On March 5, 1946, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke in Fulton, Missouri.
Excerpts from that address follow:
"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. 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 many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."
"If the Western democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter their influence for furthering those principles will be immense, and none is likely to molest them..."
Excerpts from an address by Sir Winston Churchill, March 5, 1946, Vital Speeches, Volume 12.
Why did Churchill make this speech?
- Soviet political control extended to the United States and Canada.
- The Cold War primarily threatened Europe, not the United States.
- The Iron Curtain blocked access to Britain.
- The Berlin Wall blocked access to East Germany.
- The United States was a military and economic world leader after World War II.