Churchill inspires Britain to fight on

27th April 1941: As thousands more are killed every week in an ever intensifying Blitz, the war news from Greece and North Africa is as bad as ever

A familiar scene in many British cities. In Coventry, casualties and damage from two raids in April 1941 were comparable to the notorious raid of November 1940.

During April 1941, the Luftwaffe conducted some of the most damaging bombing raids of the entire war. Belfast, London, Coventry, Plymouth, Birmingham, Bristol, and Barrow in Furness all suffered more than one raid and severe damage during the month. Everyone in every city in the country had to be prepared to take to the shelters at a moment’s notice. In London, many people simply spent every night in a shelter or down in the Underground. No one could be confident that they would survive the night, and many did not.

In the midst of this, Churchill remained as popular as ever. People flocked to see him as he toured bomb damaged cities up and down the country. He had come to personify British defiance through his rhetoric. So when he broadcast to the nation on 27th April, everybody was listening.

German soldiers raise the German war banner atop the Acropolis in Athens after forcing the Greeks to surrender on 27th April. Terrible atrocities by the Germans against the Greek populace followed. The ordeal of occupation by the Germans, the Italians and the Bulgarians, in different zones, was to become a living nightmare for the Greeks.

There was not much good news he could give. Britain struggled to find an answer to the night raiders - an answer never found during the whole war. Abroad, the debacle in Greece could fairly be considered the direct consequence of Churchill’s own overconfidence and disregard of military realities. Those with an insight into the strategic direction of the war were far from uncritical, not least Robert Menzies, the Australian Minister, who had questioned the wisdom of the Greek adventure and had been proved right.

In this daunting set of circumstances, Churchill¹ still managed to rise to the occasion and find the words that gave people confidence and hope for the future:

It is quite true that I have seen many painful scenes of havoc, and of fine buildings and acres of cottage homes blasted into rubble-heaps of ruin. But it is just in those very places where the malice of the savage enemy has done its worst, and where the ordeal of the men, women and children has been most severe, that I found their morale most high and splendid.

Indeed, I felt encompassed by an exaltation of spirit in the people which seemed to lift mankind and its troubles above the level of material facts into that joyous serenity we think belongs to a better world than this. Of their kindness to me I cannot speak, because I have never sought it or dreamed of it, and can never deserve it.