Rhetorical Analysis: We Shall Fight On The Beaches

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During the late 30s, there was massive international conflict all surrounding Hitler and Nazi Germany. During this rough era, one of the most influential people of the allies would be Winston Churchill. In World War 2, Winston Churchill was the prime minister and was fighting for the allies against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. In between July to October 1940, Germany attempted to invade Great Britain in a war called the Battle of Britain. The British people were in fear that Germany would also invade Great Britain along with France. Because of this chaos, Churchill gave a one of a kind speech called “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” in order to rally the British people and boost morale. In his speech, Churchill used many types of rhetorical …show more content…

This declaration of war would be considered as World War 2 due to the future involvement of other international powers. On April 9, 1940, Germany made quick work of invading Norway and Denmark as they invaded them within a day. One month later, they invaded the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Then after another month, Germany made its biggest invasion by invading and conquering the entire nation of France. Germany was looking unstoppable as they would then try to invade Great Britain on June 10, 1940. This attempt would inevitably cause Prime Minister Winston Churchill to give his speech, “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” to the House of Commons. All while these attacks were going on, Germany had started many different concentration camps solely for Jewish people. On December 7, 1941, Japan, an Axis power, would attack Pearl Harbor, military territory belonging to the United States. This attack would cause “the United States together with Britain, declaring war on Japan” (Everards 1). After their ally was declared war upon, Germany then declared war upon the United States on December 11, 1945. Germany was truly feeling confident that they would decide to quickly test their luck by attacking Stalingrad, Russia on August 23, 1942. This battle, called the Battle of Stalingrad, was “one of the deadliest battles …show more content…

One reason for this was the speech given by Winston Churchill. In his speech, he utilized many rhetorical devices in order to impact and rally his British audience. One of these devices was Churchill’s use of repetition. In the middle of his speech, Churchill repeated the saying, “but I will say this about the missing”, referring to the missing soldiers who have not been found. He repeats this phrase to comfort the audience and including that, “we have a large number of wounded come home safely to this country” as well as “there may be very many reported missing who will come back home, some day, in one way or another”. Another example of repetition in his speech is the repeated phrase “we shall fight”. He repeats this phrase in order for the audience to feel unified with everyone in the nation and also feel determined in this brutal war. He follows the repeated phrase with a very fierce statement such as “. . .we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. . .”. Another rhetorical device used by Churchill was the use of parallelism. The example of parallelism was used in the repeated phrase “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight on the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. . .” Here he involves all sorts of