Winston S. Churchill used the worldwide facilities of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to deliver some of the most memorable speeches of the World War II era to the largest audience ever reached by a British politician. Between 1926 and 1954, his evocative phrases and magnificent epigrams helped encourage and inspire the enemies of militant fascism and postwar communism and proved to be the most powerful force for overcoming U.S. isolationism. Using Burke, Gibbon, and Cromwell as models, his "great flights of oratory" and "sudden swoops into the intimate and conversational" made him the most eloquent statesman of his day and were instrumental in ensuring his long political success. According to Time, "Few orators since Demosthenes have evoked the emotional quality of the prime minister's exhortations."

Early Use of Radio

Churchill first manifested an interest in the political uses of broadcasting when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Baldwin government (1924-29), he attempted to use the BBC to end the General Strike of 1926 by presenting the government's position directly to the nation. Political motives also underlay his highly partisan annual budget speeches and his vigorous campaign for state-controlled radio, both of which brought him into constant conflict with the BBC's director general, John Reith.

The Prime Minister's official residence, No. 10 Downing Street in London, was first wired for broadcasting in 1926, although equipment to allow broadcasts to originate from No. 10 was not put in place until late 1938. The nearby underground Cabinet War Rooms (now a museum) also had broadcast capability by the time the war began in September 1939. From one of these sites (or from Chequers, the country house of Prime Ministers, which received broadcasting equipment during the war), Churchill broadcast 24 times between June 1940 and May 1945.

The 1930s were Churchill's "wilderness years." He took to the air only four times between 1934 and 1939, generally as an opponent of Indian self-government and of German rearmament (both unpopular positions). After 1936 his broadcasts stressed the danger of appeasing Hitlerian expansionism. On 16 October 1938, after Prime Minister Chamberlain's failure at Munich to thwart German designs on Czechoslovakia, Churchill delivered a stinging rebuke of Hitler over the BBC and called attention to Britain's military unpreparedness. When the Nazi blitz into Poland ignited World War II, Churchill's warnings seemed vindicated, and he was rewarded with a return to his old post as First Lord of the Admiralty.

As First Lord, Churchill regularly broadcast to the nation on developments in the war at sea. In December 1939 he reported jubilantly on the sinking of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee in Montevideo harbor. In order to sustain morale during the bleak period of military inactivity (Phony War), he routinely exaggerated Germany's U-boat losses.

Finest Hour: 1940-45

  In May 1940 Churchill replaced Chamberlain as prime minister. It was a dark hour for Britain. Allied forces had recently been driven from Norway and were in headlong retreat before the victorious Wehrmacht in France. Strong leadership and inspired guidance were necessary if Britain was to surmount the challenges of total war. During his premiership, Churchill would deliver 33 major wartime speeches by radio. All were carried by the BBC within Britain and shortwaved to North America and throughout the Empire. Many were translated into Danish, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, and several other languages. As Britain confronted the gravest national crisis in its long history, Churchill employed his speeches for three purposes: to keep the nation abreast of the progress of Allied operations against the Axis; to rally and reassure Britons at times of disappointment and defeat; and to satisfy world opinion, especially in the United States, of Britain's resolve to persevere until victory was achieved. In the first few years of conflict, when British forces were on the defensive in all theaters, Churchill's "fighting words" seemed to be the most formidable weapon in the national arsenal. Edward R. Murrow marveled at the way in which Churchill "mobilized the English language and sent it into battle," and parliamentarian Josiah Wedgewood believed his speeches to be "worth a thousand guns." Most of Churchill's major addresses were broadcast, and the few that were not carried live from either the House of Commons, the BBC's Broadcasting House, or Chequers were conveyed in summary form immediately afterwards. Complete transcripts were published in morning newspapers and collected in annual bound anthologies. Murrow reported on the prime minister's activities in his nightly transmissions from London, and Raymond Swing and H.V. Kaltenborn routinely analyzed his speeches on their programs. Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) correspondent Eric Severeid believed Churchill's voice was as familiar in the United States as it was in Britain, where it became an eagerly awaited wartime ritual to cluster around the living-room or pub set and hear Big Ben's nine chimes and the defiant and rousing words that followed.

In his first broadcast as prime minister on 19 May 1940, Churchill told the nation, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." With Britain suffering grievous losses in France, he urged his countrymen to "be men of valor" and accept the sacrifices the developing war would soon require of them. The next day German forces reached the Channel coast at Abbeville, effectively cutting the Allied armies in two. With his shaky French, Churchill took to the shortwaves and tried to rally General Weygand's beleaguered troops. By the beginning of June, Britain's expeditionary force was surrounded and lost 30,000 (and saved on the order of 300,000) men while evacuating the port of Dunkirk. In a 4 June 1940 speech, Churchill accepted this ignominious setback but confidently pledged that Britain would continue the struggle against Hitler "whatever the cost may be." "We shall fight on the beaches," he proclaimed, "we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets ... we shall never surrender." The House of Commons was deeply moved by this speech, and Vita Sackville-West, listening at home, was "stirred by his Elizabethan phrases" and the "massive backing of power and resolve behind them."

On 17 June 1940, France sued for peace, and Britain found herself alone against the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany. The next evening, Churchill informed the world of the tragedy and once again asserted Britain's "inflexible resolve to continue the war." In what is often regarded as his greatest rhetorical performance, the prime minister definitely stated:

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us on 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, then the whole world ... will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age ... 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 still say, "This was their finest hour."

In the summer of 1940, Hitler launched a massive air campaign against Britain and began preparations for "Operation Sea-Lion"-the cross-Channel invasion of the Home Islands. On 14 July, as the Luftwaffe attempted to bomb British cities into submission, Churchill told the 65 percent of the entire population listening to him that he "would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than tamely and abjectly enslaved." In June and July, the Royal Air Force lost over 500 pilots successfully defending British airspace against the marauders. On 20 August Churchill expressed the sentiments of a grateful nation. "Never in the field of human conflict," he declared, "has so much been owed by so many to so few." Violet Bonham-Carter said of the prime minister's hour-long broadcast, "Nothing so simple, so majestic, so true has been said in such a great moment of human history."

The air engagements of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz strained Britain's resources to the breaking point and rendered her strategic situation perilous. If she was not to succumb, the economic and military assistance of the neutral United States was imperative. Many of Churchill's 1940-41 broadcasts were geared toward securing greater U.S. involvement in the European war. In his 4 June 1940 broadcast, the prime minister spoke confidently of the "New World liberating the Old." On 20 August he likened Anglo-American unity to the irresistible flow of the Mississippi River, and on 11 September he urged the two nations to "join hands [and] rebuild the temples of man's freedom." On 9 February 1941 he transmitted a direct appeal to Franklin Roosevelt over BBC shortwave. "Put your confidence in us," he pleaded. "Give us the tools and we will finish the job." Churchill's rhetorical assault on American isolationism bore fruit, and within a month the U.S. Senate passed the Lend-Lease Act, guaranteeing Britain a regular supply of all required war material.

Despite America's increased material and moral commitment, Britain's war fortunes continued to deteriorate in the spring of 1941. By April, the Royal Army had been evicted from Greece, and German U-boats were inflicting appalling losses on Allied merchantmen in the Atlantic. On 2 7 April 1941 Churchill went on the air to overcome the pessimism that recent events had generated. "When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us," he assured, "we may derive new confidence from rem em be ring those we have already overcome." Over 77 percent of the adult population heard this speech (the largest audience achieved by a British premier to that date), and most were heartened. When Churchill asked her if she had tuned in to the broadcast, his long-time friend Violet Bonham-Carter replied, "Of course. Everyone in England listens when you speak."

Churchill was considerably encouraged by diplomatic events in the second half of 1941. On 21 June, Hitler's "Oper­ation Barbarossa" brought the Soviet Union into the anti-Nazi coalition. The following evening, Churchill broadcast to the world the news that Britain was no longer alone. During the same period, the United States was increasingly assuming the role of a co belligerent. Churchill used the occasion of a 16 June broadcast accepting an honorary doctorate from the University of Rochester to praise Roosevelt's pro-Allied tendencies, and on 14 August he reported on the Anglo-American agreement on war aims achieved in the Atlantic Charter. Time magazine remarked of this latter broadcast: "Churchill told the world and the world hung on his words   His timing was matchless [and] he lashed Britain's enemies with the splendor of Elizabethan arrogance." After America's formal entry into the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress. On 26 December, in a speech shortwave as far as Singapore, Churchill proclaimed, "The U.S. has drawn the sword for freedom and cast away the scabbard ... the subjugated peoples of Europe [can] lift up their heads again in hope."

     Churchill remained optimistic when, in the spring of 1942, the Japanese overran British possessions in the Far East and sank the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse. In a 15 February 1942 broadcast, Churchill talked of "drawing from the heart of misfortune the vital impulses of victory," and on 10 May he reviewed Allied successes during the two years since he had become prime minister.

When the tide of war shifted decisively in Britain's favor after El Alamein and the American invasion of French North Africa in late 1942, Churchill was euphoric. On 10  November he told listeners: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning." To those who feared that the war would hasten the disintegration of the Empire, he reassured Britons that he had not "become the King's First Minister in order to preside over [its] liquidation."

The majority of Churchill's broadcasts after 1943 emphasized the certainty of victory and the necessity of continued Allied cooperation in the postwar era. On 26 January 1943 he reported on the Casablanca conference and the "no compromise peace" formula was decided there. In a broadcast from London's Guildhall in June 1943, Churchill remarked on the success of the Allied bombing offensive against Germany. "Those who sowed the wind are now reaping the whirlwind." The year 1944 was, in his words, the "year of almost unbroken success." On 26 March 1944 he discussed Allied preparations for the much-anticipated second front in France. In his 9 November broadcast, he announced the end of the U-boat threat, listed the European capitals recently liberated by Allied forces, and declared that the enemy had been "beaten back into his own lair." On 23 November 1944 he gave a Thanksgiving Day speech from the Royal Albert Hall in honor of the United States' massive war-winning contribution.

On 8 May 1945 Churchill delivered the news of Germany's unconditional surrender, and on 13 May he made a 40-minute victory broadcast to the Empire and Commonwealth. In the general election that followed the end of the war in Europe, radio was Churchill's principal campaign instrument. Unfortunately, his vicious attacks on Clement Atlee and his 4 June 1945 broadcast comparing the Labour Party to the Nazi Gestapo were highly unpopular and helped to ensure his eventual defeat at the polls.

Final Years

  Despite being out of the Cabinet between 194 5 and 1951, Churchill continued to make notable broadcast speeches. His most famous is certainly the one delivered in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, when his stark depiction of the communist takeover in Eastern Europe and his call for Anglo-American vigilance against Soviet expansionism were instrumental in escalating Cold War tension. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic," he declared, "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." On 19 September 1946 another significant postwar speech was made in Zurich, where Churchill strongly advocated European integration.

In 1951 Churchill absorbed the lessons of his 1945 election defeat and adeptly used the airwaves to secure the Conservatives' return to power. On 7 February 1952, as prime _minister again, he delivered a magnificent eulogy of George VI over the BBC. His last major public address was made on 30 November 1954, on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

On 30 January 1965, Churchill's elaborate London funeral was comprehensively covered by the BBC and American radio networks. For three and a half hours, CBS's Alan Jackson and Morley Safer described the procession from Westminster Hall to St. Paul's Cathedral, Robert Trout reflected on Churchill's oratorical achievements, and ex-President Eisenhower delivered a moving tribute to his wartime friend.