-[air raid siren blares in distance] -[footsteps marching]
[tense music playing]
[airplane approaching]
[explosions booming]
[clock ticking]
[indistinct chatter over communications radio]
[Hitler on radio, in German] You are flesh…
[man over radio] Are you on the beach yet? Over.
[battle sounds mix with radio chatter]
[door opens]
[Clementine] Winston?
Winston?
Won't you go to bed?
[somber music playing]
Winston?
[combat sounds echoing]
[explosions and gunfire continue]
Do you realize that by the time you wake…
20,000 of our young men…
have lost their lives?
[Churchill] We'll never surrender.
[gulls calling]
The mounting of Operation Overlord was the greatest event and duty in the world.
The fearful price we had to pay in human life and blood
for the great offensives of the First World War
was graven in my mind.
[Tucker-Jones] Churchill was always haunted by Gallipoli.
The whole thing was a fiasco.
As Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings, drew nearer and nearer,
he'd began to fear that there would be a bloodbath
and he'd committed himself to something that was going to be a disaster.
[Churchill] If Overlord was to be done, it must be done with smashing force.
[intriguing music playing]
[man, in German] No matter how the storm rages against the walls of our fortress,
this battle will, in the end, despite all the devilry of our opponents,
lead to the greatest victory of the German Reich.
[Snow] Germany still dominates the continent of Europe.
Britain, America and their allies
have to get a foothold on that European shore
and start liberating Western Europe.
[Churchill] All southern England became a vast military camp,
filled with men trained, instructed, and eager
to come to grips with the Germans across the water.
[Roberts] Churchill always wanted to return to the continent in force one day,
but he didn't want to undertake it too early,
and he only wanted to undertake it
when he was absolutely, 100% certain of success.
You couldn't do this at half-cock because otherwise the Germans might win.
The question is, is the cause that important where life can be lost?
And I think Winston Churchill came to the conclusion it was.
[Churchill] The enemy were bound to know that a great invasion was being prepared.
We had to conceal the place and time of the attack
and make him think we were landing somewhere else and at a different moment.
[chilling drumroll plays]
[Douds] There's only so many places you can go. Calais is a logical choice.
Being the closest place to England,
certainly that's where the Germans think the Allies are going to land,
but ultimately Normandy is chosen.
[ominous music playing]
It's a better chance for us to get ashore
because the defenses at Calais are immense.
[Churchill] In wartime, truth is so precious,
that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
They'll come up with a deception plan called Operation Bodyguard.
We want to confuse them as to where we are going
so they don't build up any defenses.
[Petraeus] Churchill had such an active mind.
He thoroughly enjoyed the intrigue in these different schemes.
[Snow] There are British double agents telling the Germans all sorts of nonsense
and spinning them all sorts of lines about where and when the invasion's gonna be.
They make the best US general, Patton, sit down in southeast England
with an entirely fake army group.
[air hissing]
It's nothing but inflatable tanks and aircraft made of balsa wood.
[Churchill] Simulated concentrations of troops, fleets of dummy ships,
increased wireless activity were all used.
[plane engines humming]
[cameras clicking and snapping]
[Douds] General Eisenhower will get command of the invasion of Normandy.
He had been in command of the landing in North Africa.
He's also the senior commander for the invasion of Sicily,
so he's got two landings under his belt.
[Roberts] From Eisenhower's perspective,
they needed Britain as the springboard for the liberation of the continent,
so Churchill had to get on with Eisenhower,
Eisenhower had to get on with Churchill.
You've got the political and the military interacting here.
There are tensions there for sure.
[Petraeus] Churchill fashioned himself as a military leader,
but he's not driving this.
At this point in time, his contribution, in a way, has been made.
Eisenhower's trying to, in a sense, manage Churchill.
[Brinkley] And that's something nobody has an ability to do.
Keeping a personality like Churchill under thumb isn't easy.
"The decision's made, Prime Minister, now let us get on with the planning."
[Churchill] I felt we were at one of the climaxes of the war.
As D-Day approached, the tension grew.
[Brinkley] Eisenhower would use threatening to quit
to make sure that President Roosevelt stayed with Ike
and not jump on one of Churchill's war plans.
[Douds] Roosevelt will defer to Eisenhower,
and ultimately Winston Churchill has to defer to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
By that point, the Americans very much are firmly in the driving seat.
Britain was no longer the senior strategic partner in the Second World War,
and America began increasingly to call the shots.
[Purnell] At the beginning of the war, you could probably say
that Roosevelt looked up to Churchill in some ways.
Here was this guy who was standing up to Hitler
and had become this famous person.
[crowd cheering]
But the huge might of the American military
meant that Churchill starts to become the junior partner.
When they were planning D-Day in great secrecy,
Churchill said that he wanted to be there.
[Churchill] A man who has to play an effective part
in taking grave and terrible decisions of war
may need the refreshment of adventure.
He may need also the comfort
that when sending so many others to their deaths,
he may share, in a small way, their risks.
[Soames] This thing of always wanting to be where the action was
stayed with him throughout his life.
You know, It goes back to his early life. He loved the battle.
I hate to say it, but he liked a battlefield.
His adrenaline rush from his antics in South Africa
probably never left him.
[Churchill exhales]
[clock ticks]
I should be there.
I should be on board that ship this very instant as the barrage begins.
The greatest invasion in the history of the world, and I'm trapped here.
This is all the King's fault.
Well, I'm afraid I agree with the King.
The country can ill afford your losing your head to a stray shell in battle.
-You lose your head enough as it is. -But he shouldn't interfere.
It wasn't just him. Eisenhower was against your going too.
But the King put the pin in it, didn't he?
-[Clementine sighs] -I have the right to go if I so choose.
But he knew I haven't the heart to refuse a royal request.
Well, if it means anything to you,
I'm glad you're not on a cruiser being bombed.
Suppose it all goes wrong.
What if we've miscalculated? What if we never get ashore?
What if we flounder on the beaches for months like Gallipoli?
-I need to be there. -Really, Winston, to do what?
You'll be a spectator.
You're needed here with the people.
Those are their sons and husbands and fathers out there.
Who will speak to them if not you?
[Churchill] You've got an answer for everything. [sighs]
I don't suppose you'll be commandeering a ship to France wearing that.
[humorous music playing]
I could if I wanted to.
[laughs quietly]
Thank you.
I'm off to the Map Room. At least they should know something.
[Douds] You could imagine, you know, General Eisenhower,
"The last thing we want is the Prime Minister of England
at threat watching this whole thing."
There's this incredible correspondence between him and King George VI,
as the King finally has to pull rank,
and Churchill basically has to knuckle under.
[grave music playing]
[intense music plays]
[Brinkley] June 6th, 1944, was the most important day of the 20th century.
Democracy was just hanging by a thread.
[man over radio] A fine lad from Catskill bakers…
[Snow] Churchill's got his own personal history with these operations.
If it goes wrong, there's not gonna be a second attempt for a long time.
Anything could happen.
He's worried about, he calls it the flower of British and American youth drowning,
dying in the shallows of the French coast,
the tide awash with the blood of that youth.
[Churchill in reenactment] The battle that has now begun
will grow constantly in scale and in intensity for many weeks to come,
and I shall not attempt to speculate upon its course.
[Churchill] There was intense excitement about the landings in France,
which everyone knew were in progress at the moment.
[shells firing]
[explosions echoing]
[Snow] There are gigantic airstrikes.
There's a huge concentration of naval firepower.
Troops have been trained.
Everything has been done to give D-Day the biggest chance of success.
Because of deception operations,
the Germans don't know where and when it's coming, and they're confused.
[loud boom]
[rapid gunfire]
[Petraeus] The Allies were able to establish that beachhead
before the Nazis fully reacted.
[distant gunfire and explosions]
[Snow] They'd assumed that there would be pretty significant losses on the beaches.
In fact, despite very fierce fighting, particularly on Omaha Beach,
one of the American beaches, the landings go pretty well.
[Douds] The Allies will build up forces there, and ultimately they will break out.
[distant explosion]
[gunfire continues]
D-Day is an astonishing success.
[quiet, somber music playing]
[Packwood] We now take D-Day and the success of D-Day for granted.
And a setback in Normandy in 1944
could have considerably prolonged the war
and might well have spelled the end
for both Churchill and Roosevelt's administrations.
[Douds] Shortly after the invasion of Normandy,
Winston Churchill will go to see himself.
[Petraeus] Churchill wants to be near the action, of course, as he always does.
He just couldn't stay away from this.
[people cheering]
[Douds] He goes to congratulate all the folks that conducted the landing,
including General Montgomery, the principal British commander.
[Petraeus] Montgomery is not a man without ego,
and I don't think Churchill spent enormous amounts of time
worrying about the egos of those below him.
[Douds] So here's a great story where Churchill offers Montgomery a drink,
and Montgomery's a teetotaler and he says,
"I don't drink and I don't smoke. I'm 100% fit."
Winston Churchill, not to be outdone, says,
"I both drink and smoke. I'm 200% fit."
And so we have this little exchange
of the combative and competitive nature of Winston Churchill.
[gunfire, explosion]
[people clamoring and cheering]
[crowds cheering]
[man on radio] Paris is free.
The people of Paris rose to meet their liberators.
[Snow] Quite rapidly, far more Americans are fighting in Western Europe than Brits.
As a result, Churchill feels himself being pushed off the top table a bit.
[Churchill] The only times I ever quarrel with the Americans
are when they fail to give us a fair share of opportunity to win glory.
It has always been my wish to keep equal,
but how can you do that against so mighty a nation
and a population nearly three times your own?
The "who's in charge" part really belongs to the strongest entity.
And Dwight Eisenhower was the general
in charge of eventually liberating Europe from Hitler.
Probably because, you know, we were the biggest dog in the pound.
[soldiers speaking indistinctly]
[Roberts] As the Allies started to liberate the continent in 1944,
Winston Churchill found out about Auschwitz.
[solemn music playing]
It was via the Foreign Office
and some Polish escapees who brought the news to the West.
[Churchill] Prime Minister to Foreign Secretary.
There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest
and most horrible crime ever committed
in the whole history of the world.
And it has been done by scientific machinery.
[disturbing music playing]
Declarations should be made in public
so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death.
Many people have criticized Churchill for not doing more
when it became pretty clear
that these concentration camps were not just places of degradation,
places of humiliation, and slave labor,
but were places of execution, of industrial murder.
And word was getting out through the early 1940s.
The trouble was what to do about it.
[Douds] Many people have submitted that, "Well, you should bomb concentration camps
to try and free them."
[Justin Reash] And Churchill tells Anthony Eden, his foreign secretary,
quote, "Get anything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke me if necessary."
So this was high on his mind.
[Snow] But there was a question around accuracy. Can you bomb gas chambers?
Would they just end up bombing the barracks blocks
and killing the Jewish inmates anyway?
The way to end this Holocaust
was to just bring the war to an end as soon as possible.
That was the argument.
It's one of those difficult moral decisions they make during the war,
and certainly one that can be questioned even now.
[dramatic music playing]
[Snow] We talk a lot about D-Day in 1944.
What people don't remember is the Soviet Union launched,
by some measures, the largest attack in the history of warfare
on the Eastern Front at the same time.
[rapid gunfire]
In the space of one month,
they inflict half a million casualties on the German army.
So that's coming in from the east as the Allies are landing from the west.
The Soviet Union is making massive progress in the east.
Eastern Europe, Poland, the Balkans, might all fall under Soviet control.
So who gets to Berlin, how much territory they take along the way,
will shape the post-war world.
[Churchill] I deem it highly important we should shake hands with the Russians
as far to the east as possible.
I cannot think of any moment
when the burden of the war has laid more heavily upon me.
Churchill never wanted to be the prime minister who oversaw
the dismantling of the British Empire,
but he had essentially had to mortgage the empire to survive
when Britain was fighting alone against the Nazis,
waiting for the rest of the world to come.
Britain is becoming secondary.
What was once the most powerful empire in the world
is becoming an island to some extent.
Is this going to be a new world
where it's Soviet Union versus the United States,
and we are just bit players?
It's a really hard thing for this Victorian imperialist
to come to terms with.
The relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt
started to fray in the fall of 1944.
[Snow] Churchill feels decisions are now being made between the two superpowers,
Stalin and Roosevelt.
Churchill's like, "Hey, don't forget about me."
And so the rest of the war becomes a constant effort on his part
to try and push Britain's point of view and his own point of view
about what the post-war world should look like.
[solemn music playing]
[Katz] In fall of '44, Churchill goes to Moscow for his own meeting with Stalin.
This idea of spheres of influence
is something that has settled on Churchill's mind.
Where is a clearly defined British sphere of influence,
and where is the Soviet sphere of influence?
[Churchill] I am the leader of a strong, unbeaten nation.
Yet every morning when I wake,
my first thought is how I can please President Roosevelt,
and my second thought is how I can conciliate Marshal Stalin.
[Katz] Churchill carries out this without Roosevelt
or any American representation officially in this negotiation.
He believed that history was made by great men,
and in his view they'd largely be men sitting down around a table
and drawing up lines.
I think these percentages are fair and reasonable.
Do you agree?
[in Russian] This is satisfactory.
Thank you, Joseph.
[Katz] Churchill calls this scribble with the percentages "the naughty document."
[Brinkley] You know, "Britain is going to control this, and you could control that."
It was a way for Churchill to show
that he wasn't going to become a weak post-war player
that was subservient to the United States
or gave up aspirations of keeping the British Empire strong.
Perhaps we should burn this.
We are, after all, deciding the fates of millions of people.
[in Russian] No. You keep it.
[Packwood] I think it's called "the naughty document"
because Churchill knew that he shouldn't really be doing this.
[Roberts] It seemed immensely cynical,
and places like Romania and Bulgaria would get 80% Russian domination.
[Johnson] Greece he felt that he'd saved.
"This brand I plucked from the burning," he says, about Greece.
He sees as if he pulls that log from the fire.
But there was a lot of stuff that clearly,
the Balkans, other parts of Eastern Europe, he ultimately had to accept.
[Katz] He's recognizing that the best he can do
is secure British interests to the greatest extent he can.
[Churchill] I have had very nice talks with the Old Bear.
I like him the more I see him. I'm sure they wish to work with us.
I have to keep the President in constant touch,
and this is the delicate side.
[booming]
[distant explosions]
[Ruane] The Germans are now on retreat in the west.
The Red Army is bearing down from the east.
There's a sense that maybe the end is in sight.
By the end of 1944, the three allies realize that they really have to discuss,
together in person, the end of the war.
Stalin absolutely refuses to leave his own borders.
He is terrified of flying, terrified of leaving his security behind,
and so he will only meet within the borders of the Soviet Union.
Churchill and Roosevelt agree,
they will go to the Soviet Union to meet with him.
The Soviet Union is pretty devastated
after considerable fighting on the Eastern Front,
and so one of the very few locations that they can find is Yalta on the Black Sea.
It's very much an emblem of the Soviet Union itself,
where on the surface everything looks fine, but if you look too closely,
you can see it's quite different from what you see on the outside,
and it really is a disaster.
The palace has been overrun by bedbugs.
Bedbugs have gotten into Winston Churchill's bed,
and they bite his feet during the night,
and Churchill says that if they had spent ten years looking for a place,
they couldn't have found a worse one than Yalta,
and he even later refers to it as "the Riviera of Hades."
[Churchill] We are now entering a world of imponderables,
and at every stage, occasions for self-questioning arise.
[Meacham] Shadows are lengthening at Yalta.
Churchill later talked about believing that Roosevelt was fading.
[Peri] FDR has managed to win a fourth unprecedented term
in the 1944 elections, but he is unwell.
He's in congestive heart failure at this point.
[melancholy music playing]
[Meacham] Churchill wrote at one point,
that "our friendship is the rock upon which I build the hopes of the world."
I think that there was a sense of finality to it,
a sense that this long drama was coming to an end.
[Katz] Roosevelt wants to, understandably, save as many American lives as possible
by bringing the Soviet Union into the fight against Japan.
He doesn't yet know if the atomic bomb will be an option.
They are still working on that and have yet to test it.
Also incredibly important to Roosevelt is the creation of the United Nations.
[Peri] FDR so wants this to work that, maybe, he deluded himself into thinking
that Stalin would keep his promises, because he wanted it so badly.
[Snow] Churchill believed that he alone had the necessary genius
to kind of thrash out the post-war world.
He thought FDR was worryingly naive and worryingly liberal.
He knew that FDR did not like the British Empire,
so Churchill could not risk having FDR be the architect of the post-war world.
[Johnson] Churchill wants Roosevelt to be tougher with Stalin,
but he can't… he can't swing it.
[Douds] The Soviet Union decides that they will join the UN.
The Soviet Union decides that they will go to war with Japan
after the war in Europe ends.
[Roberts] And they come away with a promise from Stalin
for the freedom and independence of Poland.
The fact was, though, that Stalin was lying through his teeth.
[Snow] Britain had gone to war in 1939 to protect Poland from foreign occupation.
That was why Britain was in this terrible war.
So you come out at the end of the war, and Stalin's basically occupied Poland?
That's a nightmare for Churchill.
[Churchill] The misery of the whole world appalls me,
and I fear increasingly that new struggles may arise
out of those we are successively ending.
[Peri] Winston Churchill wrote FDR over a thousand letters and telegrams,
and, ultimately, Franklin Roosevelt wrote, maybe, almost 800.
Churchill is definitely the suitor in the relationship.
[Churchill] Mr. President, peace with Germany and Japan on our terms
will not bring much rest to you and me.
There will be a torn, ragged, and hungry world to help to its feet.
And what will Uncle Joe or his successor say
to the way we should both like to do it?
[Meacham] There's a pulling apart, a cooling.
They're more like an old married couple that know each other's foibles,
but can't imagine life without each other.
[gunfire]
[explosion]
[man on radio] To the whole free world,
the stunning news has come that Franklin Roosevelt is dead.
[Churchill] When I received these tidings early in the morning of Friday the 13th,
I felt as if I'd been struck a physical blow.
[Meacham] When the news came that FDR had died,
Churchill gave a remarkable eulogy in the House of Commons,
understanding that the friendship had been imperfect,
that it had been personal as well as political.
[Churchill] My relations with this shining personality
had played so large a part in the long, terrible years we had worked together.
Now they had come to an end,
and I was overpowered by a sense of deep and irreparable loss.
[emotional music playing]
Churchill once said that,
"To me, Franklin Roosevelt was like opening a bottle of champagne."
And Roosevelt wrote to Churchill,
"It's fun to be in the same decade with you."
And I think we were lucky that they were where they were when the crisis came.
[rousing music playing]
[Churchill] Hitler had made his final and supreme decision
to stay in Berlin to the end.
The capital was soon completely encircled by the Russians,
and the Führer had lost all power to control events.
It remained for him to organize his own death amid the ruins of the city.
He shot himself through the mouth.
I must say, I think he was perfectly right to die like that.
[Churchill in reenactment] I have no special statement to make
about the war position in Europe,
except that it is definitely more satisfactory
than it was this time five years ago.
[men cheering and applauding]
Yesterday morning at 2:41 a.m.,
the representative of the German High Command
signed the act of unconditional surrender.
The German war is therefore at an end.
[hopeful music playing]
Long live the cause of freedom.
God save the King.
[hopeful music swells]
In the hour of overwhelming victory, I was only too well aware
of the difficulties and perils that lay ahead.
But here at least,
there could be a brief moment for rejoicing.
[crowd cheering]
[Soames] On the night of VE Day,
he was on his own in No. 10 Downing Street,
because Clementine was in Russia doing a sort of state visit.
And he had dinner,
and then he went into the garden and walked with Smoky, the cat.
I think it's extraordinary that he was on his own that night
when all his work came to fruition.
[yelling]
[Churchill] If the Russians are ever convinced we are afraid of them
and can be bullied into submission, then indeed I should despair
of our future relations with them.
It's clear that the understanding
of the UK and the US of the post-war order is going to be different.
The Americans, they still haven't won against Japan.
They've got huge objectives there.
They don't share Churchill's horror
of Communist rule in Eastern Europe.
[man shouting indistinctly]
[Roberts] Churchill was so fearful that Stalin might not stop
at the demarcation lines that had been agreed with the Russians
and might actually just push on,
because there were so many troops in the Red Army.
[Snow] He's appalled at Stalin.
He sees a dystopian post-war world
where perhaps he thinks the war could go on,
and there could be war
between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.
I want a plan in place to enforce the Yalta Agreement,
to give Poland a fair chance at self-government.
We can't take on the Russians alone. They outnumber us.
Before America leaves, we must take the initiative.
You mean, attack the Soviets?
-Well, that's unthinkable. -Except that I have thought it.
I want a plan for all contingencies.
Before it is too late.
Churchill is offered this crazy plan called Operation Unthinkable,
where the Wehrmacht, the German army,
could be reissued with their weapons, having been defeated,
and turned round to attack the Soviet armies.
A completely bonkers plan, which is not proceeded with.
But that shows where he was, mentally, emotionally.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Churchill] We have yet to make sure that the honorable purposes
for which we entered the war are not brushed aside,
and that the words "freedom," "democracy," and "liberation"
are not distorted from their true meaning.
There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes
if totalitarian or police governments were to take the place of the German invaders.
[Roberts] As the war wound down,
Churchill was full of thoughts and ideas
about what the post-war world is going to look like.
But he has to fight a general election.
[Snow] Churchill's coalition partners, the Labour Party, say,
"We're no longer prepared to be in a coalition government with you."
"You know what? We want power."
"The war's won, well done to you, you've played a pivotal part,
but we've got a vision for the future, and you're not part of it."
[Churchill] If you thought that you had had enough of me
and that I ought to be put out to grass,
I tell you, I would take it with the best of grace.
But I must warn you,
you must be prepared for further sacrifices to great causes.
[birds chirping]
Why aren't you painting?
Surely you deserve some relaxation.
Oh, I am relaxing.
Only when I do, these thoughts keep interrupting.
You've won the war.
Yes.
But now that it's all over in Europe,
it is my duty to call a general election, one that I might not win.
You saw how the people adore you.
Shouldn't you simply ride on the coattails of victory?
Yes, I should.
Well, in that case… paint.
[whimsical music playing]
[people cheering]
[Katz] The election of 1945 is an election that's been put off
with the necessities of war,
and it'll take some time to conduct this election
with so many servicemen scattered around the globe.
It is no time to mince about, to mince measures
and fool around with weak governments.
[Snow] The Labour Party had one of the best slogans of all time.
They said simply, "Cheer Churchill, vote Labour."
Celebrate Churchill, celebrate the victory,
the deliverance, the salvation of this country,
but we're the ones who are going to take it forward.
[Packwood] He could have stayed above the political fray.
He could have presented himself as a candidate of national unity
who led a coalition government.
Instead, he launches into a full-blown,
vitriolic campaign against the Labour Party.
[Churchill] Foreign policy…
[Snow] He says some stupid things. He's electioneering.
He says the Labour Party will bring in a kind of Gestapo, a secret police.
Suddenly we're back in the gutter, right?
We're back in partisan politics,
and the British public don't like what they see.
[booing]
[man on radio] After polling day, Mr. Churchill went away
to paint in the south of France.
He had fought a strenuous campaign,
and he took a well-deserved holiday
before meeting President Truman and Marshal Stalin at the conference.
[Katz] While the ballots are still coming in from all the corners of the globe,
Churchill goes to Potsdam for the final conference of the Second World War.
That Potsdam conference is due to open formally on the 17th of July.
On the 16th of July, out in the wilds of New Mexico,
the world enters the nuclear age
when the United States successfully tests a plutonium device,
which turns out to have superlative power and destructive potential.
[troubled music playing]
President Truman is at Potsdam, awaiting the start of the conference.
Now, that news is relayed to President Truman,
who's only been in the job a few months.
[Snow] Churchill said to Truman, "Let me know if it's a flop or a plop."
And Truman just sends a message back, "Plop."
Churchill recognized that this was going to be a war-changing moment.
[Douds] The war in the Pacific continues, and now everybody starts to recognize
the invasion of mainland Japan will be incredibly costly.
[distant explosion]
Even Churchill believes it will be a million and a half casualties,
a million United States, and half a million from the Commonwealth.
The Manhattan Project has come to fruition.
There are all kinds of moral choices now having to be made,
and now we have an atomic bomb.
[Snow] Part of the nuclear deal is that before any nuclear weapon is deployed,
Churchill will have to give permission as well.
Churchill later says his agreement was unanimous, unqualified, and automatic.
He absolutely believed that nuclear weapon should be used to shorten the war
and prevent a terribly costly invasion of the Japanese homeland.
[Ruane] And I think it's important for Churchill, for lots of reasons,
to actually plant that flag.
This is a bomb fueled by the very energy
that makes the stars of the night sky pulse.
He wants to be part of this.
This can't be an American thing, and that's why he's happy to consent.
[Katz] Churchill has to leave Potsdam halfway through
as the final tally is now ready,
and so he flies home to receive the results of the election.
[Churchill] I awoke suddenly with a sharp stab of almost physical pain.
A hitherto subconscious conviction that we were beaten
broke forth and dominated my mind.
All the pressure of great events on and against which
I'd mentally so long maintained my flying speed would cease,
and I should fall.
[man] Conservatives, 180.
Labour, 364.
[Johnson] In the end, it's the people who decide who governs them.
And he really proved that.
You know, look at the guy.
He manages to steer his country to victory, to salvation,
in the Second World War.
And then, boom, 1945, he gets the order of the boot, first class.
[Soames] It must have been such a sort of slap around the face
when the results came through.
My mother was in floods of tears,
and the only one who wasn't in tears, for once, was Churchill,
who said, you know, "The people have spoken."
The Labour Party's great victory
shows that the country is ready
for a new policy to face new world conditions.
[Packwood] After five and a half years of war and hardship,
people wanted a national health service, they wanted rebuilding, reconstruction.
[Soames] But, of course, he didn't lose his way with words, even in defeat.
Clementine said to him, "Maybe it's a blessing in disguise."
And he said, "Well, it's very well disguised."
[quiet, sentimental music playing]
[Hirsch] The British public's perception of him was very different during wartime,
when that kind of statesmanlike grandeur, single-mindedness
was useful in mobilizing people and inspiring people
at a time of great challenge and darkness,
versus peacetime.
If he had been as popular as he is now in the national imagination,
it's hard to imagine that any party he led could have lost an election,
because we have iconicized him in such an extreme way
and made him this singular hero.
[crowd cheering and whistling]
[Churchill] The power to shape the future would be denied me.
The knowledge and experience I had gathered,
the authority and goodwill I had gained in so many countries,
would vanish.
[Ruane] He loses power.
But just before Churchill returns to London to hear the result,
the Potsdam Proclamation is issued.
It calls on Japan to surrender unconditionally, and if Japan doesn't…
[rousing, tense music playing]
[Churchill] What was gunpowder? Trivial.
What was electricity? Meaningless.
This atomic bomb is the Second Coming in wrath.
[Churchill in reenactment] The bomb brought peace,
but men alone can keep that peace.
And henceforward,
they will keep it under penalties
which threaten the survival not only of civilization,
but of humanity itself.
[Churchill] Out of a life of long and varied experience,
the most valuable piece of advice I could hand on to you
is to know how to command the moment to remain.
Someone like Winston Churchill can't go from being at the center of everything
to quietly painting and…
That was a part of his life.
He didn't want it to be his entire life,
and so he was never going to just retire.
[Katz] Churchill can never sit still.
He's always one who's been in a hurry to get to somewhere else.
He receives an invitation to speak
at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri,
and it's in the home state of the American president, Harry Truman.
The train to Jefferson City will be ready to board soon, sir.
Time enough to thrash these gentlemen of the press the way they deserve.
I'll take three.
One for me.
You know, lads, if I were to be born again,
there is one country in which I would want to be a citizen,
in which a man knows he has an unbounded future.
And where's that, Mr. Churchill?
The USA. Although I deplore some of your customs.
-[men chuckling] -And which ones would those be?
Well, for one thing, you stop drinking with your meals.
[all laughing]
I call.
Flush. Clubs.
[chuckling]
What'll your speech be about, sir?
I hadn't realized this was a working card game.
[all laughing]
I shall speak about the deplorable sphere of influence of the Soviet Union.
How it has hardened into an impenetrable barrier,
trapping millions in oppression.
[man] The Russians were just our allies.
They'll call you a warmonger.
It won't be for the first time.
But you see, gentlemen,
I've played this hand before.
I was right in 1938…
and I'm right now.
From Stettin in the Baltic
to Trieste in the Adriatic,
an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
[Johnson] He was always anti-communist.
He tries to remind his audience of all the things that he thinks unite us,
freedom, democracy, free speech, and so on,
that are now under threat in this Soviet-dominated sphere.
[Churchill] What we have to consider here today,
while time remains,
is the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy
as rapidly as possible in all countries.
Churchill gave the great Iron Curtain speech,
which basically said, "Good versus evil."
And that moral clarity, you know, upsets people.
And, of course, he was attacked again for being a warmonger,
just as he had been in the 1930s.
Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed
by closing our eyes to them.
This speech predicts what is going to happen,
which is that an Iron Curtain is going to descend across Europe,
and you have the advent of the Cold War.
[applause]
[distressful music playing]
[Johnson] Having been proved wrong about so many things in his earlier career,
he's proved right twice
about the tyranny of Nazism and then about Soviet communism too.
[Churchill] Many people say I ought to have retired after the war
and have become some sort of elder statesman.
But how could I?
I have fought all my life and cannot give up fighting now.
[cheers and applause]
[Packwood] That compulsion to lead on the international stage
was still there.
You know, he really doesn't want to let go.
[man] Mr. Churchill, scene two, take one.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the vote you will give on February 23rd
is of profound importance to your future.
-[man] Cut. -[Churchill] Now, wasn't that better?
[clears throat]
We are the chosen few.
I can't remember it.
I've got one of the best memories you can have.
[man] I know, sir, but that's quite all right.
Don't worry. Look at the camera and start again, sir.
We are the chosen few.
All of you will be damned.
There is no place in heaven for you.
We can't have Heaven crammed.
I thought you were muting quotations I read this morning.
-[crew laughs] -You've got to do what you can with that.
[Bush] One of the problems with democracy is people get tired of you.
And here's a guy that led England through a brutal period of time
and then gets booted out of office,
and then comes back to be the Prime Minister.
It's a remarkable comeback story.
[man] The election after six years of Labour rule goes Conservative.
Winston Spencer Churchill, world statesman, is returned to power.
[Lammy] In the British House of Commons members' lobby,
there's an immense bronze statue of Churchill,
and it is the habit of many members of Parliament
to touch his shoe for luck.
All of us are reminded about his presence on a daily basis.
[Soames] He always had this view that the way to get history
was to write it yourself.
So he set about that.
[Peri] FDR is dead.
It's not like Stalin is writing in his journals.
And of course, Hitler is dead.
Churchill immediately seizes the narrative
and is the one who is shaping how we see World War II,
which is a position of enormous power.
And by wielding that power,
generations of historians, and then subsequently, the public,
look at World War II and everything that happened around it through his lens.
[Andrews] The Second World War brings the Empire to an end in its incarnation.
People are demanding their freedom, they're demanding nationalism.
Churchill genuinely believes
that Britain and America will decide where the world goes.
What America is actually doing is setting a different form of empire,
which is about economic control rather than political control.
And that clashes heavily with Churchill.
Because of his imperialism,
he never really comes to terms with the fact that the Empire is over.
[Hirsch] Churchill is an absolutely key figure
in understanding that narrative of Britishness that has been constructed,
I would say, to make generations of British people feel good about themselves.
Not as a person with all his complexity and flaws,
but as a symbol of victory, of reinforcing the status quo,
continuity, tradition, the class systems.
[Bush] The world, at times, is starved for strong leaders,
and Churchill was a strong leader
who never forgot the beauty of freedom and the importance of democracy.
[Peri] To paraphrase Walt Whitman,
"Like America, Churchill contains multitudes."
I think it's possible to be a leader who accomplishes something extraordinary,
who legitimately helps save the world from something truly evil,
and also have made decisions that were horrific
and hold views that we find abhorrent.
We can hold all of these things. They can all be true.
And it doesn't mean that we have to tear down his statue,
maybe it means we put up some more to more fully tell the story.
[Lammy] The doggedness, the determination,
the eloquence, the wit, the drive, the purpose.
In that sense,
the British people see in his image
the self-image of the best of them.
[Roberts] Physically brave,
morally brave,
full of insights and foresight.
Humorous to the point
that he can still make people laugh 60 years after his death.
-[rousing music playing] -[applause]
The portrait is a remarkable example of modern art.
[audience laughs]
And a resolute spirit that is very rarely seen in human history.
[Meacham] Churchill should inspire us,
not because he's such a hero, but because he's so human.
[Churchill] The day may dawn when fair play,
love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom
will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant
from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell.
[quiet, sentimental music plays]
[child laughing]
[Soames] When I was small, we lived at Chartwell,
and my brother went running down the corridor
into the inner sanctum of Grandfather's study,
where none of us were really allowed to go.
He said, ''Grandpapa, Grandpapa,
is it true you're the greatest living Englishman?''
And he said, ''Yes, now bugger off.''
[Johnson] Although he was this great, patriotic,
sometimes bombastic believer in the British Empire,
he was also basically a liberal.
He believed in progress. He believed in freedom and opportunity.
I think he's more relevant than ever today
because the values he believed in are under serious threat
and need to prevail.
[Churchill] In war, resolution.
In defeat, defiance.
In victory, magnanimity.
In peace, goodwill.
[dramatic music playing]
Subtitle translation by: Y. Yun