Churchill Addresses the British after Dunkirk

Churchill Addresses the British after Dunkirk

When World War II began with the Nazi invasion of Poland, the German war machine appeared unstoppable. After crushing the Poles, the Nazis turned westward, and defeated the French in a matter of weeks. The British, who had sent forces to assist the French, barely escaped in the Dunkirk sealift in May 1940. The French government surrendered shortly thereafter. America was sympathetic and would send the British aid, but did not enter the war until after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Thus, Britain was alone and it was up to British prime minister Winston Churchill to stiffen British morale.

On June 4, 1940, Churchill spoke to the House of Commons and indirectly to the entire nation. His speech, in which he declared that “we shall defend our island whatever the cost,” helped inspire his people. The British were also fortunate in that the Germans never implemented their plans for a cross-Channel invasion of England, for reasons that ranged from the planned invasion of Russia to Hitler's fear of the water.

Excerpts from Churchill's speech follow:

[T]he German eruption swept like a sharp scythe south of Amiens to the rear of the [British and French] armies in the north: eight or nine armored divisions, each with about 400 armored vehicles of different kinds divisible into small self-contained units. This force cut off all communications between us and the main French Army. It severed our communications for food and ammunition. It ran first through Amiens, afterward through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais, almost to Dunkerque.

[T]he port of Dunkerque was held open. When it was found impossible for the armies of the north to reopen their communications through Amiens with the main French armies, only

one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn hope. The Belgian and French armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and it neighboring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and were far outnumbered in the air.

The whole root and core and brain of the British armies of later years seemed due to perish upon the field.

The enemy attacked on all sides in great strength and fierceness, and their main power, air force, was thrown into the battle.

The enemy began to fire cannon along the beaches by which alone shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas and sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than 100 strong, to cast bombs on a single pier that remained and on the sand dunes. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days the intense struggle raged. All armored divisions, or what was left of them, together with great masses of German infantry and artillery, hurled themselves on the ever narrowing and contracting appendix within which the British and French armies fought. Meanwhile the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen and host of volunteers, strained every nerve and every effort and every craft to embark the British and Allied troops.

The navy, using nearly 1,000 ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, from the jaws of death back to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately before them. We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations, but there was a victory inside this deliverance which must be noted.

We were told that Hitler has plans for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat -bottomed boats and his Grand Army, some one told him there were bitter weeds in England. There certainly were and a good many more of them have since been returned. The whole question of defense against invasion is powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this island incomparably more military forces than we had in the last war. But his will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive war. We have our duty to our Allies.

We have to reconstitute and build up the [British Expeditionary Force] once again under its gallant Commander in Chief, Lord Gort. All this is in progress. But now I feel we must put our defense in this island into such a high state of organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effectual security and that the largest possible potential offensive effort may be released.

Turning once again to the question of invasion, there has, I will observe, never been a period in all those long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon the same wind which might have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away a blockading fleet. There is always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many continental tyrants.

We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality, malice and ingenuity of aggression which our enemy displays we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous manoeuvre. I think no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a watchful, but at the same time steady, eye.

We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if they can be locally exercised. I have myself full confidence that if all do their duty and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, ride out the storms of ware outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary, for years, if necessary, alone.

At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government, every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and their need, will defend to the death their native soils, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength, even though a large tract 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 nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and 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 beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the 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, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.