This was their finest hour
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The This was their finest hour speech was a famous speech made by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the British Parliament on 18 June, 1940. It was given shortly after he took over (on 10 May) as Prime Minister of Britain, in the first year of World War II.
It was the third of three famous speeches which he gave during the period of the Battle of France. This speech (and the two others, the "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech of 13 May, and the "We shall fight on the beaches" speech of 4 June) were a great inspiration to the embattled United Kingdom as it entered what was probably the most dangerous phase of the entire war.
It was given as France continued to reel from the stunning and massive German breakthrough at Sedan, France; it was shortly to be overcome, and sued for peace a week later, on June 22. In it he tried to give a confident overview of the military situation, and thereby aid his second goal, to rally his people for what he probably knew was going to be a tremendous struggle:
Excerpts
- 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."
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