Inspiration, determination and the right choices are not that common in executive authority actually.
Inspiration and determination are meaningless if not harnessed in support of right action, which we've established Churchill didn't do much of, except where the right choice was pretty obvious.
Except the people who had tried to suppress Churchill during the build up also had doubts after the fall of France. For example - Halifax Chamberlains and then Churchills foreign secretary wanted to make peace with Hitler.
A few people do not a peace movement make. That Churchill didn't really have to fight to keep his cabinet from making peace proves that his opposition to peace was superfluous.
The terror bombing of Germany destroyed a lot of heavy industry and diverted key German resources to air defence and had its roots in the Battle Of Britain as previously discussed.
Not to the extent that it would have been anything like cost-efficient. Using those same resources differently would have made a much bigger difference, such as possibly an earlier D-Day. Terror bombing was based on the dubious idea that destroying civilian society is a much more efficient way to stop the enemy war effort than precision-targeting factories, a notion that turned out to be utterly wrong, something Churchill should have been able to predict from the Battle of Britain.
German war production kept steadily increasing through almost the entire war, despite terror bombing. Only in late 1944 did it began decreasing, a point at which the war was already decided anyway and the only open question was what the postwar map of Europe would look like.
The break with France can be exaggerated, the fleet was not something we wanted to fall into German hands and the fighters were needed for the defence of the UK. The cultivation of Charles de Gaulle and his entry into Paris later on were hardly hostile acts- also the German propaganda machine exaggerrated the split. The British worked with the resistance throughout the war.
The episode with the French fleet happened after Vichy had already been formed, when he had already failed to keep France from going collaborator. That France ended up forming Vichy, rather than going for a government-in-exile like pretty much every other Nazi-occupied country did.
The leaders he fought against however while characters who made a big difference to their countries did much to sabotage their war efforts in a way that Churchills decisions never did.
Hitlers decision to delay the tanks at Dunkirk, his decision to make the 6th Army stand and fight at Stalingrad, the failure to equip the German army for a Winter campaign and launching Barbarossa so late in the year for example. His failure to make good use of the vast numbers of Russian soldiers he captured e.g. building railways etc.
Churchill is great because he didn't do the military blunders Hitler did? That's a pretty easy standard for great leadership. Heck, even Mussolini would qualify as a great leader by that standard.
Stalins massacre of his own high command has also been referred to in this OP as very bad leadership. Indeed the socalled industrial progress you attribute to him has much in fact to do with the theft of the property of previously properous Russians. After Stalin, with nothing left to steal, the progress of communism faltered since they had killed the source of their wealth.
That's a suggestion that flies in the face of basic economic facts. You can't increase your GDP by redistributing wealth (which confiscating it is), wealth doesn't multiply just because you take it from somewhere and put it somewhere else. For its first 50 years, the USSR enjoyed decent to ludicrously fast economic growth. If all that was just spending of looted property, oh my, those Russian aristocrats must have been sitting on a McDuck money bin each.
You are still not getting this point. Churchill was the only one who was making a difference here. Given the disposiiton of the British in the thirties it seems in fact that he may have been one of those who tipped the balance to fighting Hitler rather than making peace with him as had FRance.
You've yet to show that there was any "balance" that needed to be tipped in the first place. Halifax is only one guy.
Sympathy might be the wrong word here. The point is the Americans bought this conflict as one of good v evil and provided help long before Pearl Harbour with lend lease etc. Churchill played that relationship very well and no other leaders would not have done as well. Having an American mum is significant - ask Obama! Also America did not declare war against Germany because of Pearl Harbour. Hitler declared war on them in support of his ally Japan.
Good vs evil? More like "Europeans at their wars again, we don't want anything to do with it". There was no great outpouring of sympathy. Roosevelt was the driving politician behind Lend-Lease, not Churchill. Yet, because of American isolationism, Roosevelt had to fight hard to get it passed, and even had to put a price tag on every item shipped to Britain. Stuff was neither lent, leased nor given, but SOLD, since the public would not agree to giving it away for free. That should tell you something about American enthusiasm for the war.
Rubbish, he was the leading voice arguing a view when it was unpopular. His view later became the mainstream point of view and you say he had nothing to do with that change!
To assume he did is arbitrary. If it's so evident as you claim, you should have no problem showing the causation. That his view later became the mainstream does not prove that he had anything to do with it becoming mainstream.
As I have already said the gap between Germany and the UK widened after Munich cause Germany spent 5 times as much on its military as we did. Chamberlain made things worse not better which is why Churchill led the vote against him in the peace for our time debate. What Chamberlain did was sabotage the possibility of an alliance with Czechoslovakia and France that might have prevailed against Hitler in 1938 and saved Europe and the world from 50 million deaths.
No crap, everyone knows with the luxury of hindsight that Munich was a mistake. Yet, that, is irrelevant for the question at hand, which is whether Churchill had anything to do with his opinion becoming the mainstream one later on.
That Chamberlain & co started preparing Britain for war right after Munich proves that they were completely aware of the possibility of war, that they didn't need Churchill to realize the obvious when Hitler had reneged on his pledge that the Munich demands would be his last.
