“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few…”

August 20, 1940 3:42PM, London

The exact time that Winston Churchill gave his famous speech about the Battle of Britain over the radio.

There are many sources online for reading the full transcript or listening to a recording of the broadcast of one the most famous and inspirational speeches of all time. My favorite passage, his closing comments I copy below, written this day August 18th, 1940.

"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'