(Lord of The Admiralty Winston Churchill - very dark days just ahead)

I've had a number of requests over the months to post some complete Winston Churchill addresses. Churchill is certainly a familiar voice to most people, but in the context of soundbites; short excerpts from famous speeches or radio addresses during the years of World War 2. Tonight I thought I would include a complete speech he gave in Manchester on February 1940, when the War in Europe was relatively new and the dark days of the Blitz were just ahead. Churchill had not become Prime Minister yet, but was still Lord of The Admiralty. That too would happen shortly after this address.

Winston Churchill: “Even if we look at numbers alone we have no need to feel that the task we have taken up is beyond our competence. I cannot pretend or venture to forecast what the course of this war will be, whether it will be long or short. Whether it will be dull and grinding or burst suddenly into furious flame. But I am quite sure that the British Empire and the French Republic and French Empire, once they have got on the move, and they are on the move, are far stronger together in physical energy and in psychic strength than Hitler’s Germany.”

It's also interesting to note that even Winston Churchill was not immune to heckles from the audience, as was evidenced by two shouting protests mid-way through his speech, briefly halting his address. A technical note: Because this is a shortwave broadcast, the sound goes from great to weird and distorted in places and back. In 1940 that was the best available technology at the time.

Some things, even in history, never change.