churchill speech in fulton

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‘Iron curtain’ speech

Extracts from Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech given in the USA in March 1946 (Catalogue ref: FO 371/51624)

BRITISH INFORMATION SERVICES

AN AGENCY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

ADVANCE RELEASE

For release at 3.45 pm., G.S.T

Tuesday, March 5, 1946

SINEWS OF PEACE

Following IS THE Text of an address prepared for delivery by The Right Honorable Winston Churchill, M.P., at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, Tuesday,

March 5, 1946.

————————-

I am glad to come to Westminster College this afternoon and am complimented that you should give me a Degree. The name “Westminster” is somehow familiar to me. I seem to have heard of it before. Indeed it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectic, rhetoric and one or two other things.

It is also an honour, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps almost unique, for a private visitor to be introduced to an academic audience by the President of the United States. Amid his heavy burdens, duties and responsibilities-unsought but not reconciled from- the President has travelled a thousand miles to dignify and magnify our meeting here today and give me an opportunity of addressing this kindred nation, as well as my own countrymen across the ocean and perhaps some other countries too. The President has told you that it is his wish, as I am sure it is yours, that I should have full liberty to give my true and faithful counsel in these anxious and baffling times. I shall certainly avail myself of this freedom and feel the more right to do so because any private ambitions I may have cherished in my younger days have been satisfied beyond my wildest dreams. Let me however make it clear that I have no official mission or status of any kind, and that I speak only for myself. I can therefore allow my mind, with the experience of a lifetime, to play over the problems which beset us on the morrow of our absolute victory in arms; and try to make sure that what has been gained with so much sacrifice and suffering shall be preserved for the future glory and safety of mankind.

The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. With primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. As you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done but also feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement. Opportunity is here now, clear and shining, for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the after-time. It is necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose and the grand simplicity of decision shall guide and rule the conduct of the English-speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must and I believe we shall prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future or what are the limits if any to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regards for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is sympathy and goodwill in Britain- and I doubt not here also- towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to preserve through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships. We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. Above all we welcome constant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic. It is my duty however, for I am sure you would wish me to state the facts as I see them to you, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe.

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 must 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. Athens alone, with its immortal glories, is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are being made upon them and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow Government. An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of left-wing German leaders.  At the end of the fighting last June, the American and British Armies withdrew \westwards, in accordance with an earlier agreement, to a depth at some points of 150 miles on a front of nearly 400 miles to allow the Russians to occupy this vast expanse of territory which the Western Democracies had conquered. If now the Soviet Government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the Soviets and the Western Democracies. Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts- and facts they are-this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is this one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.

From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength. If the Western Democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations charter, their influence for furthering these principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them. If however they become divided or falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.

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Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech, 1946

An Enduring Legacy to British Heritage and the World.

A Momentous Contribution to British Heritage and Global Political Landscape

Recognizing the emerging cold war: churchill's foresight, proposing a "fraternal association" and greater european integration, memorializing the iron curtain speech, conclusion: the enduring legacy, you might also like.

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This Day In History : March 5

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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 Union’s policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill’s 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 Britain—the great powers of the “English-speaking world”—in 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. Churchill’s “iron curtain” phrase immediately entered the official vocabulary of the Cold War. U.S. officials were less enthusiastic about Churchill’s call for a “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain. While they viewed the British as valuable allies in the Cold War, they were also well aware that Britain’s 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 Churchill’s comments about the “English-speaking world” as imperialist “racism.” The British, Americans, and Russians—allies against Hitler less than a year before the speech—were drawing the battle lines of the Cold War.

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A Summary and Analysis of Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was UK Prime Minister twice, between 1940 and 1945 and then again between 1951 and 1955. During his first term as Prime Minister, in the Second World War, he wrote and delivered some of the most rousing and powerful speeches ever given by a national leader, with ‘ we shall fight them on the beaches ’ being perhaps the finest of them all.

But in between his two spells as Prime Minister, after the British people voted him and the Conservative Party out of power in 1945, Churchill visited the United States, where he was welcomed by many. And it was at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri that what is perhaps Churchill’s most famous speech of all – the well-known ‘iron curtain’ speech – was delivered on 5 March 1946.

In this speech, Churchill talks about the Cold War that was developing between the West and the Soviet-controlled East, in the wake of the end of the Second World War. His metaphor of an ‘iron curtain’, although not originally his, became forever associated with him after this speech.

‘Iron curtain’ speech: summary

Churchill begins his speech by paying tribute to the Russian people, led by Joseph Stalin: the Soviet Union, of course, had been Britain and America’s ally in the recent war against the Axis powers. Churchill also acknowledges that Russia has sound reasons for wishing to protect itself against possible German invasion. But he also wants to outline to his audience the present situation in Europe.

This is when he introduces the metaphor of an ‘iron curtain’, which he describes as stretching through Europe from north to south, going from Stettin in the Baltic in the north to Trieste in the Adriatic in the south. This iron curtain has ‘descended’ across the continent of Europe.

The capital cities of the ‘ancient states’ of Central and Eastern Europe – Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia – now reside in the ‘Soviet sphere’ and are under the control of Russia to a greater or lesser degree. Only Athens in Greece is free from Soviet control. In the other countries of eastern Europe, police states are being formed under Communist rule, thanks to Russian intervention.

Churchill points out that Europe, recently liberated from the threat of Nazism in the war that ended just one year ago, is in danger of falling short of what Britain and America had planned for it. Because of increased Russian influence in Germany, where the Soviet Union is attempting to infiltrate Communism into German government, pressure will be placed upon the Germans to choose, effectively, between supporting Britain and America and siding with the Soviets.

With this fear in mind, Churchill concludes that what Europe needs, to guarantee safety and stability in the post-war world, is unity. He points out that in both world wars, America has come to the aid of Europe in its hour of need, in order to ensure a victory ‘of the good cause’. He also points out that war has changed in recent years, and with the advent of nuclear power (something implied but not openly stated by Churchill in the speech), ‘war can find any nation, wherever it may dwell between dusk and dawn.’

‘Iron curtain’ speech: analysis

Churchill’s speech has entered the canon of great speeches for one reason above all others: his use of the phrase ‘iron curtain’ to describe the divide between the capitalist West (dominated by Britain and America) and the Communist East (controlled and influenced by the Soviet Union).

This curtain is a barrier separating two very different and opposed ideologies, with ‘iron’ suggesting the military force and power of both sides, as well as the implacable and sturdy nature of the partition. But ‘iron’ here also suggests the oppressive nature of Communist control in eastern Europe, as Russia seeks to set up a divide between itself and the western world. It implies a lack of flexibility and compromise.

In actual fact, Winston Churchill didn’t coin the phrase ‘iron curtain’; the Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov used it in 1918 in The Apocalypse of Our Times , and the socialist writer Ethel Snowden then used it in a 1920 book about Bolshevik Russia. But it was Churchill who saw the utility of the phrase, and metaphor, for describing the situation that was developing in Europe between East and West, Communism and capitalism, and the dangers that Communism posed to continued peace in Europe.

But although Churchill’s speech begins by drawing attention to this partition, he ends by proposing the solution: unity in Europe. And one way to ensure this is to make sure that Britain and America remain strong allies in order to prevent the spread of Communism. This way, peace in Europe – which had only been secured a year ago, thanks in no small part to American involvement in the war – could be maintained.

It is worth remembering that in 1945, the United Nations had been established in order to try to ensure that peace would continue to reign after the bloodshed of the Second World War. Both Britain and the United States were key members of the United Nations, and the purpose of Churchill’s speech was to remind his American audience of the strong bond between the two nations, as well as America’s role in securing peace in the recent conflict.

When Churchill delivered his ‘iron curtain’ speech at Westminster College, the US President Harry Truman was in attendance, Missouri being his home state; indeed, Churchill and Truman had travelled to the college in the President’s special train. Indeed, it was Truman who had invited Churchill to deliver his speech at the college.

His speech, then, was intended to encourage the continuation of strong British-American relations, with the recent wartime leader of Britain advising the new leader of post-war America that the two nations, the economic and military powerhouses of the West, needed to work together to resist and contain the Communist expansionist programme in Europe.

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Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech

When you hear about Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri - you may also hear about Sir Winston Churchill, and for good reason. On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill visited Westminster College as the Green Lecturer and delivered "Sinews of Peace," a message heard round the world that went down in history as the "Iron Curtain Speech." "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 must 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."

The story of how Winston Churchill (and Harry S. Truman) came to Westminster that day in 1946 is fascinating - more here from the National Churchill Museum .

Sir Winston Churchill painting by George W. Bush in America's National Churchill Museum on the campus of Westminster College

“This is a wonderful school in my home state. Hope you can do it. If you come, I will introduce you.” Harry S. Truman A handwritten post-script by Truman to the letter of invitation to Churchill from Westminster College

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Churchill’s Steady Adherence to His 1946 “Iron Curtain” Speech in Fulton

• By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
• | April 1, 2021
• Category: Churchill and America Churchill in the Nuclear Age Q & A

The Fulton speech and its aftermath

Initially condemned as a warmonger for telling the truth about Soviet intentions in his “Iron Curtain” speech, Churchill was soon acknowledged as a prophet—sometimes by the same individuals and media who excoriated him in 1946.

We are asked to review Churchill’s reactions to the condemnation following that famous Fulton speech, the opening gun of the Cold War. “I know he had the hide of an elephant,” our questioner writes, “but how did he react to it all?” Readers interested in the complete background may like first to watch or read three pertinent presentations, the first being the speech itself:

• Sir Winston Churchill’s Fulton Speech, “ The Sinews of Peace ,” Westminster College, 5 March 1946 (audio only; speech begins at minute 8:40)
• Sir Martin Gilbert, “ The Enduring Importance of the ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech, ” Hillsdale College, 22 October 2004.
• Jacob R. Weaver, “ The Rhetoric of Cold War: Churchill’s 1946 Fulton Speech ,” Hillsdale College Churchill Project, July 2018.

Churchill took the early flak over Fulton rather well, and never backed off.  He knew he was right, and by 1948 it was generally proven. Over the next few years, he often alluded to his Fulton forecast. It is interesting to juxtapose his references with observing what was actually going on in eastern Europe around the same time.

11 January: Enver Hoxha proclaims the People’s Republic of Albania

9 February: Stalin declares that capitalism makes future wars inevitable

22 February:  George F. Kennan ’s Long Telegram forecasts Soviet intentions

2 March: Greek communists reignite civil war

8 September: Bulgaria establishes People’s Republic

Joseph Stalin’s 9 February speech had declared that the nature of capitalism made future wars inevitable. There was no murmur about that, but plenty for Churchill at Fulton next month. “ Pravda accused him of trying to destroy the United Nations,” wrote Sir Robert Rhodes James . “Stalin declared that Churchill called for war against the Soviet Union. In the House of Commons, Prime Minister Attlee pointedly declined comment on ‘a speech delivered in another country by a private individual.’” 1

President Truman, who had accompanied Churchill to Fulton and smiled and nodded as he spoke, suggested that Marshal Stalin might like to present his side of the story. In the event, “Uncle Joe” did not take up this invitation.

Three days after his Fulton speech Churchill addressed the General Assembly of Virginia. “Do you not think you are running some risk in inviting me to give you my faithful counsel on this occasion?” he asked. “You have not asked to see beforehand what I am going to say. I might easily, for instance, blurt out a lot of things, which people know in their hearts are true, but are a bit shy of saying in public, and this might cause a regular commotion and get you all into trouble.”

“I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word”

  Churchill was determined to “blurt out a lot of things.” A week later he had his opportunity.

When I spoke at Fulton ten days ago I felt it was necessary for someone in an unofficial position to speak in arresting terms about the present plight of the world. I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word. I was invited to give my counsel freely in this free country and I am sure that the hope which I expressed for the increasing association of our two countries will come to pass, not because of any speech which may be made, but because of the tides that flow in human affairs and in the course of the unfolding destiny of the world. 3

On 23 October, soon after Bulgaria slipped behind the Iron Curtain, Churchill looked back again:

Eight months ago, I made a speech at Fulton in the United States. It had a mixed reception…and quite a number of Hon. Members of this House put their names to a Motion condemning me for having made it [but today] it would attract no particular attention….

It was easier in Hitler’s day to feel and forecast the general movement of events. But now we have not to deal with Hitler and his crude Nazi gang. We are in the presence of something very much more difficult to measure. We are in the presence of a collective mind whose springs of action we cannot judge. Thirteen men in the Kremlin hold all Russia and more than a third of Europe in their grip. Many stresses and pressures are working on them. These stresses and pressures are internal as well as external. I cannot presume to forecast what decisions they will take. 4

1 January: Lewis H. Brown’s Report on Germany prefigures Marshall Plan

19 January: Polish Workers Party awards itself 80% of the vote, begins Sovietization

12 March: Truman Doctrine provides aid to Greece and Turkey

20 October: Non-communist opposition ends in Poland

30 December: Communist Popular Republic declared in Romania

Churchill had referred to “thirteen men in the Kremlin,” not Stalin, whom he knew held the reins. After the Fulton speech, Truman had invited Stalin. Do these gestures suggest a fitful belief that Stalin might yet be brought round? Yet Harry Truman was nothing if not a realist. By March 1947, when he proclaimed the Truman Doctrine, he had seen reports of desperate conditions in Europe that would lead to the Marshall Plan. Churchill viewed Truman’s actions with satisfaction. This was not, he said in September, the isolationist America of the years after World War I:

…if I repeated the Fulton speech in America today, it would be regarded as a stream of tepid platitudes…. I am very glad we are able to give our full support to the United States in the efforts she is making to preserve Freedom and Democracy in Europe, and to send food to its distressed and distracted countries. We hear a great deal of the “Dollar Shortage.” What are dollars? Dollars represent the toil and skill and self-denial of scores of millions of American wage earners, which they are contributing of their own free will, in most cases without any hope of repayment, to help their fellow-men in misfortune across the ocean. Such a process should be treated on all occasions with the respect which is its due. No country in the world has ever done anything like it on such a scale before. 5

25 February: Communist coup in Czechoslovakia

3 April: President Truman signs the Marshall Plan into law

12 June: Mátyás Rákosi selected by Soviets to lead communist Hungary

24 June: Stalin blockades Berlin; Berlin Airlift begins

9 September: Soviet Union declares Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

In January 1948, hoping Truman had brought equilibrium to Europe, Churchill returned to his Fulton theme of peace through understanding:

I last spoke on these questions in the House in October, 1946, fifteen months ago. I venture, by the way, to refer to what I have said in the past, because I do not speak on these matters on the spur of the moment, but from a steady stream of thought which I have followed and pursued with a study and experience of these matters over many years….

It is idle to reason or argue with the communists. It is, however, possible to deal with them on a fair, realistic basis, and, in my experience, they will keep their bargains as long as it is in their interest to do so, which might, in this grave matter, be a long time, once things were settled. 6

A month later Czech communists deposed President Edvard Beneš , with the same celerity as Hitler had in 1938. In June, Stalin solidified his grip on Hungary and began the blockade of Berlin. Truman, with Churchill’s support, replied with the Berlin Airlift. In August the Churchills were at Hôtel du Roy René in Aix-en-Provence, with daughter Mary and Christopher Soames. “The news from Berlin & from Moscow is frightening,” Mary wrote in her diary. “I wonder if I shall live to set out on a holiday which is not overshadowed by some impending world disaster?” 7

4 April: North Atlantic Treaty Organization founded

11 May: Soviet blockade of Berlin ends

29 August: Soviets test first atomic bomb

1 October: People’s Republic of China proclaimed

World events of 1949 were no less fraught. Speaking at M.I.T.’s Mid-Century Conference in March, Churchill once more alluded to his Fulton speech, now three years ago. The criticism he had borne after Fulton was no more. Now he was vindicated, and gratified:

Three years ago I made a speech at Fulton under the auspices of President Truman. Many people here and in my own country were startled and even shocked by what I said. But events have vindicated and fulfilled in much detail the warnings which I deemed it my duty to give at that time. Today there is a very different climate of opinion. I am in cordial accord with much that is being done. We have, as dominating facts, the famous Marshall Aid, the new unity in Western Europe and now the Atlantic Pact.

No one could, however, have brought about these immense changes in the feeling of the United States, Great Britain and Europe but for the astounding policy of the Russian Soviet Government….Why have they done it? It is because they fear the friendship of the West more than its hostility. They cannot afford to allow free and friendly intercourse to grow up between the vast areas they control and the civilized nations of the West. The Russian people must not see what is going on outside, and the world must not see what goes on inside the Soviet domain. 8

“An approaching scientific ability to control thoughts…”

M.I.T. was the end of a chapter that began at Fulton. Everything Churchill had forecast, and much of what he’d wished for, had come true. But the three years had provided him with a further message. It applies very well to our own baffling times:

One of the questions which you are debating here is defined as “the failure of social and political institutions to keep pace with material and technical change.” Scientists should never underrate the deep-seated qualities of human nature and how, repressed in one direction, they will certainly break out in another. The genus homo—if I may display my Latin…still remains as Pope described him 200 years ago:

Placed on this Isthmus of a middle State, A being darkly wise and rudely great… Created half to rise and half to fall; Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

In his introductory address, Mr. Burchard, the Dean of Humanities, spoke with awe of “an approaching scientific ability to control men’s thoughts with precision.” 9

I shall be very content personally if my task in this world is done before that happens. Laws just or unjust may govern men’s actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

Let us hope so.

1 Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963 , 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), VII: 7299.

2 Winston S. Churchill, Richmond, 8 March 1946, Complete Speeches, VII: 7294.

3 WSC, Waldorf-Astoria, New York, 15 March 1946, a dinner hosted by Henry Luce, Complete Speeches, VII: 7299.

4 WSC, House of Commons, 23 October 1946, in Churchill, The Sinews of Peace (London: Cassell, 1948), 225-26. The original text reads “Nazigang.”

5 WSC, Royal Wanstead Schools, Woodford, 27 September 1947, in Churchill, Europe Unite (London: Cassell, 1950), 143-44

6 WSC, House of Commons, 23 January 1948, in Europe Unite , 238.

7 Mary Soames, Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter (London: Collins, 1990), 165.

8 WSC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 31 March 1949, in Churchill, In the Balance (London: Cassell, 1951), 48.

9 Ibid., 46-47. WSC quoted from An Essay on Man , Epistle II, Stanza 1 , by Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

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Winston churchill’s iron curtain speech—march 5, 1946.

Churchill’s famed “Iron Curtain” speech ushered in the Cold War and made the term a household phrase.

Top image courtesy of America’s National Churchill Museum.

The dying embers of World War II still cast a shadow long over the postwar world when Winston Churchill arrived in the small Midwestern town of Fulton, Missouri in the spring of 1946. Westminster College seemed an unlikely place for the former British Prime Minister to deliver a speech of global importance. President Harry Truman penned a note at the bottom of the college’s invitation: “This is a wonderful school in my home state. If you come, I will introduce you. Hope you can do it.”

Winston Churchill stands with US President Harry S Truman at Westminster College where Churchill gave his now famous speech. Image courtesy of America’s National Churchill Museum.

Churchill, who had won the war in Europe, only to lose in the British general election in July 1945, eagerly accepted the invitation to appear on the same platform with the President of the United States.

Churchill knew that while the world looked forward to putting the horrors of war behind, events at the beginning of 1946 portended an even darker future ahead. In the wake of the Allied victory, the Soviet Union had begun shaping Eastern Europe in their image, bringing the governments of many nations into line with Moscow. On February 9, Premier Joseph Stalin gave a speech in which he declared that war between the East and West was inevitable. On February 22, the American Ambassador to Moscow, George F. Kennan, sent the famous “Long Telegram” warning of the Soviet Union’s perpetual hostility towards the West.

Then, on March 5, 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Churchill’s famous words “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” ushered in the Cold War and framed the geo-political landscape for the next 50 years. The former Prime Minister, with President Truman at his side, articulated the threat that the Soviet Union and communism posed to peace and stability in the post-war world. Invoking the spirit of the Atlantic Charter he called for a strengthening of Anglo-American ties and for the United Nations to become a peace-promoting world organization that would succeed where its predecessor the League of Nations had failed.

The historic Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, originally located in London. The church was moved to the Westminster College campus in the mid-1960s. Image courtesy of America’s National Churchill Museum.

A statue of Churchill stands outside of the historic church on the Westminster College campus, home to America’s National Churchill Museum. Image courtesy of America’s National Churchill Museum.

“ The Sinews of Peace ,” the title Churchill himself gave his address, endures today as one of the statesman’s most significant speeches. It not only made the term “iron curtain” a household phrase, but it coined the term “special relationship,” describing enduring alliance between the United States and Great Britain. It is a speech that offered a blueprint for the west to ultimately wage—and win—the Cold War.

This article is part of a series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II made possible by the Department of Defense.

Meet the Authors

The author is Stephen Rogers, Westminster College, with input from Timothy Riley, Sandra L, and Monroe E Trout, Director and Chief Curator at America’s National Churchill Museum.

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Churchill urged US to ‘wipe out’ Moscow with A-bomb

A new book reveals that Winston Churchill didn't want to stop at mere rhetoric in his campaign against communism.

Surprisingly voted out of office after World War II, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill privately became an advocate for an Anglo-American first strike atom bomb attack against the Soviet Union, as once secret FBI records indicate. Churchill’s 1946 speech at Fulton, Missouri, warning against his former Communist ally during World War II, set the stage for a new conflict known as the Cold War, which lasted for decades and still haunts international relations today. This excerpt is from When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys by ICIJ member Thomas Maier . 

Old Glory and the Union Jack draped the streets of Jefferson City, Missouri—the perfect symbolism for a visit by President Harry Truman and the man who Truman said had saved Western civilization.

In an open-air limousine convertible, Winston Churchill sat beside Roosevelt’s successor while thousands of Missourians waved and greeted them at the train station. The two grinning politicians were surrounded by dour security agents (standing guard on the running boards) as the limo drove through the state capital on March 6, 1946. After a long train ride from Washington, the seventy-one-year-old former British prime minister was careful not to exert himself too much. When asked that year about his secret of success, the old warhorse advised, “Conservation of energy—never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”

Only months after being turned out of high office, Churchill journeyed to a college gym in nearby Fulton to give one of the most significant speeches of his career. With the American president’s blessing, his clarion call for Anglo-American resistance to the Soviet Union’s “Iron Curtain” (his metaphor for the spread of communism dividing up Europe) would launch the decades-long Cold War. But this address in Fulton, entitled “The Sinews of Peace,” also provided another turning point in Churchill’s long life. Instead of retirement, he chose vigorous, almost defiant engagement. Rather than fade away with his glorious victories of the past, he decided to embrace, almost prophetically, the future of the postwar world with its atomic dangers. He would reinvent himself once again as a world statesman, his voice both familiar and brand new.

At Fulton, Churchill rewarded Truman’s confidence with a stellar performance. Winston wanted to wake up America, content with victory in World War II and ready to return to its isolationist slumber. He warned that if the West didn’t act swiftly and with determination, another conflict, with the totalitarian Communist regime looming in Moscow, awaited them.

“An iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” Churchill lectured, wearing the honorary cap and robes of an Oxford don before a nationally broadcast audience. “This is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.” 

Truman, who appeared next to Churchill onstage, had reviewed and approved the speech beforehand. Plainspoken Harry indicated its important message needed to be heard.

Churchill argued that Stalin’s unchecked expansion in Central and Eastern Europe posed the same risk for world conflict as Hitler’s aggressive Germany once did in the 1930s, when Winston was a lonely voice in the political wilderness. “Last time, I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention,” Churchill recalled, almost melodramatically. “There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely actions than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot . . .” 

Now, one by one, Churchill called off the names of European capitals lost to the “Soviet sphere.” He worried that this growing Communist bloc of nations would expand in the world unless a “fraternal association” (the United States, Great Britain, and the rest of “English-speaking world”) stopped its Cold War appeasement. He urged a negotiated settlement with the Soviets, to prevent tensions from bursting into an active war neither side wanted. “From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than weakness, especially military weakness,” he said, as if reciting lessons from history as he experienced it. “If these all-important years are allowed to slip away,” he concluded, “then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.”

Truman stood and applauded, appearing pleased. Unlike his tempestuous relationship with Roosevelt, Churchill appreciated Truman’s frank, direct manner and the bold way he’d brought World War II to an end. He supported Truman’s use of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaski (killing some two hundred thousand civilians) in order to avoid an estimated quarter of million Allied casualties that would taken place by an invasion of Japan. The decision to drop the bomb had been “unanimous, automatic, unquestioned,” and made with barely a moment’s thought, Churchill later recalled. Earlier in the war, the British agreed to work cooperatively with the Americans on the bomb’s development, but said they wouldn’t use it unless both sides agreed.

“Let me know whether it is a flop or a plop,” Churchill wrote to Truman in July 1945 about the first atomic test in the New Mexico desert.

“It’s a plop—Truman,” the message came back. That same year, when Stalin’s expansion plans became clear, Churchill first used the term Iron Curtain, in a private message to Truman.

Public reaction to Churchill’s Fulton speech, however, swiftly turned negative. Newspaper editorials condemned his speech as rogue bluster, and columnist Walter Lippmann called Truman’s invitation an “almost catastrophic blunder.” The new president soon learned his nation wasn’t ready for another war against its recent ally Stalin and his Russian army. Going after the Soviets in peacetime was far different from finishing off Japan in war. Truman “pulled back into his shell, even declared that he had not known in advance what Churchill was going to say,” Time magazine reported. Backpedaling away from Churchill’s comments, Truman eventually offered to send the battleship Missouri to pick up Stalin so he could come to America and refute the charges.

Winston didn’t waver, however, for his true feelings against the Soviets were even stronger than his Fulton rhetoric. Since the 1917 Russian Revolution, he felt Lenin’s Bolsheviks were extremists, intent on a dictatorship that did not recognize God , property rights, or human freedom. “The strangling of Bolshevism at its birth would have been an untold blessing to the human race,” Churchill declared. He’d made similar comments throughout his career. “Bolshevism is not a policy; it is a disease,” he railed. “It is not a creed; it is a pestilence.” In comparing Stalin’s Soviet Empire to the defeated Axis powers, Churchill wondered if the Anglo-American alliance had simply replaced one great evil with another.

Although his own empire’s resources were depleted, Churchill wanted the United States to control the Soviets in Europe through the use of nuclear weapons. No longer a backwater colony of the Crown, America was now “at the highest point of majesty and power ever attained by any community since the fall of the Roman Empire,” Churchill judged with a historian’s eye. Possessing the most deadly device ever seen, the United States would “dominate the world for the next five years,” he predicted, providing an opportunity for America to act swiftly to set a course for future peace. 

The Soviets still appeared far away from developing their own atomic weapons, and would respect American dominance if exerted. Dropping the bomb—or at least “a showdown” with the implied threat of doing so—must be a vital tool in curbing Soviet communism, Churchill argued. He expressed these views on his own, certainly without approval of Labour Party leaders running the British government. Letting the isolationists, pacifists, and appeasers prevail would only ensure another world war, he contended. “The argument is now put forward that we must never use the atomic bomb until, or unless, it has been used against us first,” Churchill said. “In other words, you must never fire until you have been shot dead. That seems to me a silly thing to say and a still more imprudent position to adopt.”

During a “private conference with Churchill” while visiting Europe in the summer of 1947, Bridges claimed the former prime minister had “stated that the only salvation for the civilization of the world would be if the President of the United States would declare Russia to be imperiling world peace and attack Russia.” If this wasn’t done, according to the FBI report dated December 5, 1947, Churchill predicted “Russia will attack the United States in the next two or three years when she gets the atomic bomb and civilization will be wiped out or set back many years.”

A full-fledged nuclear attack on the Kremlin didn’t seem to faze Bridges, who’d been a sharp policy critic of Roosevelt and Truman. Bridges mentioned this conversation with Churchill only while talking to a G-man about “other matters,” according to the agent who compiled the report. It noted that Bridges “concurs in Churchill’s views and that he sincerely hopes that our next President will do just that before Russia attacks the United States.” 

Others close to Churchill heard similar bellicose sentiments. His personal physician, Lord Moran, recalled that Winston advocated a nuclear knockout blow against the Soviets during a conversation in 1946. “We ought not to wait until Russia is ready,” Churchill said. “America knows that fifty-two percent of Russia’s motor industry is in Moscow and could be wiped out by a single bomb. It might mean wiping out three million people, but they [the Soviets ] would think nothing of that.” Winston paused and smiled as he thought of this grotesque. “They think more of erasing an historical building like the Kremlin,” he added.

A few years later, before Churchill gave a Boston speech, Averell Harriman warned U.S. State Department officials that his old friend might make “politically embarrassing statements,” urging aggressive use of the atomic bomb as a negotiating stance against the Soviets. Undoubtedly remembering Truman’s retreat at Fulton, Harriman suggested that the administration get an advance look at Churchill’s address. Inside a crowded Boston Garden, Churchill didn’t call for an attack on the Kremlin but condemned the Soviet Politburo as “something quite as wicked but in some ways more formidable than Hitler.” He reprised his “Iron Curtain” warnings and portrayed the atom bomb as Western democracy’s most potent weapon. “I must not conceal from you the truth as I see it,” he said in a speech offered on television as well as a radio. “It is certain that Europe would have been communized, like Czechoslovakia and London under bombardment sometime ago, but for the deterrent of the atomic bomb in the hands of the United States.”

Since his days watching the sword-wielding Dervish warriors slaughtered on the hills, Churchill had understood the supremacy of machinery in war, over the courage and glory of individual soldiers. Some were surprised by his callousness about such butchery. “War has always fascinated him; he knows in surprising detail about the campaigns of the past captains; he has visited nearly all the battlefields and he can pick out, in a particular battle, the decisive move that turned the day,” Lord Moran wrote in his diary. “But he has never given a thought to what was happening in the soldier’s mind, he has not tried to share his fears. If a soldier does not do his duty, the P.M. says that he ought to be shot. It is as simple as that.”

At Boston’s Ritz-Carlton before that night’s speech, Winston chatted about the atomic bomb with his longtime American friend Bernard Baruch—who later introduced him to the crowd as “the greatest living Englishman”—and with family friend Kay Halle. By his side were his wife, Clementine, and son, Randolph, seated at a circular table holding teas, buttered scones, sandwiches, and Scotch whiskey. Winston mentioned that in the New Mexico desert site, where the first Trinity bomb had been ignited, a monument was being built in memory of those who died at Hiroshima.

“Do the Americans have a bad conscience because the atom bomb was dropped?” he asked.

Kay Halle remembered Winston’s “unblinking X-ray eyes” as he stared at her, looking for an answer. Kay was now an accomplished woman in her midforties and far different from the fun-loving blonde-haired department store heiress from Cleveland whom Randolph wanted to marry nearly two decades earlier. Since then, she had worked as a broadcaster, a newspaper feature writer, and for the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime predecessor to the CIA. Though Kay revered the former prime minister, she was confident enough to give an answer he might not want.

“Very many,” Halle replied, about the number of Americans who felt guilty about this nuclear holocaust.

Winston dismissed such claptrap, arguing that the A-bomb posed “the only deterrent to the Soviets.” He showed little patience with those who asked if he worried what God might say about the atom bomb. “I shall defend myself with resolution and vigour,” he argued, as if the Gates of Heaven might resemble the well of the House. “I shall say to the Almighty, why when nations were warring in this way did You release dangerous knowledge to mankind? The fault is Yours—not mine!” Yet in private, Churchill seemed disturbed by the moral consequences of this new warfare and wondered if its true meaning might be beyond his grasp. “Do you think that the atomic bomb means that the architect of the universe has got tired of writing his non-stop scenario?” he wrote George Bernard Shaw. “The release of the bomb seems to be his next turning point.”

From his own experience, however, Randolph knew the Russians didn’t fear that the Americans would strike first with the atom bomb. During a November 1945 visit to Moscow, he heard Soviet officials complain that the United States didn’t share its nuclear technology, but didn’t seem overly alarmed by the “imperialistic purposes” of Uncle Sam. “I asked them chaffingly whether in fact anyone in the Kremlin has lost a single minute’s sleep worrying about whether the Americans were about to drop an atomic bomb on Red Square,” Randolph recalled. “They were all too honest to pretend they had.”

Little did they know his father would drop the bomb if he could.

  'Let documents be your guide:' A Q&A with author and ICIJ member Thomas Maier

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Winston Churchill "Iron Curtain" Speech

This is an audio recording of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ’s entire March 5, 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech, accompanied by s… read more

This is an audio recording of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ’s entire March 5, 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech, accompanied by still images and some brief motion picture segments. The recording begins with President Harry Truman ’s introduction. No complete film recording of the speech is known to exist, but several minutes were captured by newsreel photographers and the audio was broadcast on radio and has been preserved. close

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