Historian and bestselling author Andrew Roberts hosts the newest Prager University video “Churchill: The Man Who Saved the Free World.” The short film details how former British Prime Winston Churchill is, in-large part, responsible for keeping the West free.
“In May 1940, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi war machine were sweeping across the European continent. The future of the free world hung in the balance,” Roberts says. “An isolationist-leaning United States was an ocean away. There was one man who stood between Hitler’s seemingly invincible army and crushing defeat. That one man was Winston Churchill.”
Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, to Lord Randolph Churchill of English nobility and his wife, Jennie, the daughter of a wealthy New York stock speculator.
“From his early school days, Churchill recognized the power of words. Throughout his life, he used them with consummate skill. They never let him down,” Roberts says.
“He first made a name for himself as a war correspondent in the 1890s, covering conflicts in Cuba, Northern India, the Sudan, and South Africa. Though he never abandoned journalism, and became one the greatest historians of his age, Churchill used his family connections and his own fame to launch himself into politics. His confident manner and matchless oratory marked him as a natural leader.”
Churchill had a tumultuous career during the First World War. He became First Lord of the Admiralty, when he tried to lead campaigns against Germany through Turkey. This strategy proved to be a failure and he took the blame. Despite that, he rose in politics and became a leader before the Second World War, seeing the growing threat of Nazism in Europe.
“The English had been traumatized, as had all of Europe, by the shocking amount of death and destruction of the First World War. No one wanted to face the possibility that it could happen again,” Roberts says. “Churchill, however, saw that a new confrontation with Germany was inevitable. And when the inevitable arrived with the stunning German attack on France in May 1940, a desperate nation turned to him.
“He was ready.”
Watch the video below: