Generally, when people are at war with a country run by fascists with a massive army and a psychotic, homicidal dictator, they worry. In this speech, you can see/hear Churchill addressing his audience's fears. Those fears are related most obviously to the war, but also to the way the war has affected Britain's politics.
He's talking to MPs who have just seen an abrupt change in leadership, but Churchill doesn't waste any time trying to appease them. He tells it like it is: there will be blood.
You can't call it fear-mongering because he was right: the war would bring death, destruction, and economic panic to Britain. But by laying the unvarnished truth out there, he was preparing his government to cope with it.
Paradoxically, that was reassuring.
Questions About Fear
- What had happened in the war before this speech that would have inspired fear in Parliament?
- How do Churchill's words in this speech both inspire fear and reduce it?
- Can you think of other moments in history when fear has had such an impact on the political process of a country? How were those moments similar or different?
Chew on This
Churchill didn't have to scare anyone; the Brits already knew they were next on Hitler's hit list.
Pre-Churchill, the government's problem was that it wasn't as afraid of the Nazi regime as they should've been. Thanks, Neville Chamberlain.