Churchill - "This was Their Finest Hour"

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on the 10th of May, 1940. It was an especially difficult time in the history of Europe since on that day Hitler began his invasion of France, Belgium and The Netherlands (Holland).

In the months which followed, Churchill's speeches rallied the British people and sent a message of determined defiance, against Hitler's aggression, around the globe.

This audio clip includes the ending of one of his most famous speeches, given the month after he became Prime Minister:

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."