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As Belgium, Holland and France succumbed to the German assault, a German invasion of Britain seemed imminent. Churchill realized that Britain’s democracy—Britain’s way of life—was in danger of destruction and that, to preserve democracy, some democratic rights had to be suspended. That was done, but done through Parliament. Imprisonment without trial was instituted by a series of parliamentary votes in a single day. Newspaper censorship was put in place. Tens of thousands of German Jewish refugees from Hitler were interned, for fear that there might be fifth columnists, however few, among them: the rapid German conquest of Holland that very week had been ascribed in part to German Fifth Column activity. Parliament agreed that war—and the possibility of defeat in war—called for stern measures.

Britain and, with it, British parliamentary democracy were under the threat of physical attack. Within a few months, six parliamentary governments had been overthrown by Nazi Germany. Churchill saw the war not only as a means of preserving Britain’s independence, and in due course defeating the enemy, but as a struggle for the preservation of parliamentary institutions and democratic values worldwide. On 12 August 1941 he and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, meeting off Newfoundland, issued the Atlantic Charter, a series of pledges offering all nations of the world democracy and freely elected Parliaments.

One sentence in the Atlantic Charter reflected Churchill’s hopes for democracy in all lands under tyranny. It pledged Britain and the United States to “respect the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.” To this end, Churchill was to spend many hours arguing with the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, to try to restore democracy to Poland after the war. But while Churchill had the ideals, Stalin had the tanks.

Stalin was full of scorn for democracy and religion. On one occasion, when Churchill asked him to grant religious rights to Roman Catholics, he replied, derisively, “How many Divisions has the Pope?” Of course the Pope had no soldiers as such, beyond the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. But, like Churchill, the Vatican had a belief in the force of morality and decency.

As Prime Minister, Churchill made regular, detailed reports to Parliament on the course of the war. He made great efforts, by his presence in the Chamber, to raise the morale of Parliament during the prolonged blitz and bombardment. His Junior Private Secretary, John “Jock” Colville, noted in his diary on 22 January 1941 how Churchill did “extremely well” in explaining a complex new administrative arrangement, speaking “with the utmost clearness and cogency.” Churchill took great trouble at every stage to keep Parliament informed and at ease, amid grave events and frequent setbacks on land and at sea. To his son, Randolph, then serving at army headquarters in Egypt, Churchill wrote in June 1941 of how, two days before the Chamber was destroyed by bombing in May, “I had a most successful debate and wound up amid a great demonstration. They all got up and cheered as I left.”

Churchill did not hesitate to explain the primacy of the House of Commons when he was overseas. During his first speech to a Joint Session of the United States Congress, on 26 December 1941—on his first wartime visit to the United States—he told the American legislators: “I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father’s house to believe in democracy. Trust the people—that was his message. … I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own. … I owe my advancement entirely to the House of Commons, whose servant I am. In my country, as in yours, public men are proud to be the servants of the State and would be ashamed to be its masters.”

Four days after this