Rhetorical situation

Speaker

The speaker of “Their Finest Hour” is Winston Churchill. He was born in 1874 in Oxfordshire. In 1940, when the speech was delivered, Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Churchill served two terms as Prime Minister, from 1940 to 1945, and from 1951 to 1955. 

At the time of the speech, Churchill had been Prime Minister for just over a month, following Neville Chamberlain, after the latter declared war on Germany when Hitler invaded Poland.

During his speech, Churchill makes it clear that continuing the war against Germany is the only option. He refrains from judging the decisions that led to the Dunkirk situation (ll. 22-23), but he highlights his own military knowledge: 

The disastrous military events which have happened during the pas...