Churchill’s All Important Address to Congress

And we continue with our American Stories, and we love to tell stories about history. And as always, all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to learn all the good things in life, all the beautiful things in life. And if you can’t get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale.edu. That’s Hillsdale.edu. Winston Churchill made 16 visits to America in his lifetime. He traveled here as a soldier, a tourist, and a lecturer. But the late Prime Minister’s visit to America in 1941 as a wartime leader was his most important. The story of that trip back in the winter of 1941 and the speech to Congress the day after Christmas is worth telling. It revealed a lot about not just Churchill’s status as a statesman, but as a salesman. The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill, who just turned 67, packed his bags and headed for the United States. It would be the most important sales trip of his life, and perhaps the most important sale of the 20th century. As Dr. Larry Arne of Hillsdale College said in his speech there, “With the fall of France, Britain stood alone, decisively inferior in military power to the Nazis.” The only thing that could save it was the English Channel and an entry into the war by the United States. No one understood that stark reality better than Churchill. It was why he was on a boat crossing the Atlantic so soon after America’s darkest hours. His plan: strengthen relations with President Roosevelt, Congress, and the American public and prepare them for the exigencies of an extended and difficult war. It was a long trip of 10 days through cold, storm-tossed seas. It was a dangerous one, too. U-boats filled the Atlantic. There were serious concerns about Churchill’s safety, but he was not deterred. This was the work that could not be done on a phone. Churchill’s boat docked in Norfolk, Virginia, just two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He flew to National Airport in Washington, D.C., where President Roosevelt himself greeted him. The two would bond over a few days of drinking and smoking while Churchill prepared his remarkable speech—which, portions of which, you’re about to hear. Here is how things started the day after Christmas in 1941. Here is then-Prime Minister Winston.

Speaker 2: “The fact that my American warbears have, for so many generations, played their part in the life of the United States, that here I am, an Englishman welcomed in your midst, made this experience one of the most moving and thrilling in my life, which is already long and has not been entirely uneventful. I wish, I wish indeed, that my mother, whose memory I cherish across the vale of years, could have been here to see.”

Speaker 1: And Churchill’s mother, of course, born in Brooklyn. Churchill then made clear that our countries were connected by much more than a common length, which.

Speaker 2: “I may confess, however, that I do not feel quite like a fish out of water in a legislative assembly where English is spoken. I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father’s house to believe in democracy: ‘Trust the people.’ Therefore, I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly, and I have steered confidently towards the Gettysburg ideo: ‘the government of the people, by the people, or the people.'”

Speaker 1: He then addressed our very best angels, more certain about the true character of America than many of our own leaders, to the.

Speaker 2: “United States have been attacked and set upon by three most powerfully armed dictator states. The greatest military power in Europe, the greatest military power in Asia—Japan, Germany, and Italy—have all declared and are making war upon you. And a quarrel is open which can only end in their overthrow or yours. But you’re in Washington, in the memorable days, I have found an Olympian fortitude which, far from being based upon complacency, is only the mask of an inflexible purpose and the proof of a sure, well-grounded confidence in the final outcome.”

Speaker 1: The speech then took a tough turn, as Churchill warned Congress and the American people through the difficulties of the task ahead and the nature of our enemies, calling them wicked men that will stop at nothing that violence or treachery can suggest. Churchill then spoke of the rough path forward and invoked Scripture to close this part of the speech. No one knew better than Churchill that there was a great spiritual battle ahead.

Speaker 2: “Some people may be stoppled or moment curier depressed, when, like your President, I speak of a long and a hard war. Our peoples would rather know the truth, so bur though it be. And after all, when we are doing the noblest work in the world, not only defending our hearts and homes, but the cause of freedom in every land, the question of whether deliverance comes in 1942, or 1943, or 1944, falls into its proper place in the grand purportance of human history. Sure I am that this day, now, we are the masters of our faith, that the task which has set us is not above our strength, that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our course and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.”

Speaker 1: Churchill closed out his speech to the American people by invoking the spiritual dimension of the battle one last time and the common values the two great allies—England and America—shared.

Speaker 2: “Allow me to use other language. I will say that he must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, of which we have the honor to be the faithful servants. It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come, the British and American people will, for their own safety and for the good of all, walk together in majesty, injustice.”

Speaker 1: And indeed, Churchill responded to the roaring crowd by flashing the V for Victory signs that would become his signature gesture. On New Year’s Day, Roosevelt and Churchill visited nearby Mount Vernon to lay a wreath on the tomb of our nation’s first president in one of our greatest warriors, George Washington. On January 14th, 1942, after nearly a month away from home, Churchill left for war-torn London with one of his greatest victories. The late Churchill biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, was at Hillsdale College in 2006 and said these words: “It would take the New World, the United States, to rescue the Old and emerge as the defenders of freedom.” The story of Churchill’s 1941 Christmas-Time speech has always brought to us by the folks at Hillsdale College. All of our history stories here on our American Stories s.