26 December 1941 A.D. Winston Churchill Addresses U.S. Congress
1941 – Less than three
weeks after the American entrance into World War II, Winston Churchill becomes
the first British prime minister to address Congress. Churchill, a gifted
orator, urged Congress to back President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal that
America become the “great arsenal of democracy” and warned that the Axis powers
would “stop at nothing” in pursuit of their war aims. Born at Blenheim
Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father’s
death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military
career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing
himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to
concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to
Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals,
serving a number of important posts before being appointed Britain’s First Lord
of the Admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy to a
readiness for the war he foresaw. In 1915, in the second year of World War I,
Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli
campaigns and was thus excluded from the war coalition government. However, in
1917 he returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of
Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924
returned to the Conservative Party, where two years later he played a leading
role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to
1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of Nazi and Japanese
aggression. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill returned to
his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and eight months later replaced Neville
Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year
of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill
promised his country and the world that Britain would “never surrender.” He
rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that eventually
crushed the Axis. After a postwar Labor Party victory in 1945, he became leader
of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. In 1953, he was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. After
his retirement as prime minister, he remained in Parliament until 1964, the
year before his death.
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