Churchill's "Iron Curtain" Speech


Winston Churchill's "The Sinews of Peace" speech in Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946, is famous for his introduction of the term "Iron Curtain" to describe the barriers that the Soviets were then erecting between the Soviet and Western worlds. It would remain a major feature of world politics for decades to come. He said:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I might call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.

He also said in the speech, in reference to Bourke Cochrane:

I have often used words which I learned fifty years ago from a great Irish-American orator, a friend of mine, Mr. Bourke Cochran, "There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace."

For the full text of the speech go to "Iron Curtain" speech.


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