219: The Three Speeches

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This episode of History of the Second World War dives into the pivotal moments of the Battle of Britain, exploring Winston Churchill’s powerful speeches that galvanized Britain during the 1940 air campaign. From vivid historical comparisons to the heroic sacrifices of RAF pilots, the episode unpacks the tension, strategy, and resilience that defined this critical conflict. Listeners will hear excerpts of Churchill’s iconic rhetoric, including his reflections on the “Few” and the daring defense of British skies, all while uncovering the lesser-known details that shaped one of history’s most defining battle.

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Summary

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 219: The Battle About Britain Part 3 - The Three Speeches. This week a big thank you goes out to Evan for supporting the podcast by becoming members. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episode plus special member only episodes roughly once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more.

This episode is going to be a bit different, and instead of focusing on a topic or a series of events it is instead going to focus simply on three speeches. From May 13 to June 16th Winston Churchill would give three speeches which when combined makes for one of the most memorable set of political speeches of all time, all given within a 34 day period in the early summer of 1940. While at the time they were not named, they have become known to history through the most famous phrase from each of the speeches. On May 13th, just a few days after becoming Prime Minister he would deliver the Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat speech to the House of Commons during which he would discuss his plans as Prime Minister. On June 4th the We Shall Fight on the Beaches speech was delivered to the House of Commons as a summary and update on the current state of the war in the aftermath of the successful evacuation of Dunkirk. Then on June 16th, as the situation rapidly moved towards full defeat for France the third speech, Their Finest Hour, would once again be delivered to the Commons as a statement of the plans of the government moving forward. Even though all three speeches were delivered in the first five weeks of Churchill becoming Prime Minister they have become the most well known public statements that he would ever give. All three speeches have been referenced constantly over the last 85 years, with the date of the release of the We Shall Fight on the Beaches being exactly 85 years from the release of this podcast. This episode will work through each speech in turn, discussing the context and content of each of the speeches that were given. And of course the that will require some focus on the famous last section of each speech, in which the famous quotes are found, but there are interesting sections in each of the speeches that rarely find their way onto book covers.

The Blood Toil Tears and Sweat speech, which for the sake of brevity I will refer to simply as Toil for the rest of the episode, was the first to be delivered and also the shortest. One of the major reasons for its shorter length is that it does not give an update on the status of the fighting in France, which at the time that it was delivered was still a developing and confusing situation. The German troops had only crossed the Meuse at Sedan on the 12th, and so it was still mostly unclear that the fighting in France was not going to develop along the expected lines of a German advance through central Belgium. Instead Toil focuses on Churchill as the new Prime Minister and broad statements about his policies moving forward. He had only been made Prime Minister on the 10th, and it took some time to finalize the War Cabinet and get all of the bits of the new government put together. The majority of the speech is just a recounting of these actions, providing assurances to the Commons that everything was in order. But he would also note that ensuring that all of the various ministries were filled completely would take some time, although he did have a good excuse: “to form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations have to be made here at home.”. Then Churchill drops in the first of his statements about his intentions: “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”. But it is really in the final paragraph of the speech that Churchill really launches into his plans. “You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. 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.”. These are bold statements, showing a clear indication that Churchill believed that the only available course of action was to keep fighting, but they also need to be taken in the proper context. Churchill fully understood what these speeches were, they were not firm statements of policy, they were public relations opportunities, propaganda opportunities. And he was making the best of it, ending the speech with a call for united action “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”.

If Toil was delivered at a time of uncertainty, the second speech We Shall Fight on the Beaches, which I will refer to as Beaches, was delivered at a time of seeming disaster. The speech was being delivered on June 4th, in the aftermath of the evacuations from Dunkirk and the majority of the speech functions as a recounting of all of the events leading up to the evacuation and then the consequences of that evacuation. When I read the speech today i get the sense that this speech is was written by Churchill the writer, the same person who wrote The World Crisis on the First World War and the six volume history on the Second World War. It reads like a speech that is attempting to cover the course of a military campaign more than a political speech, and honestly if I just recorded the entire thing and released it on this podcast feed most listeners would probably think it was a pretty decent podcast episode, if perhaps in a slightly weird style. But it also is of course not entirely accurate, due to limitations on information and then also just the goal of Churchill during the speech which is not to fully accurately portray what was happening but instead to spin a bit of a tale of what happened that cast it in what he considered to be the proper light. This means you get lines like this one: “the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armoured divisions, each of about 400 armoured vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the main French Armies.”. Which is a somewhat accurate summary of what the Germans had done, with a slight over estimation of the total German armored strength which can be understood given the limitation of what the British knew. But then that same paragraph ends with this sentence: “Behind this armoured and mechanised onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.”. And just to repeat that last bit “the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.”. That is not Churchill the historian, but Churchill the propagandist using the speech to emphasize that Germany is the enemy not just of Britain but also of everything that is good and decent. There is also no small amount of positive things said about the actions of the British military during the speech “The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000 Frenchmen, in all about 4,000 strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance.”. Much of the middle of the speech is then spent on a series of paragraphs that I would summarize as Churchill emphasizing how horrible and bad things had been and could have been, and how close everything was to disaster. On the possibility of most of the troops at Dunkirk not being evacuated: “The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.”. This was a generally accurate picture of the estimates that were made before the evacuation began, that maybe 25,000 or so troops would be pulled off the beaches, it would have completely gutted the manpower of the British Army and would have set back their expansion plans maybe by years. Then onto the surrender of the Belgium: “The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest Army his country had ever formed.”. And then finally to the actions that were taking place around the pocket: “For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armoured divisions—or what was left of them—together with great masses of German infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French Armies fought.”. As discussed in the episodes on the events around Dunkirk, the German ground troops were not exactly throwing themselves, or hurling as Churchill would say, at the British and French defenses. In fact they let off on the pressure a little bit, because they did not feel that there was any real urgency in the situation and they had just executed a long advance. The next section of the speech then goes on to praise the Royal Navy and then the Royal Air Force for their actions during the evacuations. On the Royal Navy: “They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have said, themselves free from mines and torpedoes. It was in conditions such as these that our men carried on, with little or no rest, for days and nights on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters, bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they have brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage.”. Then on the Royal Air Force: “They tried hard, and they were beaten back; they were frustrated in their task. We got the Army away; and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have inflicted. Very large formations of German aeroplanes—and we know that they are a very brave race—have turned on several occasions from the attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force, and have dispersed in different directions. […] All of our types—the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant—and all our pilots have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face.”. About halfway through the speech there is also a section that seems to point towards ideas that would become famous with Churchill’s The Few speech in August 1940, when referring to British fighter pilots he would say: “There never had been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into a prosaic past: not only distant but prosaic; but these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, […] deserve our gratitude, as do all of the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready, to give life and all for their native land.”. Churchill would end the section of the speech, again the majority of its length, by turning from discussing what had happened to what would happen in the future, “Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonising week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy’s possession, the whole of the Channel ports are in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France.”. The final four paragraphs of the speech would focus on the possible threat of invasion. It would begin with this quite optimistic statement: “The whole question of home defence against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this island incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last.”. But then the next section details some of the actions that had been taken to arrest and detain many people within Britain, and not just individuals that were known supporters of Nazi Germany “We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the distinctions which we should like to do.”. Looking back from the perspective of today I find it interesting that there is such an open admission of using the excuse of war for such blatant disregard for any kind of rule of law, but that is probably just me being a bit naive. All of the preceding paragraphs generally get lost to history and are overshadowed by the final two parts of the speech. It would begin with this statement, with the ’turning one again’ being in reference to the fact that the previous section had been spend on discussing the arrests that had been made “Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people.”. Churchill then saw an opening for inserting more history, and comparing the current situation in 1940 to the grand history of the British Empire: “In the days of Napoleon, of which I was speaking just now, the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told.”. Then the final paragaph is just a series of sentences that have been endlessly quoted over the years, from the first one that I used at the start of this podcast series: “I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.”. To his statement that Britain and France planned to continue fighting: “The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.”. Then the final section: “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, 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, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”. Even ignoring the exact content of that section, it does put on display why Churchill’s speeches work even today, it is all about short sharp sentence sections and repetition of words and phrases. You can tell he is building up in speed and emphasis, and that is one of the reasons it works so well as a propaganda piece, it is inspiring and memorable and glorifies even the possibility of defeat.

The third speech, Their Finest Hour, was delivered on June 16th and much like the Beaches speech would for the vast majority of its length be a way to convey information to the members of the House of Commons. It was an official statement about what had happened and what the expectations were for the future at a time when the overall situation in France appeared to be rapidly heading to French defeat. The speech was delivered after the renewal of the German attacks on June 11th when, after a few days of fighting they had once again broken the French defensive lines that had been put in place under the leadership of German Weygand. French surrender appeared likely, and it was at this very concerning time that Churchill would again give a lengthy address that honestly has a pretty bleak tone. After discussing some of the events Churchill clearly states that the middle of June 1940 was not the time to go hunting for who to blame for the failures of the Allied armies up to that point in the war, particularly anyone in the British government. “Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. Therefore, I cannot accept the drawing of any distinctions between members of the present Government. It was formed at a moment of crisis in order to unite all the Parties and all sections of opinion. It has received the almost unanimous support of both Houses of Parliament. Its members are going to stand together, and, subject to the authority of the House of Commons, we are going to govern the country and fight the war.”. Part of this may have been Churchill trying to defend himself and those he worked with before the war, but there was no avoiding the fact that many of the people who had led Britain before the war were still in the Government, not just Chamberlain but many others. Being under the threat of invasion probably was not the ideal time to start having discussions about events from 5 years in the past, there would be plenty of time for that afterwards. Churchill would then move on to a bit of self congratulations: “The disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight have not come to me with any sense of surprise. Indeed, I indicated a fortnight ago as clearly as I could to the House that the worst possibilities were open; and I made it perfectly clear that whatever happened in France would make no difference to the resolve of Britain and the British Empire to fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.”. Although the next line is a bit questionable: “We have, therefore, in this Island today a very large and powerful military force. This force comprises all our best-trained and our finest troops, including scores of thousands of those who have already measured their quality against the Germans and found themselves at no disadvantage.”. I find it a bit hard to square Churchill’s long defeat of failures in France with the idea that the British Army did totally find against the Germans, Churchill being a bit optimistic, or purposefully misleading there. But then he follows up with some completely accurate evaluations of the chances of a German invasion: “the invasion of Great Britain would at this time require the transportation across the sea of hostile armies on a very large scale, and after they had been so transported they would have to be continually maintained with all the masses of munitions and supplies which are required for continuous battle—as continuous battle it will surely be.”. The problem he points out here, the size of the invasion that would be required, and the challenges of supplying that invasion force would be the exact problem that the Germans would spend months trying to solve. It would be the entire theme of the planning for Operation Sealion that will be discussed in just a few episodes of this podcast. Amphibious invasions are actually really difficult military operations to pull off. Churchill was also able to pull from his own experiences here, and use them as statement of expertise: “Here is where we come to the Navy—and after all, we have a Navy. Some people seem to forget that we have a Navy. We must remind them. For the last thirty years I have been concerned in discussions about the possibilities of oversea invasion, and I took the responsibility on behalf of the Admiralty, at the beginning of the last war, of allowing all regular troops to be sent out of the country.”. The next section of the speech mostly just discusses how the Royal Navy completely has the invasion risk under control in a variety of ways. Then the emphasis shifts to the air battle: “This brings me, naturally, to the great question of invasion from the air, and of the impending struggle between the British and German Air Forces. It seems quite clear that no invasion on a scale beyond the capacity of our land forces to crush speedily is likely to take place from the air until our Air Force has been definitely overpowered.”. This gives Churchill and opportunity for one of his optimistic to the point of being deceitful lines: “But we have a very powerful Air Force which has proved itself far superior in quality, both in men and in many types of machine, to what we have met so far in the numerous and fierce air battles which have been fought with the Germans. In France, where we were at a considerable disadvantage and lost many machines on the ground when they were standing round the aerodromes, we were accustomed to inflict in the air losses of as much as two and two-and-a-half to one.”. The loss ratio was nothing like that, unless you ignore British bomber losses and only count British fighter losses while still counting German bomber losses. Churchill then mentions the same advantages I have mentioned during previous episodes when it came to the advantages that the RAF would have in the coming fight over Britain: “In the defense of this Island the advantages to the defenders will be much greater than they were in the fighting around Dunkirk. We hope to improve on the rate of three or four to one which was realized at Dunkirk; and in addition all our injured machines and their crews which get down safely—and, surprisingly, a very great many injured machines and men do get down safely in modern air fighting—all of these will fall, in an attack upon these Islands, on friendly soil and live to fight another day; whereas all the injured enemy machines and their complements will be total losses as far as the war is concerned.”. After some further discussion of the aerial struggle Churchill moves on to discuss the status of the Dominions: “We have fully informed and consulted all the self-governing Dominions, these great communities far beyond the oceans who have been built up on our laws and on our civilization, and who are absolutely free to choose their course, but are absolutely devoted to the ancient Motherland, and who feel themselves inspired by the same emotions which lead me to stake our all upon duty and honor.”. Shortly after is my personal favorite line of the speech: “We may now ask ourselves: In what way has our position worsened since the beginning of the war?”. The reason I find this rhetorical question hilarious is because he kind of doesn’t answer the question, and tries to spin it has some kind of positive. He starts with this: “It has worsened by the fact that the Germans have conquered a large part of the coast line of Western Europe, and many small countries have been overrun by them.” but then after discussing that none of that effects the naval war ends with “If invasion has become more imminent, as no doubt it has, we, being relieved from the task of maintaining a large army in France, have far larger and more efficient forces to meet it.”. Britain lost its most loyal and powerful friendly nation, but don’t worry that is good for Britain because now it doesn’t have to send a few divisions to France. But the core reason for Churchill’s optimistic view is a few sentences later: “I do not see how any of these factors can operate to our detriment on balance before the winter comes; and the winter will impose a strain upon the Nazi regime, with almost all Europe writhing and starving under its cruel heel, which, for all their ruthlessness, will run them very hard.”. This really harkens back to the long standing belief among British leaders, dating all the way back to 1933 that the people under the governance of Nazi Germany were at all times one wrong move away from a full on revolt against the Nazi leadership. At every turn the British were basing their strategies on this idea, from Munich to the leaflet dropping campaigns, to the blockade and history would just prove that view to be completely incorrect. In the next section, and I of course have to talk about this, Churchill would reference the Great War: “During the first four years of the last war the Allies experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment. That was our constant fear: one blow after another, terrible losses, frightful dangers. Everything miscarried. […] During that war we repeatedly asked ourselves the question: ‘How are we going to win?’ And no one was able ever to answer it with much precision.”. Churchill is absolutely correct in this analysis, the first 3 years at least of the First World War are the story of defeat and disaster for Britain and every nation fighting the Central Powers. But I do question the idea that just because things were a disaster the first time it was okay that they were appearing to once again be a disaster. Churchill then shifts to the events in France, which at this point technically the French had not yet surrendered even though that seemed to be the course they were on, and so there was some ambiguity: “However matters may go in France or with the French Government, or other French Governments, we in this Island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon to endure what they have been suffering, we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gains, aye, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands; not one jot or tittle do we recede. Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians have joined their causes to our own. All these shall be restored.”. Then Churchill moves on to his closing statements, first making clear the stakes of the coming battle: “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.”. Then emphasizing the two courses of the future based on the outcome: “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, then the whole world, including the United 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.”. Before finally closing out with his call for heroic actions: “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.’”. The three speeches given by Churchill during this period are an interesting look into his mindset during this period, but it is critical that they always be taken in context. They were not dishonest speeches, but they were also not meant to be purely honest statements of the state of the war, Churchill’s mindset, or the course of action of the British government. They are propaganda pieces, not in the purely negative sense of propaganda trying to convince people of something that is untrue but the more benign version of propaganda that is created to elicit specific emotions, to reinforce certain beliefs, and to push listeners towards certain actions. In that since they are a masterclass,

“this was their finest hour”, “we shall fight on the landing grounds and in the streets”, “we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war”

and while Churchill would given many more speeches in his political career, it would be these three speeches from May and June 1940 that would be the foundations upon which his legacy would be built.