This research paper summarizes the life and career of Winston Churchill and assesses his historical significance. Churchill lived a very long, intense and varied life, which was full of contradictions, complexities and conundrums. Professionally, he succeeded in many fields, as a writer of history and biography, an orator, correspondent, soldier, politician, political and war leader and statesman. He also became an accomplished amateur painter. He was a Member of Parliament for most of six decades. He was twice Prime Minister of Great Britain (1940-1945 and 1951-1955). He held many senior Cabinet posts.
The thesis of this paper is many of Churchill's shortcomings and errors, some of which were colossal, represented the other side of the coin of his remarkable talents, including genius, insight, courage and willpower, none of which can be understood in isolation. He was an inept gambler, but luck also played an important role in shaping the events of his life. He was nearly killed after he stepped in front of a speeding taxi in New York in 1932. He suffered from many illnesses in his childhood and later, especially during World War II and later he survived near mortal afflictions, including pneumonia, heart attacks and strokes. If Churchill had died in 1939, he probably would have been remembered as a magnificent failure. Instead, he proved to be an inspirational wartime leader, especially during the dark days of 1940-1941 when Britain faced Adolf Hitler's Nazi juggernaut alone. He was right about a great many important things, such as the German threat in the late 1900s and the 1930s, the need for Britain to recognize Irish home rule, the plight of the Jews and their need for a homeland, the urgency of political and social reform before World War I, the futility of trench warfare on the Western front, the long-term danger to the West of Soviet Bolshevism, the importance of Anglo-American harmony, the need for Europe to unite after...