An older generation of Americans who lived through World War II recall the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who John F. Kennedy said, “In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone and most men save Englishmen despaired of England’s life, he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”
As Margaret Thatcher is laid to rest with full honors, it would be well to recall that she would not have been Prime Minister if there had not been a Winston Churchill. Against the most daunting odds, he mobilized England against the threat of Nazi Germany and its allies, Italy and Japan. After World War Two broke out in 1939, England would wait years before the United States joined the war after having been attacked by the Empire of Japan in 1941.
America had a strong isolationist streak from the years before it joined the allies to defeat Germany in World War I and it remained strong as the Nazis seized control of one European nation after another in the 1930s and 40s. Churchill knew that if England was to survive, he had to strengthen the bonds between America and England. It was a task to which he had devoted his life.
It was by any measure, an extraordinary life. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American, born in Brooklyn in 1854, the daughter of a leading American entrepreneur. Churchill’s father was Randolph Churchill, the son of the Eighth Duke of Marlborough. On November 30, 1874, Winston was born. On April 9, 1963, Churchill received an honorary citizenship from the United States. He would live until January 24, 1965, dying at age ninety.