(dramatic music) (narrator) May 1940.

Darkness had descended upon the world.

♪ Germany and her allies controlled large swathes of Europe.

Japan had invaded China and was looking to expand her empire further.

Britain and empire were under threat.

But if anybody likes to play rough, we can play rough, too.

(narrator) In this fractured world, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

He did so with a clear goal: victory.

(Winston Churchill) Now we are at war, and we are going to make war until the other side have had enough.

♪ (narrator) This is the story of the man who led Britain and her empire through one of the darkest moments in its history.

This is Winston Churchill's War.

♪ (melancholy music) In 1944 and '45, Churchill continued to embrace his role as a wartime leader.

He traveled to meet British and Commonwealth troops on the ground as well as commanders and Allied leaders.

He presented and pursued his views on strategy.

But destiny was shifting.

Britain, the empire, and the world was changing.

♪ Britain was no longer the center of the European war effort.

♪ And Churchill had to submit to the influence of more powerful allies.

♪ By war's end, the people of Britain were no longer looking for a wartime prime minister but rather a leader to guide them into a prosperous peace.

(cheering) ♪ (somber music) ♪ In January 1944, even as the Allies began to prepare for an amphibious landing in France... ♪ ...Churchill remained committed to his soft underbelly strategy and its focus on the Mediterranean.

Churchill had hoped to take complete control of Italy and deliver other strategic gains, including drawing enemy troops away from the Soviet Union and France.

(birds chirping) ♪ But the campaign in Italy was proving difficult and costly.

♪ (Winston Churchill) We now hold one-third of the mainland of Italy.

Our progress has not been as rapid or decisive as we had hoped.

I do not doubt that we shall be victors and that Rome will be rescued.

(narrator) The Allies were struggling to crack the German defenses at the Gustav Line and make the all-important breakthrough to Rome.

♪ The Gustav Line stretched 160 kilometers across Italy from the mouth of the Garigliano River, through Cassino, to the mouth of the Sangro River.

Cassino and the Liri Valley provided potential openings in the defenses.

♪ But the Germans knew this and had heavily fortified this section of the line.

(Dr. Peter Stanley) Between September 1943, when the Allies invade Italy, and the start of 1944, the Germans build a line of defenses across the lower part of Italy, north of Naples, south of Rome, and one of the key points on that line is the fortified hill of Monte Cassino.

(moody music) (narrator) In late January 1944, the Allies attempted to make a breakthrough launching an amphibious landing at Anzio.

♪ The landing began with promise, but soon the Allied troops found themselves precariously defending the beachhead against significant German reinforcements.

(exploding) ♪ (Assoc.

Prof. Stephen Napier) Churchill said that he'd hoped to land a wildcat on the shores of Italy, but instead there was a large whale flopping about with its tale in the water.

(dark music) ♪ Churchill later made an aside and said that the campaign had certainly not gone according to how he had envisaged and that in his lifetime, he couldn't afford two Suvla Bays, which was a reference to his failed Gallipoli adventure of the First World War.

♪ (exploding) (narrator) Allied incursions on land didn't fare much better.

Four major attacks were launched at Monte Cassino between January and May meeting stubborn resistance.

(Dr. Peter Stanley) Churchill had talked about the soft underbelly of Europe.

Well, it turned out not to be so soft.

♪ And one of its hardest points was Monte Cassino and the valleys and hills that the Allies had to break through if they were to advance on Rome.

(narrator) Atop Monte Cassino stood a historic Benedictine monastery.

British intelligence mistakenly reported that it was occupied by the Germans, and on the 15th of February, Allied air forces were ordered to bomb the monastery, leaving it in ruins.

The irony of the Battle of Monte Cassino and the continued fighting in Italy was that it delivered the one thing Churchill was trying to avoid in France: a stalemate.

♪ Over a period of five months, the Allies struggled to make any headway.

♪ The Allies won through at Cassino by sheer bloody determination, by making one attack after another and eventually getting a strategy to break through that blockage, partly because of the landing at Anzio.

♪ (narrator) After fierce fighting, the Allied troops eventually broke through the Gustav Line and on June the 4th, 1944, took Rome.

But the campaign in Italy dragged on even as the final, frantic preparations were being made for D-Day.

♪ (somber music) ♪ In May 1944, back in England, Churchill met with leaders of the British Commonwealth Dominions.

Their broad support and enthusiasm further reinforced Churchill's view of the strong bonds of empire.

♪ But the Commonwealth leaders also recognized the value of other rising powers, particularly the United States.

(Prof. David Edgerton) At the beginning of the war, Churchill stood at the head of a nation as powerful as any other.

♪ Now, of course, British power grew between 1940 and 1945, but Soviet power and above all, U.S. power, grew very much faster.

♪ So United Kingdom goes from head of an empire to being a power that is essentially subservient in critical ways.

The key parts of the empire, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, in many ways have stronger relations with the United States than they do with the United Kingdom.

♪ (narrator) The increasing number of U.S. troops and equipment in Britain also made Churchill acutely aware of Britain's dwindling influence in the European Theater.

(Dr. Piers Brendon) The American arrival was fairly protracted, but it was gradual, and Churchill's consciousness that Britain's role in the war was increasingly that of playing second fiddle to the Americans grew and grew.

Churchill began to feel humiliated by his dependence on the Americans and the fact that he was ultimately going to have to dance to their tune.

(cheering) (dark music) ♪ (narrator) Throughout the war, Churchill's focus had been firmly fixed on Europe and the Mediterranean... ♪ ...but over in the Asia-Pacific region, Churchill had a vested personal interest in both Burma and India.

♪ In 1885, when Winston was still a boy, his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a secretary of state for India, had annexed Burma for the British Empire.

♪ Burma was significant for two key reasons: for the Burma Road which had been used as a supply route to China and Burma's proximity to India.

♪ The threat of a Japanese invasion sparking an insurrection against the British raj would have been deeply concerning to Churchill, who had argued strongly against Indian independence in the years before the war.

(cheering) He did not want to cede control of India to Japan or to the Indian people.

(Winston Churchill) The more we can fight and engage the Japanese and especially wear down their air power, the greater diversion we make from the Pacific Theater and the more help we give to the operation of the United States.

♪ Admiral Mountbatten has enthused of spirit of energy and confidence into the heavy forces gathered to recover Burma.

♪ And by that means, it is then the frontiers of India can reopen the road to China.

♪ (ominous music) (narrator) In May 1944, the Burma campaign reached a climax with 60,000 British and Commonwealth troops surrounded on the Imphal plain by a force of over 70,000 Japanese.

♪ The Commonwealth troops held out, eventually pushing the Japanese back and into retreat, turning the tide of the Burma campaign.

♪ As the Allied troops fought their way toward Rangoon, Churchill's attention again turned to the war in Europe.

(moody music) ♪ In June 1944, the time for Operation Overlord had finally arrived.

♪ After years of debate and Churchill's numerous objections and peripheral campaigns, the Allies were about to launch the Second Front in France which Stalin had long called for.

♪ On its outcome depended the fate of the entire war.

♪ (Winston Churchill) The hour of our greatest effort and action is approaching.

We march with valiant allies who count on us as we count on them.

The flashing eyes of all our soldiers, sailors, and airmen must be fixed upon the enemy on their front.

And when the signal is given, the whole circle of avenging nations will hurl themselves upon the foe and batter out the life of the cruelest tyranny which has ever sought to bar the progress of mankind.

♪ (narrator) If successful, Overlord and the campaign that followed would mean the liberation of France and the chance to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.

♪ (splashing) (soft music) (Sir Max Hastings) Overlord offered Hitler his last just credible opportunity of the war to turn the tide against the Allies.

He had a scenario, not a very convincing one, but just possible whereby if he could throw the Allies back into the sea when they invaded, then he could shift all his important forces, above all, the panzer divisions, back to the Eastern Front, smash the Russians, and then come and deal with the Americans, the British later.

♪ (narrator) As D-Day approached, Churchill remained concerned about the potential for disaster.

And he was not alone.

♪ Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, confided in his diary that he thought it might be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war.

(Sir Max Hastings) Although all logic said that the Allies, with an overwhelming superiority of armor, ships, aircraft, were overwhelmingly likely to get ashore and be able to stay there, if they failed, the consequences would be disastrous.

I mean, the blow to the credibility of President Roosevelt and Churchill as Prime Minister would have been overwhelming.

Eisenhower would have to have been sacked as supreme commander.

Another supreme commander chosen.

There would've had to have been other scapegoats.

Morale among the American people, the British people, would've taken a most terrible blow.

(narrator) Haunted by failed amphibious operations of the past, Churchill retired the evening before D-Day burdened by fears.

He told Clementine that by the time she woke, 20,000 men may have been killed.

♪ The German defensive strategy against the seaborne attack lay in the Atlantic Wall.

(dark music) Fortified with mines and barbed wire, the wall had taken years to construct.

♪ Hitler was so invested in the details of the wall, he even designed the bunker systems.

♪ But as a defense, it proved to be fatally flawed.

♪ It was not defense in depth, and it was static.

♪ (tense music) ♪ On the morning on the 6th of June, 1944, Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy.

♪ Strong currents swept many landing craft off course, and rough seas hampered the troops as they struggled ashore.

(gunshot, exploding) On the exposed beaches, soldiers faced heavy fire from the German defenders.

(gunfire) ♪ But by day's end, the Allies had broken through the German lines and were moving inland from the precarious beachheads.

♪ (spirited music) ♪ On the 12th of June, eager to see the results of the landings, Churchill arrived in Normandy just six days after D-Day.

♪ He was there again in July visiting the troops and rallying morale.

(announcer) The PM came not only to congratulate and cheer the men of the Allied armies, but also to bring them the good wishes and thanks of all of us at home.

Before his trip to the American sector, he'd spent several days with the British troops.

He went right up into Cannes and with Generals Montgomery and Dempsey, he drove across the River Orne.

Two of the bridges are already named after him.

One is called Winston and the other, Churchill.

♪ In August, Churchill reported the successes of Operation Overlord to the House of Commons.

He praised Eisenhower and the American contribution, but was also at pains to make clear his view that British forces had contributed an equal effort.

That Churchill felt the need to mention this suggests he recognized a critical shift in the power relations.

♪ (ominous music) ♪ In August 1944, the Allies broke out of the Normandy bridgehead and advanced east.

♪ As U.S. troops drew close to the city, the French Resistance in Paris rose up against the Germans.

♪ On the 24th of August, French and U.S. forces advanced into the city and Paris was liberated on the 25th.

(announcer) Paris was all its legends of romance.

Armored equipment on the Champs-Élysées with its famous rolls of chestnut trees.

And then the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe, symbol of the glory of Paris.

The angry crowds have to be held back, and the insolent Nazis are not so insolent now.

They're scared.

♪ (narrator) By September 1944, the Allies had moved east across France and Belgium and reached Germany's western border.

But here, the Allied advance slowed to a halt as the Germans launched a counterattack in the Ardennes region.

♪ (melancholy music) As progress was being made on the Western Front, the Red Army had been driving the Wehrmacht back on the Eastern Front since the end of 1943.

(gunfire) By late 1944, Soviet troops had advanced hundreds of kilometers across Eastern Europe and were on the verge of moving into German home territory.

(engines puttering) In January 1945, the Red Army captured the Polish city of Warsaw, and by winter's end, Soviet troops were edging ever closer to Berlin.

♪ Churchill was beginning to worry about Soviet intentions in Eastern European nations, especially in Poland.

♪ (moody music) ♪ In February 1945, the Big Three came together for the Yalta Conference.

♪ With victory in Europe on the horizon, the fate of liberated nations and the conditions to be imposed upon a defeated Germany became the key focus of the conference.

♪ Yalta was a difficult and quarrelsome conference.

Churchill made it clear that a free and independent Poland was essential to Britain.

It was, he said, why Britain had gone to war.

And it was this issue that Churchill felt had contributed to the breakdown of the great alliance.

Stalin did make a commitment to a free, independent, and powerful Poland, but as with many of Stalin's promises, it proved a sham.

♪ (Dr. Piers Brendon) By the time that the Yalta Conference took place, Stalin's cloven hoof was beginning to show in Poland.

He had a long vendetta against the Poles, but he was extending Russian influence right into Western Europe.

And Churchill was getting extremely anxious about the situation in Poland.

Don't forget, Britain had entered the war to preserve the integrity of Poland against the Nazis.

Well, this clearly was not going to happen.

So, Churchill had no real cards to play except trying to say, "Let's keep the alliance together.

Let's all be decent, preserve what we're trying to fight for which is to crush the horror of Nazi Germany, try and build a United Nations and a civilized Europe."

♪ (narrator) As far as Stalin was concerned, Poland was central to the security of the Soviet Union.

(melancholy music) It had proven to be a corridor for attack on Russia, and Stalin wanted to ensure that it did not happen again.

♪ It was becoming clear that Stalin had aspirations for Soviet expansion that would not be easily quashed.

♪ The discussions regarding Poland at Yalta were an example of the fading influence of the democratic nations of Britain and the United States against the rising Communist power of the Soviet Union.

(Dr. David B. Woolner) So Stalin really took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and placed Churchill and Roosevelt in a very difficult position.

And it's at this point after Yalta that you start to see Churchill in particular getting more and more upset about Poland.

Roosevelt first says, "Give it some time," but eventually, Roosevelt himself comes around to the view that Stalin's behavior is just beyond the pale.

And they start pressuring Stalin to make some changes.

It's a sad story, there's no question about it.

For the people of Poland, the Second World War is a disaster.

♪ (moody music) ♪ Another concern for Churchill at Yalta was securing a zone of occupation for the French in a post-war Germany.

♪ This was something of which Stalin in particular saw no need.

♪ (Dr. David B. Woolner) Initially, both Stalin and Roosevelt were kind of skeptical about this.

One thing that Stalin was very concerned about was he didn't want to see these defeated and what he considered lesser powers elevated to the point where they could demand the kind of reparations and economic assistance that he felt Russia was entitled to.

Eventually, both Stalin and Roosevelt acquiesced to that decision.

♪ (narrator) There were toasts and dinners and much talk of the alliance of the great powers.

♪ At one dinner, Churchill declared that in Stalin, Britain had a friend whom we can trust.

But beneath the displays of goodwill and friendship was a much darker undercurrent.

♪ The goals of the Big Three were no longer aligned, not even those of Britain and America.

♪ (Assoc.

Prof. Stephen Napier) By Yalta, the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt had cooled considerably.

Churchill had more than a year of being on the wrong end of the strategic decision-making process.

He had suffered criticism from the American State Department about the British expedition into Greece.

Roosevelt wasn't supporting Churchill on issues like Poland.

(narrator) As it turned out, they did not have the opportunity to rebuild the relationship.

♪ (waves whooshing) (somber music) ♪ On the 13th of April, 1945, Churchill reported news of Roosevelt's death to the House of Commons.

♪ (announcer) President Roosevelt, who had guided the United States with so sure a touch, who had symbolized to other nations of the world their hopes of the future, died before victory was achieved.

♪ (narrator) Churchill called for business in the House to be suspended for the day, but it was a restrained statement for someone so fond of literary and rhetorical flourish.

♪ His reaction to the President's death would puzzle historians for many years to come.

♪ (Assoc.

Prof. Stephen Napier) The reaction of Churchill to the death of Roosevelt was very muted.

Churchill declined to go to Roosevelt's funeral.

In his history of the Second World War, Churchill said that Roosevelt was perhaps the greatest friend and the greatest ally that Britain had ever had.

So his decision to not attend Roosevelt's funeral is remarkable in that context.

(melancholy music) (narrator) He traveled far and wide during the war, even in Britain's darkest hours.

Why at this moment did he make the decision to remain in Britain?

♪ Was it a sign of a faltering relationship?

Perhaps he simply could not face the funeral of a friend and give full expression to his grief in that moment.

(gunshot) Whatever the reason, it meant a missed opportunity to meet and create a bond with Roosevelt's successor, President Harry S. Truman.

♪ (gunshot) (piano music) As the war continued and parts of Europe were liberated, Churchill feared the rapid advance of the Red Army would end in Soviet domination for years to come.

(Dr. Piers Brendon) Churchill thought very, very early on not just in terms of winning the war, but what the winning of the war would mean for post-war relationships, post-war great power relationships.

And he was extremely apprehensive about what Stalin might do, particularly given his incredibly brutal way in which he conducted himself during the war.

(Assoc.

Prof. Stephen Napier) It became clear that the Red Army in Russia was going to become the dominant force in Eastern Europe.

And what was particularly painful to Churchill was that they had no observers, they had no diplomats, not even prepress in these countries at the time.

So Churchill, in an early telegram to Truman in May 1945, made a reference to an iron curtain having descended upon Eastern Europe.

(dark music) ♪ (narrator) As the Red Army advanced through Germany, Churchill strongly believed American and British forces should not concede ground to the Soviets.

But his entreaties fell on deaf ears.

(Assoc.

Prof. Stephen Napier) Eisenhower had adopted a strange feud that Berlin was no longer a strategic objective.

The Red Army was steamrolling its way across Eastern Europe.

It had entered Austria, and Churchill believed that the Allies should occupy as much of Germany as possible to strengthen their negotiations with the Russians.

Churchill believed that Berlin, obviously as the capital of Germany, was a great political and strategic prize that he wanted to capture.

♪ (narrator) With major offensives underway on both the Eastern and Western Fronts in early 1945, Hitler was compelled to split his remaining forces.

This movement of German troops meant less resistance for U.S. and British forces as they attempted to cross the Rhine River and advance into the heart of Germany.

♪ On the 23rd of March, 1945, U.S. General Patton's Third Army was the first to cross the Rhine, and shortly after, British Field Marshal Montgomery launched his own attack across a nearly 50-kilometer front.

♪ (Dr. Peter Stanley) The real genius is that it happened so swiftly.

They managed to get across the river in one night.

It cost lives, but it was an enormous success and an immediate success, and it shows just how much the balance had shifted in the last months of the war.

The Allies could do anything they wanted and the Germans could do almost nothing to stop them.

♪ (spirited music) ♪ (planes droning) ♪ (narrator) In late March 1945, Churchill suggested to Montgomery that, together, they cross the Rhine only days after the Allied crossing had taken place.

♪ Finally, Churchill was where he had most wanted to be, standing on conquered German soil at the head of the road to Berlin.

♪ The Allied armies raced eastwards.

Germany was all but beaten.

The aim now was to stop the Red Army gaining territory.

The Cold War was beginning in earnest even before Berlin fell.

(dark music) ♪ On April the 11th, 1945, the American and British forces were at the Elbe River, less than 100 kilometers from Berlin.

♪ They were waiting for the Red Army to meet them, to commence a final pincer movement on Berlin.

♪ (Dr. Peter Stanley) Berlin was the great prize.

Both sides, both the Soviet Union and the Anglo-American forces, wanted to capture Berlin.

There's something deeply psychological in the idea of occupying the enemy's capital.

The thing was that of those two contending forces, only the Soviet Union was prepared to put the losses in to capture and get it as quickly as they did.

♪ (narrator) By April the 25th, Soviet forces had surrounded Berlin.

(exploding) And on April the 30th, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.

♪ Finally, Churchill could deliver the speech he must have longed to give for many years.

He announced victory in Europe to the British people.

(piano music) (Winston Churchill) We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.

♪ Today is Victory in Europe Day.

♪ (announcer) Britain took his words to heart.

Never was there such a day of genuine rejoicing.

(shouting) ♪ (cheering) ♪ (narrator) Victory in Europe was secured.

♪ But Churchill's premiership and the fate of the British Empire was now hanging by a thread.

He had hoped that his government coalition would continue until the war with Japan was won.

But by 1945, the wartime parliament had been in power for close to ten years, twice the normal term.

The last election had been held in 1935.

And since 1940, Churchill had led a wartime coalition.

♪ In 1944, under pressure from Clement Attlee's Labor Party, Churchill had committed to an election when the war with Germany was won.

♪ With victory over Germany secured, Churchill began to think it would be better to extend the coalition until Japan was beaten.

He put the proposition to Clement Attlee who declined the offer.

The election would go ahead as planned.

(cheering) ♪ Churchill almost immediately undermined his campaign with the infamous Gestapo speech.

In his first election broadcast in early June, he targeted the socialist principles of the Soviets and what he considered their socialist proxy in Britain, the Labor Party.

♪ (Winston Churchill) No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or valiantly worded expressions of public discontent.

They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

(dark music) (narrator) The combative tone directed at Labor members he had treated as colleagues during the war was not well-received.

By engaging in party politics, he undermined his reputation as a man who could unite the nation in peacetime as well as in war.

♪ For perhaps the first time since he had become prime minister, Churchill had misjudged the public mood.

The British people were tired, they were weary of war, and they were eager for social reform.

♪ Churchill was campaigning on the basis that there were still international tensions.

The war with Japan hadn't ended, and Russia was emerging as a threat in the future.

So Churchill basically was promising more of the same.

(cheering) ♪ (narrator) On the 21st of June, 1945, Churchill delivered his pitch to the nation.

(Winston Churchill) Five years ago, I promised you blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

And your untiring response brought us, in the end, victory over Germany.

We have a terrific task ahead of us.

We have a shattered world around us and we must help to rebuild it.

♪ (narrator) It was a warning that more work lay ahead, a call to action for still more blood and sweat.

It wasn't what the British people wanted.

♪ (Dr. Piers Brendon) What the British population wanted was a reward for the sacrifices they'd made, no return to the frightful conditions of the Depression, and the kinds of social policies that Churchill himself had championed all those years ago as a Liberal minister in the Edwardian period.

Much of it had taken place already, but they wanted the full welfare state, and, this, the Attlee and the Socialist Party promised.

(cheering) (narrator) Attlee spoke in his address of the common ground between the electorate and the members of his party.

It is the glory of our movement that men and women in every rank of society place human rights and social justice before their individual interests.

Labor's appeal is not to the lower, but to the highest instincts of the human race.

(narrator) He listed their many different vocations and varied class backgrounds.

He pitched them as a party of the people looking forward to a just peace.

On the 5th of July, the electorate voted.

But they had to wait until the 26th of July for the results to be announced.

(soft music) ♪ In the interim, Churchill attended the Potsdam Conference in Germany.

At Churchill's invitation, Clement Attlee also attended.

♪ Churchill wanted to ensure that Attlee was fully briefed on matters if the election fell his way.

♪ Churchill walked the streets of Berlin and felt a sudden surge of sympathy for the people of Germany.

♪ He visited the Chancellery and stepped into the room in the air raid shelter in which Hitler had committed suicide.

♪ Victory, in Europe, at least, had been achieved.

♪ Now the focus was firmly on securing victory over Imperial Japan by any means necessary.

(exploding) (ominous music) ♪ News of the successful test detonation of the first atomic bomb in the desert in New Mexico profoundly influenced the discussions at the Potsdam Conference.

Churchill was unequivocal in his support of the use of the atomic weapon against Japan.

He had, in fact, given his assent as British Prime Minister to use it against Japan fifteen days before the Trinity test.

♪ Churchill had expected the final effort against Japan to be protracted and bitterly fought.

The atomic bombs, in his view, prevented further slaughter.

(Dr. Spencer Jones) The atomic bomb seemed to offer a way out of this military conundrum.

You could defeat Japan at a stroke without any need to actually land on their beaches and fight their way inland.

But there was a second element to the dropping of the atomic bomb and this was a political element.

The war was clearly coming to an end.

The situation between Britain, British Empire, Soviet Russia, and the United States was unclear.

By dropping the atomic bomb, the United States sent a very clear message to Stalin and the Soviet Union that the United States was in possession of a new and terrible weapon and was prepared to use it against its enemies.

♪ That, the United States felt, would serve as a marker for any future conflict between Russia and America.

(soft music) (indistinct chatter) (narrator) On the surface, all appeared congenial at Potsdam, but tensions bubbled beneath as the war's end signaled the decisive decline of Britain's influence amid the rise of U.S.-Soviet hegemony.

♪ (Dr. David Stahel) The Soviet Union that emerges from the Second World War is not the same country that went into that war.

In four years, the country has been transformed.

Militarily, there's no question that at the beginning of the war, the Red Army was in disarray.

And, yet, in 1945, there are 12 million men in the Red Army.

It is without peer in the world operationally and strategically.

The West recognizes that whatever disagreements they may have with the Soviet Union, they simply cannot challenge the Soviet Union, at least initially and without atomic weapons in a conventional contest.

♪ (narrator) Potsdam would be the last conference in which the United States and Britain would meet with the Soviet Union.

♪ Victory in one war was near, but a new Cold War was about to begin.

♪ (moody music) ♪ Back in the United Kingdom, on the 26th of July, 1945, the results of the election were announced.

♪ The victory went decisively to Clement Attlee and the Labor Party.

Churchill tendered his resignation as Prime Minister to the king that evening.

(Dr. Piers Brendon) Churchill said that he'd won the race but had then been warned off the turf.

He was very upset about it.

Not altogether surprised.

He thought he was going to win, and then he had a terrible presentment that he was going to lose immediately before.

And after it, his wife, Clementine, said that perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, to which he replied that it was certainly very effectively disguised.

It was a real slap in the face after his victory against this monstrous tyranny of Hitler's.

(narrator) Churchill lamented privately to his son, Randolph, that though the electorate were grateful for his efforts in war, the election result made clear they did not want him for peace.

(cheering) (soft music) ♪ On the 6th of August, 1945, the United States dropped the atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

(whooshing) ♪ Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

On the 15th of August, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender to Allied forces.

♪ Just three weeks after Churchill's election defeat, the war that had so defined his premiership was also drawing to a close.

(shouting) ♪ Churchill remained in Parliament as leader of the opposition.

In line with his pre-war views, he continued to oppose Indian independence in 1947.

♪ He also took opportunities to accuse the government of socialist mismanagement of the economy.

Outside Parliament, he continued to pursue his goals with the vigor of a person half his age.

(Dr. Piers Brendon) He was remarkably resilient.

Picked himself up, he went off on a painting holiday.

He started writing his books.

He had initiatives, and he had the prospect of making millions by writing his account of the Second World War.

So he was not without a task and without a purpose in life.

(narrator) His series of books on World War Two were so influential that he shaped the narrative of that war for decades to come.

It was not enough to have led the nation during the war.

He sought to guide their understanding of it into the future.

♪ (Dr. Piers Brendon) He refused, as he said, to be put out to pasture like a bull whose great claim to fame was his past prowess.

He wasn't gonna do that.

He wanted to soldier on.

And he wanted particularly to write what he took to be the great electoral wrong that had been conducted in 1945.

He wanted to win at the polls again and to become prime minister again.

♪ (narrator) In 1951, he fulfilled his final ambition.

The Conservatives won a general election and Churchill was again elected prime minister.

(somber music) Until 1955, he led Britain against the perils of Communism, committing her to the Korean War in a vain bid to prevent the rise of Communism in Southeast Asia.

To the end of his political life, he stuck doggedly to his principles and his belief in the importance of Britain's role in the world.

Churchill was a man determined to continue living and leading with little regard for frailty of health or age.

War had given him purpose, and after it was over, he remarked to his physician that he felt lonely without it.

♪ On the 24th of January, 1965, at the age of 90, Sir Winston Churchill died.

♪ His final journey, which began with a state funeral procession to St. Paul's Cathedral, matched the grandeur of the status he had achieved as a wartime leader.

♪ (announcer) Not since the last century has the honor of a state funeral been accorded to a commoner.

But who more worthy of it than this man who, more than any other, helped to preserve this century of the common man?

He it was who provided us with an image of ourselves as we would wish to be.

Winston Churchill served his country and the world as a champion of democracy.

Now, the world joins his countrymen to pay homage at St. Paul's.

(melancholy music) (narrator) After the funeral, the cortege continued on the River Thames, and Churchill was buried in a private ceremony in the grounds of St. Martin, in Bladon, next to his mother.

♪ Churchill was a man of many talents who lived up to his self-appointed destiny.

The war made his reputation, but it was his complexity that makes him an enduring figure of history.

(Assoc.

Prof. Stephen Napier) Churchill was a very complex person.

On the one hand, he was a great, ruthless military leader.

At the same time, he was very creative, passionate about what he did.

A writer, he was a would-be artist.

He was also a very loving, caring family man.

♪ (narrator) Throughout the war, Churchill never wavered in pursuing his strategic visions.

♪ His keen interest in military matters meant that he saw his role as both military and political.

♪ He worked and traveled incessantly at hours friendly to few.

♪ He indulged in food, alcohol, and cigars.

He frustrated advisors and allies as much as he charmed them.

(Dr. Piers Brendon) There was something very endearing, something charming, something delightful, something absolutely impossible about Churchill's character.

I mean, it's very difficult to withhold admiration from him.

(piano music) (narrator) He had a number of shortcomings, but he was nonetheless a man with insight that others lacked.

He recognized the rising threat of Nazi Germany in the 1930s when so many others did not.

And he understood from the outset that Britain could not win the war alone.

♪ In the dark days of 1940, Britain needed, perhaps above all else, a strong and determined leader... ♪ ...a leader with unshakeable confidence and self-belief, who would resolutely refuse to accept defeat no matter what the cost.

♪ With his gift for rhetoric and a forceful charisma matched by few others in history, he made the people of Britain and empire believe that victory was possible.

Churchill did much more in his life than lead his nation in a time of war.

But it was that leadership and that war which has ensured his place in this history books.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ (bright music)