American Minute - Jul. 19 - Winston Churchill "This was their finest hour."

American Minute
with Bill Federer

"V" for Victory! It was on JULY 19, 1941, that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill held up two fingers as a sign of victory.

It became a symbol for all Western European resistance during WWII, with V signs painted on walls and over Nazi posters.

A year earlier, Churchill stated before the House of Commons, June 18, 1940:

"I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization...

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war."

Churchill continued:

"If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."

Winston Churchill concluded:

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"