Winston Churchill - Historical Archive

Winston Churchill was born in November 1874 and died in January 1965, in England, where he was Prime Minister. His biography includes several curious facts.

Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of England from 1940 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1955. He was also a member of the British Parliament (House of Commons) from 1900 until the end of his life, in 1965. He is considered one of those most responsible for the Allied victory for having faced Hitler and bringing Roosevelt and the USA closer to the conflict.

He died in 1965, victim of a stroke. He is remembered with honors to this day, not only in England. He was also famous for his phrases and expressions, such as naming, in the Cold War , the “iron curtain”.

Summary about Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill’s biography shows a man who was, at the same time, a politician, a writer, a soldier and an enthusiastic and demanding father with his children.
In his childhood and adolescence, Churchill did not do well at school, both due to his behavior and his problems with diction and memory.
His military career almost didn’t happen, as he only managed to enter the Military School on the third attempt.
He married once and had four daughters and a son. One of the girls died, at the age of three, due to health problems.
He himself experienced setbacks regarding his own health. He smoked and drank a lot and didn’t eat well. He had to resign as prime minister in 1955 for this reason. He died 10 years later of a stroke.
His role in World War II was fundamental for two reasons: 1) he frequently called on the British — and other countries, through their leaders — to resist and confront Nazism ; 2) for having managed to bring Roosevelt closer and the US entry into the war, guaranteeing the victory of the Allies.
He had several expressions and phrases that were marked in history, among them, he was responsible for popularizing the term “ iron curtain ” during the Cold War.
For a brief period, he was a member of the Liberal Party, but he remained faithful to the Conservative Party throughout his political history.
He was widely criticized for his warmongering nature.

Biography of Winston Churchill

Childhood and youth of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, in a palace of his family , who was wealthy. Although Churchill was not his family name — which was Marlborough — he wanted to adopt the name of a distant grandfather (great-great-grandfather). His parents were Lord Randolph Churchill and Jennie Jerome. His father was a Conservative Party politician, parliamentarian and Minister of Finance. His mother was the daughter of a US millionaire financier. Despite all the family’s wealth, they were often in debt due to high expenses.

In his early childhood, from the age of two to six, Churchill lived in Dublin, Ireland . His grandfather was, at the time, viceroy of that country. There are stories about betrayals between his parents. In one of them, it was said that his younger brother, Jack, was a bastard, having been conceived at times when the couple were apart. Thus, Churchill was practically raised by his nanny.

At school, Churchill was not doing very well . Probably due to his speech difficulties, which remained with him until adulthood. He defined his school years as unpleasant and sterile, after all, he was only successful in fencing and English. In 1884, when he changed schools because of health concerns, his grades improved. In 1888, he changed schools again and increased his performance even further, especially in History.

His behavior, however, was not good, and, despite having published poetry, his father redirected him to fencing and other physical activities, so that he could pursue a military career. His adolescence was during a very fruitful economic period for the United Kingdom , under the reign of Queen Victoria.

Still in his school life, he never learned Latin (or other languages) due to memory problems, which had a compensatory and curious effect on the English language subject. All these issues did not prevent him from having his first job at a school, in 1893.

Winston Churchill’s military career

Churchill’s military career is usually considered to lie between the years 1895 and 1899. Previously, he had twice attempted to enter the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Only in the third grade did he pass, and, as soon as he finished his studies, he was a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment of the British Army .

Also in 1895, he went to Cuba, fought alongside the Spanish in the War of Independence and, at the same time, was a journalist correspondent, sending articles about the conflict to England. The following year, he went to India, then to Sudan and South Africa, always acting in the same way: fighting and writing reports for English newspapers.

In the latter country, he became a prisoner, but managed to escape to Mozambique. He ended up returning to South Africa, but this time for a short time. According to words from his letters and autobiography, he saw a military career as a way to enter a political career , his greatest ambition. During the First World War , he was First Lord of the Admiralty, in what turned out to be a disastrous campaign.

Churchill’s political career and actions in the Second World War

Before we talk about Churchill’s role in the Second World War, it is necessary to talk about his political career. He first took a seat in the English Parliament in 1900 , when he was just 26 years old. He was elected by the Conservative Party, the same as his father, but migrated, at the beginning of his term, in 1904, to the Liberal Party. He assumed important positions, such as: Under-Secretary of the Colonies, in 1905, and full member of the Cabinet as Minister of Commerce, in 1908. In 1910, he was Home Secretary, and violently repressed miners’ strikes in Wales, leaving one injured and one dead. in action.

With his insignificant participation as First Lord of the Admiralty (April 1915 to January 1916), in the First World War, fighting in France, he resigned from all his posts and positions. Only in 1917 did he return as the government’s Minister of Ordnance and, later, in 1918, he became Minister of Finance at the end of the war.

In 1924, he returned to the Conservative Party, where he remained for the rest of his life. Between 1918 and 1939, that is, in the interwar period, he wrote many treatises and criticized the Nazi rise, which guaranteed him prominence in the House of Commons. He frequently sent requests to the government for militarization, in preparation for possible German attacks.

It was criticized for its excessively warlike character . However, when Hitler really demonstrated his strength, culminating in the Second World War, the English began to agree with what Churchill had warned much earlier. To this day he is remembered for having made this precise analysis.

In September 1939, he was reappointed as First Lord of the Admiralty. This date also marked the Nazi invasion of Poland and, consequently, the beginning of the Second World War, with the entry of the United Kingdom, which had attempted, together with France, the policy of appeasement via a mutual defense treaty signed with Poland and others. European countries. Such agreements failed to stop Hitler’s expansionist drive. Nine months later, that is, on May 10, 1940, Churchill took over as Prime Minister, at the age of 65 .

However, what most demonstrated its main action in the Second World War had to do with the increasingly closer approach of the then US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aiming at the definitive entry of the Americans into the war, which later proved to be a good strategy, as they were fundamental in the Allied victory.

Germany launched several attacks on the United Kingdom during the war, including many bombings in London. Churchill, who had good oratory skills, called on the British people to remain firm and resilient, even in times of such attacks. This is also another reason for his fame and acclaim during the Second World War, as he was seen as courageous.

In 1945, the Allies won World War II . That same year, internally in the United Kingdom, Churchill’s Conservative Party lost the elections to Labor, thus leaving him as Prime Minister, which was taken over by Clement Attlee.

In 1946, in one of his speeches, he popularized the term “iron curtain” , used to warn the world about the possible future division (which ended up coming true) between the USA and the USSR or between capitalists and communists in Europe. In 1951, the Conservative Party regained a majority, and Churchill returned to the role of Prime Minister, at the age of 76. Two years later, in 1953, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature and was hailed as “the greatest living Briton”.

On March 1, 1955, Churchill’s health was not good (during the entire war period, he worked and lived in the same place). His diet was precarious, he drank and smoked a lot, which certainly contributed to his death, years later, from a stroke), and, therefore, he resigned as Prime Minister, but continued in Parliament until 1964, shortly before your death . There he frequently denounced the dangers of a possible nuclear war that was to come in the Cold War.

Winston Churchill’s literary career

Winston Churchill began writing his first books when he was still in Sudan . His two volumes of Memoirs of the Second World War earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Check out the main works from his vast bibliography below.

→ Works by Winston Churchill

The world crises , in Portuguese (photo below), was written to analyze issues relating to the First World War. There are five volumes.
River war, the Reconquest of Sudan , his second book. Written when he was in the army, before he was even elected to the English Parliament.
Painting as a hobby is a book that brings Churchill’s discovery when he dedicated himself to painting, a habit he only acquired at the age of 40 to get rid of depression.
History of the English-Speaking Peoples is about the history of Great Britain.
Memoirs of the Second World War , which won him the Nobel Prize, is a two-volume work that narrates, in detail, the entire conflict, starting in 1919 and going until 1945.
Great Men of My Time is a book with short biographies written by Churchill about people such as Leon Trotsky, Charlie Chaplin, Rudyard Kipling, Franklin D. Roosevelt and even Adolf Hitler — all of whom were his contemporaries. Written before he was Prime Minister.
My youth is like an autobiography, in which he recalls his education, upbringing and his times as a reporter.

They do not appear as major works by the author, but, in 1900, he wrote his first and only novel and, in 1906, the biography of his father.