Showing posts with label Westminster College. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Westminster College. Show all posts

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Winston Churchill – Sinews of Peace (Iron Curtain Speech)


Winston Churchill's address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.

In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe and declares,that "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. 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."

Churchill, who had been defeated for re-election as prime minister in 1945, was invited to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri where he gave this speech. President Harry S. Truman joined Churchill on the platform and listened intently to his speech. Churchill spoke of expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union and warned against "communist fifth columns" that were operating throughout western and southern Europe. Drawing parallels with the disastrous appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II, Churchill advised that in dealing with the Soviets there was "nothing which they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness."


MARGARET THATCHER - 50th Anniversary of Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech | 1996, Fulton, MO


Fifty years after Sir Winston Churchill heralded from the podium at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the descent of an "Iron Curtain" across Europe, another former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, paid tribute to his legacy on 9 March 1996.