Winston Churchill

Biography

Preserving deputy in 1900, several times minister, then First Lord of Admiralty (1911 - 1915), finally Prime Minister (1940 - 1945 and 1951 - 1955), leader of the conservative party, it was the organizer of the British effort of war at the time of the Second world war, and one of the propagandists of the victory allied on the Axis. He was also Nobel Prize of literature in 1953.

Youths

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born the November 30th 1874 with the Palais from Blenheim. In its memories, he writes that it was in Blenheim Palace that he took “ the two most important decisions of my life: to be born and marry me. I never regretted any of both. ”. There remained faithful all its life to this palate, going back there regularly, even for its honeymoon. And it is with the cemetery of Blandon, just beside the castle of its ancestors whom it puts back, beside his/her parents. He was the oldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Jennie Jerome. His/her father was him even wire of the 7th Duc of Marlborough, while his mother, was the second girl of a rich person New Yorkean business man, Leonard Jerome. Its family circle had a beneficial influence on its military career, then political. It could indeed use all the resources that the family ties offered to him to be made send on the faces where, young soldier, it was sure to find the glory which it sought greedily. When it began in policy, it was his/her cousin, the duke of Marlborough in title which paid all its expenses of countryside.

Winston Churchill began its studies with Harrow school, a public school very with dimensions. In spite of its assertions in its Memories , there were not so bad school results only that. He liked to be presented in the form of a child badly liked, handicapped by a limited education, which enabled him to pass for a man whose success was due only to its solitary efforts. To Harrow school, it was however directed towards the military section, where one sent the least intelligent of the pupils. It begun again there with three times to enter the Military academy of Sandhurst. He became Lieutenant of the “4th regiment of hussards of the Queen” in 1895, just after the death of his father.

Eight month after being appointed officer, it was sent like observer with Cuba then torn by the Guerre Spanish-American. It benefitted from it to send reports on the operations to the Daily Telegraph , and thus to be done a little money. As long as it could it, it tried to combine its obligations of officer of active with those of war correspondent. It then used all the resources of its family relations to be made send where it occurred something.

At the western northern border of the India in 1897, that the British Empire consolidated since 1879, it took part in the conquest of the Burma. During its stay in India, it supplemented its education by the reading of Greek philosophers and traditional historians. Churchill drew from it a very deep historical culture which served all its life to him.
With the Sudan in 1898, when the army of Lord Kitchener made the conquest of it to ensure the safety of the Egypt, it was illustrated with Omdurman during one of the last loads of cavalry which knew the military history.

In 1899, it left the army and was presented to an partial legislative election with Oldham. Candidate of the Conservative party, it was beaten there. He left then in South Africa where he was correspondent war for the Daily Telegraph. The British possessions encircled then the Transvaal, country pertaining to the descendants of the Dutch colonists, the Boers. The attraction of gold and diamonds which this area contained brought a war between the the United Kingdom and Boers. It lasted of 1899 with 1902, and ended in the annexation of the Boers territories to the Empire. Winston Churchill was made prisoner by Boers (1899) after the armoured train in which he travelled had run off the line close to Colenso. Its spectacular escape was worth to him to do the one of the newspapers of the whole world. Its experiments on these various faces enabled him to write four books and to make a certain number of conferences. It benefitted from it to denounce the weakness of the organization of the British army, which started the first polemic of its career of which it will be in the beginning. It had been able to save 10.000 books in 1901, a sum raised for the time.

At the beginning 1908, it married Clémentine Hozier, with which it had a son and 4 girls, of which one died in low age.

Political career

Beginnings

In 1900, it was elected for the first time at the Parliament, as a preserving deputy of the district of Oldham. Then, at the time of the election of 1904, it was re-elected, but this time as a deputy of the liberal party . It occupied the post of minister Commercial in 1908. In 1909, Churchill was scrambled with its family and her social environment by her standpoint in favor of the People' S Budget which increased considerably the death duty of the Lords. Then, in 1910 - 1911, he was Minister of Interior Department. It decided reforms to humanize justice, in particular by removing the prison for debts and the use of the whip against the prisoners. During this period, it wove close links with David Lloyd George. Finally, in 1911, right before the first world war, it was named First Lord of Admiralty, and of 1911 with 1915, it modernized the British fleet considerably. In 1913, he adds a provision to the law on the mentally handicapped persons, which founds a Programme of forced sterilizations at ends Eugéniques.

In July 1914, Churchill accepted Albert Ballin, president of Hamburg-Amerika Line and warned it against a possible British intervention in these terms: My dear friend, do not oblige us to enter in war! . he declared to him. However, the British Cabinet was divided on the attitude to adopt with respect to the crisis: Churchill was a determined partisan of the France, Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, a determined partisan of neutrality, Sir Edward Grey, Secrétaire in Foreign Office leant rather for France, as for the Prime Minister Asquith, he took care well not to give an opinion. Without obtaining the prior agreement of the Cabinet, as Lloyd George required it, Churchill mobilized the fleet, pointed out 40.000 reservists and Manche sent at sea it North to avoid a raid of the fleet of Reich in the English Channel. Indeed, Churchill feared at the same time impossibility for the Great Britain of coming to assistance of France and the possibility for the admiral Alfred von Tirpitz of republishing the raid of the admiral Togo to Port-Arthur in 1904 while attacking by surprised the British navy. On this subject, Churchill declared: The commander of the Fleet Home is the only one which can lose the war in one afternoon! . When this mobilization was known, either the Cabinet ratified the decision of Churchill, or the government fell, which would have given an annoying impression of indecision in a so serious crisis. The partisans of the intervention carried it, the pacifist ones were inclined and the most solved resigned to between-them; following what, the secretary with the Foreign Office addressed an ultimatum to the Germany so that it evacuates the Belgium immediately.

The First World War was not happiest for Winston Churchill. There was a very discussed role which failed to put an end to its career. Churchill, then pressed by the Russians who wanted to see the Turkish pressure in the the Caucasus decreasing, and anxious to circumvent the bloody dead end of the Western face, proposed to organize a great forwarding, the Expédition of Dardanelles. The offensive launched by a timoré allied command, failed on March 18th, 1915 in front of Canakkale. At this point in time one ordered an invasion by terrestrial way. Four British divisions unloaded with the Cape Helles. They tried to establish a head of bridge in the almost island of Gallipoli, but following three terrible confrontations, the soldiers were recalled. One tried a second unloading, this time at the Cape Sulva. Once again, this new plan did not function, and the January 9th 1916, one evacuated the allied troops. The forwarding of Dardanelles showed: 144000 wounded or killed. This monumental failure forced Churchill, scapegoat, to leave its station of first Lord of Admiralty.

After its resignation, it ordered a battalion in France. Before the end of the war, it was repatriated with the the United Kingdom and became secretary with the war of 1917 with 1922.

The Between two-wars

After the Great War, he decides for a reconciliation with the Germany (contrary to Lloyd George and Georges Clémenceau) and in addition denounces the Bolchevisme (or Communisme) which seized the power in Russia. He informs: Of all tyrannies of the History, tyranny Bolshevik is the worst, more the devastator, more degrading . Later, it will compare even the Bolchevik S with a band of sanguinary baboons dancing on smoking ruins! . The purpose of this advertisement was to sensitize planet with the events which took place in Russia.

In 1921, Churchill became Secretary of State to the colonies and had two particularly thorny problems to regulate: the Question of Ireland and the Middle East.

In Ireland, it practiced initially a very firm policy of repression against the Sinn Fein, by recruiting back-up troops called Black and Tans who sowed terror there. Then, as it showed it several times in its life, it changed opinion and entered into a negociation with Michael Collins, one of the leaders of the WILL GO and he was the principal craftsman of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which allowed the birth of the State Libre of Ireland. To persuade Hakes, very gone up against him, and which reproached him for having put its head at price for: 5000 £, Churchill showed him the poster emitted by the government of Transvaal into 1899 which promised 25 £ of reward for its capture, by saying to him that itself evaluated Collins 200 times what Boers had evaluated it!

In the Middle East, it had to manage the disappointment of the Arabs and Hussein, Chérif of Mecque, who did not admit the violation of the promise lavished by Lawrence, in the name of Great Britain and which substituted a British domination for an Othoman domination. Churchill took Lawrence like advising. This one made him adopt three measures to alleviate the tensions: to withdraw the control of Mésopotamie (Iraq and Kuwait) to the India Office , to transform the mandate of the SDN in Great Britain on Iraq into treaty of alliance, to replace the British Army, perceived by Arabic like occupying force, by the RAF, more discrete and so effective.

Of 1922 with 1924, it was far away from the Parliament following the collapse of the liberal party. In 1924, it returns again as a preserving deputy, it then occupies the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer of the government and made the disastrous decision to again attach the Pound sterling to gold, which caused a catastrophic recession. The economist Keynes drew a lampoon from it the Economic consequences from Mr. Churchill .

A little later, in 1926, it strongly contributes, by public appearances, to start the Social crisis, during which it fought the trade unions savagely. He was again isolated Parliament in 1929 because of the defeat of the conservatives. Reached of an appendicitis attack, it could not make countryside; also, after its defeat, it had the word I found myself in a few days without seat at the Parliament, political friends and… without appendix! .

During the Thirties, it was devoted especially to the writing. Churchill will remain a journalist sunken all his life. He will write quantity of articles or will hold of the conferences on all the subjects, as well on what was due to him in heart as on anything. Indeed, its way of life of sybarite (champagne, whiskey, cigars, table open to many people) was to him extremely expensive. He will write even a novel, while advising highly with his friends, not without humor, not to read it.

During this “crossing of the desert” Churchill benefitted from its notoriety to constitute a network of advisers resulting from the high public office and to thus nourish its interventions with the Communes like its conferences, mainly on the danger Nazi. The operation of this network was semi-clandestine and its advisers would certainly have been relieved if the successive governments had discovered it. The de Gaulle General, between 1946 and 1958, constituted a comparable network advisers deprived within the high public office which held it with the current of progress of the nuclear research with military goal.

He was opposed to the autonomy of the Indies while treating with this occasion Gandhi of to fakir with naked half and it will support Edouard VIII at the time of the crisis of abdication of 1936 before changing opinion about it and moving away it as Gouverneur from the Bahamas in 1940, because it feared that it is not handled by Hitler or the pacifist ones. It realized quickly of the threat Nazi for the the United Kingdom, and at the time of the debate on the budget of Defense for 1936 and 1937, then in reserve of the Kingdom, it estimated that it was advisable to increase the military appropriations of at least 50 million pounds sterling (+ 40%) because: As peaceful as it can be, the German government must face a terrible dilemma. To go from front, it is the bankruptcy. To stop the movement, it is an unemployment without precedent. Germany does not have any means of replacement to use its labor: neither the means of trading with colonies, nor that to make the peaceful conquest of markets .

In September 1938, he pled for an action of the France, the United Kingdom and the USSR during the Czech crisis. He condemned the Accords of Munich signed by Neville Chamberlain and pronounces at the Parliament one of his more famous speeches during which he pronounced this sentence: You had the choice between dishonor and the war; you chose dishonor and you will have the war . It was the first to insist on a true rearmament. It did not obtain the popular favor immediately, but it rejoined a growing support.

In 1939, following the declaration of war in Germany after this one had invaded the Poland, Chamberlain had to name it, for the second time, first Lord of Admiralty. Less than thirty minutes after its nomination, all the buildings of the British fleet had received the message.

Prime Minister during the war

Following the lame beginnings of the allies, but especially because of its own unloading with Narvik which aimed at cutting the road of the iron to German, and which, following the example Gallipoli, had not succeeded, it was, on May 10th, 1940, appointed Prime Minister. Indeed, Neville Chamberlain assumed the responsibility for the failure and offered its resignation, bleaching Churchill consequently occasion and leaving with this warrior born the mission of leading the war. During the dark days of the Battle of England, the impassioned speeches of Churchill pushed the Britanniques to continue the fight. To be completely sure that the French fleet does not fall between the hands from the Germans, it ordered that one attacks the fleet of the Atlantic to the anchor with Mers el Kébir. It developed a profitable collaboration with the president Roosevelt. This “alliance” got a military and moral support to him important on behalf of the the United States. During all the war it occupied an important place in allied military coordination. It was, following the example Dwight D. Eisenhower, reticent with launching the troops on the Atlantic Wall because it feared a fault in the secrecy of the plan: if that had occurred, the troops at the time of the unloading of Normandy would have moved towards death, nothing less. That pointed out the to him Bataille of Dardanelles. Despite everything, the secrecy of forwarding was well kept and the troops took foot little by little in France, the Luftwaffe nailed on the ground.

In the conferences of allied peaces, Churchill occupied a leading role, however, it took part only in the first negotiations of Potsdam, because it was not re-elected with the elections of July 1945. He strongly criticized the reforms of “the Welfare state” founded by his successor. At the time of its famous speech of 1946 with Fulton, at the Missouri, it warned the free world against the Soviet expansionism and invented the expression of the “Iron curtain”.

It is also the first to have given to the day order the idea hugolienne of the “the United States d' Europe” at the time of a speech to Zurich the September 19th 1946 and it chaired the Congrès of $the Hague in 1948, then the European Mouvement.

January 1st, 2006, of the documents of files going back to 1942 with 1945 are made public, in which discussions between governmental cabinets are detailed. They reveal that Winston Churchill, in April 1945, had considered a death sentence by electric chair and without lawsuit with regard to Hitler and of the principal leaders Nazis, if they were captured alive. In addition, in January 1943, Winston Churchill put forward the idea to let die Gandhi if this last made an hunger strike whereas he was prisoner of the British during the Second world war.

Second mandate

It was restored at the post of Prime Minister of 1951 with 1955, but its failing health prevented it from directing the country in a way as dynamic as at the time of its first mandate. After 1955, Churchill devoted its last years to painting and the writing. He died on January 24th, 1965, at the 90 years age. National funeral was organized in its honor, those had been planned since several years under the name of code " Hope Not" . It is buried in the tomb family of Bladon, with only a few kilometers of Blenheim Palace, its birthplace.

The writer

In 1932, Churchill takes part in an anthology of Uchronie S directed by Johan Squires. It composes an innovative text for the topic of the change of the course of the history. He imagines a world in which Confédérés gained the American Civil War. In this world, it puts in scene a historian Southerner who imagines what would be the world if the Southerners had gained.

It received in 1953 the Nobel Prize of literature for its work of historian and memorialist, for its qualities of speaker, and undoubtedly especially as homage to that which carried out British resistance during the war. On this occasion, the king of Sweden declared: " Fortunately that there is no Nobel Prize of painting, one would have been obliged to give it to him ! ".

In 1963, it becomes Citoyen of honor of the United States of America. It is the first to receive this distinction.

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