Winston Churchill was one of the greatest speakers of the 20th century. One of his best speeches came early on in World War II on June 4th, 1940 titled "We will fight on the beaches". The speech brought up the situation of the Battle of France. Churchill's goal was to reassure the government that they would defend Great Britain against the Germans. He was successful in the sense that he was convincing. He had brought up past examples of invasion attempts such as a Napoleon Bonaparte. This speech is one of the best, well written, and most brilliant pieces of writing constructed by Churchill; from his great use of context and good use of persuasion he manages to convince his audience that they will win the war. “When Napoleon lay at Boulogne …show more content…
“He had to give an accurate presentation of events—although not in enough detail to reveal anything important to the enemy. He had to stress the positive side of things (what little there was) without denying the critical situation in which the British found themselves. If he overemphasized the successes of Dunkirk he risked making people complacent when what was needed was an all-out effort to defend the nation (Maguire 256-257).” Maguire mentions the fact that Churchill had a way for speaking to people without sounding pretentious or like he was talking down to them, he would use simple words that never contained more than four or five syllables. She brings up the part in his speech in which refers to the loss of many weaponry and vehicles in which he says is nearly equal to their loss of men once again holding back their military expansion. He talks about the situation as simply as he can and he makes it seems as it is not too bad but not too good either. “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” (Churchill). Churchill tries to show them that even though they lost the battle at Dunkirk in a way the sort of won by inflicting heavier losses on the Germans than the losses they themselves had suffered. “He therefore asserts that Dunkirk was “a great trial of strength between the British and German Air forces.” The Germans wanted to prevent the evacuation and sink the Royal Navy, but they were unable to do so. British airplanes were thus shown to be superior to German ones” (Maguire 267). Churchill does not introduce himself because there is no need to, he does not need to address his audience