace, there are no limits to the blessings which all men enjoy and share".

At the beginning of the Cold War, he famously mentioned the "Iron Curtain", a phrase originally created by Joseph Goebbels. The phrase entered the public consciousness after a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, when Churchill, a guest of Harry S. Truman, famously declared:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in 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.

Churchill was restless and bored as leader of the Conservative opposition in the immediate post-war years. After Labour"s defeat in the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His third government - after the wartime national government and the short caretaker government of 1945 - would last until his resignation in 1955. During this period he renewed what he called the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States, and engaged himself in the formation of the post-war order.

His domestic priorities were, however, overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crises, which were partly the result of the continued decline of British military and imperial prestige and power. Being a strong proponent of Britain as an international power, Churchill would often meet such moments with direct action.