On August 20th 1940, as the Battle of Britain raged in the skies above southern England, Churchill gave his speech praising the RAF’s fight against Hitler’s Luftwaffe, which included the now famous expression, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’
The Spitfire and Hurricane pilots of Fighter Command are now remembered as ‘the few.’
This was the fourth of his major speeches delivered in 1940, when Britain faced imminent defeat and many thought Britain should give up and sue for peace.
- On May 13th, a few days after being appointed as prime minister, as the Germans invaded Norway, Holland, Belgium and France he made the speech that included the assertion, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
- On June 4th, the day after the end of the Dunkirk evacuation, he gave the speech which included the wording: “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.”
- On June 18th, as France was about to surrender, but Britain would fight on, he said that “men will still say, this was their finest hour.”
- Then on August 20th, at the height of the Battle of Britain his speech included “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
In these brief four months, Hitler had swept through western Europe, pushed the British army back to the Channel at Dunkirk from where it had to be rescued by small civilian shipping, and defeated the French army, then the biggest and best equipped in the world, taking a staggering 2,000,000 prisoners.
Now, in August, Hitler’s Luftwaffe was flying several raids a day, each involving dozens and sometimes hundreds of aircraft, against southern England. Luftflotte 2 outnumbered RAF 11 Group approximately 4 to 1.
Thus, the context of the speeches was one of immanent defeat, what Churchill described in his August 18th speech as ‘a cataract of disaster.’
The power of oratory
Why have Churchill’s words survived for so long, and what made them so powerful? I offer three reasons.
- His need to strengthen his listeners’ backbones
- His use of ‘psalm form’ speech notes
- His choice of language
Strengthening backbones
Most of the political establishment believed that Churchill should negotiate peace terms with Hitler, in what would have been a de facto surrender. Many, such as his predecessor Chamberlain, had pursued a policy of appeasement, which Churchill vociferously opposed, saying in January 1940, ‘an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.’
Churchill was chosen in large part because it was expected he would negotiate the best possible deal with Hitler—an early version of the ‘Nixon to China’ idea. But Churchill did not want to negotiate. He said to his cabinet colleagues on May 28th, ‘if this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.’
Wow!
Churchill needed to strengthen his colleagues’ backbones for the fight, and he probably had more faith in the British people’s resolve than in his fellow politicians in the House. For this reason, these magnificent speeches were given first to a few hundred members of parliament rather than the nation, although they were subsequently repeated on the radio.
Psalm Form
The text of his ‘finest hour’ speech is: Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’
But the notes he delivered his speech from (which still survive) look like this:
Let us therefore brace ourselves
to our duty and so bear ourselves that
if the British Empire and Commonwealth
lasts for a thousand years,
men will still say,
‘This was their finest hour.’
Thus a single sentence is converted into a psalm, into a six-line epic poem.
Choice of Language
‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’
It strikes me that the deliberately elaborate formal wording of ‘Never in the field of human conflict’—he could have just said, ‘in the history of war’—is followed by repetitive single-syllable words, ‘was so much owed by so many to so few.’
The effect is strengthened by putting it in psalm form, making it unstoppable:
‘Never in the field of human conflict
was so much
owed
by so many
to so few.’
It also strikes me that ‘the few’ invokes Shakespeare’s Henry V speech before Agincourt, in which the king tells his heavily outnumbered troops that a few good men are all they need (read it here).
In that battle, which resulted in a decisive English victory, Henry’s 6,000 soldiers, most on foot, faced a French army of 25,000 including 10,000 mounted knights.
Shakespeare has Henry describe his army as ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.’
Edward R Murrow, the CBS reporter who was in London in 1940, famously said of Churchill, ‘He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.’
