Churchill delivers Iron Curtain speech
In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Unions policies in Europe and declares From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent.Churchills speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War.Churchill who had been defeated for re-election as prime minister in 1945 was invited to Westminster College in Fulton Missouri where he gave this speech.President Harry S.
Truman joined Churchill on the platform and listened intently to his speech.Churchill began by praising the United States which he declared stood at the pinnacle of world power.It soon became clear that a primary purpose of his talk was to argue for an even closer special relationship between the United States and Great Britainthe great powers of the English-speaking worldin organizing and policing the postwar world.
In particular he warned against the expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union.In addition to the iron curtain that had descended across Eastern Europe Churchill spoke of communist fifth columns that were operating throughout western and southern Europe.Drawing parallels with the disastrous appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II Churchill advised that in dealing with the Soviets there was nothing which they admire so much as strength and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness.Truman and many other U.S.
officials warmly received the speech.Already they had decided that the Soviet Union was bent on expansion and only a tough stance would deter the Russians.Churchills iron curtain phrase immediately entered the official vocabulary of the Cold War.
U.S.officials were less enthusiastic about Churchills call for a special relationship between the United States and Great Britain.While they viewed the English as valuable allies in the Cold War they were also well aware that Britains power was on the wane and had no intention of being used as pawns to help support the crumbling British empire.
In the Soviet Union Russian leader Joseph Stalin denounced the speech as war mongering and referred to Churchills comments about the English-speaking world as imperialist racism.The British Americans and Russiansallies against Hitler less than a year before the speechwere drawing the battle lines of the Cold War.
