On this day 62 years ago the British prime minister Winston Churchill made one of his most famous speeches. Britain had entered the Second World War almost a year before, declaring war on Germany, but progress for the next several months had been slow. A lack of confidence in the efforts of the British government had led to Churchill being appointed prime minister in May 1940 just as the country was suffering disastrous defeats in Europe.
Most of the British Army had successfully been rescued from the continent during June 1940, and a battle for supremacy between the German Air Force and the British Air Force had ensued, a battle which Churchill called the Battle of Britain. Over the next two months the British Air Force managed to keep the Germans at bay, although a land invasion was still expected, and on 20th August Churchill gave his famous speech in the House of Commons:
“The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day, but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate, careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power.”