June 18, 2008

Churchill’s inspirational speeches when Britain had little else to fight with roused the nation and convinced his colleagues to fight on even after Hitler’s armies had conquered France and dominated most of Western Europe. After the Soviet Union and the United States entered the war in 1941, he worked to build what he called a “Grand Alliance,” traveling tens of thousands of miles to meet with allies and coordinate military strategy. With them he redrew the map of Europe as Germany collapsed in 1945. Almost immediately, he saw the threat that had arisen in Hitler’s place, and warned the West of the Soviet “Iron Curtain” in his famous speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946.