21 Secrets About the Man who Saved Britain … and the World

He Inspired a Discouraged U.S.A.

In the opening days of America’s entry into World War II, it was to Churchill that Americans turned. “There was no way Americans could look into the future and foresee the blood, toll, tears and sweat that would be required of them – nor the ultimate outcome,” remembers historian Craig Shirley. “The United States was losing.” Nearly 3,000 Americans had died in Japan’s surprise destruction of the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sinking many of our mighty battleships. “In the sunken USS Arizona, faint tapping through the hull had been heard for days, but there was no way to get to the doomed men. The daily drumbeat of bad news was battering the American psyche into the ground. We needed to hear from a friend.”

The Nazis Were Winning

Hitler had absorbed Austria, annexed much of Czechoslovakia, then split up Poland – and defied the impotent League of Nations to do anything about it as he overran Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, north Africa and turned his attention to Russia. In the British Parliament, a rumpled, cigar-chomping, cognac-swigging Churchill, now in his 60s and just a member of the House of Commons – thundered his demands that the world stand up to the arrogant Nazis – who had begun their bloody campaign to exterminate racially inferior non-Germans as well as Jews, Catholics and gypsies. “An appeaser,” he declared, “is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

Churchill Rallied His Countrymen

Churchill saw how the Nazis looted every nation they conquered – and began systematically “purifying” the population racially, deporting Jews, gypsies and Catholics to death camps. Boys were intimidated into joining the violent and supremacist Hitler Youth. Surrender was out of the question, Churchill knew. “Never, never, never give up,” he thundered to the wavering public. “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Voters listened. They stood tall. They elected him Prime Minister.

Top British Leaders Opposed Him

Deposed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain urged negotiations with Hitler as did did Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. Liberal Party leaders Archibald Sinclair, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood were undecided. Why should Britain fight? Was it reasonable for young British troops to die in a war that showed every sign of being lost? Could the British do some kind of deal that might well save hundreds of thousands of lives? “I don’t think many people of my generation are fully conscious of how close we came to such a deal,” writes Johnson. “There were serious and influential voices who wanted to begin ‘negotiations.’” It is not hard to see why they thought as they did. Hitler seemed unbeatable.

Secret 4: He Feared Britain Would Fall

“Churchill was frightened for his nation, fears he never projected in public,” writes Kirchenbauer. “He was the English Bulldog and The Last Lion rolled into one, a leader in whose veins British indomitability and American can-do spirit flowed naturally.” But he won over Britain’s ruling elite. Atlee became Churchill’s Deputy Prime Minister – which would be like a Republican president appointing a Democrat his vice president. But Churchill had the clear and noisy backing of the people. “He had the vast and almost reckless moral courage,” writes Johnson, “to see that fighting on would be appalling, but that surrender would be even worse.”

Secret 9: He Insisted On Optimism

Although he was at retirement age, he perpetually demonstrated enthusiasm, determination and optimism in the face of inevitable defeat, writes biographer Geoffrey Best. “One of Churchill’s private secretaries spoke of Churchill’s drive: ‘The effect of Churchill’s zeal was felt immediately in Whitehall. Government departments which under Neville Chamberlain had continued to work at much the same speed as in peacetime awoke to the realities of war. A sense of urgency was created in the course of very few days and respectable civil servants were actually to be seen running along the corridors. No delays were condoned; telephone switchboards quadrupled their efficiency; the Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Planning Staff were in almost constant session; regular office hours ceased to exist and weekends disappeared with them.”

Secret 15: He Could Be Quite Cleverly Rude

“Nancy Astor became Britain’s first woman member of the House of Commons,” recalls the website Bizbag. “In the 1930’s she headed a clique in the House of Commons that found something to admire in Hitler’s Germany. Once, Churchill found himself at Cliveden, the Astor mansion. After dinner Lady Astor presided over the pouring of coffee. When Churchill came by, she glared and said. ‘Winston, if I were your wife, I’d put poison in your coffee.’ ‘Nancy,’ Churchill replied, ‘if I were your husband, I’d drink it.’ Another time, Mrs. Bessie Braddock accused him of being drunk. He is said to have responded: “And you, madam, are ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober.”

Secret 19: He Understood Hitler's Evil

At the height of World War II, Churchill told Parliament: “Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, the whole world, including the Unites States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, ‘This was their finest hour.’"

Secret 21: The Queen Broke the Rules

On Saturday, January 30, 1965, to the beat of muffled drums, a mile-long procession moved through the streets of London, watched by a world in mourning. It ended at St.Paul's Cathedral, where 3,000 mourners including kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers, participated. Those in attendance included the small figure of Paul Reynaud, Prime Minister of France in the dark days of May 1940, when he and Churchill met frequently as they tried vainly to come up with some way of convincing Hitler to talk rather than take what he wanted by force, and save the world from global war. Paying humble homage to Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth broke an ancient royal precedent by attending the funeral of a commoner.