Winston Churchhill 1874 – 1965

The political history of the 20th century can be written as the biographies of six men: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The first four were totalitarians who made or used revolutions to create monstrous dictatorships. Roosevelt and Churchill differed from them in being democrats. And Churchill differed from Roosevelt--while both were war leaders, Churchill was uniquely stirred by the challenge of war and found his fulfillment in leading the democracies to victory.
Winston Churchill's life was a trajectory of events leading to his stand against Adolph Hitler's threat to control Europe. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill helped lead a successful Allied strategy with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and General Secretary Joseph Stalin during WWII to defeat the Axis powers and craft post-war peace. After the breakdown of the alliance,

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Churchill proved to be an independent and rebellious student. He did poorly at his first two schools and in April, 1888, he was sent to Harrow School, a boarding school near London. Within weeks of his enrollment, he joined the Harrow Rifle Corps, which put him on a path to a military career. In 1899, Churchill left the army and worked as a war correspondent for the Morning Post, a conservative daily newspaper

Churchill switched to the Liberal Party in 1904. He was elected a Member of Parliament in 1908, and was appointed to the Prime Minister's Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. While serving as First Lord of the Admiralty since 1911, Churchill helped modernize the British Navy, ordering that new warships be built with oil-fired instead of coal-fired engines.

On September 3, 1939, the day that Britain declared war on Germany, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the War Cabinet, and by April, 1940, he became chairman of the Military Coordinating Committee. On May 10, King George VI appointed Churchill as prime minister and Minister of Defense. Within hours, the German Army began its Western Offensive, invading the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Two days later, German forces entered France. Britain stood alone against the onslaught.

On June 18, 1940, Churchill made one of his iconic speeches to the House of Commons, warning that "the Battle of Britain" was about to begin. Churchill kept resistance to Nazi dominance alive, and created the foundation for an alliance with the United States and the Soviet Union. Churchill had previously cultivated a relationship with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, and by March 1941, was able to secure vital U.S. aid through the Lend Lease Act, which allowed Britain to order war goods from the United States on credit.

He was appointed Minister of Defense between October 1951 and January 1952, and became prime minister in October 1951. In 1953, Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Churchill retired as prime minister in 1955. He remained a Member of Parliament until the general election of 1964. He died at his London home nine days later, at age 90, on January 24, 1965. Britain mourned for more than a week.

Source: http://www.biography.com/people/winston-churchill-9248164