MODULE WARS (WWI, WWII, CHURCHILL SPEECHES, ...), Appunti di Inglese

Scarica MODULE WARS (WWI, WWII, CHURCHILL SPEECHES, ...) e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Module: Wars World War One (WW1) Summary (made by AI) World War 1, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918. The war involved most of the world's major nations, divided into two opposing alliances: the Allied Powers, which included the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and later the United States; and the Central Powers, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. The war began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by a Serbian nationalist in June 1914. This led to a chain of events that ultimately resulted in the outbreak of war in August of that year. The early years of the war saw significant fighting in Europe, with massive casualties on both sides. The war quickly became a stalemate, with neither side making significant gains. In 1917, the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies, which helped turn the tide of the war in their favor. The war ended in November 1918 with the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne, which marked the defeat of the Central Powers. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, officially ended the war and imposed heavy penalties on Germany, including large reparations payments and the loss of territory. The war had a profound impact on the world, leading to the collapse of several empires and the redrawing of national boundaries. It also set the stage for the rise of Nazi Germany and the outbreak of World War II. The war resulted in millions of casualties, both military and civilian, and is remembered as one of the deadliest conflicts in human history. World War Two (WW2) Summary (made by AI) World War II was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The war involved most of the world's major nations, divided into two opposing alliances: the Allies, which included the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, among others, and the Axis, which included Germany, Japan, and Italy. The war began in Europe in September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. This led to declarations of war by the United Kingdom and France, and the beginning of a long and brutal conflict that would engulf the world. The early years of the war saw Germany make significant gains, conquering much of Europe and North Africa. However, the tide began to turn in 1942, with Allied victories in North Africa and the Soviet Union pushing back against German advances. The United States entered the war in December 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The US quickly became a major player in the war effort, providing significant military and economic support to the Allies. The war in Europe ended in May 1945, with the unconditional surrender of Germany. The war in Asia continued until August of that year, when the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to Japan's surrender and the end of the war. The war had a profound impact on the world, leading to the deaths of millions of people, both military and civilian. It also led to the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers, and the beginning of the Cold War. The war also saw the Holocaust, the genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany, which remains one of the darkest chapters in human history. Birdie (2009) and While Mortals Sleep (2011). We Are What We Pretend to Be (2012) comprised an early unpublished novella and a fragment of a novel unfinished at his death. A selection of his correspondence was published as Letters (2012). Complete Stories (2017) collects all of his short fiction. Vonnegut was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973. In 2010 the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library opened in Indianapolis. In addition to promoting the work of Vonnegut, the non-profit organization served as a cultural and educational resource centre, including a museum, an art gallery, and a reading room. Summary (Britannica) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (born Nov. 11, 1922, Indianapolis, Ind., U.S.— died April 11, 2007, New York, N.Y.), U.S. novelist. He attended Cornell University and the University of Chicago. Captured by the Germans during World War II, he also survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden, an experience he made part of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969; film, 1972). His pessimistic and satirical novels use fantasy and science fiction to highlight the horrors and ironies of 20th-century civilization. They include Player Piano (1952), Cat’s Cradle (1963), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Galápagos (1985), and Timequake (1997). A Man Without a Country (2005) is a collection of essays and speeches. Vonnegut also wrote plays and short stories. Summary (made by AI) Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer known for his satirical novels that often used postmodern techniques, fantasy, and science fiction to expose the ironies and horrors of 20th-century civilization. He grew up in a well-to-do family in Indianapolis and wrote for his high-school newspaper and later at Cornell University. During World War II, he was captured by the Germans and survived the firebombing of Dresden, which inspired his most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut's work often had a fatalistic worldview but also embraced modern humanist beliefs. His novels frequently featured characters who struggled against the dehumanizing effects of technology and society. Although Vonnegut's work was initially classified as science fiction, he resisted the label. He wrote many other novels and short stories, including The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions. Vonnegut's work gained a popular audience by the late 1960s, and Slaughterhouse-Five cemented his reputation as a modern-day classic. He wrote several plays and works of nonfiction and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. After his death, several posthumously published works, including Armageddon in Retrospect and Look at the Birdie, were released, and the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library opened in Indianapolis. Full book Summary (Sparknotes) Billy Pilgrim is born in 1922 and grows up in Ilium, New York. A funny-looking, weak youth, he does reasonably well in high school, enrolls in night classes at the Ilium School of Optometry, and is drafted into the army during World War II. He trains as a chaplain’s assistant in South Carolina, where an umpire officiates during practice battles and announces who survives and who dies before they all sit down to lunch together. Billy’s father dies in a hunting accident shortly before Billy ships overseas to join an infantry regiment in Luxembourg. Billy is thrown into the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and is immediately taken prisoner behind German lines. Just before his capture, he experiences his first incident of time—shifting: he sees the entirety of his life, from beginning to end, in one sweep. Billy is transported in a crowded railway boxcar to a POW camp in Germany. Upon his arrival, he and the other privates are treated to a feast by a group of fellow prisoners, who are English officers who were captured earlier in the war. Billy suffers a breakdown and gets a shot of morphine that sends him time-tripping again. Soon he and the other Americans travel onward to the beautiful city of Dresden, still relatively untouched by wartime privation. Here the prisoners must work for their keep at various labors, including the manufacture of a nutritional malt syrup. Their camp occupies a former slaughterhouse. One night, Allied forces carpet bomb the city, then drop incendiary bombs to create a firestorm that sucks most of the oxygen into the blaze, asphyxiating or incinerating roughly 130,000 people. Billy and his fellow POWs survive in an airtight meat locker. They emerge to find a moonscape of destruction, where they are forced to excavate corpses from the rubble. Several days later, Russian forces capture the city, and Billy’s involvement in the war ends. Billy returns to Ilium and finishes optometry school. He gets engaged to Valencia Merble, the obese daughter of the school’s founder. After a nervous breakdown, Billy commits himself to a veterans’ hospital and receives shock treatments. During his stay in the mental ward, a fellow patient introduces Billy to the science fiction novels of a writer named Kilgore Trout. After his recuperation, Billy gets married. His wealthy father-in-law sets him up in the optometry business, and Billy and Valencia raise two children and grow rich. Billy acquires the trappings of the suburban American dream: a Cadillac, a stately home with modern appliances, a bejewelled wife, and the presidency of the Lions Club. He is not aware of keeping any secrets from himself, but at his eighteenth wedding anniversary party the sight of a barbershop quartet makes him break down because, he realizes, it triggers a memory of Dresden. The night after his daughter’s wedding in 1967, as he later reveals on a radio talk show, Billy is kidnapped by two-foot-high aliens who resemble upside-down toilet plungers, who he says are called Tralfamadorians. They take him in their flying saucer to the planet Tralfamadore, where they mate him with a movie actress named Montana Wildhack. She, like Billy, has been brought from Earth to live under a transparent geodesic dome in a zoo where Tralfamadorians can observe extraterrestrial curiosities. The Tralfamadorians explain to Billy their perception of time, how its entire sweep exists for them simultaneously in the fourth dimension. When someone dies, that person is simply dead at a particular time. Somewhere else and at a different time he or she is alive and well. Tralfamadorians prefer to look at life’s nicer moments. When he returns to Earth, Billy initially says nothing of his experiences. In 1968, he gets on a chartered plane to go to an optometry conference in Montreal. The plane crashes into a mountain, and, among the optometrists, only Billy survives. A brain surgeon operates on him in a Vermont hospital. On her way to visit him there, Valencia dies of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning after crashing her car. Billy’s daughter places him under the care of a nurse back home in Ilium. But he feels that the time is ripe to tell the world what he has learned. Billy has foreseen this moment while time-tripping, and he knows that his message will eventually be accepted. He sneaks off to New York City, where he goes on a radio talk show. Shortly thereafter, he writes a letter to the local paper. His daughter is at her wit’s end and does not know what to do with him. Billy makes a tape recording of his account of his death, which he predicts will occur in 1976 after Chicago has been hydrogen-bombed by the Chinese. He knows exactly how it will happen: a vengeful man he knew in the war will hire someone to shoot him. Billy adds that he will experience the violet hum of Summary (made by AI) In the chapter one, the author Kurt Vonnegut writes about his experience as a prisoner of war during the firebombing of Dresden in World War II and his struggles to write a book about the event. Vonnegut and his wartime friend return to Dresden in 1967, where they strike up a conversation with a taxi driver about communism. Vonnegut recounts his unsuccessful attempts to write about Dresden over the years, including drawing a crayon outline of the story on wallpaper. He encounters ignorance about the magnitude of Dresden's destruction and discovers that the event is still classified as top secret by the U.S. Air Force. Vonnegut's anti-war stance only adds to the difficulty of writing about the event. He eventually lands a contract to write three books, with "Slaughterhouse-Five" being the first. The book is short and jumbled because, Vonnegut explains, there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. On the way to Dresden, Vonnegut's perception of time becomes distorted, and he muses on the inevitability of the book's failure, resolving not to look back anymore. Chapter 2 Summary (SparkNotes) The narrator bids us listen and declares that “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” Billy travels randomly through the moments of his life without control over his chronological destination. Born in 1922 in Ilium, New York, Billy grows up a funny-looking weakling. He graduates high school and trains to be an optometrist before being drafted. After his military service in Germany, he suffers from a nervous collapse and is treated with shock therapy. He recovers, marries, has two children, and becomes a wealthy optometrist. In 1968, Billy survives a plane crash in Vermont; as he is recuperating, his wife dies in an accident. After returning home, Billy goes on a radio show in New York City to talk about his abduction by aliens in 1967. His twenty-one-year-old daughter, Barbara, discovers his proselytizing and brings him home, concerned for his sanity. The following month, Billy writes a letter to his local paper about the aliens. The day the letter is published, Billy is hard at work on his second letter to the Ilium newspaper about lessons he learned when he was taken to the planet Tralfamadore. He is glowing with the expectation that his letter will console many people by explaining the true nature of time. Barbara is distraught by his behaviour. She arrives at his house with newspaper in hand, unable to get Billy to talk sense. Billy describes his entry into the army, his training as a chaplain’s assistant in South Carolina, and his dazed trek behind enemy lines after the disastrous Battle of the Bulge in World War II. After the battle, Billy falls in with three other American soldiers, two of whom are scouts and capable soldiers. The one who is not, the antitank gunner Roland Weary, is a cruel, insecure man who saves Billy’s life repeatedly in acts that he thinks will make him a hero. Billy first time-shifts as he leans against a tree in a Luxembourg forest. He has fallen behind the others and has little will to continue. He swings through the extremes of his life: the violet light of death, the red light of pre- birth. He is then a small boy being thrown into the deep end of the YMCA swimming pool by his father, a proponent of the “sink- or-swim” method. Billy time-travels to 1965. He is now forty-one years old and visiting his mother in a nursing home. He blinks and finds himself at a Little League banquet for his son, Robert, in 1958. He blinks again and opens his eyes at a party in 1961, cheating on his wife. Messily drunk, he passes out and wakes up again behind enemy lines. Roland Weary is shaking him awake. The two scouts decide to ditch Weary and Billy, much to Weary’s chagrin. All his life people have ditched him. He has imagined himself and the scouts as the Three Musketeers, and he blames Billy for breaking them up. Billy is suddenly giving a speech in 1957 as the newly elected president of the Ilium Lions Club. He is then back in the war, being captured by Germans along with Weary. Summary (made by AI) The chapter two follows the life of Billy Pilgrim, who travels randomly through the moments of his life without control over his chronological destination. Billy is born in 1922 in Ilium, New York, grows up as a weakling, and becomes an optometrist after graduating high school. After serving in the military, he has a nervous breakdown and is treated with shock therapy. He recovers, marries, and becomes wealthy. In 1968, he survives a plane crash, and his wife dies in an accident while he is recuperating. Billy claims to have been abducted by aliens and writes letters to the newspapers about his experiences, causing concern for his sanity. The chapter also covers Billy's experiences as a chaplain's assistant in World War II, his relationship with the cruel antitank gunner Roland Weary, and his time-traveling through different moments of his life. Description of Billy Pilgrim (made by AI) Billy Pilgrim is the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse-Five." He is a time traveller who randomly travels through different moments of his life and is unable to control his chronological destination. Billy is born in 1922 in Ilium, New York, and grows up as a funny-looking weakling. He graduates from high school and trains to be an optometrist before being drafted into the military. After his service in Germany during World War II, where he suffers a nervous collapse and is treated with shock therapy, he marries and has two children. He later becomes a wealthy optometrist. Billy is also abducted by aliens and becomes a proselytizer for Tralfamadorian beliefs. He survives a plane crash and the death of his wife, and throughout the novel, he time-travels to different moments in his life, including his childhood and experiences during the war. Billy is portrayed as a somewhat passive character who accepts his fate and experiences without much resistance. Description of Tralfamadorians (made by AI 1) Tralfamadorians are fictional extraterrestrial beings that are featured in Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse-Five." The Tralfamadorians are described as being green, shaped like toilet plungers, and having one hand with an eye in the palm. They are noted for their advanced knowledge of time and space and their ability to travel through time. Tralfamadorians view time as a non- linear concept, where all moments exist simultaneously and can be visited at will. They believe that death serves a function and that "corpses are improvements." They do not believe in free will, as they see themselves and all other beings as being trapped in a predetermined structure of time. Tralfamadorians have a unique perspective on existence, seeing a person's life as an unchanging whole, rather than a progression of events. They are also noted for their interest in the works of Charles Darwin, whom they view as an important thinker. of champagne from a table. He watches a late-night documentary on American bombers and their gallant pilots in World War II. Slightly unstuck in time, Billy watches the movie forward and backward. Planes fly backward, magically quelling flames, drawing their fragmented bombs into steel containers, and sucking them back up into their bellies. Guns on the ground suck metal fragments from the pilots, crew, and planes. Weapons are shipped backed to factories, where they are carefully disassembled and broken down into their constituent minerals. The minerals are shipped to specialists all over the world who “hide them cleverly” in the ground, “so they never hurt anybody ever.” In Billy’s mind, Hitler becomes a baby and all of humanity works toward creating two perfect people named Adam and Eve. Billy heads out to the backyard to meet the saucer that will arrive soon. A sound like a melodious owl heralds the arrival of the spacecraft, which is 100 feet in diameter. Once on board, Billy is asked if he has any questions. He asks, “Why me?”—a question that his captors think very typical of earthlings to ask. They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber. Billy is then anesthetized. The crush of the spaceship’s acceleration sends him hurtling through time. He is back on a boxcar traveling across Germany. The men take turns sleeping and standing. No one wants to let Billy sleep beside him because Billy yells and kicks in his sleep. He thus sleeps standing up. By the ninth day of the boxcar journey, people are dying. Roland Weary, who is in another car, dies after making sure that everyone in the car knows who is responsible for his death: Billy Pilgrim. A car thief from Cicero, Illinois, named Paul Lazzaro swears he will make Billy pay for causing Weary’s death. On the tenth night, the train reaches its destination: a prison camp. The prisoners are issued coats, their clothes are deloused, and they are led to a mass shower. Among the prisoners is Edgar Derby, a forty- four-year-old teacher from Indianapolis. When the water begins to flow in the shower, Billy time-travels to his infancy. His mother has just given him a bath. He is then a middle-aged optometrist playing golf with three other optometrists. He sinks a putt, bends down to pick it up, and is back on the flying saucer. He asks where he is and how he got there. A voice reiterates that he is trapped in a blob of amber. He is where he is because the moment is structured that way, because time in general is structured that way—because it could not be otherwise. The voice, which is Tralfamadorian, comments that only on Earth is there talk of free will. Summary (made by AI) In this chapter of "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim is unable to sleep on the night of his daughter's wedding because he knows he will be kidnapped by Tralfamadorians in an hour. He picks up a half-empty bottle of champagne and watches a documentary about American bombers and their pilots in World War II. Slightly unstuck in time, Billy watches the movie forward and backward. He heads outside to meet the Tralfamadorians' spacecraft, which arrives with a sound like a melodious owl. Once on board, he asks why he was chosen and is told that there is no why. The spacecraft sends Billy hurtling through time, and he finds himself on a boxcar traveling across Germany. Roland Weary dies, and Billy is blamed for his death by a car thief named Paul Lazzaro. The train reaches its destination, a prison camp, where the prisoners are deloused and led to a mass shower. Billy time- travels to his infancy and then to playing golf with other optometrists. He is back on the flying saucer, where he is told by a Tralfamadorian voice that he is trapped in a blob of amber and that only on Earth is there talk of free will. Chapter 10 Summary (SparkNotes) It is 1968. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. are both dead, assassinated within a month of one another. Body counts from the jungle war in Vietnam fill the evening news. According to Billy, Tralfamadorians are more interested in Darwin than in Jesus Christ. They admire the Darwinian view that death serves a function and that “corpses are improvements.” A Kilgore Trout book, The Big Board, features aliens who capture an earthling and ask him about Darwin and golf. Vonnegut tells us that he is not overjoyed if what Billy learned from the Tralfamadorians about eternal existence is true. Still, he is grateful for all the pleasant times experienced in his life. Vonnegut recalls one of those moments—his return to Dresden with his war buddy O’Hare. On the plane, the men eat salami sandwiches and drink white wine, and the author’s friend shows him a book that claims the world population will reach seven billion by the year 2000. “I suppose they will all want dignity,” Vonnegut remarks. Billy is also back in Dresden, two days after the war, digging for bodies. Vonnegut and O’Hare are there too. After spending two nights in the stable, the prisoners are put to work excavating the ruins of Dresden, where they discover innumerable “corpse mines.” The bodies rot faster than they can be removed, making for a grisly clean-up job. One prisoner, a Maori, dies of the dry heaves. Eventually, as the pace of putrefaction outstrips the recovery efforts, the authorities adopt a new policy. The bodies are cremated where they lie in subterranean caverns. The soldiers use flamethrowers to carry out this grim task. During the course of the excavations, while the men are still under German command, Edgar Derby is discovered with a teapot found in the ruins. He is arrested and convicted of plundering, then executed by firing squad. Soon it is spring, and the Germans disappear to fight or flee the Russians. The war ends. Trees sprout leaves. Billy finds the horses and the green, coffin-shaped wagon. A bird says to him, “Poo-tee-weet?” Summary (made by AI) In this chapter of "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut, it is 1968 and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. have been assassinated, while the Vietnam War rages on. Billy Pilgrim tells us that the Tralfamadorians are more interested in Darwin than Jesus Christ and admire the Darwinian view that death serves a function. Vonnegut recalls a pleasant moment in his life, returning to Dresden with his war buddy O'Hare, where they discover countless "corpse mines" while excavating the ruins of Dresden. One prisoner, a Maori, dies of the dry heaves, while another, Edgar Derby, is arrested and executed by firing squad for plundering. Eventually, spring arrives, the Germans disappear, and the war ends. Billy finds the horses and the green, coffin-shaped wagon, and a bird says to him, "Poo-tee-weet?" What does the ending mean? (SparkNotes) In the first chapter, Vonnegut writes in his own voice and foreshadows that the novel will end with the phrase “Poo-tee-weet?” as Billy Pilgrim realizes that World War II has ended, and the world is quiet enough for him to hear a bird tweeting. Vonnegut warns that there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, and the bird’s chirp is as nonsensical as anything else anyone says after mass destruction. As Vonnegut explains how difficult it was to write Slaughterhouse-Five, he says: “Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.” understand, but might someday forgive her, and be grateful to her, and she expected, absolutely unexpectedly, to be married in the spring. She loved him as always, but she realized now it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great career and believed in him absolutely. She knew it was for the best. The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhoea from a salesgirl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park. Summary (Internet) The short story “A Very Short Story” by Ernest Hemingway is about the relationship between a soldier and a nurse named Luz. They meet at the hospital when the soldier is wounded, and they seem to fall in love. The soldier helps Luz during her night shifts by taking the temperature of other patients while she rests. The two plan on getting married in the future. After the soldier returns to the front, Luz writes him letters, which he does not receive until after the armistice. In her letters, she tells him that she misses him. They decide he should get a good job in New York, after which they can get married. Luz will not come with him until he gets a good job. The soldier wants her to join him sooner, and they argue about this. Although they kiss good-bye at the train station, they have not made up after their argument, and the soldier is upset that they have to part like this. The soldier goes to America, and Luz goes to Pordenone, where she opens a hospital. While there, she sleeps with the major of an Italian battalion. She writes to the soldier that their relationship is over because she expects to be married to the major. She adds that, although she loves the soldier, their relationship cannot work. However, the major does not marry Luz. The soldier does not answer her letter. He sleeps with a salesgirl in the back of a cab and gets gonorrhoea. Summary (Wikipedia) In the story, a World War I soldier and a nurse, named Luz fall, in love as she tends to him over the course of three months in a hospital in Padua. They decide to marry, but when the soldier returns home to the United States, he receives a letter from Luz with the news that she has fallen in love with an officer. Later she writes that she has not married, but the soldier ignores her. Shortly afterward, the soldier contracts gonorrhoea from a sexual encounter in a taxi. & Winston Churchill Speech - We Shall Fight on the Beaches June 4, 1940 House of Commons From the moment that the French defences at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of over 20 divisions and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German penetration were realized and when a new French Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced across the Somme in great strength to grasp it. However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armoured divisions, each of about four hundred armoured vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armoured and mechanized onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own. I have said this armoured scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk-almost but not quite. Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen Victoria's Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000 Frenchmen, in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At least two armoured divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines to be flooded and to be held by the French troops. Thus, it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighbouring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air. When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I thought-and some good judges agreed with me-that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens- Abbeville gap would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity. That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French and British Armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already aeroplanes-and we know that they are a very brave race-have turned on several occasions from the attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force and have dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have been hunted by two. One aeroplane was driven into the water and cast away by the mere charge of a British aeroplane, which had no more ammunition. All of our types-the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant-and all our pilots have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face. When we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the air above this Island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armoured vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that every morn brought forth a noble chance and every chance brought forth a noble knight, deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for their native land. I return to the Army. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well-in these battles our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who have suffered bereavement or who are still anxious. The President of the Board of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has been killed, and many in the House have felt the pangs of affliction in the sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing: We have had a large number of wounded come home safely to this country, but I would say about the missing that there may be very many reported missing who will come back home, someday, in one way or another. In the confusion of this fight, it is inevitable that many have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from them. Against this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns -- nearly one thousand-and all our transport, all the armoured vehicles that were with the Army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had gone to the British Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped Army. They had the first-fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this Island. An effort the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Work is proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and weekdays. Capital and Labor have cast aside their interests, rights, and customs and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us, without retarding the development of our general program. Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy's possession, the whole of the Channel ports are in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France. We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone. "There are bitter weeds in England." There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned. The whole question of home defence against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this Island incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive war. We have our duty to our Ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the British Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort. All this is in train; but in the interval we must put our defences in this Island into such a high state of organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive effort may be realized. On this we are now engaged. It will be very convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon this subject in a secret Session. Not that the government would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of the House by Members with their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Majesty's Government. We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attendant upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way, for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House, without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than satisfied, that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out. Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon, the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that Winston Churchill’s first Speech to the House of Commons 13 May 1940 I beg to move, That this House welcomes the formation of a Government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion. On Friday evening last I received His Majesty's commission to form a new Administration. It as the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties, both those who supported the late Government and also the parties of the Opposition. I have completed the most important part of this task. A War Cabinet has been formed of five Members, representing, with the Opposition Liberals, the unity of the nation. The three party Leaders have agreed to serve, either in the War Cabinet or in high executive office. The three Fighting Services have been filled. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day, on account of the extreme urgency and rigour of events. A number of other positions, key positions, were filled yesterday, and I am submitting a further list to His Majesty to-night. I hope to complete the appointment of the principal Ministers during to-morrow. the appointment of the other Ministers usually takes a little longer, but I trust that, when Parliament meets again, this part of my task will be completed, and that the administration will be complete in all respects. I considered it in the public interest to suggest that the House should be summoned to meet today. Mr. Speaker agreed, and took the necessary steps, in accordance with the powers conferred upon him by the Resolution of the House. At the end of the proceedings today, the Adjournment of the House will be proposed until Tuesday, 21st May, with, of course, provision for earlier meeting, if need be. The business to be considered during that week will be notified to Members at the earliest opportunity. I now invite the House, by the Motion which stands in my name, to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new Government. To form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many other points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations, such as have been indicated by my hon. Friend below the Gangway, have to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time, I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "come then, let us go forward together with our united strength." Summary (made by AI 1) The text is an extract from a speech given by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940. The speech announced the formation of a new government and emphasized the need for unity and determination in prosecuting the war with Germany. Churchill recognized the challenges ahead but expressed his confidence in the British people's ability to overcome them. He urged the House to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new government. Churchill also outlined the scope of the war, which was being fought on multiple fronts, and declared the government's policy and aim: to wage war C 7 with all their might and achieve victory at all costs. The speech is remembered as a defining moment in Churchill's leadership during World War II. Summary (made by AI 2) The text is an extract from the first speech given by Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on May 13, 1940, shortly after receiving His Majesty's commission to form a new administration. Churchill outlines the urgent need for a united government to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion. He explains that a War Cabinet has been formed, comprising of Members from all parties, including the Opposition Liberals. Churchill emphasizes the scale and complexity of the task at hand, given that Britain is fighting on multiple fronts. He declares that the government's policy is to wage war with all its might and strength against Nazi Germany, and the aim is victory at all costs. Churchill concludes by asking for the aid of all and urges everyone to go forward together with united strength. C I