Curated playlist
British Empire in World War II
- Mahatma GandhiOn the day India won freedom, Gandhi refused to celebrate. He fasted and spun cloth in Calcutta, pleading for peace.
- Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill escaped a prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria by hiding on freight trains. It made him famous.
- Neville ChamberlainNeville Chamberlain waved a single sheet of paper at a crowd after signing away part of Czechoslovakia.
- George VIGeorge VI, known to his family as Bertie, wrote an anguished line in his diary about the day before his brother gave up the crown. He had gone to London to tell his mother, Queen Mary, what had happened. His entry read: "When I told her…
- Declaration by United NationsThe name "United Nations" was coined by Roosevelt, and Churchill noted Lord Byron had used it.
- Clement AttleeClement Attlee told the King, "I've won the election," and the King replied that he already knew.
- Potsdam ConferenceMid-conference at Potsdam in 1945, British voters replaced Winston Churchill with Clement Attlee.
- Quit India MovementThe Quit India Movement alarmed the Viceroy of India enough that he wrote to Winston Churchill about it on the 31st of August 1942. Lord Linlithgow called it "by far the most serious rebellion since 1857". He admitted that its gravity and…
- Subhas Chandra BoseSubhas Chandra Bose is remembered in India as Netaji, a Hindustani title that means Respected Leader. The name did not begin on Indian soil. It was first used in early 1942, in Berlin. The speakers were soldiers of the Indische Legion,…
- Atlantic CharterThe Atlantic Charter was never actually signed. Roosevelt himself said no copy of it existed that he knew of.
- Lend-LeaseRoosevelt likened Lend-Lease to lending a neighbor a garden hose. Senator Robert Taft compared it to chewing gum.
- Lord MountbattenLord Mountbatten sat alone in his study at the Viceroy's House as midnight arrived on the 15th of August 1947. India and Pakistan were becoming independent nations, and he reflected that for a few minutes more he remained the most powerful…
- John Maynard KeynesAt Bretton Woods in 1944, Keynes proposed a world currency called the bancor, and the United States rejected it.