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The Battle of Britain and the Blitz
In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. The attack touched off the world struggle that Churchill would later call "The Unnecessary War" because he felt a firm policy toward aggressor nations after World War I would have prevented the conflict. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain brought Churchill into government again as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill became Prime Minister on May 10, 1940, the day Hitler launched his invasion of France, Belgium, and Holland. During the tense months that followed, Britain stood alone with her Empire and Commonwealth, surviving the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Churchill's speeches and broadcasts carried a message of determination and defiance around the globe. |
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Help From America
Even though the U.S. was desperately trying to build up its military forces throughout 1941, Roosevelt decided to give the British some of the United States' most advanced weapons. Military aid to Britain was greatly facilitated by the Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, in which Congress authorized the sale, lease, transfer, or exchange of arms and supplies to "any country whose defense the president deems vital to the defense of the United States." |
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Justin Murray. Winston Churchill (Befriendus Leaselendus), ca.1945 |
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W. Averell Harriman to Winston Churchill, April 15, 1941 |
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Winston Churchill to W. Averell Harriman, May 20, 1941 |
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Prime Minister Sees Flying Fortresses, June 6, 1941 |
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Prime Minister Winston Churchill, July, 1941 |
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British War Cabinet record of a meeting, July 24, 1941 |
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The Prime Minister's Return Journey Across the Atlantic, August, 1941 |
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Herbert Block. "Working On Him," 1941 |
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The Home Front
Churchill, like all Britons, faced personal hardships during the war. His son Randolph was a soldier serving with a British Special Raiding Squadron and his daughter Mary joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service and served with an antiaircraft unit. Many young children, including Churchill's grandson, were sent away from British cities and other target areas to escape German bombing raids. Wartime shortages and commodities rationing in Great Britain were occasionally alleviated by friendly Americans. |
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Clementine Churchill to W. Averell Harriman, April 15, 1941 |
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Mary Churchill to W. Averell Harriman, November 27, 1941 |
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Acme. A Chip Off the Old Block, 1942 |
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Clementine Churchill to W. Averell Harriman, June 30, 1942 |
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Randolph Churchill to Winston Churchill, July 10, 1943 |
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Associated Press. Churchills with a British Symbol, 1943 |
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America Enters the War
The Japanese surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought America into the war. Churchill was with the President's special envoy, Averell Harriman, and the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, John Gilbert Winant, when he received the news over the telephone from President Roosevelt. Four days later, Germany declared war on the United States, making U.S. involvement in Europe inevitable. |
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Churchill-Roosevelt Globes
On the first day of 1942, Churchill and Roosevelt, along with representatives of China and the Soviet Union, signed a declaration creating the United Nations. This wartime alliance eventually grew to include twenty-six countries and to form the nucleus for a lasting international organization. For the next year Churchill tried to forge good working relationships with his most important ally, the United States, as well as with the Soviet Union and the Free French led by General Charles de Gaulle. Churchill often differed with the Americans over questions of grand strategy and the future of the British Empire, but he was able to resolve many issues in the course of face-to-face meetings with Roosevelt in Washington and, later, in Casablanca, Morocco. |
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United Nations
On the first day of 1942, Churchill and Roosevelt, along with representatives of China and the Soviet Union, signed a declaration creating the United Nations. This wartime alliance eventually grew to include twenty-six countries and to form the nucleus for a lasting international organization. For the next year Churchill tried to forge good working relationships with his most important ally, the United States, as well as with the Soviet Union and the Free French led by General Charles de Gaulle. Churchill often differed with the Americans over questions of grand strategy and the future of the British Empire, but he was able to resolve many issues in the course of face-to-face meetings with Roosevelt in Washington and, later, in Casablanca, Morocco. |
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Postponing a Second Front
Germany had gone to war with the Soviet Union in June, 1941, and by August of 1942, the Soviets were fighting for their lives before Stalingrad. To the disappointment of the Americans and the Soviets, however, Churchill used his considerable influence to postpone launching a Second Front against the Germans in northwest Europe. He wanted to exploit successes in the Mediterranean, and he was concerned that a premature assault on the northern French coast might end in failure.
In August 1942, Churchill flew to Moscow to tell Stalin that there would be no Second Front in Western Europe that year to draw off German forces. Stalin condemned the Anglo-American decision to abandon the Second Front. Churchill argued: "War was war but not folly, and it would be folly to invite a disaster which would help nobody." Stalin replied, "A man who was not prepared to take risks could not win a war." |
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Churchill landing in Moscow |
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W. Averell Harriman, October 15, 1941 |
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Winston Churchill to W. Averell Harriman, November 27, 1941 |
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill, April 3, 1942 |
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Winston Churchill and W. Averell Harriman, August 12, 1942 |
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Edward Sorel. First Encounters: Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill, 1991 |
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Office of War Information. Churchill and Stalin in Moscow, 1942 |
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Office of War Information. B-24 Liberator, 1942 |
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Winston Churchill and W. Averell Harriman, August 16, 1942 |
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Northern Africa
By the end of 1942, British forces had been victorious in Egypt at the Battle of El Alamein and, along with the Americans, had successfully landed in northwest Africa. At the Casablanca Conference (January 14-24, 1943) Churchill and Roosevelt decided to continue with operations in the Mediterranean once they had driven the Germans and Italians out of North Africa. This decision was in accord with Churchill's preference for an attack through the "under belly of the Axis" instead of a more direct approach through northwest Europe into Germany. The war in the Mediterranean theater continued to dominate Churchill's thoughts in 1943. After many frustrating delays, Allied forces (principally British, American, and French) wiped out the last remaining Axis (German and Italian) troops in North Africa. They exploited this success by undertaking operations in Sicily and from there moved onto the Italian peninsula. |
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Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin
After the Allied successes in the Mediterranean, Churchill's American allies made known their desire to come to grips with Hitler's armies in northwest Europe in a series of additional wartime conferences. These began with the TRIDENT meeting in Washington in May 1943 and culminated in the first meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Teheran, Iran, at year's end. At the conclusion of the Teheran meeting the Americans and Soviets had overridden Churchill's lingering doubts and had secured a firm commitment to launch a cross-Channel attack in northwest France by the late spring of 1944, together with a supporting amphibious operation in southern France. |
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Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
Both the war against Nazi Germany and efforts to stop the Holocaust were hampered by anti-Semitism. Axis propaganda sought to portray Churchill, who was sympathetic to Zionist aims and had many Jewish friends, as part of a supposed Jewish conspiracy. Nevertheless, Churchill expressed his outrage as the scale of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews became apparent. It was, he said, "probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world." |
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Operation Overlord
As the Allies were learning details of the Nazis' ongoing mass-murder program taking place at the Auschwitz death camp, the greatest Anglo-American action of World War II began: the cross-Channel airborne and amphibious attack known as "D-Day." Churchill enthusiastically supported this operation, long-advocated by the Americans, after some initial hesitation and despite his hopes for an Italian campaign.
On June 6, 1944, the Allied Expeditionary Forces landed more than 150,000 British, Canadian, and American troops on the Normandy coast. The invasion, which was code-named "OVERLORD," marked the opening of the final drive to defeat German forces in northwestern Europe. A number of deception measures, outlined by Churchill at the Teheran Conference, helped make D-Day a success. The most important of these was "FORTITUDE SOUTH," the creation of a phantom group of armies that supposedly were to invade the European mainland after the actual Normandy landings. These measures were greatly assisted by the use of highly secret ULTRA intelligence, generated by the British from deciphered radio communications. |
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Associated Press. A Serious Inspection, 1944 |
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Twelfth Army Group. Situation - 2400 HRS 6 JUNE 1944 HQ. FUSAG, 1944 |
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Dwight David Eisenhower. "Order of the Day," June 6, 1944 |
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D-Day Landing |
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U.S. Maritime Commission. Bird's-eye view of landing craft, barrage balloons, and allied troops landing in Normandy, France on D-Day, 1944 |
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Admiral Bertram Ramsay to Winston Churchill, May 16, 1944 |
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George McDonald to Carl Spaatz, June 21, 1944 |
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Cartoon showing D-Day invasion of France by British troops in a parody of the Bayeux Tapestry, 1944 |
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Victory and Defeat
For Churchill, the last year of the war was a time of great triumph and bitter disappointment. Allied ground forces began to break through enemy defenses late in July 1944 and were soon threatening Germany itself. A Nazi counteroffensive--the Battle of the Bulge-- proved to be only a temporary setback, and the war's outcome seemed certain.
Looming postwar problems, however, cast a shadow over the impending triumph as Soviet armies advanced through Eastern Europe and the Balkans, imposing communism in their wake. Churchill's great wartime partner, Franklin Roosevelt, and his great wartime enemy, Adolf Hitler, both died in April 1945. The European war ended the following month. But in the middle of the final wartime conference, held in Potsdam, Germany, he learned of his own political defeat, as the British electorate turned him and his Conservative Party out of office. |
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W. Averell Harriman to Franklin Roosevelt, October 11, 1944 |
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Manuscript map, 1945 |
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Memorandum of conversation, Yalta Conference, February 4, 1945 |
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Crimean Conference, 1945 |
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Churchill on the Siegfried Line, 1945 |
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Clementine Churchill to W. Averell Harriman, April 13, 1945 |
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Associated Press. Churchills Leave Thanksgiving Service, 1945 |
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