Winston Churchill Documentary - Biography of the life of Winston Churchill

[Music] [Music] the man known to history as Winston Churchill was born of Blenheim Palace in the county of Oxfordshire England on the 30th of November 1874 his father Randolph Churchill have been the Conservative member of parliament for Woodstock Oxfordshire since 1874 when he succeeded his own father John Spencer Churchill the 7th Duke of Marlborough after he entered the House of Lords Winston's mother Jenny Churchill was American her family's wealth coming from success in finance although despite their wealth and connections both Randolph and Jenny were often in debt and had money worries which was a problem that would become all too familiar to Winston later in his life in 1876 the family moved to Ireland after Winston's grandfather was made Viceroy and three years later Jenny gave birth to Winston's brother Jack which sparked rumors regarding his paternity as Randolph and Jenny did not have a close relationship indeed Winston's relationship with his parents was also distant largely due to it being common in the English aristocracy at the time for children to be raised by nannies and Winston was particularly devoted to his own nanny Elizabeth and Everest who he called woman II when he was 7 Winston was sent to a boarding school at st. George's in Ascot Berkshire where he gained a reputation as an unruly pupil and did poorly academically and after a spate of ill health he was moved to the Brunswick school near Hove in East Sussex at this time Winston's father Randolph was considered to be one of Britain's foremost politicians who had reached the peak of his career in 1886 when he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer however Randolph was renowned for being outspoken and often failed to gain the support of his fellow cabinet members in seeking cuts in public expenditure particularly the military he then only after four months as Chancellor handed in his resignation calculating that he was too important to figure for the Conservative government to lose but this gamble then backfired in spectacular fashion when the then prime minister Lord Salisbury accepted his resignation meaning that Randolph's career was effectively over in contrast Winston's performance at school had improved by this time which then resulted in him narrowly passing his exams in 1888 after which he began studying at one of the best public schools in England Harrow his father was determined the Winston would pursue a career in the military and after finishing his education Churchill tried twice and failed to gain entry to the Royal Military College in Sandhurst but on the third attempt he was accepted and after a year of training graduated as a cadet however Winston's pride at doing well at Sandhurst was short-lived as in January of 1895 his father Randolph died of syphilis which no doubt was a result of his extramarital liaisons and for some time afterwards Randolph's cause of death was kept from Winston in February 1895 Churchill was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th Hazare's cavalry regiment of the British Army and he then later that year travelled to the Caribbean where he fought on the side of the Spanish army against Cuban nationalists in their war for independence after this Churchill made the first of his many visits to the United States where he spent time in New York amongst other cities and it is fair to assume that this journey combined with Winston's American heritage did much to form his lasting affection and admiration for his mother's homeland after returning from North America Churchill was posted to India in October of 1896 and a year later in 1897 managed with the support of his mother to join the malecon field force as a correspondent and saw combat against the mermen dribbles which he reported on in the British Daily Telegraph after leaving India Churchill wrote a book of his experiences which gained positive reviews and he then using his greater notoriety managed to gain a place on Herbert Kitchener's expedition to the Sudan to take on Abdullah bin Mohamad who had established an Islamic caliphate in the country a bin Mohamad had previously been one of the right-hand men of Mohammed Ahmed the self-proclaimed Marathi or guided one who according to Islamic prophecy were supposed to rid the world of evil and along with Jesus defeat the false messiah or Antichrist [Music] the mark D had started his Islamic uprising in the Sudan in 1881 and initially led a successful campaign in the region even defeating a British led Egyptian army at the Battle of shaken in November 1883 this prompted the British Liberal government who deemed the country not to be worth fighting for to send Major General Charles Gordon to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to evacuate Egyptian civilian personnel but Gordon on arrival decided to fortify the city as the marketís army had cut off river traffic on the river nile to the north making an evacuation impossible khartoum then fell to the mark D in January of 1885 after a ten-month siege and Gordon who was by this time a hero in Britain was killed in the fighting and beheaded however the mark T himself also died soon afterwards of typhus and was replaced by Abdullah bin Muhammad who ruled over the Sudan until 1896 when the British fearing a French invasion of the country sent the previously-mentioned invasion force to defeat the Islamists once and for all kitcheners army then journey down the Nile and defeated AB in Muhammad's forces at the Battle of Omdurman and Winston a few days after the battle was involved in a cavalry charge against the remnants of Muhammad's forces afterwards Churchill wrote his account of the conflict entitled the river war in which he criticized kitcheners handling of the campaign indeed Churchill would become a prolific writer during his lifetime eventually publishing over two dozen books with each often consisting of several volumes after returning home Winston sailed to South Africa to take part in the Boer War and was after being involved in several engagements captured when the troop train he was travelling on was derailed during an ambush Churchill was then sent to a prisoner of war camp near Pretoria but managed to escape by climbing over the perimeter fence surrounding the camp and after being sheltered by sympathetic locals succeeded in sneaking aboard a freight train heading to neutral Portuguese East Africa his escapades during this period attracted a great deal of public attention as well as praise in the British press as the Boers had started a large-scale manhunt for him therefore his successful escape was seen as a propaganda victory instead of sailing home and reaping the benefits of his newly found acclaim Churchill sailed to Durban and was appointed as a left tenant in the South African Lighthorse before joining read verse Bullers attempt to relieve the siege of the small town of Ladysmith in the natal region of South Africa the town had been under siege by a force of some 20,000 balls for over three months and supplies were getting scarce with the troops being forced to survive on horses and oxen meat finally after repeated attempts that break the boars stranglehold Bullers force broke through the enemy lines and Ladysmith was relieved with Churchill being amongst the first troops to enter the town Winston then arrived back in England six months later and sought to use the fame and notoriety hid earned on his travels to help him emulate his father Randolph by embarking on a career in politics he then stood for office as the Conservative candidate in the constituency of Oldham Greater Manchester in 1900 winning by a slender margin and afterwards embarked on a speaking tour of Britain and the United States in which he gave lectures on his experiences in the Boer War Churchill then after returning home threw himself into politics with the same vigor or ration Asst as he had exercised in his military career by making controversial speeches over the next two years in which he attacked the Conservative government of which he was a member in these speeches Winston continually criticized the Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and his cabinet for their policies on free trade restrictions an excessive military expenditure and over the coming years continually voted against his own party which inevitably resulted in him forming close political ties with the opposition liberals this disobedience eventually culminated in Churchill crossing the floor and joining the Liberal Party in 1904 which resulted in his deselection as a Member of Parliament for Oldham but this gamble eventually paid off a little over a year later when the Liberals came to power in 1906 Winston was elected to be a member of parliament for Manchester Northwest instead Churchill was then given the position of Undersecretary of State for the Commonwealth office a work to ease the continuing tensions in South Africa between British immigrants the Boers and the native population Winston then embarked on a European and African holiday in 1906 in which he progressed across France and Germany at one point meeting Kaiser Wilhelm before traveling through Italy and on to Africa and Kenya where he went game hunting in 1908 Winston who was now President of the Board of Trade lost his seat in Manchester and was instead given a safer seat at Dundee in Scotland after which he played an important role in the instigation of labour exchanges and unemployment insurance which after a fierce struggle were proved in 1910 along with a myriad of other progressive liberal reforms such as the old-age pensions act of 1908 indeed it is fair to say that churches political views were complex in the extreme as he supported trade unions and welfare programs early in his political career but later on the other hand argued for the preservation of Britain's Empire in short Churchill was a complex character politically as he evidently had some socialist liberal and conservative views which can perhaps explain his changing allegiances during his career in parliament in 1908 Winston married a Clementine hozier who would come to play a crucial role in his success in life and it is entirely possible that without Clementine Winston would not have been able to achieve the things he did in his career or recover from his regular bouts of depression which he referred to as his black dog in 1910 Churchill despite still being relatively young was appointed Home Secretary and attracted controversy on various incidents such as the cambrian collar a dispute his opposition to the suffragette movement and the infamous siege of Sydney Street in which two Latvian revolutionaries were cornered after committing a number of robberies and murders in Greater London during which Churchill took control of the instant in person which drew much criticism in the press in 1911 Churchill was appointed to be First Lord of the Admiralty placing him in charge of Britain's Royal Navy which was then the most powerful on earth however this maritime supremacy was beginning to become fragile at this time as a host of nations around the globe were building scores of powerful warships the decade before World War one had seen Britain and Germany in a naval arms race and Winston was now tasked with overseeing the construction of a number of new battleships including the queen elizabeth-class which were the fastest and most powerful ships ever launched by the Royal Navy at this time after the outbreak of World War one and the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front the decision was made to attempt to knock Germany's Ally turkey out of the war by seizing control of the land surrounding the Dardanelles which controlled the Western Approaches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Turkish capital of Constantinople and the black sea beyond a combined British and French naval task force then set sail to capture the Dardanelles in early 1915 which ended in disaster after the Allied Force failed to capture its objectives in the face of stubborn Turkish resistance this in turn resulted in a 10-month battle of attrition which only ended with the humiliating withdrawal of the Allied forces from the Dardanelles in which they lost some 300,000 men dead or wounded Churchill who as First Lord of the Admiralty have been one of the operations prime advocates was demoted in the aftermath of the campaign as he was largely blamed for the expedition's defeat and the massive loss of life that resulted this was a devastating blow for Winston as the Gallipoli campaign as it is now known stained his reputation for decades and would almost certainly have ended the careers of less determined or driven men in an effort to redeem himself Churchill them volunteered to rejoin the army and was posted to the Western Front in early 1916 as a manger with the Grenadier Guards and later left Hannon Colonel with the Royal Scots Fusiliers with whom he saw combat on numerous occasions and was much respected by the troops under his command few if any could question Winston's bravery but Lloyd George who became Britain's prime minister in December of 1916 questioned if Churchill cared more about his own reputation and career than the fate of the country and this nagging doubt about Churchill's motivations would remain in the minds of many of his detractors for years to come Winston then returned to Parliament in the spring of 1916 and for the remainder of the war held important positions within the coalition government including Minister for munitions Secretary of State for war and Secretary of State for air an interesting fact about Churchill is that he was instrumental in the development of the tank which would prove crucial in breaking the stalemate on the Western Front in the latter stages of the conflict and it could be said that he played an important role in securing victory in both world wars after the Armistice of 1918 whilst at the war office Winston had a hand in the failed attempt to intervene in the Russian civil war against the Bolsheviks and after being appointed Secretary of State for the colonies in 1921 was also involved in the instigation of the anglo-irish treaty which made southern island an independent nation and started the gradual disintegration of the British Empire then in the 1922 election Winston lost his seat in Dundee largely due to him recovering from an appendix removal after which he drifted away from the Liberals but became a vocal critic of the New Labour government Churchill had by the early twenties begun to once again associate himself with the Conservative Party and after winning a seat in parliament for the constituency of Epping was appointed by the new prime minister Stanley Baldwin to the post of chancellor of the exchequer in 1924 which prompted him to then rejoin the Conservatives however Churchill's tenure as Chancellor was not that much more successful than his late father's largely due to his disastrous policy or bringing Britain back into the gold standard this was a form of account that fixed the price of money to that of the gold supply and Churchill later admitted this was a mistake as deflation of the pound ensued and public spending was limited to the gold supply meaning that in the coming Great Depression the government had restricted cash flow with which to stop the banks from collapsing and stimulate the economy it should be noted also that Churchill was a deeply unpopular figure in many ordinary people's eyes at this time as they saw him as a warmonger career politician a political turncoat whose decision to rejoin the gold standard had consigned an entire generation into abject poverty the Conservatives were then soundly defeated in the general election of 1929 which resulted in Churchill being sidelined within the party largely due to his unpopular opposition to Indian home rule his actions regarding the gold standard and his seemingly ever-changing allegiances this in turn led to his decade-long wilderness years in which Winston retreated from politics and focused on writing and his painting which he in large part undertook to ease his sense of failure and depression this culminated in him writing a three-volume biography of his ancestor John Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough who had defeated the armies of louis xiv of france during various battles such as Blenheim during the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 18th century indeed Churchill was a great expert on Maul bruh and there is a body of opinion that states his excellent grasp of history enabled him to see the parallels between louis xiv and adolf hitler both of whom saw to dominate Europe and persecute religious minorities by this time in the early 1930s Hitler was Chancellor of Germany and was rearming the country at breakneck speed which prompted Winston to make speeches and write articles warning of the possible threat that Nazi Germany posed he was aided in this by Ralph Wigram an official in the Foreign Office who along with many other contacts have been passing intelligence on Germany's rearmament to Churchill which gave his speeches and columns a lot more weight and in turn for Stanley Baldwin's government who returned to power in 1935 to take notice however Churchill was still largely ignored in Britain as many people throughout the country and world didn't want to contemplate the possibility of another European conflict but these people were soon shaken out of their complacency as by the late 1930s it all became too evident that Hitler was intent on aggressive expansion and as the likelihood of war increased Churchill was steadily accepted back into the mainstream of British politics two days after world war ii broke out in september 1939 churchill was reappointed as first lord of the admiralty but again concerns over his judgment were raised after his plans to stop german iron ore shipments from norway by raiding the port of Narvik in April of 1940 resulted in failure after Hitler invaded the country despite this operation being of Churchill's design and it's having whirring similarities with the Gallipoli disaster Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who had consistently tried and failed to prevent an outbreak of war was forced to resign after the Labour Party may declare it would not form a coalition government under his leadership the choice of replacement was now between Churchill and Lord Halifax who did not want the position therefore Chamberlain then on the evening of the 10th of May 1940 made the short journey from 10 Downing Street to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation after which he recommended that King George the 6th should invite Churchill to form a government Winston Churchill was now the Prime Minister of Great Britain however he descended to the post in the midst of the most critical and dangerous crisis since the First World War and the fate of the country was now firmly on his shoulders he was then thrown right into the deep end from day one of his Premiership as the very same day he became prime minister Germany invaded Holland Belgium and France resulting in the military disaster that was the fall of Western Europe Winston spent these desperate weeks traveling to and from the continent in the hope of keeping the French in the fight but as its armies had all but collapsed in the face of the German advance Churchill along with his commanders resolved to commit no more resources to the defense of Britain's Ally and instead decided to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force from France before it was annihilated by Hitler's Panzers and the Luftwaffe this resulted with the aid of civilian craft as well as the Royal Navy in over 300,000 Allied troops being rescued from Dunkirk meaning that Britain still had an army capable of putting up a fight in the event of a German invasion and later resisting the Italian and German incursions into North Africa Churchill now set about silencing the voices within his own government particularly Lord Halifax who were arguing for peace negotiations to begin with Hitler and after doing so began the mammoth task of reorganizing the country's defenses for the inevitable onslaught after the surrender of France the north of the country was occupied by Hitler's armies and the vassal eyes South remained under the control of Philippe Patton with its capital being in the French city of Vichy however even though France itself had been dismembered the country still had an empire and along with it a large war fleet based in the North African colony of Algeria but with Vichy France effectively now being under German control Churchill decided that Britain could not risk the French fleet falling into German hands and ordered a naval task force to set sail into the Mediterranean in order to end the threat one way or another then on the 3rd of July 1940 the British fleet arrived off the coast of Algeria and demanded the French hand out their battleships but they refused and the British then opened fire on their former allies sinking one of the French battleships damaging to others and killing some 1,300 sailors this was seen as treachery in France and is still seen by many in the country today to be a war crime however from Britain and Churchill's perspective the danger of the French fleet falling into German hands was too large to ignore and although ruthless its sinking was essential to ensure Britain's naval supremacy in the Mediterranean Hitler's planned invasion of Britain then commenced in July 1940 with mass air attacks on ground targets and radar installations across southern England which were designed to [ __ ] the country's air defences and facilitate a cross-channel invasion [Music] however Britain was well-prepared for the German Luftwaffe as it had pioneered the world's first air defense network which is known today as the Dowding system after the head of RAF fighter command Hugh Dowding this involved radar stations along England's south coast being linked to vile and lines to Fighter Command headquarters a Bentley Priory in Northwest London which along with the Royal observer Corps enabled the British to build a live strategic overview of all inbound enemy air activity and thusly send the required numbers of Fighters to intercept them this system was far more than the British Hawker hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire responsible for the eventual wearing down of German resistance in the Battle of Britain as without it the RAF would only have been able to defend the country skies by means of random patrols over the coming months the RAF and the Luftwaffe engaged in aerial combat above the skies of Britain with massive losses on both sides until by the end of the summer the RAF was on its knees however on the 25th of August 1940 RAF bombers hampered by heavy cloud cover over Berlin dropped their payloads on residential areas which in turn prompted Hitler to undertake reprisal bombing raids across London in what we know today as the Blitz this change in strategy effectively saved Britain from any possible invasion as the Luftwaffe now concentrated its efforts on bombing London instead of destroying the RAF which quickly regrouped and strengthened its numbers of pilots and aircraft over the coming months during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz on London Churchill rallied the populace with some of the most famous speeches ever broadcast which helped the British people realize the gravity of the threat which faced them and also helped them strengthen their resolve to carry on the fight indeed Winston's rallying of the British population was particularly crucial as the country was now alone against Nazi Germany and as its Navy was scattered throughout the world and Imperial Japan was now threatening military expansion of its own things were desperate in the extreme the war situation was then further complicated when the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini thinking Britain was too weak to oppose him ordered the invasion of British controlled Egypt in September 1940 via Italian Libya this invasion was soon crushed however by British counter-attacks which forced the Italians back towards Tunisia and in turn prompted Hitler who feared a British victory would secure their dominance of the Mediterranean to send General Erwin Rommel and the Africa Corps to intervene one of the few options that still lay open to Britain was to seek the assistance of the United States and Churchill being half American on his mother's side had long enjoyed good relations within the country and in particular with his President Franklin D Roosevelt the two men had much in common with one another as they shared a love of the Navy and had been exchanging correspondence and gifts for some years including Winston giving Roosevelt a signed copy of his biography of the Duke of Marlborough during the 1930s this relationship was perhaps one of the most important factors in the eventual victory over the Axis powers as Britain could simply not hope to defeat Germany Japan and Italy alone and desperately needed assistance and supplies despite many within the United States particularly those of Irish descent understandably hating the British Roosevelt after careful and protracted lobbying secured enough support to assist Britain resulting in the system of aid which is known today as lend-lease this was a program which involved the United States supplying Britain free France China and later the Soviet Union with food and war materials in return for gold money and access to naval bases throughout the globe this was crucial in keeping Britain which by now was a shrinking world power in the conflict and without it it is almost certain the country would have had to secure peace terms with the Axis powers in 1941 it should not be forgotten also that Churchill was instrumental in securing the backing of the United States and Roosevelt indeed him securing lend-lease was arguably one of his most important achievements as without it defeat would have been almost certain the battle for North Africa was in full swing by this stage a low point coming when the Germans captured Tobruk in 1942 and afterwards threatened to overrun Egypt which would have almost certainly knocked Britain out of the war as the Suez Canal was vital for the flow of supplies between Europe and Britain's Empire not to mention the massive oil reserves in the Middle East beyond it Churchill also gave the go-ahead for the formation of the world's first Special Forces units at this time namely the commandos and the special air service or SAS which consisted of volunteers who had given intensive extra training and better weaponry than regular troops the commandos were involved in various rates on the continent during World War two including the brilliant raid on Sun Nazaire in which the only docks in France capable of holding the massive German battleship Tirpitz were destroyed the SAS on the other hand were formed in North Africa and conducted brilliant raids behind enemy lines in the desert destroying hundreds of German aircraft and various installations severely damaging their fighting capability indeed certain generals were against the use of Special Forces at the time but Churchill overruled them seeing their potential to cause havoc behind enemy lines as crucial to the war effort Winston would later go on to champion the use of civilian resistance groups of mainland Europe which were often directed and supplied by Britain's Special Operations Executive or SOE which conducted thousands of daring raids across occupied Europe during World War two perhaps the largest threat Germany posed to Britain after 1940 was its u-boat fleet which through the early to middle stages of the war conducted daring raids on British and Allied shipping in the North Atlantic and severely hampered Britain's war effort sinking millions of tons of supplies in the process there is no doubt that Churchill himself considered the u-boat threat to be top priority but over time the British got the upper hand in the battle for the Atlantic with the aid of the codebreakers of Bletchley Park including the brilliant Alan Turing who cracked the German Enigma codes which combined with the ever-increasing flow of war materials from America steadily overwhelmed the limited numbers of German u-boats in the meantime Hitler had embarked on his massive invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 which quickly became the main focus of his attention as it became clear to both him and the German High Command that sub during Stalin's Russia was not the easy task they had first thought Churchill was by this stage regularly undertaking long and dangerous journeys to and from North Africa the United States and Britain involving hundreds of thousands of air miles and it is no exaggeration that the stress and workload he had undertaken was immense to say the least and took a serious toll on his health however he was soon given what was perhaps the best news of the war from a British perspective that being the attack by Imperial Japan on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December 1941 which led to Hitler declaring war in the United States himself four days later indeed Hitler declaring war in America can be seen as the point where the war was effectively decided as Germany could not hope to out produce both the United States Britain and Russia in terms of food supplies or manpower therefore the outcome of World War two was effectively decided as early as the winter of 1941 this was borne out over the coming years as from 1942 onwards the Axis powers lack of resources combined with their increasingly overstretched industry resulted in a long process of retreat and defeat for them culminating in the effective collapse of German resistance in Russia from 1943 onwards their defeat in North Africa and the subsequent invasion of Italy along with the gradual liberation of all the Japanese territorial gains in the Pacific Winston had effectively succeeded in his goals by this stage as Britain was now the minor partner in the Triple Alliance between it the United States and the Soviet Union and the remainder of the conflict would increasingly see both he and Britain taking a back seat in all theatres however without Churchill keeping Britain in the conflict it is almost certain that the invasion of Italy and the later d-day landings would never have taken place in turn meaning that Stalin's Russia would have had to deal with Hitler's invasion alone and very possibly collapsed as a result in contrast to this there has been a large amount of criticism of Winston Churchill of recent years which has been centered on his involvement or lack thereof in trying to alleviate the Bengal famine of 1943 which came about after the Japanese occupied Burma and cut off rice imports to the eastern subcontinent in 1942 Churchill and his War Cabinet fearing a full-scale Japanese invasion of India ordered a scorched earth policy in the region in which thousands of acres of farmland were seized or even destroyed this combined with a series of natural disasters in 1942 including a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal effectively compounded the increasingly widespread starvation famine which culminated in the deaths of upwards of 3 million people in the region although some say the figure is much higher Churchill has largely been blamed for perpetuating and even instigating this famine by Indian and progressive historians in recent publications as by this time his disregard for the country and its freedom seeking populace was no secret indeed some even compare Churchill with Hitler claiming that he pursued genocidal policies in the subcontinent even labeling him a racist mass murderer on the other hand Churchill's defenders claimed that when both he and his war cabinet became fully aware of the scale of the famine on the 24th of September 1943 they diverted a quarter of a million tons of grain to India they also mentioned the fact that the Japanese invasion of Burma was one of the prime causes of the crisis along with the lack of shipping due to the war along with poor local government misplaced food allocations and natural disasters although Churchill's relationship with Roosevelt was cordial if not friendly his relationship with Stalin was fiery and interspersed with heated arguments this meeting of ideological adversaries was first forged a year after the Nazi invasion of Russia had started when Churchill made the dangerous journey via the Middle East to Moscow in August of 1942 where the two men held several alcohol-fueled meetings the Man of Steel had long pressured the British to start a second front in Europe to relieve the pressure on the Russians but without American help Britain simply did not have the manpower to undertake an amphibious landing on the continent Churchill had however championed an invasion of Italy to start a second front but the Americans were in favor of taking the most direct route through France given the hilly terrain of Italy which naturally favored defense it has to be said that choosing France as the main focus of attack by the Western Allies was the correct one as the invasion of Italy proved to be a slow and bloody conflict that did little more than tie down several German armies one of the main ways the British had been able to carry the war to the Germans have been air raids and by the later stages of the war the RAF had accumulated a massive force of bombers mainly consisting of the famous Lancaster the British decided earlier in the war due to large losses over Germany to conduct night bombings which was safer for bomber crews but resulted in less accuracy was the Americans after entering the war mounted large-scale daylight raids after the Blitz it became British policy to target German cities and industrial centres in order to wear down Hitler's supply chain and with ever-increasing air supremacy it wasn't long before many German cities were reduced to rubble perhaps the greatest example of this was in the bombing of Dresden in February of 1945 in which over 20,000 people were killed and after the war both the head of the RAF Bomber Command Arthur Harris and Churchill were blamed for the deliberate bombings of civilian targets as many people maintained it was a war crime after victory in 1945 Churchill was voted out of office as Prime Minister being replaced by the Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee however Winston refused to be bitter about the defeat despite him leading his country to victory stating that the British people had had a hard time in the following years churchill argued for the creation of the early European Union or the United States of Europe as he called it thinking it essential in preventing future conflict and regularly gave speeches warning of the threat of the Soviet Union he then continued as leader of the opposition during the post-war period until the general election of 1951 when he once again became Prime Minister Churchill was the first Prime Minister of Queen Elizabeth the second reign and proved to be a guiding influence for her in the early years of being monarch however his second tenure as premier was largely dominated by struggling to deal with Britain's reducing role in the world and its withdrawal from Empire which was largely due to the country's near exhausted a massively indebted economy by this stage in his life Winston had suffered numerous heart attacks and strokes an early example of which occurred as early as 1941 when he had a heart attack was visiting President Roosevelt at the White House and he also suffered another two years later after a bout of pneumonia in many ways it is remarkable that Winston lived to the age he did as by modern standards he was an alcoholic and was rarely to be seen without a drink or one of his famous Cuban cigars his second spell as Prime Minister was then cut short when he suffered a severe and partially paralyzing stroke on the evening of the 23rd of June 1953 which left him bedridden for the next six months after which he returned to his duties however it was clear that Churchill was now unable to undertake the role of Prime Minister and he finally resigned on the 5th of April 1955 handing the reins of government to his deputy Anthony Eden now in retirement Winston spent much of his time in his home at Chartwell in Kent with his wife Clementine who had been with him through thick and thin since 1908 spending his time painting writing a relaxing abroad loving the South of France in particular his health continued to fail him however and on the morning of the 24th of January 1965 after suffering another severe stroke Sir Winston Churchill died Britain and the entire Western world was left grieving at his death and there was a widespread feeling that with Churchill's passing an era had come to a close he was then given the great honor of a state funeral for for which his lead-lined coffin was taken up the Thames by boat passing the London Docks where cranes were lowered in his honor before being taken to st. Paul's through the streets lined with tens of thousands of grieving people he was then taken by train to Woodstock Oxfordshire and made to rest in the Churchill family cemetery at the Church of st. Martin's in the village of Bladen less than a few miles from his birthplace at Blenheim Palace Sir Winston Churchill is today widely regarded as one of Britain's greatest prime ministers despite his faults and mistakes both personal and professional there is no doubt that without his resolve bravery and fortitude victory over the Axis powers and Hitler's Germany in particular would have been next to impossible his key contributions to the Allied war effort was keeping Britain in the war which ultimately enabled d-day to happen and there is also a body of opinion which states that without Britain's Arctic Convoys to the Soviet Union from 1941 onwards Stalin's Russia may have also collapsed under the German onslaught some claim that Churchill was a war monger and placed his own personal ambitions above the needs of his country whilst others state that in India he is responsible for war crimes particularly in the Bengal famine to the majority of people however particularly in the West Sir Winston Churchill remains a hero as without his insistence in continuing the fight against Hitler's Germany Western Europe Russia and possibly the entire world would have fallen to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan what do you think of Winston Churchill was he a war hero or a war criminal let us know in the comment section and until next time thank you very much for watching

Channel: The People Profiles

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Keywords: Churchill, Winston Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill, Churchill Documentary, Winston Churchill Documentary, Churchill Biography, Winston Churchill Biography, The life of Winston Churchill, Churchill Speeches, Churchill Speech, Churchill Omdurman, Documentary, Churchill Gallipoli, Churchill Boer War, Churchill First World War, Churchill World War One, Churchill World War Two, Churchill Second World War, Biography, History, Historical, Biographical, Education, Educational

Id: WV_msNkTcoc

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019