The war against Japan continued for the duration of the caretaker ministry.^[37] Even before the defeat of Germany, Churchill had told the Americans that he wanted the Royal Navy to play a prominent role in the defeat of Japan and the liberation of Britain's Asian colonies, especially Singapore. The Americans were unenthusiastic, suspecting that Churchill's intentions were primarily imperialist. Neither Franklin Roosevelt nor Harry Truman had any intention of helping to sustain the British Empire.^[38] In their successful campaigns of 1944 and the early months of 1945, the British Army and its allies had mostly cleared Burma of Japanese forces by May 1945. Rangoon had fallen to the Allies on 2 May following the Battle of Elephant Point.^[38]

The vicious Battle of Okinawa continued to rage until 22 June. The Pacific War would end sooner than expected after the atomic attack on Hiroshima (6 August), the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (8 August) as agreed with the western Allies at the Yalta Conference, and the atomic attack on Nagasaki (9 August).^[39] Japan surrendered on 15 August, three weeks after Churchill's resignation.^[40] While Churchill had hoped for a triumphant re-entry to Singapore,^[38] its recovery was logistically difficult and it would remain under Japanese control until 12 September when it was finally recovered, following the Japanese surrender, by British forces in Operation Tiderace.^[41]

Trieste and Istria was the main ongoing problem as the European war ended. On 15 May Churchill, with President Truman’s approval, had telegraphed Stalin stating that Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans must not be allowed to occupy the whole of Istria, whose future must not be decided by military conquest. Churchill also telegraphed Field Marshal Alexander, Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, that day that he was concerned at Alexander’s recent worries about the low morale of his forces, including US troops. He had told Alexander that he had obtained a “magnificent” message of support from Truman on 12 May and that Trieste and Istria would be a flashpoint for the western Allies standing up to Soviet-backed incursion. Alexander had replied, the same day, that his troops would obey orders but without the same enthusiasm with which they had fought “the hated Germans”. Churchill had forwarded the message on to Eden, who was then in San Francisco negotiating the foundation of the United Nations, commenting that in Greece British troops had “soon warm[ed] up” when sent into action in similar circumstances (he was referring to the Dekemvriana in December 1944 when British troops had prevented ELAS guerrillas from seizing Athens, so as to ensure the setting-up of a pro-British monarchist regime in Greece). The ongoing Istria issue would eventually be resolved at the peace treaty in 1947 which set up the Free Territory of Trieste.^[42]

On 31 May, Churchill and Eden intervened in the so-called Levant Crisis which had been initiated by French General Charles de Gaulle. Acting as head of the French Provisional Government, de Gaulle had ordered French forces to establish an air base in Syria and a naval base in Lebanon. The action provoked a nationalist outbreak in both countries and France responded with an armed retaliation, leading to many civilian deaths. With the situation escalating out of control, Churchill gave de Gaulle an ultimatum to desist. This was ignored and British forces from neighbouring Transjordan were mobilised to restore order. The French, heavily outnumbered, had no option but to return to their bases. A diplomatic row broke out and Churchill reportedly told a colleague that de Gaulle was "a great danger to peace and for Great Britain".^[43]

Churchill was Great Britain's representative at the post-war Potsdam Conference when it opened on 17 July. It was a "Big Three" event with Joseph Stalin representing the Soviet Union and President Harry Truman the United States. Ever since the conference was first proposed, Churchill had worried about the countries of eastern Europe, especially Poland, which had been overrun by the Red Army.^[44]

According to Eden, Churchill's performance at Potsdam was "appalling" because he was unprepared and verbose. Eden said Churchill upset the Chinese, exasperated the Americans and was easily led by Stalin, whom he was supposed to be resisting.^[45] This negative version of events is contradicted by Gilbert who describes Churchill's eager involvement in discussions with Stalin and Truman. Their main topics were the successful testing by the Americans of the atom bomb and the demarcation of a new frontier between Poland and East Germany. Stalin insisted on extending the frontier westward to the Oder and Western Neisse rivers, forming the Oder–Neisse line and thus incorporating most of Silesia into Poland. Churchill and Truman opposed this proposal but to no avail. Gilbert does recount that Field Marshal Montgomery was worried about Churchill's health, saying in a letter that Churchill had "put on ten years since I last saw him".^[46]

Churchill was accompanied at the sessions not only by Eden as Foreign Secretary but also by Attlee, pending the result of the general election which had been held on 5 July.^[47][48] They attended nine sessions in nine days before returning to England for their election counts. Churchill did not return to Potsdam after the landslide Labour victory, instead Attlee returned to lead the British delegation as Prime Minister with Ernest Bevin as the new Foreign Secretary and there were a further five days of discussion.^[49]

The Conservative Party withered during the war and Churchill’s speeches to the Party Conference in 1941 and 1942 had been lacklustre.^[50]

By early 1943 (after the Second Battle of El Alamein, the Torch landings, the Casablanca Conference and the Battle of Stalingrad) the Allies were clearly winning the war and public opinion began to shift towards an interest in post war planning, especially after the publication of the Beveridge Report in November 1942. Churchill gave a broadcast speech on the Government’s Four Years Plan (21 March 1943). The speech floated the possibility that he might remain as Prime Minister after the war, and was a rare example of him speaking about post war plans. Churchill, still preoccupied with war matters, dictated the draft during a car journey. His secretary’s notes were illegible so she reconstructed the speech by consulting his advisors, Churchill later complained that the speech was not what he had dictated but “at least the words made sense”. In discussing the plans to provide free milk for the under-fives, it contained the memorable line that “there is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies”.^[51]

Opinion polling started in June 1943 and showed Labour in a consistent lead, which they would maintain until 1945.^[52] As early as August 1943 Mass Observation surveys found that although Churchill was widely respected, around a third of people thought he would be a poor peace leader.^[53]

People disliked and were suspicious of the Conservative Party, whose "National" coalition was perceived as having presided over poverty and mass unemployment in the 1930s, and to have appeased German and Italian aggression. In the runup to and during the election Labour ran a very effective campaign which focused on the peacetime issues foremost in the minds of the voters and which Labour were trusted to resolve: full employment, improved housing and the provision of free medical services.^[54] Robert Blake wrote that, by contrast, the Tory message, which made similar promises, “did not lack content, but it lacked credibility”.^[55] Churchill’s 1945 manifesto, Mr. Churchill's Declaration to the Voters, did not specifically endorse any party.^[24] It began by stating that he had formed "a new National Government".^[f][56] Churchill was very keen to distance himself from the unpopular Conservative Party and to appeal to Liberal voters. However, his attempt to do so in his "Gestapo" Speech, by stressing Labour’s supposed threat to civil liberties, would backfire badly. His use of the “National” title also backfired as Labour had always treated the name as a fraud in the 1930s and it was particularly discredited after the war coalition had been formed in 1940.^[57]

Churchill mishandled the election campaign by his partisan attacks on the Labour Party.^[58] He committed a serious political gaffe in a broadcast on 4 June by saying in a radio broadcast that a Labour government would require "some form of Gestapo" to enforce its agenda:^[59][54][60] Churchill's ill-judged phrase may, in the view of Richard Toye, have been inspired by an old speech which he had given on 14 April 1905. Churchill, who had then recently defected from the Conservatives to the Liberals, had accused his old party of wanting to bring in US-style tariffs, a German military system (the Balfour Government had been reforming the Army, whereas the Liberals were initially committed to military retrenchment) and an Aliens Act enforced by a Tsarist-style Okhrana.^[61]

"The Times" reported Churchill’s message in the speech as “VOTE NATIONAL – NOT PARTY”.^[62] Churchill spoke at length about how he and his government were “Conservative and National” (he stood under that label in his own seat at Woodford). He was particularly critical of the Liberals, his own former party, for not joining his government. His criticism of Labour and the Liberals’ refusal to serve in his new government was a deliberate echo of Stanley Baldwin’s claim during the 1931 General Election that the Labour ministers had run away from their responsibilities rather than join the National Government, while his criticism of Labour's plans to nationalise the Bank of England (which in the event would prove relatively uncontroversial) were an attempt to repeat the 1931 scare that Labour would nationalise or even confiscate people's Post Office Savings.^[63]

However, in a passage which became notorious, he declared:

No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

Gilbert describes the speech's references to socialism as "hostile and injudicious", and it backfired badly.^[64] Labour reacted to the broadcast with ridicule rather than outrage. Herbert Morrison called it “Churchill’s Crazy Broadcast” (article in 5 June Daily Herald).^[65] Attlee made political capital by saying in his reply broadcast on 5 June: "The voice we heard last night was that of Mr Churchill, but the mind was that of Lord Beaverbrook". Roy Jenkins says this broadcast was "the making of Attlee".^[66] Attlee claimed that the speech had been inspired by The Road to Serfdom which he dismissed as “theoretical stuff” by “an Austrian professor Friedrich August von Hayek” (subtly stressing his foreign origins).^[67] Attlee observed that left-wing governments had been elected in Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand without causing tyranny. His contrast of Churchill the great war leader with Churchill the partisan party leader was a deliberate rebuttal of Churchill’s attempt to wrap himself in the “National” label, and after the election was the subject of a famous cartoon by Low.^[g][67]

Richard Toye wrote in 2010 that the Gestapo speech had retained all of the notoriety it gained at the time of delivery.^[69] Labour’s rhetoric was often just as extreme - the Labour Party Speaker’s Handbook actively encouraged speakers to link the Tories to fascism and appeasement.^[70] However, Churchill’s gaffe made it hard for the Conservatives to take the moral high ground or to reply in kind. A Leeds shopkeeper told Mass Observation that Churchill’s speech was like listening to the soapbox oratory of forty years previously.^[71] A national leader was expected to behave differently from a party leader during an election and Churchill failed to strike the right balance, causing him to lose credibility.^[72]

Many of Churchill's colleagues and supporters were appalled by the speech, including Leo Amery who praised Attlee's "adroit reply to Winston's rhodomontade".^[69] Harold Macmillan tactfully wrote to Churchill (8 June) calling the anti-Labour message “splendid” but urging him to direct his subsequent broadcasts to “the floating (and non-party) vote”.^[73] The Gestapo speech was well liked in the USA but caused anger in Australia and New Zealand.^[74]

The Liberal Lord Samuel (9 June), apparently echoing the previous comments by Labour’s Herbert Morrison, claimed that the Conservatives, like the Nazis and Italian Fascists, were claiming the right to rule in perpetuity. AV Alexander (12 June) mentioned that housewives in the 1930s had been tormented by “the Gestapo of the Means Test”.^[75]

Although the Gestapo speech created a negative response, Churchill personally retained a very high approval rating in opinion polls and was still expected to win the election.^[54] Although the Conservative Party was unpopular, many electors appear to have wanted Churchill to continue as prime minister whatever the outcome, or to have wrongly believed this would be possible.^[76]

Churchill's second broadcast (13 June) briefly mentioned the Government's Four Year Plan, and claimed that William Beveridge had been a “friend” since, as President of the Board of Trade (1908-10), he had enlisted his help in setting up Labour Exchanges (he privately thought Beveridge “an awful windbag and a dreamer” and his 1942 Report too costly to implement in full). He also stressed the legacy of his former close colleague David Lloyd George, who had died a few months earlier, in founding the welfare state.^[77] Churchill had stressed to his colleagues that a Conservative government must be constructive, and he announced his commitment to addressing the housing shortage broadcast in the 13 June broadcast but, as with the Gestapo speech on 4 June, he ruined the effect by again insisting that Labour would deploy some form of political police to control the nation.^[78]

Stafford Cripps, speaking in Glasgow (16 June), criticised the Cult of Personality of Churchill’s campaign: he drew attention to Churchill’s failure to mention the word “Conservative” in his manifesto and stated that he had seen a candidate in Cumberland describe himself as a “Churchill candidate”. Philip Noel-Baker argued in an official Labour broadcast (17 June) that the Tories had aided Germany by allowing her to rearm with the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement.^[75]

Churchill's third broadcast (21 June) discussed the issue of Harold Laski, who had claimed, to Attlee's irritation, that as chairman of the Labour party organisation he could dictate to an elected Labour Government.^[73] Some Conservative candidates talked of “Gauleiter Laski”.^[79] Churchill's fourth broadcast (30 June) expressed his relief that this “strange, unnatural election”, which had set recent colleagues against one another, was “now, to everybody’s relief, drawing to its close”.^[73] He was still referring to his government as “the National Government” in the draft of that broadcast.^[80] When he addressed an audience in the Labour stronghold of Walthamstow on the evening of 3 July, he was almost forced to abandon the event because of booing and heckling.^[34]

Many commentators felt that Churchill's election speeches lacked "vim" and there is a view that he was much more interested in what was happening in eastern Europe, his primary concern at Yalta and Potsdam, than in Great Britain.^[81] Vita Sackville-West wrote to her husband Harold Nicolson (22 June) that, as an admirer of Churchill, she was “dreadfully distressed by the badness” of his speeches which were “confused, woolly, unconstructive and so wordy” that they would put off “wobbler” voters.^[82] Churchill’s doctor Lord Moran later claimed in his controversial memoirs that Churchill had told him in the middle of the campaign that “I am worried about this damned election. I have no message for them”.^[83]

Polling day was on 5 July, with the count delayed, as agreed, for three weeks for collection of the overseas service votes.^[18] Churchill attended the Potsdam Conference from 17 July (see above), returning to London for the results; he later recorded in his war memoirs that he went to bed on 25 July hoping to “reconstitute the National Coalition Government in the proportions of the new House of Commons” then awoke with a stabbing pain and a premonition that he had lost.^[84] Churchill's wife Clementine and his daughter Mary attended the count in Woodford on 26 July and returned to Downing Street to meet him for lunch. Churchill had been unopposed by the major parties in Woodford, but his majority over a sole independent candidate was much less than expected. With a Labour victory increasingly obvious, Mary later described the lunch as "an occasion of Stygian gloom".^[85][86] To Clementine's suggestion that defeat might be "a blessing in disguise", Churchill retorted: "At the moment it seems very effectively disguised".^[85]

The outcome was a landslide victory for the Labour Party with a Commons majority of 146 over all other parties.^[87] Moran later recorded that on the afternoon after the announcement of the results, he had commiserated with Churchill on the "ingratitude" of the British public, to which he replied "I wouldn't call it that. They have had a very hard time".^[88] Churchill wanted to exercise his constitutional right to remain in office until defeated by a no confidence vote in the House of Commons, partly so he could complete the Potsdam Conference as prime minister. Instead he was persuaded by Eden (on the telephone from his constituency at Warwick) to resign that evening, and was succeeded by Attlee.^{[87][89][90][91]}