What was iron curtain speech

Churchill, who had won the war in Europe, only to lose in the British general election in July , 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 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. 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. On the cold, snowy night of March 5, , a mob of American colonists gathers at the Customs House in Boston and begins taunting the British soldiers guarding the building.

The protesters, who called themselves Patriots, were protesting the occupation of their city by British More specifically, it is linked with the music of the late-'60s counterculture and antiwar movement. But opposition to the war was far from For the first time in U. President Andrew Johnson, reviled by the Republican-dominated Congress for his views on Reconstruction, stood accused of having violated the controversial Tenure An estimated 25 million Hula Hoops were sold in its first four months of production Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox.

Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union since , dies in Moscow. Ioseb Dzhugashvili was born in in Georgia, then part of the old Russian empire. 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. 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 from 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.