July 9, 2013

FINEST HOUR 128, AUTUMN 2005

ABSTRACT
MESSAGES LIKE THIS reach a crescendo every spring, we’re sure because it is term paper and final examination time. We don’t write students’ papers, but we try to help…

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I am a student doing a history project on Winston Churchill as Prime Minster during World War II. If you do not mind I would like to ask you three questions about him.

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1. What were Winston Churchill’s goals for the end of World War ll?
2. How did he feel about the peace settlement?
3. What were his hopes for the United Nations when it was established after the war? —EUNICE KIM

Variations on email like this from young people all over the world come to us every week. Some sound suspiciously like requests to write their essays for them. But sometimes they are just intriguing enough that we are not quite sure. Of course they can easily “lift” things from our website and put them down on paper—but teachers we’ve talked to are fairly talented at spotting plagiarism.

We try to help all comers. As WSC said, “I am on the side of the optimists….” See what you think of our reply to Ms. Kim, and whether you can think of any improvements we might adopt.

Dear Eunice Kim,

These are very broad questions, and what you need to do is enter words like “end of World War ll,” “peace settlement” and “United Nations” in our website search engine, and then read the articles that it finds—which will help you a lot. Here are some general answers to your questions:

1. Churchill’s goals for the end of World War II are best represented by the Atlantic Charter, issued by Churchill and Roosevelt in August 1941 (before the USA entered the war). Check this page on our website here.

2. There was never an official peace settlement among all the warring parties. Rather there were individual treaties. The United States, Great Britain and France eventually combined their German occupation zones to form the German Federal Republic. The Soviets set up the eastern “German People’s Republic.” The two Germanys were not reunited until 1990.

Churchill’s attitude toward the end of the war might be summarized in his “theme” of his last volume of war memoirs, Triumph and Tragedy. “How the Great Democracies triumphed, and so were able to resume the follies which had so nearly cost them their life.” He was at first concerned, after the war, that the Western allies would not see the danger of the Soviet Union, which he warned about, most notably in his speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946 (search for “Fulton speech”). After Stalin’s death in 1953, and with the advent of the hydrogen bomb which was far more powerful than the atomic bomb, Churchill became convinced that a summit meeting was necessary between Stalin’s successors, President Eisenhower and himself. Eisenhower resisted this. Use our search engine to search for articles about “Churchill and Eisenhower.” Use it also to search for articles on “Eisenhower” and “Stalin” and “Bermuda Conference.”

3. Churchill’s hope for the United Nations when it was established after the war was that it would prevent future wars, through a security council with five permanent members. It didn’t work out as he expected. Look up our website references to “United Nations.” 

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