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Winston Churchill, War Memoirs, T. 1, 1919-1941, Tallandier, 2009, 444 p.
Speech 17
and June 18, 1940
on this side of the Channel, at least in France, to any matter concerning on June 18, 1940 the response is spontaneous and unanimous: it's "Call of De Gaulle. While relativizing greatly the number of actual listeners that night on the Continent (1) ...
To not wear glasses that lights, if you go through history books about England - and Churchill in particular - you will find confirmation of other speeches, historical, too ...
Churchill, 17 June 1940 the BBC:
- "The news from France is very bad and I suffer for the gallant French people who fell in that terrible misfortune. Nothing will change our feelings towards him, nor our faith in a future resurrection of the genius of France.
What happened in France does not alter our actions and our intentions. We are now still the only champion in arms to defend the cause of the world. We will do our best to show ourselves worthy of this honor. We shall defend our island homeland and, with the aid of the Empire, we will fight relentlessly until the curse is lifted Hitler poses to humanity. We are confident that everything will end well. "(2)
(Mont. JPO / DR).
Churchill, June 18, 1940:
- "We always maintain our (...) camaraderie with the French people (...).
Czechs, Poles, Dutch, Belgians have joined their cause and ours. All these countries will be released (...).
What General Weygand called the Battle of France has just ended ; the Battle of Britain is about to commit. In this battle depends the fate of Christian civilization, the survival of England, our institutions and our Empire.
All violence, all the power of the enemy will soon be unleashed against us. Hitler knows that he will defeat us in our island, or lose the war.
If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed, and the world will rise to vast horizons sunny. But if we succumb, then the world, including the U.S., and everything we knew and loved, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister, and perhaps more sustainable, by the lights a perverted science.
So let us therefore courage to face our duties, and we behave so that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last thousand years, men can say "This was their finest time ". (3)
Kersaudy Francis, Winston Churchill, Tallandier, 2009, 715 p.
Notes:
(1) Pierre Assouline on his blog:
- "... His famous call radio, that almost nobody has heard and which we search in vain for the recording by the BBC (maybe he will one day exhumed from Soviet archives ...). "
(June 18, 2010).
(2) Winston Churchill Memoirs ..., op. cit., p. 346.
4th cover:
- "The War Memoirs of Winston Churchill , are both a great literary work, a first-hand testimony by one of three main protagonists of the Second World War, a unique reconstruction of this war on every fronts in Europe, Africa, Russia, Asia, South East, South Pacific, to Japan and a concise analysis of the postwar period until 1957, by a statesman who has been both participant and witness of the facts he relates. It is this work more than any other who helped Winston Churchill to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.
A broad overview of events from 1919 to 1939 with a documentary richness and beauty of classical style that makes this book comparable to the War Memoirs of General de Gaulle.
Edition established, introduced and commentary by the specialist from Winston Churchill: Francis Kersaudy. "
(3) F. Kersaudy, Winston Churchill ... op. cit., p. 394.
4th cover:
- "" We are all worms, "was the young Winston modestly confided to a friend," but I think I am a glowworm! "The word is not too strong: Alexandre Dumas could have invented a character like this, but in the case of Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, the strict reality goes far beyond the fiction.
Up to 26 years, the adventures of the young officer and the reporter inevitably recall those of Tintin, but then the character becomes a synthesis of Clemenceau and de Gaulle, humor and alcohol and more ... and a limitless imagination, "Winston said President Roosevelt, a hundred ideas a day, of which only four are good ... but he never knows why! Yet it was de Gaulle who has best held: "It was the great artist of great history."
This life was a novel and is narrated as such, without a word fiction. Based on archival research from eight countries, consultation of some four hundred books and interviewing numerous witnesses and actors, this epic shows how a lonely man, long shaped by exceptional talent and unique weaknesses, could alter the course of this century, with the complicity a fate that has radically departed from its impartiality. "
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