System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Winston Churchill
1874 - 1965
Winston Churchill, the man who led England through the Second World War, died January 24, 1965. He was 90.
Churchill was born November 30, 1874 in Oxfordshire, England. The son of Randolph and Lady Churchill, he became a soldier and statesman.
Churchill graduated with honors from Sandhurst and began service in the British Empire's vast domain across the world. He served in Hampshire, Cuba, and in North Africa where he took part in a famous cavalry charge at Omdurman.
He also was a war correspondent, writing for the London Daily Telegraph in such hot spots as South Africa during the Boer War. He was taken prisoner by South Africa's Louis Botha in 1899. Botha would later serve as South Africa's prime minister and would become a good friend of Churchill's.
Traveling to the United States at the turn of the century, he began to build his political base. A fine orator, he lectured across America on military and economic issues facing the two countries.
Returning to England, he was elected to Parliament in 1900 as a Conservative. Trade policies, especially tariffs, caused him to jump from the conservatives to free-trade liberals in 1904. When Herbert Asquith became prime minister in 1908, Churchill's political fortunes improved.
Serving as president of the board of trade and home secretary, he began to develop a reputation as a good administrator. Other positions came his way, including first lord of the admiralty, but disfavor occurred after problems with the Royal Air Force which Churchill helped found.
During the early 1920's, Churchill served as secretary of state for war and air, and secretary for the colonies. In both positions, he initiated military reforms and policies which looked favorably at the establishment of new Arab states, a homeland for the Jews in the mideast, and a free Irish state.
He came back to the Conservative Party in 1924, and was elected Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Prior to World War II, Churchill was semi-retired from government service, but as hostilities between Germany and Britain escalated, Churchill was asked to return to his old post of first lord of the admiralty.
When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned in 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister, and remained so through the end of World War II.
As prime minister, Churchill was the voice of England, urging his countrymen to fight German aggression by sea and by land. Until the United States entered the war in 1941, England was the sole resistance to Hitler for two years. Hitler's bombing of England did not get his desired result of surrender, and it was Churchill's intention to begin bombing Germany.
When the United States was brought into the war by Japan, the combined strength of England, the United States and later Russia eventually won total victory against the Japanese and Germans.
Churchill helped broker peace agreements with Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, agreements which led to the partitioning of Europe by Russia and the western nations.
It was Churchill who first coined the term 'iron curtain', referring to the demarcation between east and west Europe.
At the end of World War II, the Labor Party won control of the Parliament, and Churchill was out of power. Six years later, he again assumed the reigns of power as prime minister, supporting such initiatives as the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the defense of Western Europe against communist aggression.
Churchill was knighted in 1953, and received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his chronicles of the war years. He retired in 1955.
Churchill died of old age on January 24, 1965, and was buried in his hometown of Oxfordshire.
