Winston Churchill

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• Born: 30 November 1874
• Birthplace: Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England
• Died: 24 January 1965
• Best Known As: Indefatigable prime minister of Britain during World War II

Soldier, politician and finally prime minister, Winston Churchill was one of Britain's greatest 20th-century heroes. He is particularly remembered for his indomitable spirit while leading Great Britain to victory in World War II. Churchill fought with the British Army in India and Sudan, and as a journalist was captured in South Africa (where his dispatches from the Boer War first brought him to public prominence). He became a member of Parliament in 1900 and remained an MP for over 64 years. His early topsy-turvy political career earned him many enemies, but his stirring speeches, bulldog tenacity and refusal to make peace with Adolf Hitler made him the popular choice to lead England through World War II. When Britain and its allies prevailed in 1945, Churchill's place in history was assured. (Ironically, he lost the prime ministership two months after Germany's surrender, when the opposition Labor Party took majority control of Parliament.) One of the 20th century's most quotable wits, Churchill wrote a plethora of histories, biographies and memoirs, including the landmark four-volume A History of the English-speaking Peoples (1956-58). In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature; he was knighted the same year.

Churchill served as prime minister from 1940-45 and again from 1951-55... His wartime contemporaries included presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, French resistance leader Charles de Gaulle and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin... More recent British PMs have included Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair... The famous portrait of a scowling Churchill was taken by Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh.

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(b. Blenheim, Oxfordshire, 30 Nov. 1874; d. 24 Jan. 1965) British; Home Secretary 1910 – 11, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1924 – 9, Prime Minister 1940 – 5, 1951 – 5; KG 1953 The son of Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston had an undistinguished education at Harrow. After Sandhurst, he joined the 4th Hussars and had extensive overseas experience. In 1899, he fought Oldham as the Conservative candidate, lost, and then went as a journalist to cover the Boer War in South Africa. He returned a national hero, having fought to protect British troops and having escaped from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp. He was elected as Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900. In 1904 he crossed the floor of the House to join the Liberals, doing so on the issue of free trade. He was quickly rewarded, being made a junior minister in the new Liberal government in 1906. Two years later he joined the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. In 1910 he was appointed Home Secretary. He was 35. He implemented some prison reforms but alienated radicals by his willingness to sanction the deployment of troops in Wales during a coal strike. A year later he was made First Lord of the Admiralty. He helped modernize the navy but his reputation declined in the early years of the First World War and he was blamed for the failure of the attack on the Dardanelles. In 1915 the Conservatives insisted on his removal from the Admiralty as one of the conditions for joining a coalition. He was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but resigned within a matter of months in order to see active service. After a year at the front, he returned to Westminster. Excluded initially (on Bonar Law's insistence) from the Lloyd George government, he was brought in as Minister of Munitions in 1917. When the war ended, he was appointed Minister of War and used the post as a platform for attacking the new Bolshevik regime in Russia. He was then promoted to be Colonial Secretary. His ministerial career as a Liberal MP ended in 1922. He lost his seat. He wrote a two-volume work entitled The World Crisis, and — believing that the Conservatives were the party best placed to combat the threat of socialism — returned to the Conservative fold. In 1924 he was elected as the "constitutionalist" candidate in Epping and within days Stanley Baldwin, wanting to separate him from creating an alliance with Lloyd George, had appointed him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was a remarkable political rehabilitation. As Chancellor, Churchill presided over a return to the gold standard and the General Strike. He served as Chancellor throughout the parliament (1924 – 9). However, he proved a difficult and demanding colleague and Baldwin decided not to appoint him again to government. When the Conservatives returned to office in 1931, dominating the National Government, he was consigned to the back benches.

The 1930s were Churchill's wilderness years. He antagonized his own side by his vehement opposition to the Government of India Bill, giving the country dominion status, and by his demands for more rapid rearmament. He was also unpopular because of his support for the King, Edward VIII, during the abdication crisis. By 1937, wrote one biographer (Virginia Crowe), "his influence had fallen to zero".

The failure of the Munich agreement and the declaration of war vindicated the stance taken by Churchill. Neville Chamberlain brought him into his wartime government as First Lord of the Admiralty. Chamberlain's resignation in 1940 created a vacancy that Churchill was to fill. Though Labour leaders and most Conservative MPs would have supported Lord Halifax as Prime Minister, Halifax demurred in favour of Churchill. Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and threw himself into the office with vigour. He eventually overcame criticisms and political sniping by critics on the Conservative benches. His carefully crafted speeches proved inspirational. He took the House of Commons seriously. His strategic leadership was sometimes flawed but often brilliant. He dominated a powerful War Cabinet. He overcame some difficult moments in the House of Commons, especially in 1942, when a united house was essential to the war effort. When victory was in sight, he wanted to continue the coalition government until a general election could be held. Labour leaders disagreed, and so a caretaker Conservative government was formed in 1945. It held office until the general election later that year, when the Labour Party was returned to power with its first working majority. The result shocked Churchill. His wife told him it might be a blessing in disguise. He replied that, in that case, it was very well disguised.

In Opposition, Churchill proved a lacklustre leader, making some important pronouncements on foreign affairs, but leaving it to others to prepare the party for a new era. He was fortunate in having lieutenants who were up to the task. His own position was variously criticized and some MPs wanted him to retire gracefully. He rebuffed any suggestions that he should step down and he led his party into the 1950 and 1951 general elections. The latter resulted in a Conservative victory and Churchill forming his first peacetime administration. He had little feel for what should be done. He confided to Oliver Lyttleton that "In the worst of the war I could always see how to do it. Today's problems's are elusive and intangible." He was keen to ensure social harmony and was willing to appease the unions to avoid industrial unrest. He had able ministers but he had doubts about Eden's ability to succeed him. Despite being laid low by strokes, he carried on. He eventually gave up office in April 1955, at the age of 80. He stayed in the House of Commons until the 1964 general election, though making no significant contribution to parliamentary debates. He died on 24 January 1965 and was given a state funeral.

Churchill was difficult, impulsive, prone to depressive moods, extreme at times in pursuing his views, and sometimes plain wrong. He was also brave, determined, at times clear-sighted, and the outstanding Englishman of the century. He provided inspirational leadership as Prime Minister in time of war, towering above his colleagues. He died as the great commoner, having declined a dukedom.

Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965). Churchill was an atavistic anachronism who found lasting glory and fulfilment as an inspirational tribal leader during WW II, but was otherwise closely associated with many of the British military, foreign, and domestic policy disasters of the first half of the 20th century. He had a nightmare childhood: his father Lord Randolph succumbed to syphilitic insanity, while his beautiful mother Jennie, an American heiress, was promiscuous even by the lax standards of her class and time. Both largely ignored him. With Randolph dead and no longer a source of embarrassment, Winston exploited his mother's well-placed connections to advance his career.

Arriving in India with the 4th Hussars, he served in the 1897 Malakand expedition, later writing The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898). His combination of serving officer and war correspondent aroused deep suspicion, particularly in the breast of Kitchener, and only his mother's wiles enabled him to join the 21st Lancers and to take part in one of the last cavalry charges at Omdurman, as recounted in The River War (1899). He resigned his commission to stand as the losing Conservative candidate at Oldham in 1899, went to cover the Second Boer War for the Morning Post, was captured when the armoured train in which he was travelling was ambushed, escaped from a POW camp, and returned to England having finally achieved the fame and (modest) fortune he sought, to win Oldham in 1900, an astonishing reversal of fortunes in just over a year.

While previously he had shamelessly used his parents' connections for self-advancement, now he was a celebrity in his own right. Not a natural public speaker, his dominance of the form emerged from hours of preparation. Later in life, when found muttering to himself by a confidant, he explained with a grin that he was rehearsing his off-the-cuff remarks for the next day. The jury will remain out concerning whether his move from the Conservative to the Liberal party in 1904 was the product of opportunism or principle; that it was encouraged by Lloyd George argues strongly for the former. In the 1906 general election he won a seat in Manchester for the Liberals and in 1908 finally obtained a cabinet post as President of the Board of Trade. Defeated in Manchester, he won re-election in Dundee and also wed Clementine Hozier, with whom he was to have a lifelong, happy marriage. Leaving aside his stormy tenure at the Board of Trade and his role in the curbing of the power of the House of Lords and in the matter of Home Rule for Ireland, during which time he made more enemies than most manage in a whole career, he became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911 and oversaw the largest naval expansion programme in British history and ordered mobilization on his own authority on 2 August 1914, guaranteeing the orderly and uninterrupted passage of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France. In October he went in person to Antwerp to encourage it to hold out while the Belgian army escaped and the Channel ports were secured (see Antwerp, sieges of).

Subsequently things went less well; his partnership with Fisher foundered over Churchill's enthusiasm for a naval expedition to seize the Dardanelles. After a number of warships were sunk Adm de Robeck called it off, Fisher resigned, and Churchill was, at Conservative insistence, demoted from the Admiralty to the Duchy of Lancaster during the formation of the first coalition government. He was to be blamed for the Gallipoli fiasco, for which he was given responsibility without any power to influence decisions. He resigned in November 1915 and served as battalion commander with the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the western front, returning to parliament in June 1916. Over intense Conservative opposition, Lloyd George gave him the non-cabinet post of Minister of Munitions in the second coalition government, a post to which he brought characteristic energy, particularly in deploying tanks, a pet project since Admiralty days.

In January 1919 he became war minister and his name is indelibly linked with the twin debacles of the Allied North Russia intervention and the Anglo-Irish war. As colonial secretary from 1921, he developed an imaginative and cost-effective policy of allying with friendly local rulers and depending heavily on the independent air force for imperial policing, but he also confirmed an ultimately provocative and untenable policy of recognizing both Jewish and Arab rights in Palestine. Not least, he advocated confrontation with a resurgent Turkey, one of the nails in the coffin of the coalition government. He was a notable casualty of the 1922 general election.

While briefly ‘without an office, without a seat, without a party’, he wrote The World Crisis and with the proceeds bought the country house at Chartwell, which was to remain his home. He also took up painting, revealing yet another talent. The wonder is that he found time to do everything he did, usually well and always passionately. His bucolic interlude ended in 1923-4 with a return to politics as an adamant anti-socialist (although he was one of the pre-war founders of the welfare state) and a return to the Conservative fold when the Liberal party became an electoral irrelevance.

Baldwin appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post for which he was deeply unsuited and in which he received, and took, very bad advice from Treasury and Bank of England mandarins. The return to the gold standard provoked Keynes, of whom Churchill might otherwise have approved as an economist with only one hand, to follow up his insightful The Economic Consequences of the Peace with the equally damning The Economic Consequences of Mister Churchill. After 1929, after a further round of managing to offend nearly everyone of political consequence without making any compensatory friends, he began a decade in ‘the wilderness’ from which only the renewal of war with Germany was to retrieve him. He did not, of course, let the grass grow …

The most crucial relationship he developed during the 1930s was with Franklin Roosevelt, who shared his fears of a resurgent Germany but who was unable to overcome US isolationism until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler, not content with his titanic war against the USSR, did Churchill the enormous favour of declaring war on the USA as well. The two men established a covert liaison through the Canadian industrialist Stephenson that was clearly well within the ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ for which a US president may be impeached. Their aim was to finesse the awkward fact that with a large German and Irish population, a (well-found) suspicion that British propaganda and other black arts had drawn the USA into WW I, and the strain of ‘manifest destiny’ that saw the British empire as the principal obstacle to US world hegemony, they were dealing with a majority public opinion that was not neutral but actively hostile to British interests. When Churchill later wrote of the New World coming to redress the balance of the Old, he knew of what he spoke, and insofar as anything today remains of the once ‘special relationship’, it is due as much to the abiding admiration of many Americans for Churchill as it is to more apparent than real similarities of language and culture.

Brought back to the Admiralty at the outbreak of WW II amid the panic of the civil servants and the rejoicing of the Royal Navy, the abrasiveness that ruffled so many feathers in peacetime suddenly became, even in the eyes of a class and ideological enemy like Ernest Bevin, precisely the qualities the nation needed to fight for its life. After the 1940 resignation of the unfortunate Chamberlain, there was a moment when the accommodationist Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax seemed the likely successor, but the mood of the time was for Churchill, whose maiden speech as PM promised ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’.

It has been argued that by continuing the war, Churchill not only bankrupted Britain but also precipitated the very socialism at home and retreat from empire abroad that he had fought against so strenuously. While the war undoubtedly completed the destruction of the economic underpinnings of the world in which he grew up which had begun in WW I, it is idle to pretend that the cost of any kind of deal which might have been made with Hitler would not have included at the very least national self-respect. The English Channel provided both a barrier to invasion and insurance that force majeure in the form of an invading army could not be adduced to compromise with what was, without doubt, absolute evil. If the old nation had to destroy itself, it could not have done so for a cause more befitting its noblest aspirations, or under a better chieftain.

Churchill's penchant for warfare on the cheap, in terms of human lives if not of treasure, led him to seek the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Axis and to pursue what can only be seen as strategic red herrings if one discounts the fact that his overriding aim was to avoid a repetition of the holocaust of WW I. In private he was extremely realistic about the limited achievements that the bombing campaign might bring, while assuring his impatient allies that it was tearing the heart out of Nazi Germany. Thanks to him more people died of traffic accidents than from enemy action in Britain in the five years before the Normandy invasion, while millions of Russians and Germans were immolated on the eastern front. He drove his CIGS Alanbrooke to near nervous breakdown and the US general staff to distraction, but when the invasion finally went forward it was at a time and place of his choosing, under the operational control of a British general, and even then was only just successful. The consequences of a premature invasion, as maliciously urged by Stalin and echoed by US generals who lacked experience of what the German war machine could do, would have been the occupation of much more of Europe by the Red Army before the western Allies could regroup.

Of course numbers and industrial production counted, but at the end of the war Britain was still a great if hollowed-out power, possessed of the moral strength to conduct an orderly withdrawal from worldwide commitments she could no longer sustain. That his political heirs more than once botched the process does not diminish Churchill's legacy of the time and authority at least to try to do it right. If instead of considering him as the chief of those who led Britain through a long process where even victory concealed fundamental defeat, we instead consider him to have conducted a 50-year fighting retreat, by far the most difficult military manoeuvre, then his life's work deserves every encomium it has received. Through it all, he was the embodiment of the high Victorian ideal set out in Kipling's If--:

‘If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!’

Bibliography

• Bonham Carter, Violet, Churchill As I Knew Him (London, 1965).
• Lash, Joseph, Roosevelt and Churchill 1939-1941: The Partnership that Saved the West (New York, 1976).
• Moran, Lord Charles, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival (London, 1966).
• Pelling, Henry, Winston Churchill (New York, 1977)

— Hugh Bicheno

Son of an English statesman, Lord Randolph Churchill, and an American, Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill served as a cavalry officer and worked as a war correspondent before entering Parliament. A conservative, he joined the cabinet in 1908, and, at the start of World War I as first lord of the Admiralty, was in charge of the Royal Navy, with general oversight of the policy of searching neutral, including American, ships. Blamed for the ill‐fated Gallipoli expedition, he left government to serve on the western front. In 1919, back as minister of war, he was an advocate of military intervention in the Russian civil war. Falling out with his party leaders, Churchill spent most of the 1930s as a backbench member of Parliament, but he made his name once more as an opponent of appeasement of Nazi Germany, and again took charge of the navy in 1939. With his great experience of war and government, he was a natural choice as war leader in May 1940.

As prime minister, Churchill's rousing oratory and determination embodied Britain's will to win, but he could also be impatient and arrogant, overworking himself and others. He believed it vital to work closely with the United States, to forge a personal link to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to create a long‐term “special relationship” between the two countries. Taking an active part in military planning with U.S. and British commanders, he especially advocated a “Mediterranean Strategy,” designed to attack Germany through what he called the “soft underbelly” of Europe while preserving British Imperial interests. Defeated by the Labour Party in the July 1945 election, and replaced at the Potsdam Conference by Clement Attlee, Churchill nonetheless urged resistance to Soviet communism with the 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Missouri. As prime minister once more in 1951–55, he visited America three times and took a great interest in nuclear developments, reaching an agreement in January 1952 on the use of British air bases by American nuclear bombers. His aim was always to maintain Britain as a great power.

[See also D‐Day Landing, World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

• Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, 1991.
• Norman Rose, Churchill: An Unruly Life, 1994.
• Warren Kimball, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War, 1997

Churchill, Sir Winston S. (1874-1965) British prime minister during World War II, born Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill at Blenheim, Oxfordshire, England. He served as a soldier during World War I, and returned to serve in Parliament as minister of munitions under David Lloyd George. Following the end of the war, he was secretary for war from 1918 to 1921. Out of office for ten years (1929-1939), he became a vocal critic of Conservative policy on India, and was fiercely opposed to Chamberlain's attempt to appease Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Churchill returned to his post at the Admiralty when World War II began, and, when Arthur (Neville) Chamberlain had to resign, he was asked to form a coalition government, and did so in May 1940, becoming its prime minister. He and President Franklin D. Roosevelt were close friends, and Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941, which declared the Allies' war strategy. He also met with Allied leaders in Casablanca, Washington, Cairo, Moscow, and Tehran, and with Josef Stalin and Roosevelt in the Crimea in 1945 to plan for the coming victory over the Axis Powers. He announced the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945 and, within two weeks, his coalition government collapsed. Churchill lost in a general election in July 1945, and became the opposition leader until October 1951, when he again became prime minister. He served in that capacity until April 1955 when he resigned to take up writing and painting. In 1953, he won the Nobel Prize for literature for his six-volume history of World War II (1948-54), and also wrote the four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-58).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The English statesman and author Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) led Britain during World War II and is often described as the "savior of his country."

Sir Winston Churchill's exact place in the political history of the 20th century is, and will continue to be, a subject of debate and polemical writing. Where he succeeded, and how much he personally had to do with that success, and where he failed, and why, remain to be established. That he was a political figure of enormous influence and importance, belonging in many ways to an age earlier than the 20th century, and that he fitted uneasily into the constraints of British party politics until his moment came in 1940 are not in doubt. Until recently his reputation during the years from 1940 onward was scarcely questioned. But now historians are beginning to reassess his career in just the same way as Churchill himself tried to revise T. B. Macaulay's account of the Duke of Marlborough by writing a multivolumed Life of his distinguished ancestor (completed in 1938).

Churchill's record both before 1939 and after 1945 was for the most part undistinguished. But as Anthony Storr writes: "In 1940 Churchill became the hero that he had always dreamed of being. … In that dark time, what England needed was not a shrewd, equable, balanced leader. She needed a prophet, a heroic visionary, a man who could dream dreams of victory when all seemed lost. Winston Churchill was such a man; and his inspirational quality owed its dynamic force to the romantic world of phantasy in which he had his true being."

Early Life

Winston Churchill was born on Nov. 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace - the home given by Queen Anne to his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a Tory Democrat who achieved early success as a rebel in his party but who later failed and was cruelly described as "a man with a brilliant future behind him." His mother was Jenny Jerome, the beautiful and talented daughter of Leonard Jerome, a New York businessman.

Winston was conventionally educated following the norms of his class. He went to preparatory school, then to Harrow (1888), then to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He was neither happy nor successful at school. Winston idolized his mother, but his relations with his father, who died in 1895, were cold and distant. It is generally agreed that as a child Winston was deprived of openly expressed warmth and affection.

Churchill very early exhibited the physical courage and love of adventure and action that he was to keep throughout his political career. His first role was that of a soldier-journalist. Having joined the 4th Hussars in 1895, he immediately went to Cuba to write about the Spanish army for the Daily Graphic. He took part in the repulse of the insurgents who tried to cross the Spanish line at Trochem. In 1896 he was in India, and while on the North-West Frontier with the Malakand Field Force he began work on a novel, Savrola, a Tale of the Revolution in Laurania, which was published in 1900. More important, however, were his accounts of the military campaigns in which he participated. A book about the North-West Frontier and the Malakand Field Force was followed by a book about the reconquest of the Sudan (1899), in which he had also taken part. He went to Africa during the Boer War as a journalist for the Morning Post, and the most romantic of his escapades as a youth was his escape from a South African prison during this conflict.

Young Politician

In 1899 Churchill lost in his first attempt at election to the House of Commons. This was to be the first of many defeats in elections and by-elections during his career - he lost more elections than any other political figure in recent British history. But in 1900 he entered the House of Commons, in which he served intermittently until 1964. Throughout this long span his presence and oratory exercised a magnetic attraction in an institution he always refused to leave for the House of Lords.

Churchill's early years in politics were characterized by an interest in the radical reform of social problems. In 1905 he completed a biography of his father, which is perhaps his best book. Lord Randolph had tried to give coherence and organization to a popular socially oriented Toryism; Churchill carried that effort into the Liberal party, which he had joined in 1904 because of his disagreement with the revived demands for protectionism by the Chamberlain section of the Tory party. The major intellectual achievement of this period of Churchill's life was his Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909). In this work he stated his creed: "Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. … Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right." Churchill was very active in the great reforming government of Lord Asquith between 1908 and 1912, and his work in palliating unemployment was especially significant.

In 1912 Churchill became first lord of the Admiralty - the range of offices which he held was as remarkable as the number of elections which he lost. He switched his enthusiasm away from butter toward guns, and his goal was the preparation of Britain's fleet for impending war. While at the Admiralty, Churchill suffered a major setback. He became committed to the view that the navy could best make an impact on the 1914-1918 war in Europe by way of a swift strike through the Dardanelles. This strategy proved unsuccessful, however, and Churchill lost his Admiralty post. In 1916 he was back in the army and served for a time on the front lines in France.

Interwar Years

Churchill soon reentered political life. Kept out of the Lloyd George War Cabinet by conservative hostility to his style and philosophy, by 1921 Churchill held a post in the Colonial Office. A clash with Mustapha Kemal in Turkey, however, did not help his reputation, and in 1922 he lost his seat in the House of Commons. The Conservative party gained power for the first time since 1905, and Churchill now began long-term isolation, with few friends in any part of the political spectrum.

In 1924 Churchill severed his ties with liberalism and became chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's government. His decision to put Britain back on the gold standard was a controversial one, attacked by the economist John Maynard Keynes, among others. Although he held office under Baldwin, Churchill did not agree with the Conservative position either on defense or on imperialism. In 1931 he resigned from the Conservative "shadow cabinet" as a protest against its Indian policy. Ever the romantic imperialist, he did not want to cast away "that most truly bright and precious jewel in the crown of the King." Baldwin and he also disagreed on how to react to the crisis caused by the abdication of King Edward VIII.

Churchill's interwar years were characterized by political isolation, and during this period he made many errors and misjudgments, among them his bellicosity over the general strike of 1926. Thus he cannot be viewed simply as a popular leader who was kept waiting in the wings through no fault of his own. In fact, it is not completely evident that he was aware of the nature of the fascist threat during the 1930s.

World War II

The major period of Churchill's political career began when he became prime minister and head of the Ministry of Defense early in World War II. "I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," he wrote in the first volume of his account of the war. (This account was later published in six volumes from 1948 to 1953). His finest hour and that of the British people coincided. His leadership, which was expressed in noble speeches and ceaseless personal activity, stated precisely what Britain needed to survive through the years before United States entry into the war.

The evacuation of Dunkirk and the air defense of the Battle of Britain have become legend, but there were and are controversies over Churchill's policies. It has been argued that Churchill's oversensitivity to the Mediterranean as a theater of war led to mistakes in Crete and North Africa. The value of his resistance to the idea of a second front as the Germans advanced into Russia has also been questioned. And there has been considerable debate over the wisdom of the course he pursued at international conferences (such as those at Yalta in February 1945) which reached agreements responsible in large part for the "cold war" of the 1950s and 1960s. But although criticisms may be made of Churchill's policies, his importance as a symbol of resistance and as an inspiration to victory cannot be challenged.

Last Years

The final period of Churchill's career began with his rejection by the British people at the general election of 1945. At that election 393 Labour candidates were elected members of Parliament as against 213 Conservatives and their allies. It was one of the most striking reversals of fortune in democratic history. It may perhaps be explained by Churchill's aggressive vituperation during the campaign combined with the electorate's desire for patient social reconstruction rather than for a return to prewar economic mismanagement.

In 1951, however, Churchill again became prime minister. He resigned in April 1955 after an uneventful term in office. For many of the later years of his life, even his iron constitution was not strong enough to resist the persistent cerebral arteriosclerosis from which he suffered. He died on Jan. 24, 1965, and was given a state funeral, the details of which had been largely dictated by himself before his death.

Further Reading

Churchill's own works, combining a very personal perspective with grand historical themes, are written with great style and lucidity. They include The World Crisis (6 vols., 1923-1931), an account of World War I; The Second World War (6 vols., 1948-1953); and the less satisfactory but sometimes elegant History of the English Speaking Peoples (4 vols., 1956-1958).

An official multivolume biography of vast scope, with separate companion volumes of documents, was started by Churchill's son, Randolph S. Churchill: Winston S. Churchill, vol. 1: Youth, 1874-1900 (1966); Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume I, pts. 1 and 2 (1967); Winston S. Churchill, vol. 2: Young Statesman, 1901-1914 (1967). The best introductory assessment of Churchill is A. J. P. Taylor and others, eds., Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment (1969), a volume of essays. For the best example of what will be a growing industry of revisionism on Churchill's reputation see Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939 (1970).

There are many other studies of Churchill: Alan Moorehead, Winston Churchill in Trial and Triumph (1955); Alfred L. Rowse, The Churchills (2 vols., 1956-1958; 1 vol., 1966); Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (1957; rev. ed. 1966); American Heritage, Churchill: The Life Triumphant; the Historical Record of Ninety Years (1965); Malcolm Thomson, Churchill: His Life and Times (rev. ed. 1965; published 1949 as Life and Times of Winston Churchill); Charles McMoran Wilson Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (1966); Kenneth Young, Churchill and Beaverbrook: A Study in Friendship and Politics (1966); Brian Gardner, Churchill in His Time: A Study in Reputation, 1939-1945 (1968); Dennis Bardens, Churchill in Parliament (1969); and John Wheeler-Bennett, Action This Day: Working with Churchill (1969). Harold MacMillan's memoirs have much material on Churchill: Winds of Change, 1914-1939 (1966); The Blast of War, 1939-1945 (1967); and Tides of Fortune, 1945-1955 (1969).

Additional Sources

Charmley, John, Churchill, the end of glory: a political biography, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Churchill, Winston S. (Winston Spencer), Memories and adventures, New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Churchill, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: a life, London: Heinemann, 1991.

Pelling, Henry, Winston Churchill, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989.

Robbins, Keith, Churchill, London; New York: Longman, 1992.

Rose, Norman, Churchill: the unruly giant, New York: Free Press, 1995.

Sandys, Celia, The young Churchill: the early years of Winston Churchill, New York: Dutton, 1995.

Soames, Mary, Winston Churchill: his life as a painter: a memoir by his daughter, London: Collins, 1990.

Winston Churchill: resolution, defiance, magnanimity, good will, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.

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Winston Churchill, photographed by Yousuf Karsh, 1941. (credit: Karsh/Woodfin Camp and Associates)

(born Nov. 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, Eng. — died Jan. 24, 1965, London) British statesman and author. Son of Lord Randolph Churchill and the American Jennie Jerome, he had an unhappy childhood and was an unpromising student. After joining the 4th Hussars in 1895, he saw service as both a soldier and a journalist, and his dispatches from India and South Africa attracted wide attention. Fame as a military hero helped him win election to the House of Commons in 1900. He quickly rose to prominence and served in several cabinet posts, including first lord of the Admiralty (1911 – 15), though in World War I and during the following decade he acquired a reputation for erratic judgment. In the years before World War II, his warnings of the threat posed by Adolf Hitler's Germany were repeatedly ignored. When war broke out, he was appointed to his old post as head of the Admiralty. After Neville Chamberlain resigned, Churchill headed a coalition government as prime minister (1940 – 45). He committed himself and the nation to an all-out war until victory was achieved, and his great eloquence, energy, and indomitable fortitude made him an inspiration to his countrymen, especially in the Battle of Britain. With Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, he shaped Allied strategy through the Atlantic Charter and at the Cairo, Casablanca, and Tehran conferences. Though he was the architect of victory, his government was defeated in the 1945 elections. After the war he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. He led the Conservative Party back into power in 1951 and remained prime minister until 1955, when ill health forced his resignation. For his many writings, including The Second World War (6 vol., 1948 – 53) he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; his later works include his History of the English-Speaking Peoples (4 vol., 1956 – 58). He was knighted in 1953; he later refused the offer of a peerage. He was made an honorary U.S. citizen in 1963. In his late years he attained heroic status as one of the titans of the 20th century.

For more information on Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, visit Britannica.com.

Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965). Prime minister. Churchill was born at Blenheim palace in 1874, the elder son of Lord Randolph Churchill. His mother was the American heiress Jennie Jerome. Educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, he served with the 4th Hussars and rode in the lancers' charge at Omdurman. Between 1899 and 1900 he was a war correspondent in South Africa, where he was captured by the Boers but escaped. He saw active service in the trenches for a few months in 1916.

In 1900 he entered the House of Commons as a Conservative but crossed the floor within four years to join the Liberals on the issue of free trade. Returned as a Liberal at the next election, he gained his first ministerial experience under Campbell-Bannerman as under-secretary for the colonies. Asquith brought him into the cabinet at the age of 33 as president of the Board of Trade (1908) and moved him to the Home Office before he had reached the age of 35 (1910). By now Churchill had married Clementine Hozier (1908) who provided him with a stable emotional base for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, along with Lloyd George, he played a major part in laying the foundations of the welfare state by establishing labour exchanges and social insurance. His tenure of the Home Office, on the other hand, is remembered for the myth that he sent troops to Wales to crush the striking miners of Tonypandy (1910).

In 1911 he became 1st lord of the Admiralty and a figure of significance. Completing the work of Admiral Fisher, he replaced dreadnoughts with super-dreadnoughts, established a naval air service, and began the conversion of the fleet from coal to oil. Having the fleet ready was one of Churchill's contributions to the British war effort between 1914 and 1918. Another was the part he played in the development of the tank. However, he was remembered most of all for conceiving the 1915 Dardanelles campaign, designed to shorten the war by removing Turkey and allowing the western allies to link up with Russia. The attack on Gallipoli failed due to naval delays. In its wake, Asquith was forced to form a coalition with the Conservatives, who loathed Churchill as a renegade, and had him transferred to become chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. Lacking any influence over the course of the war, Churchill resigned and took command of a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in France. A few months later he was recalled by Lloyd George to become minister of munitions. Between 1918 and 1920 he was secretary of state for war and air, in which capacity he was responsible for running down the planned post-war Royal Air Force from 154 squadrons to 24, with only two for home defence. His attempts to persuade his colleagues to overthrow the Bolsheviks in Russia were unsuccessful.

In 1921 he became colonial secretary and made a treaty with the Irish Free State. He also negotiated a peace settlement with the Arabs, advised by T. E. Lawrence. Although he opposed Lloyd George's policy towards the Turks, he gave his prime minister vociferous support over the Chanak crisis of 1922. When the coalition fell a few months later, he was defeated in the 1922 election and began work on his history of the First World War, the first volume of which was published in 1923. A friend quipped: ‘Winston has written an enormous book about himself and called it The World Crisis.’

Returning to the Commons in October 1924, he was offered the chancellorship of the Exchequer by Baldwin and rejoined the Conservative Party. In 1925 he put Great Britain back on the gold standard, unfortunately at the pre-war parity of £1 = $1, which was of little help to British exporters. Three years later he introduced the ‘ten-year rule’, whereby the service estimates would be prepared on the assumption that no war was likely for the next ten years. Meanwhile, he was only prevented from running down the navy as he had already run down the RAF by the threatened resignation of the entire Board of Admiralty. In the General Strike of 1926, he took overall command of the government newspaper the British Gazette. Churchill's star, however, was set to wane. With the fall of Baldwin's government in 1929, he was out of office for the next ten years.

Churchill himself turned the 1930s into his wilderness years. His attacks on constitutional progress in India and his defence of Edward VIII found little response. Nor was Churchill able to capture the public imagination as the foe of fascism. He admired Mussolini and sympathized with Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Finally, on the great economic questions of the day—unemployment, protection, recovery—he had little to say.

Churchill did however take up the cause of resistance to Nazi Germany. There were many obstacles to this. The Treasury in particular opposed rearmament: after a year of war, Britain, it predicted, would be bankrupt. The Foreign Office asked just who our allies were going to be. America was neutral, the dominions unpredictable, and even if the Soviets could be brought in, an alliance with them might push Franco into the arms of the axis and close off the Mediterranean. The appeasers, therefore, had a good case. Churchill did not believe that war was inevitable and knew that Hitler wanted Britain as an ally. However, he believed that a grand alliance against the dictator would make him moderate his plans. If not, perhaps he could be overthrown before it came to war. But if Germany would not see reason, then war it would be. He envisaged that war, however, as one in which Britain would make her contribution with sea and air power. He thought a continental army a mistake.

When war came, Churchill returned to the Admiralty, although he acted as if he were already prime minister. Almost immediately he became involved in a madcap scheme to send an expeditionary force to Norway, ostensibly to help save Finland from the Russians, but in practice to cut off Swedish iron ore from the Germans. The lack of air cover meant that the campaign was a disaster. Ironically, Chamberlain was blamed and Churchill became prime minister at the head of a national government.

As war leader, Churchill was a mixture of ruthlessness and impetuosity. Determined to do everything possible to win the war, in practice he had few means of doing so. Still, he did what he could, which meant the bombing offensive, plus the Mediterranean campaign. Determined to have action, he prodded and sacked his generals and made many mistakes—sinking the French fleet at Oran, invading Greece, defending Crete, neglecting the Far East. Yet his position as prime minister was secure, since he had become in the summer of 1940 the spirit of British resistance incarnate, defying the Nazis with speeches of supreme eloquence. His real hope of victory depended on the entry of the USA, and when that happened, Churchill persuaded the Americans to make Europe the primary theatre of the war and to participate in the north African campaign. When Hitler attacked Stalin, he immediately offered aid to the Soviets. Towards the end of the war, in October 1944, aware of US plans to send their troops home once the war was over, he signed the Percentages agreement with Stalin, dividing the Balkans into spheres of influence and saving Greece from communism. As war leader, Churchill had little time for the home front. Nor was he much interested in post-war planning. When the Beveridge Report was published in 1942, he doubted whether a bankrupt Britain would be able to afford it. In any case, he had left domestic affairs to Attlee and his Labour colleagues, which proved a mistake. For it was to them that the electorate turned in July 1945 once victory had been secured. Churchill was still respected, but the voters guessed that he was not the man for post-war reconstruction. But as leader of the Conservative Party and of the opposition, he was more politically secure than he had ever been before in peacetime. His voice continued to be heard in international affairs and, just as he had warned against the rising threat from Hitler, he now warned against the ‘iron curtain’ which was descending over Europe. He also spoke out in favour of a united Europe, although he never meant that Britain should be part of it.

In 1951 he returned as prime minister. He was now 77 years old, had suffered two strokes, and would suffer two more. Yet his government was highly successful. Eden shone as foreign secretary, Macmillan built a record number of council houses, and nothing was done to undermine the welfare state, inherited from Labour. In April 1955 he agreed to retire as prime minister, completing a career without equal among democratic politicians. He died in 1965, soon after retiring from the Commons, was given a state funeral, and was buried in Bladon churchyard.

Early Career

Educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, he became (1894) an officer in the 4th hussars. On leave in 1895, he saw his first military action in Cuba as a reporter for London's Daily Graphic. He served in India and in 1898 fought at Omdurman in Sudan under Kitchener. Having resigned his commission, he was sent (1899) to cover the South African War by the Morning Post, and his accounts of his capture and imprisonment by the Boers and his escape raised him to the forefront of English journalists.

Political Career

Early Government Posts

Churchill was elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1900, but he subsequently switched to the Liberal party and was appointed undersecretary for the colonies in the cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Under Asquith, he was initially (1908–10) president of the Board of Trade, then home secretary (1910–11), and championed innovative labor exchange and old-age pension acts. As first lord of the admiralty (1911), he presided over the naval expansion that preceded World War I.

Discredited by the failure of the Dardanelles expedition, which he had championed, Churchill lost (1915) his admiralty post and served on the front lines in France. Returning to office under Lloyd George, he served as minister of munitions (1917) and secretary of state for war and for air (1918–21). As colonial secretary (1921–22), he helped negotiate the treaty that set up the Irish Free State.

After two defeats at the polls he returned to the House of Commons, as a Constitutionalist, and became (1924–29) chancellor of the exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government. As an advocate of laissez-faire economics, he was strongly criticized by John Maynard Keynes. Churchill was not a financial innovator; he basically followed conventional advice from his colleagues. Nevertheless, Churchill's decision to return the country to the prewar gold standard increased unemployment and was a cause of the general strike of 1926. He advocated aggressive action to end the strike, and thus earned the lasting distrust of the labor movement.

World War II

Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill wrote and remained in the public eye with his support for Edward VIII in the abdication crisis of 1936 and with his vehement opposition to the Indian nationalist movement. He also issued warnings of the threat from Nazi Germany that went unheeded, in part because of his past political and military misjudgments. When World War II broke out (Sept., 1939), Neville Chamberlain appointed him first lord of the admiralty. The following May, when Chamberlain was forced to resign, Churchill became prime minister.

Churchill was one of the truly great orators; his energy and his stubborn public refusal to make peace until Adolf Hitler was crushed were crucial in rallying and maintaining British resistance to Germany during the grim years from 1940 to 1942. He met President Franklin Roosevelt at sea (see Atlantic Charter) before the entry of the United States into the war, twice addressed the U.S. Congress (Dec., 1941; May, 1942), twice went to Moscow (Aug., 1942; May, 1944), visited battle fronts, and attended a long series of international conferences (see Casablanca Conference; Quebec Conference; Cairo Conference; Tehran Conference; Yalta Conference; Potsdam Conference).

The Postwar Period

The British nation supported the vigorous program of Churchill's coalition cabinet until after the surrender of Germany. Then in July, 1945, Britain's desire for rapid social reform led to a Labour electoral victory, and Churchill became leader of the opposition. In 1946, on a visit to the United States, he made a controversial speech at Fulton, Mo., in which he warned of the expansive tendencies of the USSR (he had distrusted the Soviet government since its inception, when he had been a leading advocate of Western intervention to overthrow it) and coined the expression “Iron Curtain.”

As prime minister again from 1951 until his resignation in 1955, he ended nationalization of the steel and auto industries but maintained most other socialist measures instituted by the Labour government. In 1953 Churchill was knighted, and awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature for his writing and oratory. He retained a seat in Parliament until 1964. He refused a peerage, but his widow, Clementine Ogilvy Hozier (married 1908), accepted one in 1965 for her charitable work.

Character and Influence

Churchill was undoubtedly one of the greatest public figures of the 20th cent. Extraordinary vitality, imagination, and boldness characterized his whole career. His weaknesses, such as his opposition (except in the case of Ireland) to the expansion of colonial self-government, and his strengths, evidenced by his brilliant war leadership, sprang from the same source—the will to maintain Britain as a great power and a great democracy.

Bibliography

Churchill's biographical and autobiographical works include Lord Randolph Churchill (1906), My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), and the study of his ancestor Marlborough (4 vol., 1933–38). World Crisis (4 vol., 1923–29) is his account of World War I. The Second World War (6 vol., 1948–53) was followed by A History of the English-speaking Peoples (4 vol., 1956–58). See also his speeches ed. by R. R. James (8 vol., 1974) and D. Cannadine (1989); the multivolume study by R. Churchill, his son, and M. Gilbert (1966–78); biographies by W. Manchester (2 vol., 1983–88), M. Gilbert (1992), N. Rose (1995), R. Jenkins (2001), and J. Keegan (2002); A. J. P. Taylor et al., Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment (1968); R. R. James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900–1939 (1970); J. Charmley, Churchill's Grand Alliance (1995); A. Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (1995); J. Lukacs, Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian (2002); J. Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (2003); D. Reynolds, In Command of History (2005).

1874 - 1965

British statesman; prime minister, 1940 - 1945 and 1951 - 1955.

Winston S. Churchill's connections with the Middle East were based on two concepts - the national interest of Great Britain and what he called "the harmonious disposition of the world among its peoples." These concepts were not necessarily contradictory. Thus, in advocating British support for the establishment and maintenance of independent Arab states in Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria after World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, his objective was to produce a satisfactory harmony of local Arab needs, in the hope of creating states that would be well-disposed toward Britain and its defense and petroleum needs.

As a young soldier serving in India at the turn of the twentieth century, Churchill had seen the importance of Egypt and the Suez Canal for the maintenance of Britain's sea link with India and Asia. He had participated in the reconquest of the Sudan, where he had been repelled by the cruel attitude of the British commander in chief toward wounded Sudanese soldiers, and he had expressed his disgust in a book published in 1900. While British control of Egypt was something he took for granted (although nationalist movements were already a problem for Britain), at the same time, he was insistent that the British connection should be beneficial for the well-being and advancement of the Egyptian people.

First Direct Interaction with the Middle East

At the time of the Young Turk revolution in 1909, Churchill not only supported the modernization efforts of the Young Turks for the Ottoman Empire, but met several of their leaders during a visit to Constantinople (now Istanbul) that same year and remained in contact with them. In August 1914 when World War I began, he appealed directly to the Turkish minister of war, Enver Paşa, to keep Turkey neutral and thereby preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Two months later, when Turkey committed itself to the Central Powers (against the Allies) and began the bombardment of Russia's Black Sea ports, it fell to Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill, to direct naval operations against Turkey. These culminated in the attack on the Dardanelles (Turkish Straits), the failure of which led to Churchill's own temporary eclipse from politics.

In 1915, Churchill suggested that once the Ottoman Empire had been defeated, Palestine should be given in trust to Belgium, since Germany had violated Belgian neutrality and overrun most of the country. As compensation for this, Churchill wanted Belgium to be made the European overseer of the establishment of a Jewish national home.

Once the war ended in 1918, Churchill became secretary for war and air (1919 - 1921). In 1919, at a time when Britain herself had assumed the responsibility for Palestine, Churchill encouraged the Zionist leader Dr. Chaim Weizmann to consider the southern desert region of the Negev as an area of potential Jewish settlement (in 1949, David BenGurion, Israel's first prime minister, was to urge this same policy on his fellow citizens). Churchill's own instinct was, at first, to keep Britain clear of all Palestine responsibilities and even to reject the League of Nations mandate for Palestine - on the grounds, he warned the cabinet in 1920, that "the Zionist movement will cause continued friction with the Arabs." Nor were his feelings entirely supportive of Zionism: Writing in a cabinet memorandum
in 1919 of those who stood to gain from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, he declared: "Lastly there are the Jews, whom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience."

Views on the Formation of a Jewish State

As colonial secretary in 1921 and 1922, it then fell to Churchill to fix the terms of the Palestine mandate. His attitude on Zionism had changed. In a public article in 1920, he stated: "If, as may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event will have occurred in the history of the world which would from every point of view be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire."

Having made the link of Jewish national aspirations and British interests, Churchill was also impressed by the ideological convictions of the Zionists and by their determination to create a flourishing world for themselves in a region that had been their home many centuries earlier. During a visit to Palestine in 1921, he was impressed by the Jews' success at cultivation and by the labor Zionist work ethic - the redemption of the land through toil. Henceforth, he encouraged the Jews to enter the region, stating in the terms of the mandate, as presented to the League of Nations in 1922, that the Jews were in Palestine "of right, and not on sufferance." He also gave the Zionists monopoly rights over the development of the hydroelectric power of the country.

During this same visit to Palestine, Churchill encouraged the development of a Jewish Agency for Palestine, through which the Jews would acquire virtual autonomy over health, education, and communal life, as well as participation in the political and diplomatic discussions concerning their future. At the same time, he urged the Palestinian Arabs to accept the fact of Jewish immigration and settlement and to recognize the economic benefits that the Jews would bring to the country.

When a Palestinian Arab delegation asked Churchill to suspend all future Jewish immigration, he replied (on 28 March 1921): "It is manifestly right that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should have a national centre and a National Home where some of them may be reunited. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? We think it will be good for the world, good for the Jews and good for the British Empire. But we also think it will be good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine, and we intend that it shall be good for them, and that they shall not be sufferers or supplanted in the country in which they dwell or denied their share in all that makes for its progress and prosperity."

At the Cairo Conference in 1921, Churchill agreed to the establishment of Arab self-government in Iraq and Transjordan and to the exclusion of Jewish settlement in Transjordan (now Jordan). He also argued in favor of a national home for Kurds in northern Iraq but was overruled by his officials.

During the 1930s, Churchill resented the pressure of the Arab states of the Middle East to curtail Jewish immigration into Palestine. He was an opponent of the white papers on Palestine (1939), by which the British government gave the Palestinian Arabs an effective veto over any eventual Jewish majority in Palestine. He also opposed the restrictions on Jewish land purchase in Palestine. These restrictions were introduced in 1940, shortly after Churchill had reentered the government as first lord of the admiralty, and as such he opposed the use of Royal Navy warships to intercept illegal Jewish immigrant ships heading for Palestine. As prime minister in 1940, he rejected Arab calls for the deportation of illegal Jewish immigrants.

During World War II, while he was prime minister (1940 - 1945), Churchill had to take steps to defend the Middle East from German encroachment. Although in 1942 he failed to persuade Turkey to enter the war on the side of the Allies, he did encourage Turkish neutrality. He also secured the basing of British military experts on Turkish soil, to immobilize oil pipelines and facilities crossing Turkey from Iraq, should German troops try to cross Asia Minor in any attack through Palestine to the Suez Canal. During the war, the pro-German revolt of Rashid Ali in Iraq was thwarted and the pro-German Vichy French government in Syria was ended by British initiatives. Throughout 1940, 1941, and the first half of 1942, Egypt and the Suez Canal were defended by Allied troops against continuous Italian and German military threats. Later in the war, Palestinian Jews were encouraged to volunteer not only for British military tasks, but for clandestine parachute missions behind German lines in Europe.

As wartime prime minister, Churchill watched sympathetically over Zionist aspirations. In 1942, he warned a personal friend "against drifting into the usual anti-Zionist and antisemitic channel which it is customary for British officers to follow." A year later, he told his cabinet that he would not accept any partition plan for Palestine between Jews and Arabs "which the Jews do not accept." Even the murder of his close friend Lord Moyne by Jewish terrorists did not deflect Churchill from his belief that a Jewish state should emerge after World War II, and he called upon the Jewish Agency for Palestine to take action against the terrorist minority in their midst.

In 1945, during a meeting in Egypt, Churchill tried to persuade King Ibn Saʿud of Saudi Arabia to become the leader of a Middle East federation of independent states, in which a Jewish state would form an integral part. Only Churchill's defeat in the general election five months later prevented him from setting up a Middle East peace conference and presiding over it, with a view to establishing such a federation. In 1946, as leader of the opposition, he told the House of Commons, after a Jewish-extremist bomb in Jerusalem had killed ninety people, including many Jews, at the King David Hotel: "Had I the opportunity of guiding the course of events after the war was won a year ago, I should have faithfully pursued the Zionist cause, and I have not abandoned it today, although this is not a very popular moment to espouse it." In 1948, Churchill pressed the Labour government to recognize the State of Israel. As prime minister for the second time, from 1951 to 1955, he argued in favor of allowing merchant ships bound for Israeli ports to be allowed to use the Suez Canal - which had been taken from British control by Egypt's military in 1952 during the revolt that ended in Farouk's abdication and the establishment of the republic.

Churchill's sympathies for Zionism were public and pronounced, alienating many Arabs. Yet he was not without understanding of Arab aspirations and of the vast potential of the Middle East. "The wonderful exertions which Israel is making in these times of difficulty are cheering for an old Zionist like me," he wrote to Weizmann, the first president of the State of Israel, in 1951, and he added: "I trust you may work with Jordan and the rest of the Moslem world. With true comradeship there will be enough for all."

Bibliography

Gilbert, Martin. Winston Churchill, Vol. 4: The Stricken World. London and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

Gilbert, Martin. Churchill: A Life. New York: Holt, 1991.

— MARTIN GILBERT

An English political leader and author of the twentieth century; he became prime minister shortly after World War II began and served through the end of the war in Europe. Churchill symbolized the fierce determination of the British to resist conquest by the Germans under Adolf Hitler. He forged a close alliance with Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union in opposition to Germany. Stunningly defeated in elections in 1945, he returned to office as prime minister for several years in the 1950s.