Sold – Churchill Amidst the Blitz in 1940: This is “the front line of freedom”

He labels this the “hour of supreme crisis,” which will require ”stern resolve” and “a sacrifice of personal interest”

Churchill was named Prime Minister in May 1940, after the Nazi juggernaut had overwhelmed Poland and then smashed into Denmark and Norway, followed shortly by invasions of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. From that moment his life and career became one with Britain’s story and its survival. Churchill’s task was to inspire resistance at all costs, to organize the defense of the island, and to make it the bastion for an eventual return to the continent of Europe. To do this, he needed to breathe a new spirit into the government and a new resolve into the people. His magnificent oratory, his immense confidence, and his stubborn refusal to accept anything but total victory, did just that, and rallied the nation, particularly during the dark days in 1940 and 1941 before the United States entered the war. The speeches he made in accomplishing this are classics and among the most moving and important ever written in the English language. From his first blunt talk to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940, in which he warned “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”; to his pledge to resist – “We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!”; to his memorable plea for strength and courage – “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”; his words effectively inspired the people and led ultimately to victory over Nazi tyranny.

France fell in June 1940, and from July to September 1940 all waited tensely for the expected German invasion of Britain to begin, as the Battle of Britain was fought to secure air supremacy and the skies above the south of England became the scene of battles between German and British fighter planes. By September it was clear that the RAF had denied the Luftwaffe the control the Germans needed to cross the English Channel, and the Nazi leaders decided to concentrate instead on bombing cities to pound the British people into submission. On September 7, 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters pounded London all afternoon until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second group of raiders commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning. For months in succession the cities of Britain suffered night after night of air terror, and while the cities were being destroyed the people sought safety in air raid shelters, and in London, in Underground (subway) stations. Typically there were 100 to 200 bombers dropping around 200 tons of high explosive and 300 incendiaries a day, although there were raids with 300 and 400 planes with more than double the amount of bombs dropped. This bombing of the civilian population came to be known as the Blitz.

Air raids threatened the people, their government and hallowed monuments. On September 13 Buckingham Palace was hit, on the night of September 24 an incendiary was dropped on Downing Street, on October 8 it was the War Office, on October 10 two unexploded bombs hit Horse Guards Parade. By then some 250,000 people were homeless. On the evening of October 14, Winston and Clementine Churchill were being served dinner in the Garden Rooms at No. 10 when several heavy detonations were heard close by. Several minutes later a high explosive bomb hit the Treasury Gardens, yards away. Three civil servants in the Treasury were killed and Treasury Building offices were destroyed. The blast rocked Downing Street. Although the Churchills were unharmed, No 10’s upstairs kitchen and pantry were wrecked, a large plate glass window was shattered and the State Drawing Rooms, Pillared Drawing Room and Sloane Dining Rooms were damaged. At the same time occurred one of the saddest moments of the Blitz, as a bomb penetrated the road and exploded in the Balham Underground station (which was being used as a shelter) killing 68 people. A bus travelling in black-out conditions then fell into the bomb crater. On October 20, for his security, Churchill and his government moved to the underground cabinet war rooms.

At the start of the war, Britain imported 70% of its food to feed its 50 million residents. It was one of the principal strategies of the Germans to sink shipping bound for Britain with not merely weaponry, but food, hoping to potentially starve the nation into submission. To deal with sometimes extreme shortages, the Ministry of Food instituted a system of rationing. There were farmers in Britain, and encouraging them to produce as much as possible at as little price as feasible was an important interest of the British government. Churchill himself took a hand in the matter, and when Tom Peacock, the president of the National Farmer’s Union, wrote him expressing his concerns, he received the following famous letter.

Typed Letter Signed, on Prime Minister’s letterhead, 3 pages, London, 14th October 1940, the very day of the bombings mentioned above, to Peacock. The letter reads like one of his inspirational speeches with which he rallied the nation. “…I need not tell you that the food production of our country is, at this hour of supreme crises, one of the vital factors in our ability to resist and overcome a formidable enemy. We rely on the farmers…I know that we can do this with complete confidence in their toil, their ingenuity and their readiness to accept hardship in a grave emergency affecting all our people…They take their place in a general plan to meet the exceptional needs of the War. In some cases they may impose burdens; in others there may even be a call to sacrifice of personal interest…And I know that it would be answered by a stern resolve to make the best of the expedients at hand, to labour and strive and achieve, with no thought of obstacles and no heed of difficulties. Only if we devote our lives and our energies wholly to the tasks of war can we survive the ordeal and gain the victory, which will save our people from intolerable servitude. And in this service, the farming community, the home through the centuries of bold and independent men, is called to play a vital part. Today the farms of Britain are the front line of freedom.” Very unusually, the original, postmarked envelope is still present. This letter is one of only a handful of war date Churchill letters containing his resounding and moving phraseology that we have had over the decades, and just the second from the Blitz.

Churchill’s phrase that Britain, and specifically its farmers, are on “the front line of freedom,” was quickly published and became a byword for Britain and its farms. The definitive book on the subject uses the phrase in its title – “The Front Line of Freedom: British Farming in the Second World War.”