During the time the Battle of France was being carried out, three important speeches were delivered by Winston Churchill; Blood, toil, tears, and sweat, (May 13^th), We shall fight on the beaches (June 4^th) and This was their finest hour (June 18^th). We shall fight in the beaches was the second speech he addressed to the nation from the House of Commons and it is considered the defining speech of the World War II and furthermore, one of the finest addressed in history. Although initially this speech did not get a warm reception among the population, the speech has gone down in history because of its clarity and honest explanation of the complicated situation of the moment.

First of all, Churchill gave reasons of the recent military disaster and of the terrified withdrawal of the British troops and so he decided to turn that escape into a rescue, but trying to transmit that, acting in that way will not make Britain win the war. At the same time, he uses this opportunity to praise the work that the RAF had been doing because he knew very well, the Air-Force would be the protagonist of the war after a few days and wanted people to feel safe and trust the army.

“Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force.”

Churchill showed his skills as politician with such a tribute to the RAF. He was aware of the distrust feeling that many of the rescued soldiers in Dunkirk had towards the RAF. They accused the Air Force of having abandoned them in France. Churchill knew he had to turn the pilots into the heroes of the English Battle to change the popular opinion.

Secondly, he warned population of a very probable German attempt of invasion of Great Britain and, at the same time, he tried to prepare British people for the imminent falling of France into Hitler’s dominion.

Then, the speech challenges for the first time United States to become part of the fight against Nazism by means of insisting on the main idea of his previous speech: the British aim is to achieve victory at all costs.

At the end of the speech, Churchill gets inside his audience’s mind. At that moment, British people were wandering about their future if France surrendered. Churchill drew a map showing the British resistance towards Germany:

“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.”

Finally he explains they would fight in France, and whenever France succumbed, they would defend themselves from the sea (with the Royal Navy) and with the R.A.F in the air “with growing confidence and growing strength in the air”. If Germany decided to start with the invasion, British would fight them in every single piece of land: in the beaches, in the R.A.F aerodrome, to continue in the fields and in the streets. And if all those measures were not enough, their last resource would be from the hills, as it had been happening since the beginning of the times.

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;

Germany could not wait for any surrender; British people would die defending every piece of land of their island.

we shall never surrender