Churchill, Winston S.

Churchill, Winston S. (1874–1965), British soldier, politician, and prime minister.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.

John W. Young