Churchill, a man of war and peace

« I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. »

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Churchill made it something a lot of people want to do : leaving something positive and meaningful behind us.

Nowadays, a lot of people still have a strong positive opinion about him seeing him like a man who was incredibly smart, with an astonishing dry humour and a real talent for repartee.

In spite of this, on May, the 13th 1940, 3 days after he became Prime Minister,  Churchill declares in two different speeches the same day :

« I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. »

Thanks to this sentence, he motivates England to surrender, to be brave and to fight back even in the darkest times. He was considered as the last rampart in the World War II.

But how a man passionate about war, is mostly known for peace ?

We will see that the public man was different from the private one but the both of them made History.

1.  A man with personal troubles in private

Churchill wasn’t predestined to be who he became later. When he was young he was a very agitaded child. His teachers talk about him with very bad appreciations, saying he has « no ambitions » and that he even was the meanest child ever.

His parents weren’t really here for him but he was inspired by his father, he listened all his speeches by heart and collected everything he saw about him in the newspapers.

In 1886, His father became ministre of finance, but  he resign in order to be supported by the public opinion. Unfortunately, it failed and his father died without being successful in his career but especially without express his pride to this son.

As this war was one of the worst disaster for England and for him because of military mistakes, he paid for it and was removed from the political life. Churchill missed action so much that he suffered from manic-depressive illness and has strong depressive episodes that he called « black dog ». During this period, Clementine thought he was going to die of grief. Churchill said that it was the hardest time of his life. To drown his sorrow, he find an ally in alcohol and tobacco. He said to his secretary: "I take a lot more out of drink that it takes out of me » Alcohol was a real addiction for him, when he was few yeas letter in America for a tour after writing a book, his doctor did a medical prescription to allow him to drink alcohol « especially at meals time » in the middle of the Prohibition. He said to his secretary: "I take a lot more out of drink that it takes out of me"

He needed war so much that it came to France to be part of it, he wrote to Clementine, talking about his depressive episode « I am very happy here. How I ever could have wasted so many months in impotent misery, which might have been spent in war, I cannot tell. ». War was essential to his  survival, war was his therapy.  

II. A man who knew how to act in public

     In the political world, Churchill always knew where to be. In the beginning of his carrer, he became Conservative or Liberal, going where he could take the most advantages of the situation. Thanks to his instinct, he became at 32, the youngest member of the government since half of a century, and at 36 the Minister of the Interior.

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