Iron Curtain Speech

2024-05-2300:09 Status: Tags:

Winston Churchill

During WWII, Stalin sought to claim the region between Germany and The Soviet Union (alongside Soviet allied states). This objective further strained relations - especially at the Yalta Conference (February 1945), and subsequent Potsdam Conference (August 1945). Western states pushed against Stalin’s desire to control these buffer states, as they were afraid that The Soviet Union was forming an empire. However, regions of Poland, the Balkans, Romania, and Finland were assigned to be under Soviet control after this conference. As an expression of gratitude, Stalin promised that these nations would be self sovereign, although largely unconvincing. Churchill in particular thought that the decimated Europe may be a victim to the Soviet “empire’s” reign. So he was particularly skeptical as he wanted to retreat back into American Isolationism.

Churchill’s suspicion spread across the west, as he gave his Iron Curtain Speech.

At Westminster College, Churchill gave his “Sinews of Peace” address on March 5th, 1946 he coined the term “Iron Curtain” to describe how Soviet control dominated much of Eastern Europe.

“From Stetting 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 surrounding populations lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet in” some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow”

Churchill framed the Soviet’s influence as a kind of disease, one that had to be quarantined. The ever expanding soviet influence was corrupting (for whatever reason), and he called for the unification between The US and The UK to combat this epidemic.

Joseph Stalin

Propagating the notion of communist rise to dictatorial power was initially was a difficult notion to spread as many Western states recognized the allyship they had with the Soviet Union during WWII. The term, Iron Curtain was used quite widely and colloquially (spreading past this border), and as a response to this, Stalin responded in a news article (official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Pavda). In which he accused Churchill of fear mongering and defended Soviet allyship with eastern states. He claimed that this was a mere protection of invasion. The central message of his speech was to shift the ire of the public to Churchill’s wrongdoing: Churchill sought to inject right-wing governance in Eastern Europe as a means of agitation. This disruption of stability was a particular worry for people residing in these Soviet states, so disruptors of this peace would be considered enemies.