Woops...I know, paragraphs are your friend. I’ve been a freeper since 2003, lurking since 1998 or so. This is my first post! Go easy, huh?
Thank you. Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor! Churchill made the same pledge, and the English people were a living sacrifice for the salvation of Western Civilization. That Obama disregarded this is a measure of his disregard for us,also.
So what exactly did Churchill announce that fateful day?
To understand what our English cousin did (Churchill was half-American by birth; his mother was Jennie Jerome of New York), it is essential to first recall the dire circumstances he faced.
England was at war with Germany, standing alone against a seemingly insurmountable foe. Churchill and the rest of the world had watched in amazement as Adolf Hitler had swallowed up countries wholesale: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway and now France had all capitulated under the Nazi blitzkrieg and surrendered to the Fuhrer.
Churchill stood alone.
Popular opinion, especially in America, favored compromise: Churchill should sue for peace lest he face annihilation by a superior enemy. Remember, these were the days when people thought Hitler’s daring couldn’t miss — and five years before the full measure of his wickedness would be revealed.
Tiny England, common sense suggested, would fare no better in the face of Hitler than her allies had; more to the point, the United States showed no interest in entering another European war. America was officially neutral. President Franklin Roosevelt even made keeping our boys out of the conflict a campaign theme.
Joseph P. Kennedy, our ambassador to England, thought the war already lost, declaring, “Democracy is finished in England,” before resigning his post later that year. His words seem strange today but accurately expressed the common sentiment of the time.
Churchill believed otherwise. “We shall never surrender!” he declared to a beleaguered nation, famously adding, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
And so, on July 4, 1940, Churchill revealed to Parliament that he had personally given the order to fire upon and sink three French battleships stationed at Oran in French North Africa, resulting in the death of nearly 1,300 French seamen. Young men, mostly; men who considered the British their brothers in arms; men in the prime of their lives, yet now entombed at the bottom of the sea. Why on earth would Churchill have done it?
The answer is brutally simple. Though France had surrendered to Germany, its navy was still intact. (Its army was decimated.) Britain, understandably, asked its ally to turn its warships over to the U.K., the United States or any other neutral port, lest they be seized by Hitler and turned on Britain. But the French Navy refused, naïvely believing the ships were unimportant or could defend themselves. Churchill proved this reasoning a myth by sinking the ships in mere minutes.
Upon learning of the sinking of the French fleet, the world bristled. But no one now doubted Churchill’s resolve. Roosevelt was particularly impressed, believing that England just might hold out. France was stunned.
The act caused outrage, but it also inspired. Two French families who lost their sons by British fire actually requested that the Union Jack lie with the French flag on their sons’ caskets. In his memoir, Churchill praised the families, noting that “the comprehending spirit of simple folk often touches the sublime.” Indeed.
One week after the fleet at Oran was destroyed, Hitler, as Churchill predicted, launched the Battle of Britain with a massive bombardment by the Luftwaffe of England. The English survived, but just barely, and, perhaps, because Germany offered no naval challenge.
You know the rest of the story. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and brought America into the war — war in the Pacific, initially. Amazingly, it was Hitler himself who brought America into the conflict in Europe: He declared war on America on Dec. 11.
Upon hearing the news, Churchill retired for the night “and slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful,” knowing that with America by his side, the war was won.
As we remember our many heroes this Independence Day, perhaps we might also raise a glass to the memory of our distant cousin, Sir Winston S. Churchill: the weeping warrior who fired upon his friends so that we could freely embrace ours; the man who stood alone and promised a frightened world blood, sweat and tears, and chillingly delivered on all counts, so that we might enjoy our own freedoms today.
Daniel F. Harrington is president of Chartwell Investment Services, in Rumford. His business is named after Churchill’s beloved estate in Kent, England.
Thank you for posting this. It was really interesting and I didn’t know the history in that detail.
Hitler had little choice but to attack the Soviets to gain access to the Balken Oil fields. This open another (fatal) front for Nazi Germany.
It was also Churchill's call to first fight in Africa so the young US Army could become battle tested and learn German Military strategy.
Many Historians also believe that Churchill and Montgomery's attack strategy after securing Paris MAY ended the War in late 1944. However with US providing most of the resources, Eisenhower plan won out.
“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 small 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 Churchill 1940
If I read ‘England’ again in this thread, I will scream.