Winston Churchill

Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill gives the victory sign to the crew of the Queen Mary as he debarks, June 1943. When World War II started, Churchill defiantly said, “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs – Victory in spite of all terror – Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”

In the dark early days of World War II, Churchill had few real weapons other than words. But the words in his speeches were among the most powerful ever given. His words were defiant, inspiring, heroic and human, and they reached out to everyone in Britain, if not the world. One journalist wrote, “He took the English language and sent it into battle.”

Churchill paid tribute to England’s RAF fighter pilots in 1940, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Before the House of Commons in 1940, he inspired England by saying, “We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be; 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….”