Winston Churchill British Prime Minister, Wartime Leader, and Statesman

2012 ◽  
pp. 109-116
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
British Prime Minister

Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874 –1965)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Gerena Cubbon
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
First Time

Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister twice during his eventful political career. Churchill initially served the British Empire as a soldier in the Caribbean, India, and Africa during the imperial wars of the 1890s. His political service began in Parliament in May 1904 when he joined the Liberal Party and became undersecretary at the Colonial Office (1905). Prime Minister Herbert Asquith promoted Churchill to the Home Office and, in 1911, appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty. After briefly resigning from politics, Churchill returned in 1917 as an ardent anti-communist, joining the Conservatives in 1924, the year he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty following the outbreak of World War II and became Prime Minister for the first time in May 1940. As Prime Minister during the war, Churchill relied on vigorous nationalist rhetoric to rouse his compatriots against Germany. Although defeated in the general election of 1945, he continued to speak and publish, delivering his famous "iron curtain" speech at Fulton College in Missouri on March 5, 1946. A lifelong anti-communist, he used this particular speech to emphasize the ideological gulf between the democratic, liberty-embracing West and the Soviet Union. Churchill again served as Prime Minister from 1951 until 1955.

scholarly journals Zajęcie i okupacja Islandii przez wojska brytyjskie 1940–1943

2018 ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Kubiak
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
The Will ◽  
Strategic Motivation ◽  
The Right

After the German invasion of Denmark, Winston Churchill, then forming a new cabinet, decided to occupy Iceland. According to the British Prime Minister, this was an operation to prevent the Germans from establishing themselves on the island. According to Churchill, the Germans – who had been successful in Norway – had not only the opportunity and the right forces, but also the strategic motivation to capture Iceland. It should be underlined that, at the time, Iceland, which since 1918 had been an independent state in a personal union with Denmark, declared the will to be strictly neutral. However, Iceland was not able to defend itself. Apart from about 150 policemen and Coast Guards, there were no Icelandic armed forces. The article presents the circumstances and conditions of the British “invasion” of Iceland and the course of the occupation.

The “Statement on Atrocities” of the Moscow Tripartite Conference

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto Kircheimer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Joint Declaration ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
The World

This chapter focuses on the “Statement on Atrocities,” which contains a joint declaration concerning war crimes and war criminals. Issued by the Tripartite Conference over the signatures of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, the report details that the declaration constitutes the first common announcement of intentions on the part of all three major powers. The chapter considers parallel statements issued on October 25, 1941, by Roosevelt and Churchill, which drew the attention of the world to the shooting of hostages during World War II and announced that retribution would be exacted from the guilty. It also addresses the question of the effect of the Moscow Declaration on Germany and the use which can be made of it in psychological warfare operations.

Adherence to Agreements

2019 ◽  
pp. 187-220
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter charts a middle road between traditional and revisionist scholars on the Cold War and highlights how ambiguities and uncertainties influenced the behavior of both Washington and Moscow. It reveals that the Yalta agreements were vague, purposefully so, because Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were seeking to pave over their differences, sustain the wartime alliance, and establish a framework for postwar cooperation. Once victory was assured, the impulse to cooperate waned as new circumstances and new fears intensified mutual distrust and catalyzed unilateral moves to insure security. These actions were coupled with harsh condemnations of one another's treachery. Yet neither the Americans nor the Russians really wanted to antagonize the potential rival; they wanted to seize upon ambiguities in the wartime agreements to enhance their respective notions of security. By engaging in rhetorical overkill, leaders in both capitals made compromise and accommodation more difficult. Few Americans, however, understood how their own rhetoric, charges, and actions contributed to the collapse of the wartime alliance.

Negotiations leading to Anglo-Polish agreement of 31 March 1939

1956 ◽  
Vol 10 (38) ◽  
pp. 156-192
Author(s):  
T. Desmond Williams
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
British Prime Minister

By March 21 the British prime minister had discovered that, owing to difficulties raised by Poland and Russia, as well as by Rumania, it would be impossible to secure the support of all the four great powers for the declaration he had suggested on March 20. Chamberlain accordingly altered his course, and on the same day, through Halifax, threw out the suggestion of a bilateral arrangement for mutual consultation between Britain and Poland. The foreign secretary had a long discussion with Count Raczynski, who had received instructions from Warsaw to inform London of Polish objections to the proposed four-power declaration.

When the Bombs Fell

Strange Bird ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele K. Troy
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
World War ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Joint Chiefs Of Staff ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Strategic Bombing ◽  
German Capital ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt

This chapter examines how the Allied bombings of Germany affected the lives of people in the Albatross-Tauchnitz fold, particularly Max Christian Wegner and Walter Gey. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler's reign, the Nazi elite gathered with thousands of party loyalists on January 30, 1943 for an evening of rousing speeches at the Berlin Sportpalast. The Allies commemorated Hitler's tenth anniversary by sending Royal Air Force Mosquito light bombers on a daylight air raid on the German capital. For Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin Roosevelt, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this attack marked the beginning of the “strategic bombing” campaign they had agreed upon at the Casablanca Conference days earlier. This chapter considers Wegner's arrest and imprisonment at the height of World War II as well as Gey's efforts to make the best of the Albatross Press's ever-shrinking terrain.

Who Wants a United Ireland?

1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Harvey Cox
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The People ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
Irish People ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
The Right ◽  
Elected Representatives

THE PROVISIONAL IRA'S ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE BRITISH Prime Minister and Cabinet at Brighton on 12 October 1984, represents the most dramatic move to date in a reputedly 20-year strategy of inducing the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland and leave Ireland to the Irish. Where nonviolent Irish nationalists have aimed, most notably through the New Ireland Forum Report published in May 1984, to persuade the British that the 1920 constitutional settlement dividing Ireland is inherently unstable and must be dismantled, the Provisional IRA has no faith in this course of action. The British, they calculate, will be persuaded not by the force of argument but by the argument of force. In this they can claim, with some justification, to be the true heirs of the Easter Rising of 1916. At that time the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which was to become the basic document of Irish republicanism, declared ‘… the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible’. Since the 1916 Proclamation was ratified by the first subsequent meeting of elected representatives of the Irish people, the first Dáil Eireann, in 1919, representing virtually all but the Ulster unionist minority, and since the right and the aspiration to Irish unity have been reaffirmed by all non-unionist Irish parties ever since, it must be a truth universally acknowledged that the division of Ireland is unjust and undemocratic and that the reunification of the country is the rightful aspiration of the great majority of its people.

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