This is an IHeart podcast. And we continue with our American stories, and we love to tell stories about history.

And as always, all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks

at Hillsdale College where you can go to learn all the good things in life, all the beautiful

things in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free

and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale.edu. That's hillsdale.edu.

Winston Churchill made 16 visits to America in his lifetime.

He traveled here as a soldier, a tourist, and a lecturer.

But the late prime minister's visit to America in 1941 as a wartime leader was his most important.

The story of that trip back in the winter of 1941 and the

speech to Congress the day after Christmas is worth telling. It revealed a lot about not just

Churchill's status as a statesman, but as a salesman. The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

Churchill, who just turned 67, packed his

bags and headed for the United States, it would be the most important sales trip of his life,

and perhaps the most important sale of the 20th century.

As Dr. Larry Arne of Hillsdale College said in his speech there, with the fall of France,

Britain stood alone decisively inferior in military power to the Nazis. The only thing that could

save it was the English Channel, an entry into the war by the United States. No one understood

that stark reality better than Churchill. It was why he was on a boat crossing the Atlantic so soon after one of America's darkest hours.

His plan strengthen relations with President Roosevelt, Congress, and the American public

and prepare them for the exigencies of an extended and difficult war. It was a long trip of 10 days through cold storm-tossed seas.

It was a dangerous one, too.

U-boats filled the Atlantic.

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