On June 18, 1940, Britain stood at the edge of the shadow of
Nazi occupation. France was negotiating the terms of an armistice with Germany,
and many people believed that Britain was doomed to fall as well. Prime Minister
Winston Churchill addressed the nation to prepare the British people for total
war. This speech, given before the House of Commons and then broadcast by radio,
is considered by many to be Churchill’s greatest. The closing of the speech
appears here.
Churchill: 'This Was Their Finest Hour'
We do not yet know what will happen in France or whether
the French resistance will be prolonged, both in France and in the French Empire
overseas. The French government will be throwing away great opportunities and
casting adrift their future if they do not continue the war in accordance with
their Treaty obligations, from which we have not felt able to release them. The
House will have read the historic declaration in which, at the desire of many
Frenchmen—and of our own hearts—we have proclaimed our willingness at the
darkest hour in French history to conclude a union of common citizenship in this
struggle. However matters may go in France or with the French government, or
other French governments, we in this island and in the British Empire will never
lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon
to endure what they have been suffering, we shall emulate their courage, and if
final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gains, aye, and freedom
shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands: not one jot or
tittle do we recede. Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians have joined
their causes to our own. All these shall be restored.
What [French] General Weygand called the Battle of
France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this
battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own
British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The
whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows
that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up
to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into
broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the
United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into
the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by
the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties
and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for
a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
Source: The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches.
MacArthur, Brian, ed. Penguin Books, 1996.
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