Winston Churchill in the context of "Home Secretary"

Diplomacy is the communication by representatives of state, intergovernmental, or non-governmental institutions intended to influence events in the international system.

Diplomacy is the main instrument of foreign policy which represents the broader goals and strategies that guide a state's interactions with the rest of the world. International treaties, agreements, alliances, and other manifestations of international relations are usually the result of diplomatic negotiations and processes. Diplomats may also help shape a state by advising government officials.

The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England, lit. 'air battle for England') was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. It was the first major military campaign fought entirely by air forces. It takes its name from the speech given by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on 18 June, 1940: "What General Weygand called the 'Battle of France' is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin."

The Germans had rapidly overwhelmed France and the Low Countries in the Battle of France, leaving Britain to face the threat of invasion by sea. The German high command recognised the difficulties of a seaborne attack while the Royal Navy controlled the English Channel and the North Sea. The primary objective of the German forces was to compel Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement.

The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty (Irish: An Conradh Angla-Éireannach), commonly known in Ireland as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the government of the Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of Independence. It provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion within the "community of nations known as the British Empire", a status "the same as that of the Dominion of Canada". It also provided Northern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, an option to opt out of the Irish Free State (Article 12), which was exercised by the Parliament of Northern Ireland.

The agreement was signed in London on 6 December 1921, by representatives of the British government (which included Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who was head of the British delegates, and Winston Churchill, who was Secretary of State for the Colonies) and by representatives of the government of the Irish Republic (which included Michael Collins, who was Secretary of State for Finance, and Arthur Griffith, who was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs). The Irish representatives had plenipotentiary status (negotiators empowered to sign a treaty without reference back to their superiors) acting on behalf of the Irish Republic, though the British government declined to recognise that status. As required by its terms, the agreement was approved by "a meeting" of the members elected to sit in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland and [separately] by the British Parliament. In reality, Dáil Éireann (the legislative assembly for the de facto Irish Republic) first debated then approved the treaty; members then went ahead with the "meeting". Though the treaty was narrowly approved, the split led to the Irish Civil War, which was won by the pro-treaty side.

The Levant Crisis, also known as the Damascus Crisis, the Syrian Crisis, or the Levant Confrontation, was a military confrontation that took place between British and French forces in Syria in May 1945 soon after the end of World War II in Europe. French troops had tried to quell nationalist protests in Syria against the continued occupation of the Levant by France. With hundreds of Syrian nationalists being killed by French troops, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, wanting to maintain friendly relations with the Arabs, opposed French action and sent British forces into Syria from Transjordan with orders to fire on the French if necessary.

British armoured cars and troops then reached the Syrian capital of Damascus, following which the French were escorted and confined to their barracks. With political pressure added, the French ordered a ceasefire. Syria became fully independent in July 1946. The crisis infuriated the French leader Charles de Gaulle and almost brought Britain and France to the point of war.

The Iron Curtain was the political and physical boundary that divided Europe from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. East of the Iron Curtain were the smaller states controlled by the Soviet Union, in 1955 formally allied by the Warsaw Pact. Many nations to the west of this geopolitical divide were NATO members. Over time these economic and military alliances developed into broader, more entrenched, cultural barriers that deepened widespread distrust on both sides. Initially, the term "Iron Curtain" was a literal description of physical barriers such as razor wire, fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers along the borders of the opposing powers. But the term eventually took on a broader, symbolic meaning perceived as a generalized "differentness" of ideology, economy, government, and way of life that emerged when the Cold War severed earlier cultural connections between European populations.

The term's origin is often attributed to the speech "Sinews of Peace" delivered by Winston Churchill on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri where he said: "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe." In fact, the phrase was originally used by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, when in 1914 when she described an "Iron Curtain" descending between her people and the nation of Germany.

Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions:

• 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 10 (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of English; it has long been established in American English and has since become common in Britain and other English-speaking countries as well.
• 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 10 (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the long scale. This number is the historical sense of the word and remains the established sense of the word in other European languages. Though displaced by the short scale definition relatively early in US English, it remained the most common sense of the word in Britain until the 1950s and still remains in occasional use there.

American English adopted the short scale definition from the French (it enjoyed usage in France at the time, alongside the long-scale definition). The United Kingdom used the long scale billion until 1974, when the government officially switched to the short scale, but since the 1950s the short scale had already been increasingly used in technical writing and journalism. Moreover, in 1941, Winston Churchill remarked: "For all practical financial purposes a billion represents one thousand millions..."

The third presidential term of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on January 20, 1941, when he was once again inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the fourth term of his presidency ended with his death on April 12, 1945. Roosevelt won a third term by defeating Republican nominee Wendell Willkie in the 1940 presidential election. He remains the only president to serve for more than two terms. Unlike his first two terms, Roosevelt's third and fourth terms were dominated by foreign policy concerns, as the United States became involved in World War II in December 1941.

Roosevelt won congressional approval of the Lend-Lease program, which was designed to aid the United Kingdom in its war against Nazi Germany, while the U.S. remained officially neutral. After Germany began war against the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt extended Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union as well. In Asia, Roosevelt provided aid to the Republic of China, which was resisting an invasion by the Empire of Japan. In response to the July 1941 Japanese occupation of French Indochina, Roosevelt expanded a trade embargo to cut off oil that Japan urgently needed for its fleet. When Roosevelt refused to end the embargo, on December 7, 1941, Japan launched an attack on the U.S. fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Isolationist sentiment in the U.S. immediately collapsed and Congress declared war on Japan. After Germany declared war on the U.S., Congress declared war on Germany and Italy. To win the war, the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union assembled a large coalition of the Allies. The U.S. funded much of the war efforts of the other allies, and supplied munitions, food, and oil. In consultation with his Army and Navy and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Roosevelt decided on a Europe first strategy, which focused on defeating Germany before Japan. In practice, however, in 1942 and 1943 the U.S. focused on fighting Japan.