Dan Snow's History Hit - Churchill's Speeches

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

"Their finest hour", "we shall fight on the beaches", "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few". These words of Winston Churchill are synonymous with our idea of the British war effort during the darkest days of WWII. Richard Toye joined me on the podcast to take a closer look at these speeches. How many civilians would have actually heard Churchill's brilliant rhetoric, and what did they think of them? Why were they so compelling, both then and now? And perhaps most importantly, did they make any difference to the war effort? Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This summer in 1940, 80 years ago, Winston Churchill made a series of some of the greatest speeches in the history of the English language, rallying the British people, allied nations and people in the wider world to the cause of anti-fascism. In August in 1940 Winston Churchill made the famous speeches known as the few never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few. Referring of course to fighter pilots that were flying up to five sorties a day taking on the German Luftwaffe. One wag, one fighter pilot said is he talking about our bar bills? This episode of the podcast is an interview with Professor of History

at Exeter University, Richard Toy, talking about those speeches, talking about how and when they were delivered, and also when they were recorded. You'll be astonished to learn that many of the iconic Churchill speeches were not, in fact, broadcast to the public over the wireless in the summer of 1940.

They were delivered in Parliament and reported in the press. It blew my mind. Yep. So it's a fascinating podcast on an anniversary of a big summer in British and world history. You can watch our documentary actually about Churchill and these speeches, which I filmed inside the House of Commons itself. We got an extraordinary opportunity to film inside the House of Commons. You can watch that documentary on History Hit TV. You just go along to historyhit.tv,

like thousands of other people at the moment, and you subscribe using the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and then you get a month for free and then one month for just one pound, euro or dollar. And then you'll have the Netflix of history for next to nothing, for the next two months. And you can watch our documentary on Churchill's 1940 speeches, Churchill's Finest Hour. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy this podcast. Churchill's finest hour. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy this podcast. Richard, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's great to be here.

80 years ago, we're recording this in the early summer of 2020. So 80 years ago, we get those remarkable Churchill speeches. Where do you think they rank in terms of oratory and in terms of impact in the history of speeches? in terms of oratory and in terms of impact in the history of speeches? Well, they are very, very powerful speeches. I think there is wonderful oratory. There are wonderful phrases in there. And I think that in terms of a series of speeches, remember that this is part of a long series of speeches which Churchill delivers throughout the whole war,

then in terms of the level of consistency of quality, then I think they're very high indeed. But I think that it is possible to sometimes mistake what their impact was and to take the emotional effect which some of the famous clips have on us now when we see them played or hear them played on the radio or on TV and to kind of think that that's the whole story, and to leap from what that emotional impact is on us now to assume that it

must have been the same impact that people had in the summer of 1940. Quite right. So Churchill becomes Prime Minister in May 1940. That's correct. So he becomes Prime Minister on May the 10th. And his first speech as Prime Minister is in the Commons on the 13th of May, so basically on the Monday. And that is the famous blood, toil, tears and sweat speech, which is, of course, very well known, but it's not something which we have a recording of. And equally, at the time, it's difficult to see that that speech had a particular impact, that people aren't writing about it in their diaries. They aren't saying, this is the most wonderful speech I ever heard. Of course, the only people who heard it on the day were the MPs who were in the Chamber of the House of Commons, which of

course reported in the papers, but sort of ordinary people aren't then saying, well, I've read this most wonderful speech. And so, you know, we can appreciate it for its literary qualities, but actually looking for a sort of a huge reaction from the population, it's difficult to track that at all. We've got the blood toil, we've got fight them on the beaches, we've got the few, all of these speeches, are they all delivered in the House of Commons?

No, not all of them. So the one which you've kind of missed out, which is sort of understandable because he's not famous, is the one which he gives on 19th of May, which is his first broadcast to the British people as Prime Minister, and it's sort of called Be Ye Men of Valour. And again, it doesn't actually have any of the famous phrases. People did listen to it. People did record their reactions to it, many of which were positive, but also people feeling depressed by this speech because, of course, this was a time when the war was going extremely badly. The French were in full retreat before Dunkirk. And so obviously the fact of bringing bad news, which Churchill consistently does, he's not afraid to tell people bad news, but we shouldn't assume that people reacted warmly to

that, even though that was the sort of the correct thing for him to be doing as an orator. So to follow up on your question, there's kind of an image that Churchill was sort of broadcasting every night on the radio, as it were. Actually, he didn't much appreciate having to do that. And so that the speech which he gave, you know, fight on the beaches is one where he did then having delivered it in the House of Commons, he didn't go and deliver it on the airwaves. What people heard was a news announcer summarising it. Now, people did, in fact, sometimes have a very sort of strong emotional reaction to that as well. But again, it wasn't always this sense of being invigorated or inspired. People were sometimes made to feel very solemn because, again, the bad news it was bringing,

remember it contains this key phrase, you know, we will fight on if necessary for years, if necessary for alone. Remember, the French were still in the war at this point and would be for another couple of weeks. And so he says, if necessary, alone. People naturally think, hang on, does this mean that the French are going to drop out of the war? And of course, that's exactly what he does mean. But this is news to people. It's a fear. It's something which is obviously going to cause a

great deal of anxiety. And so Churchill is rightly sort of preparing people, he's sort of dropping this very big hint that the French may be soon going to surrender. Questioning and anxiety are reactions to that speech, you know, just as much as feeling galvanised, thinking that this was all marvellous. So let's go through the speech that you made in the House of Commons and then either recorded later or broadcast later. So initially, those speeches you made in the House of Commons, who was the audience of those speeches? Well, Churchill always said, he sort of actually says in one of those speeches, that there are three audiences. There's the people at home, there are the allies,

and there are the enemy. So, you know, the allies abroad, this is partly directed at them. And of course, during the summer of 1940, Churchill was, of course, desperate for the Americans to come into the war, and was constructing his speeches in a way which was a calculated attempt to do that and to get American support. Of course, we all know that he was speaking with British people. But of course, he also knew that what he said was being repeated globally, and that included being picked up by people in Germany, for example. And now, because people could and did listen to Allied broadcasts illegally in Germany, some people would have got the message, the key messages of the speeches that way. And that meant, of course, that the Germans couldn't avoid reporting on the

speeches in their own press. They would, of course, distort the message. They would sort of be incredibly selective about reporting which things that Churchill had said. They couldn't simply ignore the fact that Churchill was speaking any more than the British media could ignore pronouncements by Hitler or Goebbels. So it is this knowledge that what he's saying is being listened to very carefully and analysed diplomatically by people around the world. And of course, that makes it incredibly crucial to, you know, at the same time as he wants to give the British people information about the course of the war and to explain and justify his own policies, he has to be incredibly careful about what he says in terms of giving away any kinds of military secrets. I mean, an example of one occasion, one of the few

occasions really when he slips up is after the House of Commons suffered a direct hit from a bomb. Later on, he kind of alludes to, mentions this in a speech, this is something that the Germans actually, they don't know. So the reporters, the Speaker of the House of Commons has to say to the reporters, don't report what he just said. So he doesn't make very many mistakes, but of course, he's only human. The occasional things like that do slip through. In terms of the domestic audience, is in those big speeches in 1940, is he trying to sell them a narrative about the war, about their participation? Now it seems obvious to us, because we know what happened when Belsen,

when Auschwitz were liberated. We know what the death squad did to the populations, particularly of Eastern and Central Europe, the Nazi death squads. But that wasn't clear in the spring and early summer of 1914. And yet he's talking about the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crimes. You know, he is trying to cast Hitler in a different light to Louis XIV, Louis XV, Philip of Spain, the Kaiser.

Is that an important part of what he's doing? Yes, I think that his long-term historical understanding is a really important part of how he constructs his message. So that, you know, again, I would emphasize that, you know, probably each of us could quote half a dozen or maybe 10 phrases which comes from Churchill speeches during the war. Or even if people who aren't historians can do this, you know, sort of give us the tools and we'll finish the job, etc. You mentioned the few, the finest hour and so on. This is a tiny proportion of the huge hundreds of thousands of words which Churchill produces throughout the war. the huge hundreds of thousands of words which Churchill produces throughout the war. And an awful lot of the speeches are dedicated to explanation. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff about sort of troop movements in France and so on. And this, of course, was something which

on the printed page, or when we listen to it now, doesn't necessarily sound that exciting. But of course, people who were hungry for news, and were often frustrated by the formal sources of news that they got, like the BBC and the papers, they were very eager to sort of get this information and analysis. And a kind of a core part of that analysis was Churchill's ability, you know, we may question his credentials as a historian, to some extent, you know, whether he really got things perfectly right. But he was good at saying, well, we can go back to the time of Napoleon and sort of see this in this longer period framework. himself. And so he was able to say, during World War One, we didn't know how it was going to end. We didn't know how we were going to achieve victory over the Germans. We plugged on for several years without necessarily seeing what the exit route or what the exit strategy was going to be. And then all of a sudden, the Germans collapsed, it all came good. So you know, again,

that kind of comforting message, which is based on it all came good. So, you know, again, that kind of comforting message, which is based on his own experience, combined with what he can bring in about his knowledge about history, is, I think, a key facet of what he's trying to do. Is he trying to convince anybody domestically? I mean, is he talking to the backbenchers behind him in some of those early speeches? I think that sometimes there's a feeling that sort of Churchill was the only person who kind of prevented the British people sort of giving up, as it were, and that everybody, had it not been for Churchill, would have kind of been sort of ready to throw the

towel in. And so I don't actually think that there's a great deal of defeatist sentiment. And so I don't think he needs to overcome anything like that. I mean, there had been that kind of sentiment in the autumn of 1939. But as particularly once the peace terms that have been inflicted on France become clear, then everybody realises in effect that there is no such thing as a kind of compromise peace. There is nothing to be rescued. It's being absolutely defeated is really no worse than the kind of terms you could expect from Hitler.

But I think that what Churchill is trying to do is he's obviously trying to fend off military criticism of the military handling of the war. And this is kind of true through 1942. So after that point, things start to go rather better and he doesn't have to worry so much. But I think that he does have anxieties. Remember that when he became Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain remained in the War Cabinet and was still the leader of the Conservative Party until he retired from ill health, very shortly afterwards died in the autumn. You know, there are a group of Conservative backbenchers who are still loyal to Chamberlain, see Churchill as a sort of reckless adventurer.

And, you know, their support is contingent. And I would say, again, another speech from 1940, which isn't well known, but should be well known, is the speech which he gives in early July about the destruction of the French fleet in North Africa. And essentially, you know, just a couple of weeks after Britain and France have been allies, the first thing that the British do in terms of dramatic action is to take over where it can in North Africa, destroy the French fleet in order to prevent the fleet falling into German hands. Now, this from the point of view of the British people is a great move because people have had this frustration that we've had setback after setback after setback, and at last the British are doing something. They're doing it against the French

rather than against the Germans. And Churchill makes a speech in which he outlines in great detail, there aren't any flashy phrases, it's a recitation of a series of stages of why the decision was taken, the different warnings that were given to the French, which would have allowed them to not have been bombarded by the British had they chosen to surrender and so forth. And so it is a moving speech. Churchill sits down with his head in his hands at the end of speech, very deeply moved. And it is at the end of that speech that really, for the first time, the Conservative backbenchers as a whole, as a body, stand up and cheer. Whereas previous to that the Labour MPs had been the

ones who had sort of given Churchill certainly the loudest cheers in the House of Commons after he had become Prime Minister. Now it wasn't necessarily purely the effect of the speech which did that. It was perhaps because Chamberlain had realised that there was a danger in Conservatives not being seen to sort of visibly support Churchill. And, you know, the chief whip, David Margeson, is giving people signals, stand up, stand up, you know, get on your feet and make sure you cheer the Prime Minister. And so I think that he obviously does have to take account of opinion in the House of Commons. And of course, you know, when things are going well militarily, when he's got successes to report, it's an awful lot easier to win them over than when everything seems to be going terribly wrong. Technical question. The speeches that we have all heard a million times, including the big four from 1940, but other ones as well. Churchill sat down to record later, like an actor might have done, did he?

Or sometimes he did it live on the BBC. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week there's a combination so sometimes you may actually have two recordings i think that is

true to say of these of the 18th of june speech for example their finest hour yes that's right so after the war in 1949 churchill is persuaded to sit down and record his greatest hits if you like or a gramophone company and he does so and that is where you will hear the fight on the beach of speech obviously we've all heard that numerous times but that is actually a recording made nine years after the event I mentioned earlier he made it in the House of Commons but didn't repeat it over the airwaves whereas with the finest hour he made the speech in the Commons he then made it in the House of Commons, but didn't repeat it over the airwaves. Whereas with The Finest Hour, he made the speech in the Commons, he then repeated it over the airwaves that evening. A number of people actually sort of criticised the delivery when they heard it, so that a speech that had been, it was obviously a high quality speech, when he was tired, some

people rightly or wrongly alleged that he was drunk when he made it in the evening. You can certainly hear him stumbling over his words. I mean, it's not as terrible as some of the contemporary commentators were saying, but yes, it's not perfectly fluid. And I'd have to check for certain, but I think there's probably a sort of redone better version of that, which he recorded after the war as well. But, you know, it was very much when he sat down to record it, it was, here are some chunks of speeches which are going to be recorded. You're not going to necessarily do all the stuff about the troop movements in France. We're going to go for the soundbites, really. And of course, those actually weren't

released on record until 1964. They were then released on Decca. And so, you know, again, there was this sort of hiatus, if you like, between when some of the speeches were made, and then nobody heard Churchill saying them again for sort of 24 years. So there's an oddity there. And so these have obviously been very powerful in terms of how Churchill's image is shaped. And yet that image has actually changed over the years since 1940 in subtle ways. Coming back to their reception, I was reading Dan Todman's excellent book about Britain at war. And I was thinking about, do speeches matter?

And he pointed out in this book that there were less strikes immediately in the summer of 1940, less hours lost to industrial action, people worked longer hours in factories. Do you think, given how much of Churchill's war leadership we see through the prism of these speeches, and we think, oh, these were amazing, they galvanised the nation, the world, amazing, did they matter?

Well, I think that they did matter. I think they mattered in context. That is to say, it know, it's not just Churchill who is broadcasting. Of course, there are many other people, including the King, people like Anthony Eden, who made famous speech about the Home Guard as well at the time of Dunkirk, you know, Labour ministers, you sort of have J.B. Priestley, of course, is another famous one. You've got a sort of a range of speakers, many of whom are now sort of totally forgotten to history, who may not have been as excellent as Churchill, yet they were kind of part of a sort of consistent

propaganda diet that the BBC was putting out. And it wasn't just speeches, it was, you know, other programmes which were designed to keep people's morale up. So I think that as long as we say that he was sort of the leading voice in a rather effective choir, if you like, then I don't think it's wrong to put some emphasis on Churchill's speeches. But again, I would say that his popularity, which is undoubtedly very high, the reception of the speeches is better when things are going well militarily and worse when it's going badly, so that people will say things when, you know, sort of early 1942, for example,

fall of Singapore, et cetera, et cetera. People say, well, fine words, but what about some fine actions? And it should be said as well that when I published my book, sort of the roar of the lion is about the speeches and their reception. People said that because I was sort of pointing out the often negative reactions of a substantial minority of people to the speeches, that I was somehow criticizing the speeches. Well, that's not the point. It's rather to say that Churchill's job was actually harder than one might imagine, given that he had to deal with a range of people who weren't his natural supporters and were going to find reasons to object to what he said.

Some people said that the speeches were just sort of long and boring, for example. Others, as I mentioned, were depressed. Other people remembered his longer term career. So they remembered or at least had folk memories of Gallipoli, of the general strike, of his advocacy of British intervention in the Russian Civil War. So he came with a lot of baggage, which didn't miraculously disappear in 1940. the criticism and not endorsing the criticism necessarily. I mean, sometimes people are very acute, actually, and they dissect the speech line by line, or they compare how a speech sounded on the radio with how it read in the newspaper the next day and sort of the different effects. And people sort of change their mind, sort of reading it from listening to it or vice versa. But some people were quite contradictory if you look at their diaries you know what they were saying about Churchill one month saying he was marvellous and a couple of months later there's things going badly and

they're saying he's the pits it's not to say that the critics were necessarily right although reading these criticisms or reading these observations about the speeches sometimes draws your attention to things about the speeches which are not obvious if you just read them in cold print today without understanding the full context of that individual moment. Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the defeat of Germany's attempt to knock Britain out of the war through air power in the summer of 1940, the speeches didn't really matter in that respect, did they, in the short term? I mean, were Dowding and Fighter Command done? Or do you think these pilots were flying that little bit harder, putting those aircraft factory workers working that little bit harder, because they were

being inspired from hearing reports of them and the one that was broadcast, for example? I don't think that you can sort of create an absolutely concrete measure where you sort of say this speech occurred and it was a brilliant speech and the next day everybody worked that much harder. The reality is that working hard, it wasn't just about everybody deciding to do more hours. If you were making a Spitfire, you had to have the bits of the Spitfire delivered on time. And you had to be able to sort of have the tools which were going to allow you to put them in the right place. And so I think there's a sort of an intangible quality. I certainly don't think that if Churchill had not made these speeches,

then we would have lost the war. I think that they were, as I was saying earlier, one part of a significant contribution to morale. And what I'll actually say is that you don't just see an instant reaction. And so one thing I really will say in praise of Churchill's speeches is that it's not just about the fine phrases. It is about this refusal to give false comfort. So, for example, when he goes to America in December of 1941, he makes a speech to Congress, which people can listen to in the UK. Remember, it's very advanced technology which allowed this to happen he says we must now begin making our preparations for and our plans for 1943 what i mean it doesn't sound like a very

controversial thing to read if you pick up the book of speeches and read it today you think well yes of course we know the war is going to still go on in 1943 but the people listening back in britain didn't know that and they 1943, is the war still going to be going on in 1943? This is really bad news. And of course, it was really bad news. It would have been much better if the war had finished. And people have got this persistent desire to believe that Hitler can't stand another winter, that the Germans are bound to collapse, it's going to be over quickly. And Churchill has got a problem in, on the one hand, make people believe that it's worth carrying on and we're going to win in the end, versus sort of trying to damp down any kind of expectation that this is going to be over soon.

And so many of his generals have to be reined in because they've got a tendency to sort of say to visiting pressmen, oh, yes, I kind of think the Germans might collapse soon. Of course,, late summer of 1944, he finally says, I think the war is going to be over fairly soon, then people are actually inclined to believe him because he's established his credibility. So I think that kind of orators who go out there who think that they're going to make one brilliant speech, which is going to completely change people's mentality over the course of, you know, 24 hours. I don't think that's ever going to happen. And very few orators, of course, have sort of got the prominence of Churchill, which allow him to deliver a consistent message over a period, you know, not just in weeks or months, but over a period of years. But it is that relentless consistency, if you like, which I think is very important.

Again, it doesn't change whether or not we would have won. There are much more important things, obviously, like the Americans and the Soviets coming into the war, which are hugely important and really determine the course of events. However, in terms of maintaining a general good overall position and morale, which could, broadly speaking, be maintained without a sort of a kind of collapse in morale in spite of very, very serious defeats. Although I don't want to make Churchill too central, I think he nevertheless is a sort of somebody who sets the agenda, if you like, somebody who sets the tone, I do think we should give him considerable credit for that. Well, thank you very much indeed for joining us on this podcast. What's the book called?

The book about the speeches is called The Roar of the Lion, but I might also take a moment to mention my forthcoming book out in August, which is called Winston Churchill, A Life in the News, which looks at these speeches, amongst other things, from a slightly different perspective of how they were presented in the press and the media more generally. So everyone going by, Richard Toys, Churchill, A Life in the News. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast, Richard. Thank you. It was a great pleasure.

I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free.

Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather. Laura the jungle out there and i need all the fire support i can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you