Iron Curtain

IRON CURTAIN

IRON CURTAIN, a phrase made popular by the former British prime minister Winston S. Churchill in a speech in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946. He referred to the influence of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." As the Cold War emerged, President Harry S. Truman and other politicians used Churchill's metaphor to describe a dividing line in Europe between "West" and "East." The expression "behind the iron curtain" conjured an image of "captive peoples" suffering in a Soviet "bloc." Although Soviet influence over its neighbors varied country by country and the "curtain" did not move westward, the dark symbol served as anticommunist propaganda and helped spur the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Radio Free Europe. The Berlin Wall, erected by the Soviets in 1961, gave the symbol credence. In 1989 the communist governments in Eastern Europe collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down, and in 1991 the Soviet Union disintegrated. Consequently, the term lost its relevance and its value as a Cold War epithet.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harbutt, Fraser J. The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Paterson, Thomas G. On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 1992.

Thomas G. Paterson

See also Anticommunism ; Cold War .