The Iron Curtain Speech

- Winston Churchill, 1946

Mundos Anglófonos en Perspectiva Histórica y Cultural – Primer Semestre

Grado de Estudios Ingleses
On the 5th of March 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his speech “The Sinews of Peace”
at the Westminster College in the state of Missouri. The text is now a transcript of the
words he spoke then, and it was addressed to all English-speaking countries, namely the
Commonwealth and the United States, as to ponder on the consequences of the recently
finished World War II and what actions to take as defenders of the democratic values the
Allied forces defended against fascism. However, the real addressee for this speech is the
Soviet Union, as it will be further explored in this analysis.

Winston Churchill had been the British Prime Minister during wartime but lost
the election against the Labour candidate Attlee Clement in 1945. Despite him being the
former Prime Minister, he had been personally appointed by the President of the United
States Harry Truman, which proves how influential and respected his figure still was at
the time.

The speech was delivered months after the war was put to an end. Two major
conferences preceded the official end of World War II, in which the Allies agreed upon
several important resolutions for the post-war period: the Yalta Conference held in early
February 1945 and the Potsdam Conference that took place in August of the same year.
In both conferences, it was stated that, although joined in arms thanks to the
circumstances, tensions and obvious ideological differences were present within the Ally
Forces, as it will later be explored in this analysis.

Throughout his speech, Churchill appoints several issues at hand but focuses on
three major topics: the relevance of the United Nations as an organization to preserve the
peace, a proposition for a renewed alliance among English-speaking countries, and a
warning about the expansion of the communist values in Eastern Europe.

For the introduction of these topics, Churchill emphasizes the role the United
States exerts after World War II while standing “at the pinnacle of world power” and
holding the global hegemony. He urges the Americans to seize the opportunity presented
to them to persevere on “the safety and welfare, freedom and progress, of all the homes
and families (…) in all the lands”. He seeks to follow an “overall strategic concept” to
obtain such safety and welfare, and so he mentions two main dangers that threaten this
state: war and tyranny.

First, as for the threat of a new “war”, he claims it is “our task and duty to guard
the homes of the common people from the horrors and miseries of another war”, and for
such reason, they had reached the agreement to create the United Nations. Regarding its
role, Churchill hints to the previous League of Nations, which failed to prevent World
War II, in hopes that this new organization becomes “a true temple of peace in which the
shields of many nations can someday be hung up”. He urges the need to create an
equipped international army, that will later become the now known North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a military alliance joined by more than 30 North American and
European countries founded in 1949.

As for the second threat “tyranny”, Churchill professes the duty to proclaim the
“great principles of freedom and the rights of man” exercised in the English-speaking
world, which guarantee that all citizens must have the right to vote and partake in
government affairs, guaranteed freedom of speech, or a judiciary branch independent of
the executive power. Therefore, the countries that represent this “tyranny” are those that
don’t fully recognize these principles, namely Eastern Europe.

To confront both fears, he proposes an alliance between the British

Commonwealth, the British Empire, and the United States of America, as such a
relationship would maintain a mutual understanding between their societies and their
military relations. In other words, they should remain wary of potential new common
enemies that should arise while interchanging military knowledge and manpower. This
way they could avoid the “return of the Dark Ages” of new totalitarian states, as
“prevention is better than cure”.

Finally, we come to the issue at hand, what has made this speech so historically
referential and relevant: the warning on the advances of the communist Soviet Union.
Churchill alerts that “a shadow has fallen” upon the new world after the Allied victory,
and “an iron curtain has descended across the continent”. Through these statements, he
implies that many ancestral European capitals are now under Soviet control. The “iron
curtain” symbolizes the metaphorical barrier that divides Western Europe, defenders of
capitalist ideals, and Eastern Europe, mostly under the Soviet alliance. This division was
further solidified with the Warsaw Pact in 1955 on the one hand (signed by the Soviet
Union and seven countries of the Eastern Block), and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization founded in 1949 on the other (NATO). This division between blocks paves
the way to the solidification of the next major conflict that will put the whole world on
hold: the Cold War, an event that will divide the world in two for decades, and that will
last until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Churchill proceeds on alerting that “a new
war is inevitable and imminent”, and recalls how the previous war had started, and how
they all underestimated Hitler’s misdeeds while calling for unity “in sedate and sober
strength seeking no one’s land or treasure”. This unity, and especially a joint alliance
between the United States, would bring “an overwhelming assurance of security”.

This discourse was widely reported, and it prevailed through history as an

important document. Some historians even consider it the beginning of the Cold War. Its
importance relies mainly on the events that unfolded posteriorly, and its reactions were
immediate and equally divided. While some people feared a new confrontation against
the Soviets as it would divide the world in two right after the difficulties endured in World
War II, others saw this speech as an opportunity for Great Britain, whose power was
declining, as an opportunist suggestion. Stalin himself responds to the speech in an
interview shortly after and refers to Churchill as a “warmonger”. He says the English and
the Americans have given all non-English countries an “ultimatum” in which they had to
“recognize [their] dominance voluntarily and then all will be in order; on the contrary
case, war is inevitable” (McNeal).

The intention behind the speech was to get the general opinion to open to the idea
of a new war against those ideas that challenged the recently acquired capitalist
expansion. Churchill fuels this new fear of communist ideology, appearing to be
extremely preoccupied that the new “Dark Ages may return”, but it is still remarkable
how there is no hint of the fascist regime that was actively taking place at the time by
Franco in Spain. It was Stalin who at the aforementioned Potsdam Conference, held
barely six years after the Spanish Civil War had ended, reminded the other attendees
(Harry Truman and Clement Attlee) that Franco remained unpunished and ruling, but the
Ally Forces had had enough war and kept their indifference towards the Francoist regime
(Moradiellos 82), which was maintained for 30 more years and was even welcomed into
the United Nations in 1955. In his speech, Churchill emphasizes the danger the Soviet
Union poses for the recently reacquired democratic values, but he fails to point out the
fact that Spain remains under the specific values the Ally Forces fought against only one
year ago.

It was this fear and hatred towards communist ideas which led the Ally Forces to
approach regimes sympathizers to the Axis ideology, like the already mentioned Francoist
regime, and even financed them economically to avoid any rapprochement to the Eastern
Block. In the worst years of the Cold War, this rejection to socialist and communist ideas
was so flagrant that a blacklist was created to keep in check sympathizers of leftist
ideology in the Hollywood industry, denying employment to those involved or believed
to pertain (Perlman, 2020). Churchill claims that “in a great number of countries (…)
Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity” which constitutes
“a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization”, meaning he fears a Communist
expansion within the governments of settled Western democracies, with the exceptions
of the British Commonwealth and the US because “Communism is in its infancy”. To
prevent this Soviet expansion, a secret operation network was created by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the name of Gladio (Ganser 15), which resorted to
overwatch and overthrow by anti-democratic means to minimize the impact of any
European left-wing parties.

All in all, it is my personal conclusion that this text would be read in a completely
different light if the Cold War turned out differently. As it is, history is told by the winning
band, and therefore we regard Winston Churchill in high esteem. He is considered a
visionary who could foresee the damage Hitler would cause in World War II, and we tend
to dismiss many questionable deeds committed by the very same person, such as the
inactions his administration performed upon the Bengal famine or the recently reviewed
racist standpoints.

Personally, I find this speech impressively cunning. Churchill pretends to speak

from an observant’s point of view, an equidistant position with no implication in either
band as he is “seeking no one’s land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon
the thoughts of men”. However, the whole speech was utterly directed to stand from a
position that ultimately holds the British and American interests, that is to maintain the
solidness of the capitalist system and avoid any approach to the Marxist ideas. As it has
been described throughout this document, Churchill continuously defends a certain
standpoint, he omits specific data to favor his claims and he overexerts an at-the-time
nonexistent threat of war that will only commence after the Soviet Union’s governor Iosif
Stalin takes these words as a war declaration. However, whether this whole ordeal was
unavoidable or not is up to everyone’s imagination.
REFERENCES

Ganser, Daniele. NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western
Europe. Frank Cass Publishers, 2004.

McNeal, Robert H. Lenin. Stalin. Khrushchev. Voices of Bolshevism. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice
Hall, 1963. Retrieved December 01, 2020, from http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1947-2/cold-
war/cold-war-texts/stalin-on-churchills-iron-curtain-speech/

Moradiellos, Enrique. "The Potsdam Conference and the Spanish Problem." Contemporary
European History, vol. 10, no. 1, 2001, pp. 73-90. ProQuest, https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.uned.es/docview/204212587?accountid=14609.

Perlman, A. (2020). Hollywood Blacklist. Retrieved November 09, 2020, from

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hollywood-blacklist

P. Rossi, John. "Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech." The Imaginative Conservative. 6 May
2014. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

Royde-Smith, J. G., & Hughes, T. A. (1998). Costs of the war. Retrieved November 09, 2020,
from https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II/Costs-of-the-war

“The Sinews of Peace ('Iron Curtain Speech').” The International Churchill Society, 13 Apr. 2017,
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-
of-peace/