Full Biography of Winston Churchill & 10 famous quote with life learning.

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S.L Topic Name Pg/No
1.0 Introduction & Quick fact 02
2.0 Political Career Before 1939 03
2.1 As Liberal minister 04
2.2 During World War I 05
2.3 In and out of office, 1922–29 07
2.4 Exclusion from office, 1929–39 08
3.0 Leadership During World War II 10
3.1 As prime minister 11
3.2 Formation of the “grand alliance” 13
3.3 Military successes and political problems 14
3.4 Electoral defeat 16
4.0 Postwar political career 16
4.1 As opposition leader and world statesman 16
4.2 As prime minister again 17
4.3 Retirement and death 19
4.4 Legacy 20
5.0 Life Lessons We Can All Learn from Sir Winston
Churchill
21
5.1 How Winston Churchill inspired me 24

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1. Winston Churchill
PRIME MINISTER OF UNITED KINGDOM
Winston Churchill, in full Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, (born November 30,
1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England—died January 24, 1965, London), British
statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940–45, 1951–55) rallied the British people
during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory. After a sensational
rise to prominence in national politics before World War I, Churchill acquired a reputation for
erratic judgment in the war itself and in the decade that followed. Politically suspect in
consequence, he was a lonely figure until his response to Adolf Hitler’s challenge brought him to
leadership of a national coalition in 1940. With Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin he then
shaped Allied strategy in World War II, and after the breakdown of the alliance he alerted the West
to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. He led the Conservative Partyback to office in 1951
and remained prime minister until 1955, when ill health forced his resignation.
In Churchill’s veins ran the blood of both of the English-speaking peoples whose unity, in peace
and war, it was to be a constant purpose of his to promote. Through his father, Lord Randolph
Churchill, the meteoric Tory politician, he was directly descended from John Churchill, 1st duke
of Marlborough, the hero of the wars against Louis XIV of France in the early 18th century. His
mother, Jennie Jerome, a noted beauty, was the daughter of a New York financier and horse
racing enthusiast, Leonard W. Jerome.
The young Churchill passed an unhappy and sadly neglected childhood, redeemed only by the
affection of Mrs. Everest, his devoted nurse. At Harrow his conspicuously poor academic record
seemingly justified his father’s decision to enter him into an army career. It was only at the third
attempt that he managed to pass the entrance examination to the Royal Military College, now
Academy, Sandhurst, but, once there, he applied himself seriously and passed out (graduated) 20th
in a class of 130. In 1895, the year of his father’s tragic death, he entered the 4th Hussars. Initially

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the only prospect of action was in Cuba, where he spent a couple of months of leave reporting the
Cuban war of independence from Spain for the Daily Graphic (London). In 1896 his regiment
went to India, where he saw service as both soldier and journalist on the North-West Frontier
(1897). Expanded as The Story of the Malakand Field Force(1898), his dispatches attracted such
wide attention as to launch him on the career of authorship that he intermittently pursued
throughout his life. In 1897–98 he wrote Savrola (1900), a Ruritanian romance, and got himself
attached to Lord Kitchener’s Nile expeditionary force in the same dual role of soldier and
correspondent. The River War (1899) brilliantly describes the campaign.
2. Political Career Before 1939
The five years after Sandhurst saw Churchill’s interests expand and mature. He relieved the tedium
of army life in India by a program of reading designed to repair the deficiencies of Harrow and
Sandhurst, and in 1899 he resigned his commission to enter politics and make a living by his pen.
He first stood as a Conservative at Oldham, where he lost a by-election by a narrow margin, but
found quick solace in reporting the South African War for The Morning Post (London). Within a
month after his arrival in South Africa he had won fame for his part in rescuing an armoured train
ambushed by Boers, though at the price of himself being taken prisoner. But this fame was
redoubled when less than a month later he escaped from military prison. Returning to Britain a
military hero, he laid siege again to Oldham in the election of 1900. Churchill succeeded in
winning by a margin as narrow as that of his previous failure. But he was now in Parliament and,
fortified by the £10,000 his writings and lecture tours had earned for him, was in a position to
make his own way in politics.
A self-assurance redeemed from arrogance only by a kind of boyish charm made Churchill from
the first a notable House of Commonsfigure, but a speech defect, which he never wholly lost,
combined with a certain psychological inhibition to prevent him from immediately becoming a
master of debate. He excelled in the set speech, on which he always spent enormous pains, rather
than in the impromptu; Lord Balfour, the Conservative leader, said of him that he carried “heavy
but not very mobile guns.” In matter as in style he modeled himself on his father, as his
admirable biography, Lord Randolph Churchill (1906; revised edition 1952), makes evident, and
from the first he wore his Toryism with a difference, advocating a fair, negotiated peace for the
Boers and deploring military mismanagement and extravagance.

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2.1 As Liberal minister
In 1904 the Conservative government found itself impaled on a dilemma by Colonial
Secretary Joseph Chamberlain’s open advocacy of a tariff. Churchill, a convinced free trader,
helped to found the Free Food League. He was disavowed by his constituents and became
increasingly alienated from his party. In 1904 he joined the Liberals and won renown for
the audacity of his attacks on Chamberlain and Balfour. The radical elements in his political
makeup came to the surface under the influence of two colleagues in particular, John Morley, a
political legatee of W.E. Gladstone, and David Lloyd George, the rising Welsh orator and
firebrand. In the ensuing general election in 1906 he secured a notable victory in Manchester and
began his ministerial career in the new Liberal government as undersecretary of state for the
colonies. He soon gained credit for his able defense of the policy of conciliation and self-
government in South Africa. When the ministry was reconstructed under Prime Minister Herbert
H. Asquith in 1908, Churchill was promoted to president of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the
cabinet. Defeated at the ensuing by-election in Manchester, he won an election at Dundee. In the
same year he married the beautiful Clementine Hozier; it was a marriage of unbroken affection
that provided a secure and happy background for his turbulent career.
At the Board of Trade, Churchill emerged as a leader in the movement of Liberalism away from
laissez-faire toward social reform. He completed the work begun by his predecessor, Lloyd
George, on the bill imposing an eight-hour maximum day for miners. He himself was responsible
for attacking the evils of “sweated” labour by setting up trade boards with power to fix minimum
wages and for combating unemployment by instituting state-run labour exchanges.
When this Liberal program necessitated high taxation, which in turn provoked the House of
Lords to the revolutionary step of rejecting the budget of 1909, Churchill was Lloyd George’s
closest ally in developing the provocative strategy designed to clip the wings of the upper chamber.
Churchill became president of the Budget League, and his oratorical broadsides at the House of
Lords were as lively and devastating as Lloyd George’s own. Indeed Churchill, as
an alleged traitor to his class, earned the lion’s share of Tory animosity. His campaigning in the
two general elections of 1910 and in the House of Commons during the passage of the Parliament
Act of 1911, which curbed the House of Lords’ powers, won him wide popular acclaim. In the
cabinet his reward was promotion to the office of home secretary. Here, despite substantial
achievements in prison reform, he had to devote himself principally to coping with a sweeping

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wave of industrial unrest and violent strikes. Upon occasion his relish for dramatic action led him
beyond the limits of his proper role as the guarantor of public order. For this he paid a heavy price
in incurring the long-standing suspicion of organized labour.
In 1911 the provocative German action in sending a gunboat to Agadir, the Moroccan port to
which France had claims, convinced Churchill that in any major Franco-German conflict Britain
would have to be at France’s side. When transferred to the Admiralty in October 1911, he went to
work with a conviction of the need to bring the navy to a pitch of instant readiness. His first task
was the creation of a naval war staff. To help Britain’s lead over steadily mounting German naval
power, Churchill successfully campaigned in the cabinet for the largest naval expenditure in
British history. Despite his inherited Tory views on Ireland, he wholeheartedly embraced the
Liberal policy of Home Rule, moving the second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill of 1912 and
campaigning for it in the teeth of Unionist opposition. Although, through his friendship with F.E.
Smith (later 1st earl of Birkenhead) and Austen Chamberlain, he did much to arrange the
compromise by which Ulster was to be excluded from the immediate effect of the bill, no member
of the government was more bitterly abused—by Tories as a renegade and by extreme Home
Rulers as a defector.
2.2 During World War I
War came as no surprise to Churchill. He had already held a test naval mobilization. Of all the
cabinet ministers he was the most insistent on the need to resist Germany. On August 2, 1914, on
his own responsibility, he ordered the naval mobilization that guaranteed complete readiness when
war was declared. The war called out all of Churchill’s energies. In October 1914,
when Antwerp was falling, he characteristically rushed in person to organize its defense. When it
fell the public saw only a disillusioning defeat, but in fact the prolongation of its resistance for
almost a week enabled the Belgian Army to escape and the crucial Channel ports to be saved. At
the Admiralty, Churchill’s partnership with Adm. Sir John Fisher, the first sea lord, was productive
both of dynamism and of dissension. In 1915, when Churchill became an enthusiast for
the Dardanelles expedition as a way out of the costly stalemate on the Western Front, he had to
proceed against Fisher’s disapproval. The campaign aimed at forcing the straits and opening up
direct communications with Russia. When the naval attack failed and was called off on the spot
by Adm. J.M. de Robeck, the Admiralty war group and Asquith both supported de Robeck rather

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than Churchill. Churchill came under heavy political attack, which intensified when Fisher
resigned. Preoccupied with departmental affairs, Churchill was quite unprepared for the storm that
broke about his ears. He had no part at all in the maneuvers that produced the first coalition
government and was powerless when the Conservatives, with the sole exception of Sir William
Maxwell Aitken (soon Lord Beaverbrook), insisted on his being demoted from the Admiralty to
the duchy of Lancaster. There he was given special responsibility for the Gallipoli Campaign (a
land assault at the straits) without, however, any powers of direction. Reinforcements were too
few and too late; the campaign failed and casualties were heavy; evacuation was ordered in the
autumn.
In November 1915 Churchill resigned from the government and returned to soldiering, seeing
active service in France as lieutenant colonel of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. Although he entered
the service with zest, army life did not give full scope for his talents. In June 1916, when
his battalionwas merged, he did not seek another command but instead returned to Parliament as
a private member. He was not involved in the intrigues that led to the formation of a coalition
government under Lloyd George, and it was not until 1917 that the Conservatives would consider
his inclusion in the government. In March 1917 the publication of the Dardanelles commission
report demonstrated that he was at least no more to blame for the fiasco than his colleagues.
Even so, Churchill’s appointment as minister of munitions in July 1917 was made in the face of a
storm of Tory protest. Excluded from the cabinet, Churchill’s role was almost entirely
administrative, but his dynamic energies thrown behind the development and production of
the tank (which he had initiated at the Admiralty) greatly speeded up the use of the weapon that
broke through the deadlock on the Western Front. Paradoxically, it was not until the war was over
that Churchill returned to a service department. In January 1919 he became secretary of war. As
such he presided with surprising zeal over the cutting of military expenditure. The major
preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was, however, the Allied intervention in Russia.
Churchill, passionately anti-Bolshevik, secured from a divided and loosely organized 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. And in 1920, after the
last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles
when they invaded the Ukraine.

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In 1921 Churchill moved to the Colonial Office, where his principal concern was with
the mandated territories in the Middle East. For the costly British forces in the area he substituted
a reliance on the air force and the establishment of rulers congenial to British interests; for this
settlement of Arab affairs he relied heavily on the advice of T.E. Lawrence. For Palestine, where
he inherited conflicting pledges to Jews and Arabs, he produced in 1922 the White Paper that
confirmed Palestine as a Jewish national home while recognizing continuing Arab rights. Churchill
never had departmental responsibility for Ireland, but he progressed from an initial belief in firm,
even ruthless, maintenance of British rule to an active role in the negotiations that led to the Irish
treaty of 1921. Subsequently, he gave full support to the new Irish government.
In the autumn of 1922 the insurgent Turks appeared to be moving toward a forcible reoccupation
of the Dardanelles neutral zone, which was protected by a small British force
at Chanak (now Çanakkale). Churchill was foremost in urging a firm stand against them, but the
handling of the issue by the cabinet gave the public impression that a major war was being risked
for an inadequate cause and on insufficient consideration. A political debacle ensued that brought
the shaky coalition government down in ruins, with Churchill as one of the worst casualties.
Gripped by a sudden attack of appendicitis, he was not able to appear in public until two days
before the election, and then only in a wheelchair. He was defeated humiliatingly by more than
10,000 votes. He thus found himself, as he said, all at once “without an office, without a seat,
without a party, and even without an appendix.”
2.3 In and out of office, 1922–29
In convalescence and political impotence Churchill turned to his brush and his pen. His painting
never rose above the level of a gifted amateur’s, but his writing once again provided him with the
financial base his independent brand of politics required. His autobiographical history of the
war, The World Crisis, netted him the £20,000 with which he purchased Chartwell, henceforth his
country home in Kent. When he returned to politics it was as a crusading anti-Socialist, but in
1923, when Stanley Baldwin was leading the Conservatives on a protectionist program, Churchill
stood, at Leicester, as a Liberal free trader. He lost by approximately 4,000 votes. Asquith’s
decision in 1924 to support a minority Labour government moved Churchill farther to the right.
He stood as an “Independent Anti-Socialist” in a by-election in the Abbey division of Westminster.

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Although opposed by an official Conservative candidate—who defeated him by a hairbreadth of
43 votes—Churchill managed to avoid alienating the Conservative leadership and indeed
won conspicuous support from many prominent figures in the party. In the general election in
November 1924 he won an easy victory at Epping under the thinly disguised Conservative label
of “Constitutionalist.” Baldwin, free of his flirtation with protectionism, offered Churchill, the
“constitutionalist free trader,” the post of chancellor of the Exchequer. Surprised, Churchill
accepted; dumbfounded, the country interpreted it as a move to absorb into the party all the right-
of-centre elements of the former coalition.
In the five years that followed, Churchill’s early liberalism survived only in the form of advocacy
of rigid laissez-faire economics; for the rest he appeared, repeatedly, as the leader of the diehards.
He had no natural gift for financial administration, and though the noted economist John Maynard
Keynes criticized him unsparingly, most of the advice he received was orthodox and harmful. His
first move was to restore the gold standard, a disastrous measure, from which flowed deflation,
unemployment, and the miners’ strike that led to the general strike of 1926. Churchill offered no
remedy except the cultivation of strict economy, extending even to the armed services. Churchill
viewed the general strike as a quasi-revolutionary measure and was foremost in resisting a
negotiated settlement. He leaped at the opportunity of editing the British Gazette, an emergency
official newspaper, which he filled with bombastic and frequently inflammatory propaganda. The
one relic of his earlier radicalism was his partnership with Neville Chamberlain as minister of
health in the cautious expansion of social services, mainly in the provision of widows’ pensions.
In 1929, when the government fell, Churchill, who would have liked a Tory-Liberal reunion,
deplored Baldwin’s decision to accept a minority Labour government. The next year an open rift
developed between the two men. On Baldwin’s endorsement of a Round Table Conference with
Indian leaders, Churchill resigned from the shadow cabinet and threw himself into a passionate, at
times almost hysterical, campaign against the Government of India bill (1935) designed to give
India dominionstatus.
2.4 Exclusion from office, 1929–39
Thus, when in 1931 the National Government was formed, Churchill, though a supporter, had no
hand in its establishment or place in its councils. He had arrived at a point where, for all his

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abilities, he was distrusted by every party. He was thought to lack judgment and stability and was
regarded as a guerrilla fighter impatient of discipline. He was considered a clever man who
associated too much with clever men—Birkenhead, Beaverbrook, Lloyd George—and who
despised the necessary humdrum associations and compromises of practical politics.
In this situation he found relief, as well as profit, in his pen, writing, in Marlborough: His Life and
Times, a massive rehabilitation of his ancestor against the criticisms of the 19th-century
historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. But overriding the past and transcending his worries about
India was a mounting anxiety about the growing menace of Hitler’s Germany. Before a supine
government and a doubting opposition, Churchill persistently argued the case for taking the
German threat seriously and for the need to prevent the Luftwaffe from securing parity with
the Royal Air Force. In this he was supported by a small but devoted personal following, in
particular the gifted, curmudgeonly Oxford physics professor Frederick A. Lindemann (later Lord
Cherwell), who enabled him to build up at Chartwell a private intelligence centre the information
of which was often superior to that of the government. When Baldwin became prime minister in
1935, he persisted in excluding Churchill from office but gave him the exceptional privilege of
membership in the secret committee on air-defense research, thus enabling him to work on some
vital national problems. But Churchill had little success in his efforts to impart urgency to
Baldwin’s administration. The crisis that developed when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 found
Churchill ill prepared, divided between a desire to build up the League of Nationsaround the
concept of collective security and the fear that collectiveaction would drive Benito Mussolini into
the arms of Hitler. The Spanish Civil War (1936–39) found him convinced of the virtues of
nonintervention, first as a supporter and later as a critic of Francisco Franco. Such vagaries of
judgment in fact reflected the overwhelming priority he accorded to one issue—the containment of
German aggressiveness. At home there was one grievous, characteristic, romantic misreading of
the political and public mood, when, in Edward VIII’s abdication crisis of 1936, he vainly opposed
Baldwin by a public championing of the King’s cause.
When Neville Chamberlain succeeded Baldwin, the gulf between the Cassandra-like Churchill and
the Conservative leaders widened. Repeatedly the accuracy of Churchill’s information on
Germany’s aggressive plans and progress was confirmed by events; repeatedly his warnings were
ignored. Yet his handful of followers remained small; politically, Chamberlain felt secure in
ignoring them. As German pressure mounted on Czechoslovakia, Churchill without success urged

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the government to effect a joint declaration of purpose by Great Britain, France, and the Soviet
Union. When the Munich Agreement with Hitler was made in September 1938, sacrificing
Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, Churchill laid bare its implications, insisting that it represented “a
total and unmitigated defeat.” In March 1939 Churchill and his group pressed for a truly national
coalition, and, at last, sentiment in the country, recognizing him as the nation’s spokesman, began
to agitate for his return to office. As long as peace lasted, Chamberlain ignored all such
persuasions.
3. Leadership During World War II
In a sense, the whole of Churchill’s previous career had been a preparation for wartime leadership.
An intense patriot; a romantic believer in his country’s greatness and its historic role in Europe,
the empire, and the world; a devotee of action who thrived on challenge and crisis; a student,
historian, and veteran of war; a statesman who was master of the arts of politics, despite or because
of long political exile; a man of iron constitution, inexhaustible energy, and total concentration, he
seemed to have been nursing all his faculties so that when the moment came he could lavish them
on the salvation of Britain and the values he believed Britain stood for in the world.
Churchill, WinstonWinston Churchill.FSA-Office of War Information Collection/Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C. (LC-USW33-019093-C)

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On September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Chamberlain appointed
Churchill to his old post in charge of the Admiralty. The signal went out to the fleet: “Winston is
back.” On September 11 Churchill received a congratulatory note from Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt and replied over the signature “Naval Person”; a memorable correspondence had begun.
At once Churchill’s restless energy began to be felt throughout the administration, as his
ministerial colleagues as well as his own department received the first of those pungent minutes
that kept the remotest corners of British wartime government aware that their shortcomings were
liable to detection and penalty. All his efforts, however, failed to energize the torpid Anglo-French
entente during the so-called “phony war,” the period of stagnation in the European war before the
German seizure of Norway in April 1940. The failure of the Narvik and Trondheim expeditions,
dependent as they were on naval support, could not but evoke some memories of the Dardanelles
and Gallipoli, so fateful for Churchill’s reputation in World War I. This time, however, it was
Chamberlain who was blamed, and it was Churchill who endeavoured to defend him.
3.1 As prime minister
The German invasion of the Low Countries, on May 10, 1940, came like a hammer blow on top
of the Norwegian fiasco. Chamberlain resigned. He wanted Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, to
succeed him, but Halifax wisely declined. It was obvious that Churchill alone could unite and lead
the nation, since the Labour Party, for all its old distrust of Churchill’s anti-Socialism, recognized
the depth of his commitment to the defeat of Hitler. A coalition government was formed that
included all elements save the far left and right. It was headed by a war cabinet of five, which
included at first both Chamberlain and Halifax—a wise but also magnanimous recognition of the
numerical strength of Chamberlainite conservatism—and two Labour leaders, Clement
Attlee and Arthur Greenwood. The appointment of Ernest Bevin, a tough trade-union leader, as
minister of labour guaranteed cooperation on this vital front. Offers were made to Lloyd George,
but he declined them. Churchill himself took, in addition to the leadership of the House of
Commons, the Ministry of Defence. The pattern thus set was maintained throughout the war
despite many changes of personnel. The cabinet became an agency of swift decision, and the
government that it controlled remained representative of all groups and parties. The Prime Minister
concentrated on the actual conduct of the war. He delegated freely but also probed and interfered

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continuously, regarding nothing as too large or too small for his attention. The main function of
the chiefs of the armed services became that of containing his great dynamism, as a governor
regulates a powerful machine; but, though he prodded and pressed them continuously, he never
went against their collective judgment. In all this, Parliament played a vital part. If World War II
was strikingly free from the domestic political intrigues of World War I, it was in part because
Churchill, while he always dominated Parliament, never neglected it or took it for granted. For
him, Parliament was an instrument of public persuasion on which he played like a master and from
which he drew strength and comfort.
On May 13 Churchill faced the House of Commons for the first time as prime minister. He warned
members of the hard road ahead—“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”—and
committed himself and the nation to all-out war until victory was achieved. Behind this simplicity
of aim lay an elaborate strategy to which he adhered with remarkable consistency throughout the
war. Hitler’s Germany was the enemy; nothing should distract the entire British people from the
task of effecting its defeat. Anyone who shared this goal, even a Communist, was an acceptable
ally. The indispensable ally in this endeavour, whether formally at war or not, was the United
States. The cultivation and maintenance of its support was a central principle of Churchill’s
thought. Yet whether the United States became a belligerent partner or not, the war must be won
without a repetition for Britain of the catastrophic bloodlettings of World War I; and Europe at the
conflict’s end must be reestablished as a viable, self-determining entity, while the Commonwealth
should remain as a continuing, if changing, expression of Britain’s world role. Provided these
essentials were preserved, Churchill, for all his sense of history, was surprisingly willing to
sacrifice any national shibboleths—of orthodox economics, of social convention, of military
etiquette or tradition—on the altar of victory. Thus, within a couple of weeks of this crusading
anti-Socialist’s assuming power, Parliament passed legislation placing all “persons, their services
and their property at the disposal of the Crown”—granting the government in effect the most
sweeping emergency powers in modern British history.
The effort was designed to match the gravity of the hour. After the Allied defeat and the evacuation
of the battered British forces from Dunkirk, Churchill warned Parliament that invasion was a real
risk to be met with total and confident defiance. Faced with the swift collapse of France, Churchill
made repeated personal visits to the French government in an attempt to keep France in the war,
culminating in the celebrated offer of Anglo-French union on June 16, 1940. When all this failed,

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the Battle of Britain began on July 10. Here Churchill was in his element, in the firing line—at
fighter headquarters, inspecting coast defenses or antiaircraft batteries, visiting scenes of bomb
damage or victims of the “blitz,” smoking his cigar, giving his V sign, or broadcasting frank reports
to the nation, laced with touches of grim Churchillian humour and splashed with
Churchillian rhetoric. The nation took him to its heart; he and they were one in “their finest hour.”
Other painful and more debatable decisions fell to Churchill. The French fleet was attacked to
prevent its surrender intact to Hitler. A heavy commitment was made to the concentrated bombing
of Germany. At the height of the invasion threat, a decision was made to reinforce British strength
in the eastern Mediterranean. Forces were also sent to Greece, a costly sacrifice; the evacuation of
Crete looked like another Gallipoli, and Churchill came under heavy fire in Parliament.
In these hard days the exchange of U.S. overage destroyers for British Caribbean bases and the
response, by way of lend-lease, to Churchill’s boast “Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job”
were especially heartening to one who believed in a “mixing-up” of the English-
speaking democracies. The unspoken alliance was further cemented in August 1941 by the
dramatic meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, which
produced the Atlantic Charter, a statement of common principles between the United States and
Britain.
3.2 Formation of the “grand alliance”
When Hitler launched his sudden attack on the Soviet Union, Churchill’s response was swift
and unequivocal. In a broadcast on June 22, 1941, while refusing to “unsay” any of his earlier
criticisms of Communism, he insisted that “the Russian danger…is our danger” and pledged aid
to the Russian people. Henceforth, it was his policy to construct a “grand alliance” incorporating
the Soviet Union and the United States. But it took until May 1942 to negotiate a 20-year Anglo-
Soviet pact of mutual assistance.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) altered, in Churchill’s eyes, the whole
prospect of the war. He went at once to Washington, D.C., and, with Roosevelt, hammered out a
set of Anglo-American accords: the pooling of both countries’ military and economic resources
under combined boards and a combined chiefs of staff; the establishment of unity of command in

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all theatres of war; and agreement on the basic strategy that the defeat of Germany should have
priority over the defeat of Japan. The grand alliance had now come into being. Churchill could
claim to be its principal architect. Safeguarding it was the primary concern of his next three and a
half years.
In protecting the alliance, the respect and affection between him and Roosevelt were of crucial
importance. They alone enabled Churchill, in the face of relentless pressure
from Stalin and ardent advocacy by the U.S. chiefs of staff, to secure the rejection of the “second
front” in 1942, a project he regarded as premature and costly. In August 1942 Churchill himself
flew to Moscow to advise Stalin of the decision and to bear the brunt of his displeasure. At home,
too, he came under fire in 1942: first in January after the reverses in Malaya and the Far East and
later in June when Tobruk in North Africa fell to the Germans, but on neither occasion did his
critics muster serious support in Parliament. The year 1942 saw some reconstruction of the cabinet
in a “leftward” direction, which was reflected in the adoption in 1943 of Lord Beveridge’s plan
for comprehensive social insurance, endorsed by Churchill as a logical extension of the Liberal
reforms of 1911.
3.3 Military successes and political problems
The Allied landings in North Africa necessitated a fresh meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt,
this time in Casablanca in January 1943. There Churchill argued for an early, full-scale attack on
“the under-belly of the Axis” but won only a grudging acquiescence from the Americans. There
too was evolved the “unconditional surrender” formula of debatable wisdom. Churchill paid the
price for his intensive travel (including Tripoli, Turkey, and Algeria) by an attack of pneumonia,
for which, however, he allowed only the briefest of respites. In May he was in Washington again,
arguing against persistent American aversion to his “under-belly” strategy; in August he was
at Quebec, working out the plans for Operation Overlord, the cross-Channel assault. When he
learned that the Americans were planning a large-scale invasion of Burma in 1944, his fears that
their joint resources would not be adequate for a successful invasion of Normandy were revived.
In November 1943 at Cairo he urged on Roosevelt priority for further Mediterranean offensives,
but at Tehrān in the first “Big Three” meeting, he failed to retain Roosevelt’s adherence to a
completely united Anglo-American front. Roosevelt, though he consulted in private with Stalin,

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refused to see Churchill alone; for all their friendship there was also an element of rivalry between
the two Western leaders that Stalin skillfully exploited. On the issue of Allied offensive drives into
southern Europe, Churchill was outvoted. Throughout the meetings Churchill had been unwell,
and on his way home he came down again with pneumonia. Though recovery was rapid, it was
mid-January 1944 before convalescence was complete. By May he was proposing to watch the D-
Day assaults from a battle cruiser; only the King’s personal plea dissuaded him.
King, W.L. Mackenzie; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Churchill, Winston(From left, seated) Canadian Prime
Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill at an Allied conference in Quebec, 1943.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Insistence on military success did not, for Churchill, mean indifference to its political implications.
After the Quebec conference in September 1944, he flew to Moscow to try to conciliate the
Russians and the Poles and to get an agreed division of spheres of influence in the Balkans that
would protect as much of them as possible from Communism. In Greecehe used British forces to
thwart a Communist takeover and at Christmas flew to Athens to effect a settlement. Much of what
passed at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, including the Far East settlement, concerned
only Roosevelt and Stalin, and Churchill did not interfere. He fought to save the Poles but saw
clearly enough that there was no way to force the Soviets to keep their promises. Realizing this,

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he urged the United States to allow the Allied forces to thrust as far into eastern Europe as possible
before the Russian armies should fill the vacuum left by German power, but he could not win over
Roosevelt, Vice Pres. Harry S. Truman, or their generals to his views. He went to Potsdam in July
in a worried mood. But in the final decisions of the conference he had no part; halfway through,
when news came of his government’s defeat in parliamentary elections, he had to return
to England and tender his resignation.
3.4 Electoral defeat
Already in 1944, with victory in prospect, party politics had revived, and by May 1945 all parties
in the wartime coalition wanted an early election. But whereas Churchill wanted the coalition to
continue at least until Japan was defeated, Labour wished to resume its independence. Churchill
as the popular architect of victory seemed unbeatable, but as an election campaigner he proved to
be his own worst enemy, indulging, seemingly at Beaverbrook’s urging, in extravagant prophecies
of the appalling consequences of a Labour victory and identifying himself wholly with the
Conservative cause. His campaign tours were a triumphal progress, but it was the war leader, not
the party leader, whom the crowds cheered. Labour’s careful but sweeping program of economic
and social reform was a better match for the nation’s mood than Churchill’s flamboyance. Though
personally victorious at his Essex constituency of Woodford, Churchill saw his party reduced to
213 seats in a Parliament of 640.
4. Postwar Political Career
4.1 As opposition leader and world statesman
The shock of rejection by the nation fell heavily on Churchill. Indeed, though he accepted the role
of leader of the parliamentary opposition, he was never wholly at home in it. The economic and
social questions that dominated domestic politics were not at the centre of his interests. Nor, with
his imperial vision, could he approve of what he called Labour’s policy of “scuttle,” as evidenced
in the granting of independence to India and Burma (though he did not vote against the necessary
legislation). But in foreign policy a broad identity of view persisted between the front benches,

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and this was the area to which Churchill primarily devoted himself. On March 5, 1946, at Fulton,
Missouri, he enunciated, in the presence of President Truman, the two central themes of his
postwar view of the world: the need for Britain and the United States to unite as guardians of the
peace against the menace of Soviet Communism, which had brought down an “iron curtain” across
the face of Europe; and with equal fervour he emerged as an advocate of European union. At
Zürich, on September 19, 1946, he urged the formation of “a council of Europe” and himself
attended the first assembly of the council at Strasbourg in 1949. Meanwhile, he busied himself
with his great history, The Second World War, six volumes (1948–53).
The general election of February 1950 afforded Churchill an opportunity to seek again a
personal mandate. He abstained from the extravagances of 1945 and campaigned with his party
rather than above it.
The electoral onslaught shook Labour but left them still in office. It took what Churchill called
“one more heave” to defeat them in a second election, in October 1951. Churchill again took a
vigorous lead in the campaign. He pressed the government particularly hard on its handling of the
crisis caused by Iran’s nationalization of British oil companies and in return had to withstand
charges of warmongering. The Conservatives were returned with a narrow majority of 17, and
Churchill became prime minister for the second time. He formed a government in which the more
liberal Conservatives predominated, though the Liberal Party itself declined Churchill’s
suggestion of office. A prominent figure in the government was R.A. Butler, the progressive-
minded chancellor of the Exchequer. Anthony Eden was foreign secretary. Some notable
Churchillians were included, among them Lord Cherwell, who, as paymaster general, was
principal scientific adviser with special responsibilities for atomic research and development.
4.2 As prime minister again
The domestic labours and battles of his administration were far from Churchill’s main concerns.
Derationing, decontrolling, rehousing, safeguarding the precarious balance of payments—these
were relatively noncontroversial policies; only the return of nationalized steel and road transport
to private hands aroused excitement. Critics sometimes complained of a lack of prime ministerial
direction in these areas and, indeed, of a certain slackness in the reins of government. Undoubtedly
Churchill was getting older and reserving more and more of his energies for what he regarded as

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the supreme issues, peace and war. He was convinced that Labour had allowed the transatlantic
relationship to sag, and one of his first acts was to visit Washington (and also Ottawa) in January
1952 to repair the damage he felt had been done. The visit helped to check U.S. fears that the
British would desert the Korean War, harmonized attitudes toward German rearmament and,
distasteful though it was to Churchill, resulted in the acceptance of a U.S. naval commander in
chief of the eastern Atlantic. It did not produce that sharing of secrets of atom bomb manufacture
that Churchill felt had unfairly lapsed after the war. To the disappointment of many, Churchill’s
advocacy of European union did not result in active British participation; his government confined
itself to endorsement from the sidelines, though in 1954, faced with the collapse of the European
Defense Community, Churchill and Eden came forward with a pledge to maintain British troops
on the Continent for as long as necessary.
The year 1953 was in many respects a gratifying one for Churchill. It brought the coronation of
Queen Elizabeth II, which drew out all his love of the historic and symbolic. He personally
received two notable distinctions, the Order of the Garter and the Nobel Prize for Literature.
However, his hopes for a revitalized “special relationship” with Pres. Dwight D.
Eisenhower during his tenure in the White House, beginning in 1953, were largely frustrated. A
sudden stroke in June, which caused partial paralysis, obliged Churchill to cancel a planned
Bermuda meeting at which he hoped to secure Eisenhower’s agreement to summit talks with the
Russians. By October, Churchill had made a remarkable recovery and the meeting was held in
December. But it did not yield results commensurate with Churchill’s hopes. The two leaders, for
all their amity, were not the men they once were; their subordinates, John Foster Dulles and
Anthony Eden, were antipathetic; and, above all, the role and status of each country had changed.
In relation to the Far East in particular there was a persistent failure to see eye to eye. Though
Churchill and Eden visited Washington, D.C., in June 1954 in hopes of securing U.S. acceptance
of the Geneva Accords designed to bring an end to the war in Indochina, their success was limited.
Over Egypt, however, Churchill’s conversion to an agreement permitting a phased withdrawal of
British troops from the Suez base won Eisenhower’s endorsement and encouraged hopes, illusory
as it subsequently appeared, of good Anglo-American cooperation in this area. In 1955, “arming
to parley,” Churchill authorized the manufacture of a British hydrogen bomb while still striving
for a summit conference. Age, however, robbed him of this last triumph. His powers were too
visibly failing. His 80th birthday, on November 30, 1954, had been the occasion of a unique all-

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party ceremony of tribute and affection in Westminster Hall. But the tribute implied
a pervasive assumption that he would soon retire. On April 5, 1955, his resignation took place,
only a few weeks before his chosen successor, Sir Anthony Eden, announced plans for a four-
power conference at Geneva.
4.3 Retirement and death
Although Churchill laid down the burdens of office amid the plaudits of the nation and the world,
he remained in the House of Commons (declining a peerage) to become “father of the house” and
even, in 1959, to fight and win yet another election. He also published another major work, A
History of the English- Speaking Peoples, four volumes (1956–58). But his health declined, and
his public appearances became rare. On April 9, 1963, he was accorded the unique distinction of
having an honorary U.S. citizenship conferred on him by an act of Congress. His death at his
London home in January 1965 was followed by a state funeral at which almost the whole world
paid tribute. He was buried in the family grave in Bladon churchyard, Oxfordshire.

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4.4 Legacy
In any age and time a man of Churchill’s force and talents would have left his mark on events and
society. A gifted journalist, a biographer and historian of classic proportions, an amateur painter
of talent, an orator of rare power, a soldier of courage and distinction, Churchill, by any standards,
was a man of rare versatility. But it was as a public figure that he excelled. His experience of office
was second only to Gladstone’s, and his gifts as a parliamentarian hardly less, but it was as a
wartime leader that he left his indelible imprint on the history of Britain and on the world. In this
capacity, at the peak of his powers, he united in a harmonious whole his liberal convictions about
social reform, his deep conservative devotion to the legacy of his nation’s history, his unshakable
resistance to tyranny from the right or from the left, and his capacity to look beyond Britain to the
larger Atlantic community and the ultimate unity of Europe. A romantic, he was also a realist, with
an exceptional sensitivity to tactical considerations at the same time as he unswervingly adhered
to his strategical objectives. A fervent patriot, he was also a citizen of the world. An indomitable
fighter, he was a generous victor. Even in the transition from war to peace, a phase in which other
leaders have often stumbled, he revealed, at an advanced age, a capacity to learn and to adjust that
was in many respects superior to that of his younger colleagues.
5.0 Life Lessons We Can All Learn from Sir Winston Churchill
Live Life to the Fullest
Winston Churchill said, “Now, is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is,
perhaps, the end of the beginning.” These words actually tell us that it is important to value life.
Life is actually a journey that is meant to be lived. It is undeniable that life’s happiness also com
with troubles. However, there are no problems that do not have any solution.
What Winston Churchill wants to know is that we have to embrace the beauty of life. He teaches
us that the key to success is ourselves and the changes that we are willing to embrace. It is actually
best to live every day like it is the last day. That is why, it is essential for us to do our best in every
action that we take.

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Don’t Give Up
According to Winston Churchill, “continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to
unlocking our potential.” The thing with individuals today is that they want instant success.
However, success is a process that needs to be carefully tendered. You can start small and work
your way up to the top. Even in your small continuous efforts, you will succeed.
Persistence is actually the key to achieving your goals. No matter how hard life could be, always
keep your hopes up and be persistent. Remember, that only a few people have truly tasted success
because only a few have taken the road less travelled. In the end, it does pay to go the extra mile.
Don’t give up to soon, or you will lose something that you might deserve to have.
Think Positive
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every
difficulty.” This is a quote by Winston Churchill that up to this day could bring a string impact to
a lot of people and the way they live their lives. The world has to so much to offer and the people
have the freewill to make decisions that are appropriate to their needs. However, very few people
master the art optimism. Most people succeed because of their positive outlook in life. This is what
Winston Churchill wants the populace to know. Positivity attracts positive opportunities. Your
positive insights can turn into positive goals, and positive goals can turn into success.
Focus on the Present
Through Winston Churchill, we are taught that “it is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link
in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.” A lot of times, many people miss their
opportunities because they are too busy looking into what might happen in the future compared to
what is already happening in the present. However, the great Winston Churchill wants us to know
that focusing on the now is actually the first steps to success. The goals have to be realistic as well.
Alongside the focus needed for your success is the optimism and the discipline to make sure that
you follow the right tracks to your success.

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Keep Your Motivation and Enthusiasm Intact
One of the life lessons that Winston Churchill has offered to the universe is the art of enthusiasm.
He once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” This actually
reminds us that the life we ought to live will never be perfect. There could be failures along the
way, but those failures should never be the reason for us to give up. Things may not go as you
have planned them to be. However, you have the power to keep your faith and improve your
enthusiasm even more. Positivity is still the key in this life lesson that Winston Churchill has left
as a legacy to the world.
Be Perseverant, Be A Better Person
“Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential” — Winston
Churchill
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
I don’t consider myself a particularly strong or intelligent person. However, I’m able to accomplish
a lot because I’m consistent in acting towards my goals. But it wasn’t always so. What good is it to
think that we don’t have the strength or intelligence to do something? A lot of times we don’t even
give ourselves the chance. We don’t even try. I challenge you to try something you don’t think you
have the strength or intelligence to do. Deconstruct it. Plan how you’ll be able to achieve it in a
month. Or something longer, it doesn’t matter. You’ll notice that if put continuous effort, you will
eventually accomplish it.
Be Courageous
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston
Churchill
In the face of defeat, finding the courage to move forward is all but easy. In order to achieve some
of our higher goals, we will have failures. These failures defeat us. We need not let that happen.
That’s one thing I like about reading biographies. We all know how great people are in their peak,
yet we forget all the hardships they had to go through to get where they are today. They had the

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courage to press on during hard times. I don’t know of anyone who achieved great things without
failing, many times, but picking themselves up and having the courage to move forward.
Be A Giver
“We make a living by what we get, but we make life by what we give.” — Winston Churchill
This is a very powerful quote for me personally. After traveling the world for a year, I realized that
life is all about giving back. There’s nothing more satisfying than helping others achieve their goals.
I want to make giving a part of my life going forward. Back when I was a kid, I didn’t understand
why my mother gave everything she had for everyone even though she had nothing. She has always
been a giver, yet never seemed to get anything back in return. I was wrong. Happiness from others
is more than enough. Genuinely give and you’ll get genuine love back.
Be Forward-Thinking
“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a
better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”— Winston Churchill
It’s not by chance that a lot of people see Elon Musk as their role model. He’s one of the few
entrepreneurs who is willing to risk all his assets in order to move humanity forward. Not everyone
agrees with his ideas, yet no one can deny that at least he’s one of the most forward-thinking
entrepreneurs of our time. And I’m not comparing Musk’s achievements, with Churchill’s, I’m just
giving a more recent example. Just yesterday, I was watching “Daughters of Destiny” on Netflix.
It’s a documentary about Shanti Bhavan, a school that educates kids of the lowest cast so they have
a chance at accomplishing great things in life. It’s more complex than that, so I encourage you to
watch it also to have a better understanding. What I’m coming at is: Dr. George started that school
with the future in mind. He recognized that to bring change to a country with deep traditions, it has
to start from a new generation. They onboard kids from the age of 4. Imagine. To see the results of
their labor, they have to wait 14 years until the kid is ready to make their own space in the world! I
personally feel like he’s on the right track and it resonates very well with Churchill’s quote.

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5.1 How Winston Churchill inspired me:
“Never, never, never give up”- Winston Churchill
This quote changed my mind and life. At the time of my university admission I was a failure
person. I didn’t got chance in any university. And I admitted in a private university at that time.
Then I was a frustrated person. One day I noticed this famous quote. And then I read about Winston
Churchill and his other quote. And my mind changed and I started taking preparation for second
time again. And I succeeded & got chance in 3 universities. Thus this famous quote inspired me .
Thanks