24 January 1965 A.D. Sir Winston Churchill Passes
Editors. “Winston Churchill dies.” History.com.
N.d. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/winston-churchill-dies.
Accessed 23 Jan 2014.
Winston Churchill dies
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer
Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through
the crisis of World War II, dies in London at the age of 90.
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 in 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 that he foresaw.
In 1915, in the second year
of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and
Gallipoli campaigns, and he was excluded from the war coalition government. He
resigned and volunteered to command an infantry battalion in France. 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 was called back to his post as first lord of the
admiralty and eight months later replaced the ineffectual 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 the British people 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
crushed the Axis.
In July 1945, 10 weeks after
Germany's defeat, his Conservative government suffered a defeat against Clement
Attlee's Labour Party, and Churchill resigned as prime minister. He became
leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. Two
years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume
historical study of World War II and for his political speeches; he was also
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1955, he retired as prime minister but
remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death.
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