Quotes from book
The Second World War

The Second World War
Winston S. Churchill

The Second World War is a history of the period from the end of the First World War to July 1945, written by Winston Churchill. Churchill labelled the "moral of the work" as follows: "In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill".Churchill wrote the book, with a team of assistants, using both his own notes and privileged access to official documents while still working as a politician; the text was vetted by the Cabinet Secretary. Churchill was largely fair in his treatment, but wrote the history from his personal point of view. He was unable to reveal all the facts, as some, such as the use of Ultra electronic intelligence, had to remain secret. From a historical point of view the book is therefore an incomplete memoir by a leading participant in the direction of the war.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“By its sudden collapse, … the proud German army has once again proved the truth of the saying, 'The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech before a Joint Session of Congress (May 19, 1943), Washington, D.C., in Never Give In! : The best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (2003), Hyperion, p. 352 ISBN 1401300561
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“If Gandhi tries to start a really hostile movement against us in this crisis, I am of the opinion that he should be arrested, and that both British and United States opinion would support such a step. If he likes to starve himself to death, we cannot help that.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Minute (14 June 1942) to the Secretary of State for India before Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 123
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Churchill ended his December 8, 1941 letter to the Japanese Ambassador, declaring that a state of war now existed between the United Kingdom and Japan, with the courtly flourish "I have the honour to be, with high consideration, Sir, Your obedient servant".
The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbor).
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“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.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons (4 June 1940).
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. … I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray—ah, yes, for there are times when all pray—for the safety of their loved ones, for the return of the bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Radio broadcast (22 June 1941) on the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1120
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Goodnight then: sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. Vive la France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Radio broadcast, London, Dieu Protège La France [God protect France], October 21, 1940 ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/LaFrance.html).
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The hour has come; kill the Hun.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

How Churchill said he would end his speech if Germany invaded Britain (John Colville's diary entry for January 25, 1941). In The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), ed. Gilbert, W.W. Norton, pp. 132–133 ISBN 0393019594
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948) Chapter 19 (Prague, Albania, and the Polish Guarantee).
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“We cannot tell when they will try to come; we cannot be sure that in fact they will come at all; but no one should blind himself to the fact that a heavy full-scale invasion of this Island is being prepared with all the usual German thoroughness and method, and that it may be launched at any time now. … Therefore, we must regard the next week or so as a very important week for us in our history. It ranks with the days of the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon's Grand Army at Boulogne. We have read all about this in the history books; but what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its civilization than these brave old days of the past. Every man and every woman will therefore prepare himself to do his duty, whatever it may be, with special pride and care.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (11 September 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 778
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The House of Commons has lifted our affairs above the mechanical sphere into the human sphere. It thrives on criticism, it is perfectly impervious to newspaper abuse or taunts from any quarter, and it is capable of digesting almost anything or almost any body of gentlemen, whatever be the views with which they arrive. There is no situation to which it cannot address itself with vigour and ingenuity. It is the citadel of British liberty; it is the foundation of our laws; its traditions and its privileges are as lively today as when it broke the arbitrary power of the Crown and substituted that Constitutional Monarchy under which we have enjoyed so many blessings.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, October 28, 1943 "House of Commons Rebuilding" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/oct/28/house-of-commons-rebuilding#column_405.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Side by side … the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue … mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them … gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians -- upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Radio broadcast, Be Ye Men of Valour, May 19, 1940 ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/BeYeMofV.html).
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

After the devastation of Dresden by aerial bombing, and the resulting fire storm (February 1945). Quoted in Where the Right Went Wrong (2004) by Patrick J Buchanan, p. 119 ISBN 0312341156
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“We all of us made our mistakes, but the strength of the Parliamentary institution has been shown to enable it at the same moment to preserve all the title-deeds of democracy while waging war in the most stern and protracted form. I wish to give my hearty thanks to men of all Parties, to everyone in every part of the House wherever they sit, for the way in which the liveliness of Parliamentary institutions has been maintained under the fire of the enemy, and for the way in which we have been able to persevere—and we could have persevered much longer if need had been—till all the objectives which we set before us for the procuring of the unlimited and unconditional surrender of the enemy had been achieved.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons (8 May 1945), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 1346
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“I hate nobody except Hitler — and that is professional.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Churchill to John Colville during WWII, quoted by Colville in his book The Churchillians (1981) ISBN 0297779095
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“When this war is won by this nation, as it surely will be, it must be one of our aims to work to establish a state of society where the advantage and privileges which hitherto have been enjoyed only by the few shall be far more widely shared by the many and the youth of the nation as a whole.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech to Harrow School (18 December 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 950
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“To achieve the extirpation of Nazi tyranny there are no lengths of violence to which we will not go.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech to Parliament, September 21, 1943. Quoted in Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War (2008) by Patrick J Buchanan, p. 396.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil Servants, no longer servants and no longer civil. And where would the ordinary simple folk—the common people, as they like to call them in America—where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 32
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War, Volume II : Their Finest Hour (1949) Chapter XXX (Ocean Peril). p. 529.
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“My friends, I must tell you that a Socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Although it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism of the early part of the century, there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. It is not alone that property, in all its form, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its form, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 33-34
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Personally, having lived through all these European disturbances and studied carefully their causes, I am of the opinion that if the Allies at the peace table at Versailles had not imagined that the sweeping away of long-established dynasties was a form of progress, and if they had allowed a Hohenzollern, a Wittelsbach, and a Habsburg to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler. To Germany, a symbolic point on which the loyalties of the military classes could centre would have been found, and a democratic basis of society might have been preserved by a crowned Weimar in contact with the victorious Allies.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Telegram (26 April 1945) to Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, British Ambassador to Turkey, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 1314
The Second World War (1939–1945)