66 Churchill, Winston laureate for literature, was born on November 30, 1874, in Oxfordshire He studied at Harrow and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst With intermingling careers in the army and in journalism, he traveled to Cuba, the North-West Frontier in India, Sudan, and South Africa His political career began as a member of the House of Commons in 1900 After the electoral victory of the Liberals in 1906, Churchill became the undersecretary of state for the colonies He also became the president of the Board of Trade and afterward the home secretary, undertaking major social reforms In 1911 he was appointed lord of the admiralty in the ministry of Herbert Asquith (1852–1928) and undertook modernization of the Royal Navy An abortive naval attack on the Ottoman Turks and the Allied defeat at Gallipoli led to Churchill’s resignation at the time of World War I He was called back and was put in charge of munitions production in the ministry of David Lloyd George (1863–1945) and was instrumental in deploying tanks on the western front He returned to the Conservative Party as chancellor of the exchequer in 1924 in the ministry of Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) He reintroduced the gold standard in his tenure of five years For about a decade he did not hold any ministerial office and was isolated politically because of his extreme views Most of the political leaders also did not pay any heed to Churchill’s caution against appeasement policy toward Germany and the German march toward armament For Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869– 1940) the policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany was not working There was no relenting of the march of Germany’s army under Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Churchill became the premier on May 13, 1940, when he also took charge of the Department of Defense As wartime policy, he initiated measures that enabled the country to withstand the Nazi onslaught and led Great Britain toward victory However, the bombing of German cities, particularly the firebombing of Dresden, which resulted in the loss of thousands of innocent lives, brought criticism against him Churchill initiated changes in the war efforts of his government For the Air Raid Precautions (ARP), half a million volunteers were enlisted Under the National Services Act, conscription and registration of men between 18 and 41 began In 1944 the British army had a strength of about 2,700,000 Women’s emancipation took another step when they were called upon to work outside the home in the war economy Agencies like the Women’s Transport Service (FANY), the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), Winston Churchill led Great Britain through the trials of World War II and stood in opposition to Soviet expansion and the Women’s Royal Naval Service were created, by which women contributed to the nation’s war efforts Churchill, along with the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, formulated war strategy, peace plans, the reconstruction of Europe, and the fate of the Axis powers Churchill had met Roosevelt on August 14, 1941, and signed the “Atlantic Charter,” which spelled out a plan for international peace and adherence to national sovereignty The “Grand Alliance” was committed to defeating Nazism and bringing about world peace The last wartime conference that Churchill attended was the Yalta Conference in Crimea in the Soviet Union (now in Ukraine) with Roosevelt and Stalin between February and 11, 1945 The differences between the Soviet Union on the one hand and the United States and Great Britain on the other were emerging Churchill had many rounds of verbal dueling with Stalin over the fate of Poland, the division of Germany, and the occupation of Berlin Once the war was over and their common enemy was defeated, the cold war began World War II ended in victory, but Great Britain was no longer the country commanding the most