1955
Winston Churchill
Resigns
Sir
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain
and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, retires as prime minister of
Great Britain.
Born
at Blenheim Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon
his father’s death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an
illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and
distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his
commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was
elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the
Liberals, serving a number of important posts before being appointed Britain’s
First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy
to a readiness for the war he foresaw.
In
1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the
disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns and was thus excluded from the
war coalition government. However, in 1917, he returned to politics as a
cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he
was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party,
where two years later he played a leading role in the defeat of the General
Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded
warnings of the threat of Nazi and Japanese aggression.
After
the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill returned to his post as First
Lord of the Admiralty and eight months later replaced Neville Chamberlain as
prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his
administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised
his country and the world that Britain would “never surrender.” He rallied the
British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that eventually crushed the Axis.
After
a postwar Labor Party victory in 1945, he became leader of the opposition and
in 1951 was again elected prime minister. In 1953, he was knighted by Queen
Elizabeth II and awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. After his retirement as
prime minister, he remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his
death.