Churchill's ""Iron Curtain"" Speech Fifty Years Later by Muller, James W.;

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Winston Churchill's visit to Fulton, Missouri, on March 5th, 1946, marked the first public recognition of the cold war that was to follow World War I. Churchill delivered his famous speech, ""The Sinews of Peace"", which became known by the phrase he used to describe the division of Europe, the ""iron curtain"". In the USA and Britain, wartime alliances had fostered favourable feelings toward the Soviet Union. By 1946 democratic citizens on both sides of the Atlantic had begun to consider communist Russia a friend. In his speech at Fulton, Churchill exhibited flexibility and a recognition of the main threat as he reminded the public that true friendship must be reserved for countries sharing a common love of liberty. The ""iron curtain"" speech defined postwar relations with the Soviet Union for citizens of Western democracies. Although it initially provoked intense controversy in the USA and Britain, criticism soon gave way to wide public agreement to oppose Soviet imperialism. Opening with the full text of the address Churchill delivered in Fulton and concluding with Margaret Thatcher's 50th anniversary address surveying the challenges facing Western democracies in this post-Cold War climate, this work brings together essays that reflect on the second half of the 20th century, recognizing Churchill's speech as a carefully conceived herald of the Cold War for the Western democracies. The essays seek to offer a fresh appreciation of the speech's historical, diplomatic and rhetorical significance.