I'll be waxing Churchill for the next several weeks as I populate this blog with all the man's great speeches and quotes. There are many speeches of the last century that I would characterize as "great", and all of Churchill's certainly were. But the three greatest in my opinion were all spoken within a month of each other, at the moment Britain was being written off as a chicken about to get its neck wrung. Even many of those closest to Churchill (Lord Halifax anyone), thought the situation hopeless, but Churchill gave them a backbone, first with Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat (our second runner up) in May 1940 that laid out Victory as the only honourable policy; followed by We Shall Fight on the Beaches on June 4th during the retreat at Dunkirk, when Winston was at his defiant best (first runner up); and finally Their Finest Hour on June 18th, as France capitulated leaving Britain alone and isolated against the Nazi menace:
"What 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." "