The Most Important Churchill Speech You've Never Heard: His Christmas Address to Congress Weeks After Pearl Harbor

On this episode of Our American Stories, only weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made an all-important stop in the United States to visit with President Roosevelt and to address Congress about the hard path before them...as he knew more than anybody else in the world what that path looked like. He'd been walking it alone for a while. 

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:25):
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.

(00:45):
Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu. Winston
Churchill made sixteen visits to America in his lifetime. He
traveled here as a soldier, a tourist, and a lecturer.
With the late Prime Minister's visit to America in nineteen
forty one as a wartime leader was his most important.
The story of that trip back in the winter of

(01:06):
nineteen forty one 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 sixty seven, packed his bags and headed
for the United States. It would be the most important

(01:29):
sales trip of his life, and perhaps the most important
sale of the twentieth century. As doctor 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, an entry into the war by

(01:50):
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

(02:11):
and difficult war. It was a long trip of ten
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

(02:32):
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

(02:52):
started the day after Christmas in nineteen forty one. Here
is then Prime Minister Winston.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
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

(03:28):
in my life, which is already long and has not
been entirely uneventful. I wish, I wish indeed that my mother,
who's memory I cherish across the vale of years, could

(03:49):
have been here to see.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
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 (04:01):
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

(04:25):
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,

(04:48):
or the people.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
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 (05:01):
United States, have been attack 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

(05:24):
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

(05:49):
purpose and the proof of a sure, well grounded confidence
in the final outcome.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
The speech then took a tough turn, as Churchill war
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.

(06:21):
No one knew better than Churchill that there was a
great spiritual battle ahead.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
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

(06:49):
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 nineteen
forty two, or nineteen forty three or nineteen forty four
falls into its proper place in the grand purportance of

(07:13):
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

(07:34):
as we have faith in our course and an unconquerable
will power, salvation will not be denied us.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
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 (08:00):
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

(08:20):
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

(08:42):
their own safety and for the good of all, walk
together in majesty, injustice.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
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.

(09:14):
On January fourteenth, nineteen forty two, 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 two thousand and
six and said these words, it would take the New
World the United States to rescue the old and emerge

(09:40):
as the defenders of freedom. The story of Churchill's nineteen
forty one 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