Winston Churchillborn in Oxfordshire in 1874 and died in London in 1965was a conservative political leader, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He belonged to an aristocratic family and entered Parliament in 1900 at just 26 years old. From 1908 to 1929 he was minister several times and during the First World War he promoted the disastrous Gallipoli military expedition against the Ottoman Empire. In the 1930s he remained away from government, but in May 1940 he was appointed prime minister. In this capacity, he was one of the main architects of the Allied strategy and led the United Kingdom to victory against Nazi Germany. After the war he was leader of the opposition for a few years and again prime minister from 1951 to 1955. In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but two years later he retired into private life.
Winston Churchill’s family and youth
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born in Woodstock, near Oxford, on 30 November 1874. He belonged to a very prominent aristocratic family. His father Randolph was a member of the House of Commons; his mother, the American Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of a prominent businessman.
Churchill was able to attend the best schools and as a young man joined the army as an officer, serving in India and South Africa. Having returned to England, in 1900 he ran for the House of Commons for the Woodstock constituency in the ranks of Conservative Partybeing elected. Thus began his very long political career. From a young age he developed habits that would accompany him throughout his life: i cigarsThe alcohol and the gambling.
Churchill’s political career
As the years passed, Churchill took on increasingly important political roles. In 1906 he became undersecretary of the colonies, in 1908 minister of commerce and in 1911 first Lord of the Admiraltya position roughly equivalent to that of Minister of the Navy. In the first decade of the twentieth century his private life also changed: in 1904 he met Clementine Hozierwhom he married in 1908. The woman bore him five children and remained his wife for life.
During the First World War Churchill was among the main creators of the landing of a military contingent on the Gallipoli peninsula, near the Dardanelles Strait, to attack the Ottoman Empire. The campaign ended with a bitter defeat and Churchill was forced to leave office. He took part in the war on the French front for a period, but in 1917 he returned to government as minister of supplies. Two years later he was appointed Minister of War and Air Force and took part in the Paris peace conference.
In 1921, appointed Minister of the Colonieshad to deal with the issue of the Middle East, which had just been liberated from Ottoman domination. He presided over the Cairo Conference, during which the structure of the Middle Eastern territory was established. He was also one of the negotiators of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which allowed the creation of the Irish Free State.
In 1924 it became Chancellor of the Exchequerthat is, a sort of minister of the economy. In this capacity he promoted a deflationary policy, which earned him much criticism, and sought to reduce the role of the state in the economy. In 1927 he visited Italy and showed some admiration for fascism, but declared that it could not be applied in the United Kingdom.
The 1930s and criticism of the British government
In 1929, following the electoral victory of the Labor Party, a phase of relative isolation began for Churchill, during which he retained his seat in the House of Commons, but did not obtain any other government positions. However, he continued to express his ideas and took a stand against independence movements developed in the British Empire, harshly criticizing Gandhi and the India National Congress.
He was one of the first, however, to understand the danger represented by the Nazism and in the second half of the 1930s he harshly criticized the politics ofappeasementthat is, the search for a compromise with Hitler, carried out by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Churchill leading the United Kingdom during World War II
At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill once again assumed the role of first lord of the Admiralty; in May 1940, after Hitler had achieved victories on all fronts, he was appointed prime minister in Chamberlain’s place.
Thus began the most famous phase of Churchill’s life, who proved capable and determined to lead the fight against Nazism to the end. He led the country during the Battle of Britain 1940 and established cordial relations with the American president Roosevelt, with whom he signed the agreement in 1941 Atlantic Chartera document that recognized the right to self-determination of peoples. He also allied himself with the Soviet leader Stalinputting aside anti-communist ideology in the name of fighting the Nazis. He took part in all the most important international summits, such as those in Casablanca, Tehran, Moscow and Yalta, during which the strategy to be used against Germany was established and the post-war structure of Europe and the world was decided.
The post-war period: the electoral defeat, the return to government, the retirement and death of Churchill
Churchill was defeated at elections of July 1945 and left the leadership of the government to Labor leader Clement Atlee. The English people, although they appreciated him as a wartime prime minister, did not consider him suitable to lead the country in peacetime. Churchill therefore became opposition leader.
In the 1946 Churchill uttered a famous one speech in the United States, asserting that a “iron curtain” between the Western and Eastern blocs. The expression “iron curtain” established itself in common usage. In the same period Churchill wrote his memoirs on the Second World War, which in 1953 earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In 1951 he became prime minister again. He retained the reforms promoted by Labor in previous years, but in 1955 was forced to resign due to increasingly precarious health and retired to private life. He died in London on 24 January 1965.
