Table of Contents
BIOGRAPHY OF WINSTON CHURCHILL PART – 1
• Churchill was born at his parental home, Blenheim Palace in Oxford shire, on 30
November 1874 at which time the United Kingdom was the dominant world power.
• His family were among the highest levels of the British aristocracy, and thus he was born into
the country’s governing elite.
• His paternal grandfather, John Spencer Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, had been a
Member of Parliament (MP) for ten years, a member of the Conservative Party who served
in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. His own father, Lord Randolph
Churchill, had been elected Conservative MP for Woodstock in 1873.
CHILDHOOD
• His mother, Jennie Churchill, was from an American family whose substantial wealth
derived from finance.
• He was unruly and bad as a child and teachers.He didn’t behave very good with
others. As a young child, Churchill grew up in Dublin.
• After performing poorly at his first two schools, Churchill in April 1888 began attending Harrow School, a boarding school near London. Within weeks of his enrollment, he joined the Harrow Rifle Corps, putting him on a path to a military career.
CHILDHOOD
• He made three attempts to be admitted to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, only succeeding on the third. There, he was accepted as a cadet in the cavalry, starting his education in September 1893 and graduated in 1894.
• He had a very terrible relationship with his parents.His father called him a failure but he relay admired his father.
• While at school, Churchill wrote emotional letters to his mother, begging her to come see him, but she seldom came. His father died when he was 21, and it was said that Churchill knew him more by reputation than by any close relationship they shared.
• He started travelling the world visiting Cuba,Sudan and India.Churchill arrived in Bombay, British India, in October 1896. They were soon transferred to Bangalore, where he shared a bungalow with Barnes. Describing India as a “godless land of snobs and bores“.
YOUNG CHURCHILL MILITARY SERVICE
• He showed exceptional skills in military training. Churchill enjoyed a brief but eventful career in the British Army at a zenith of British military power.
• While in the Army, he wrote military reports for). the Pioneer Mail and the Daily Telegraph, and two books on his experiences, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899).
• In 1899, Churchill left the Army and worked as a war correspondent for the Morning Post, a conservative daily newspaper. While reporting on the Boer War in South Africa, he was taken prisoner by the Boers during a scouting expedition. . He made headlines when he escaped, traveling almost300 miles to Portuguese territory in Mozambique.
POLITICAL CAREER
• In 1900, Churchill became a member of Parliament in the Conservative Party for Oldham, a town in Manchester. Following his father into politics, he also followed his father’s sense of independence, becoming a supporter of social reform. At the age of 25, he was now an MP.
• In February 1901, Churchill took his seat in the House of Commons, where his maiden speech gained widespread press coverage. He opposed an increase in army funding, suggesting that any additional military expenditure should go to the navy.
• In May 1903, the Conservative MP Joseph Chamberlain called for the introduction
of tariffs on goods imported into the British Empire from outside; Churchill became a
leading Conservative voice against such economic protectionism.
• In February 1903, he was among 18 Conservative MPs who voted against the
government’s increase in military expenditure.Unconvinced that the Conservative
Party was committed to social justice, Churchill switched to the Liberal Party in 1904.
POLITICAL CAREER
• He was elected a member of Parliament in 1908, and was appointed to the prime minister’s cabinet as president of the Board of Trade. As president Churchill joined newly appointed Chancellor David Lloyd George in opposing the expansion of the British Navy. He introduced several reforms for the prison system, introduced the first minimum wage and
helped set up labor exchanges and unemployment insurance.
• Churchill also assisted in the passing of the People’s Budget, which introduced taxes on the wealthy to pay for new social welfare programs. The budget passed in the House of Commons in 1909, and was initially defeated in the House of Lords before being passed in 1910.
• Named first lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Churchill helped modernize
the British Navy, ordering that new warships be built with oil-fired
instead of coal-fired engines. He was one of the first to promote
military aircraft and set up the Royal Navy Air Service. He was so
enthusiastic about aviation that he took flying lessons to understand
firsthand its military potential.
WORLD WAR 1
• Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in June 1914, there was growing talk of war in Europe. Churchill began readying the navy for conflict, convinced that if Germany attacked France then Britain would inevitably join the war.
• Churchill remained in his post through the start of World War I, but was forced out for his part in proposing what became the disastrous Battle of Gallipoli, and resigned from the government toward the end of 1915. In 1917, he was appointed minister of munitions for the final year of the war, overseeing the production of tanks, airplanes and munitions.
• From 1919 to 1922, Churchill served as minister of war and air and colonial secretary under Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Fractures in the Liberal Party led to the defeat of Churchill as a member of Parliament in 1922, and he rejoined the Conservative Party.
BIOGRAPHY OF WINSTON CHURCHILL PART – 2
POLITICAL ISOLATION
• Churchill accepted the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s Unionist government, and formally rejoined the Conservative Party as Chancellor of the Exchequer Churchill oversaw Britain’s disastrous return to the Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation,
unemployment, and the miners’ strike that led to the General Strike of 1926.
• The return to the pre-war exchange rate and to the Gold Standard depressed industries The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 general election. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931, Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He
was at the low-point in his career, in a period known as “the wilderness years“.
• In 1932, Churchill accepted the presidency of the newly founded New
Commonwealth Society, a peace organisation which he described in 1937
as “one of the few peace societies that advocates the use of force, if
possible overwhelming force, to support public international law.
WORLD WAR 2
• Churchill, holidaying in Spain when the Germans reoccupied the Rhineland in February 1936.Horrified with the declaration of war UK,FRANCE,GERMANY AND ITALY signed the Munich agreement on 30 September 1938 giving certain part of Czechoslovakia to Germany.
• Chamberlain returned to London as triumphant but Churchill had a
different view.He didn’t like this initiative and knew that Hitler will go for
war and he told to chose between WAR AND SHAME.
• On 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany following the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, the same position he had held during the first part of the First World War. As such he was a member of Chamberlain’s small War Cabinet.
• As Germany began controlling its neighbors, Churchill had become a staunch critic of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement toward the Nazis.
“WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER”
• On 10 May 1940, hours before the German invasion of France by a lightning advance, it became clear that, following failure in Norway, the country had no confidence in Chamberlain’s prosecution of the war and so Chamberlain resigned.Churchill replaced him and soon after the
invasion of France he took the command.
• Britain was all alone fighting with mighty Germany and at some instances the condition seemed so hopeless that his ministers advised him to negotiate with Hitler.
• Quickly, Churchill formed a coalition cabinet of leaders from the Labor, Liberal and Conservative parties. He placed intelligent and talented men in key positions. On June 18, 1940, Churchill made one of his iconic speeches to the House of Commons, warning that “the Battle of Britain” was about to begin.
• After the United States entered World War II, in December 1941, Churchill was confident that the Allies would eventually win the war.
WORLD WAR 2
• Churchill’s good relations with United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt—between 1939 and 1945 they exchanged an estimated 1700 letters and telegrams and met 11 times.Helped secure vital food, oil and munitions via the North Atlantic shipping routes.
• In the months that followed, Churchill worked closely with U.S. President Roosevelt and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin to forge an Allied war strategy and post-war world.
• In meetings in Teheran (November-December 1943), Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July 1945), Churchill collaborated with the two leaders to develop a united strategy against the Axis Powers, and helped craft the post-war world with the United Nations as its centerpiece.
• As the war wound down, Churchill proposed plans for social reforms in Britain, but was unable to convince the public. Despite Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945, Churchill was defeated in the general election in July 1945.
COLD WAR ERA(AFTER 1945)
• In the six years after Churchill’s defeat, he became the leader of the opposition party
and continued to have an impact on world affairs. In March 1946, while on a visit to the
United States, he made his famous “Iron Curtain” speech, warning of Soviet
domination in Eastern Europe. He also advocated that Britain remain independent from
European coalitions.
• After the general election of October 1951, Churchill again became prime
minister, and his second government lasted until his resignation in April 1955.
He also held the office of Minister of Defence from October 1951 until 1 March
1952.
• In the early 1950s, Britain was still attempting to remain a third major power on the
world stageThese domestic reforms were overshadowed by a series of foreign policy
crises in the colonies of Kenya and Malaya, where Churchill ordered direct military
action. While successful in putting down the rebellions, it became clear that Britain was
no longer able to sustain its colonial rule.
• In 1908, Winston Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier after a short
courtship. The couple had five children together: Diana, Randolph, Sarah,
Marigold (who died as a toddler of tonsillitis) and Mary.
DEATH AND HONOURS
• After leaving the premiership, Churchill spent less time in parliament until he
stood down at the 1964 general election. Churchill spent most of his
retirement at Chartwell and at his home in Hyde Park Gate, in London, By the
time of the 1959 general election Churchill seldom attended the House of Commons.
• In 15 January 1965, Churchill suffered a severe stroke and died at his London
home nine days later, aged 90, on the morning of Sunday, 24 January 1965,
70 years to the day after his own father’s death. y decree of the Queen, his
body lay in state in Westminster Hall for three days and a state funeral service
was held at St Paul’s Cathedral on 30 January 1965.
• In 1953, Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. The same year, he
was named the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
CRIMES OF CHURCHILL
• There has been debate over Churchill’s culpability in the deaths of approx 4.3 millions
of Indians during the Bengal famine of 1943. Some commentators point to the
disruption of the traditional marketing system and maladministration at the provincial
level as a cause, with Churchill saying that the famine was the Indians’ own fault for
“breeding like rabbits”.
• Adam Jones, editor of the Journal of Genocide Research, calls Churchill “a genuine
genocidaire”, noting that the British leader called Indians a “foul race” in this period and
said that the British air force chief should “send some of his surplus bombers to destroy
them.”
• The real cause was the fall of Burma to the Japanese, which cut off India’s main supply
of rice imports when domestic sources fell short …it is true that Churchill opposed
diverting food supplies and transports from other theatres to India to cover the shortfall:
this was wartime.’
• In response to an urgent request by the Secretary of State for India (Leo Amery) and
the Viceroy of India (Wavell), to release food stocks for India, Churchill responded with a
telegram to Wavell asking, if food was so scarce, “why Gandhi hadn’t died yet”. In
July 1940, newly in office, he reportedly welcomed reports of the emerging conflict
between the Muslim League and the Indian Congress, hoping “it would be bitter and
bloody.
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