Namesake:
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
The only statesman to achieve high office in both World
Wars and to write profusely about his experiences, Winston
Churchill dominated the 20th Century like few other individuals.
Although best known for his courageous leadership as British
prime minister during World War II, Churchill was a formidable
political thinker and one of the highest-paid journalists from
the days of Queen Victoria's "little wars" to his
memoirs of World War II.
A larger-than-life character, famous for his trademark
cigar and his overblown reputation as a drinker (which he
joyfully exaggerated), Churchill was also a talented amateur
painter and pilot, soldier, farmer, bricklayer, and orator. When
he retired from the House of Commons in 1964, he had spent over
six decades in public life, a career that ran from the last
great British cavalry charge to the nuclear age.
Born in 1874 to Lord Randolph Churchill and an American
mother, the former Jennie Jerome, Winston spent a typical
upperclass childhood in the hands of nurses and headmasters at a
succession of private schools. While he was no more neglected
than most boys of his age and class, his sensitive nature
recoiled at his parents' aloofness and he always regretted his
failure to achieve a close relationship with his father, who
died in 1895 at the age of only 45. His mother later became his
ardent ally, helping him achieve key assignments as a war
reporter and smoothing his career in politics.
In late 1900, Churchill was elected to Parliament as a
Conservative and took his seat in early 1901. His independent
nature soon saw him at odds with his party, and in 1904 he "crossed
the floor" to the Liberals, who won a landslide election in
early 1906. He served the Liberal government as President of the
Board of Trade and Home Secretary, where he helped introduce
social legislation that laid the foundations for the later
welfare state. In 1911, he became First Lord of the Admiralty
(civilian head of the Royal Navy), working feverishly to
complete the conversion of ships from coal to oil power.
Together with his two First Sea Lords, Prince Louis of
Battenberg and Admiral Lord Fisher, Churchill promoted fast,
powerful battleships and outbuilt the Germans to maintain
British naval supremacy. He founded the Naval Air Service, and
made numerous visits to ships and navy bases, where he was
admired for his efforts to improve conditions for officers and
crews.
At Churchill's direction, the fleet was at its war station
before war broke out in 1914, but it was never able to engage
the Germans in a decisive early sea battle. Worse, Churchill's
support of a failed campaign to force entry in the Dardanelles "by
ships alone" caused his removal from the Admiralty in May
1915. Reporting to his regiment in the trenches of Belgium, he
was under fire for three months before returning to Parliament.
In 1917 he was appointed Minister of Munitions and, in 1919,
Secretary for War and Air.
As Colonial Secretary in 1921-22, Churchill enjoyed two
notable diplomatic achievements. At the 1921 Cairo conference,
he helped establish the borders of the modern Middle East,
though he failed in his attempt to set up a Kurdish homeland "to
protect the Kurds against some future bully in Iraq."
Closer to home, he helped to forge the Irish Treaty, which kept
the peace in Ireland for 50 years. Michael Collins, the IRA
revolutionary with whom Churchill negotiated, said from his
deathbed: "Tell Winston we could have done nothing without
him."
In 1924, Churchill rejoined the Conservatives, serving as
Chancellor of the Exchequer through spring 1929. He returned
Britain to the gold standard and ran a government newspaper, "The
British Gazette," during the general strike of 1926. He
became increasingly separated from the Conservatives in the
1930s, first over the plan to grant India dominion status; later
over Britain's slow rearmament in the face of Hitler's
aggression; and finally when he championed King Edward VIII, who
abdicated in 1936. Not until war had broken out again in 1939
was he asked to rejoin the Government - again becoming First
Lord of the Admiralty, which according to legend, signaled to
its ships: "Winston is Back." He renewed his energetic
naval policies but was repulsed in an attempt to wrest Norway
from the invading Germans in April 1940.
With the Nazi blitzkrieg pouring into the Low Countries,
Churchill succeeded Neville Chamberlain as prime minister on May
10, 1940 and presided over a year of devastating defeats. In
those months, when Britain stood alone and almost unarmed
against Hitler, as Edward R. Murrow said, "he mobilized the
English language and sent it into battle." After Hitler
attacked Russia in June 1941, Churchill vowed to help the
Soviets, declaring, "if Hitler invaded hell I would at
least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of
Commons." Establishing close ties with President Roosevelt,
he secured American military aid and moral support, but his
ultimate goal was to have America fighting at Britain's side.
When the United States was drawn into the war by Japan's attack
on Pearl Harbor, Churchill admitted that he "slept the
sleep of the saved and the thankful."
Churchill was disappointed by the failure to control an
expansionist Soviet Union toward the end of the war, and watched
with mounting concern another totalitarian state rise dominant
in Europe. To the amazement of many outside Britain, his party
was routed in the 1945 general election and he became Leader of
the Opposition. His famous "Iron Curtain" speech at
Fulton, Missouri in 1946 was the opening salvo and warning of
the Cold War, unpopular at the time but later considered
prophetic. In 1949, he predicted the demise of Communism, "ignited
by a spark coming from God knows where, and in a moment the
whole system of lies and oppression is on trial for its life."
In 1951 the Conservatives regained an electoral majority
and Churchill became prime minister again, but he was
disappointed in his effort to achieve a peaceful settlement of
cold war antagonisms, and his domestic record was indifferent.
He became a Knight of the Garter, acquiring the title "Sir
Winston," in 1953.
Churchill won the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature,
bestowed for his numerous books on history, biography and
politics. His greatest biography was "Marlborough" (4
volumes, 1933-38); his best-known historical work was "A
History of the English-Speaking Peoples" (4 volumes,
1956-1958). His personal memoirs, "My Early Life"
(1930), "The World Crisis" (5 volumes, 1923-31) and "The
Second World War" (6 volumes, 1948-53) are readable
personal accounts of his Victorian youth and the two world wars.
In all, Churchill wrote over 40 titles in over 60 volumes,
nearly 1,000 articles and uncounted speeches. His official life,
by his son Randolph and Sir Martin Gilbert, is the longest
biography ever published.
Asked to summarize Churchill in one sentence, Gilbert
said: "He was a great humanitarian who was himself
distressed that the accidents of history gave him his greatest
power at a time when everything had to be focused on defending
the country from destruction, rather than achieving his goals of
a fairer society."
To Martin Gilbert also we owe these last lines from Sir
Winston's biography: "When at last his life's great
impulses were fading, Churchill's daughter Mary paid him perhaps
the most eloquent tribute of all: 'In addition to all the
feelings a daughter has for a loving, generous father, I owe you
what every Englishman, woman & child does -- Liberty
itself.'"
Suffering from age and poor health, he retired in April
1955, but remained a Member of Parliament for another nine
years. In 1963 he was declared an Honorary Citizen of the United
States by President John F. Kennedy. He died at age 90 on
January 24, 1965.
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