What was the "Iron Curtain?"

The "iron curtain" was a phrase used by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to describe the expansion of Soviet influence into Eastern Europe. Churchill coined the phrase in a speech he gave in US President Harry Truman's home state of Missouri (at Truman's invitation) in 1946, just one year after the end of World War II. All the nations of Eastern Europe, Churchill warned, were falling "not only to Soviet influence but to a...

The "iron curtain" was a phrase used by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to describe the expansion of Soviet influence into Eastern Europe. Churchill coined the phrase in a speech he gave in US President Harry Truman's home state of Missouri (at Truman's invitation) in 1946, just one year after the end of World War II. All the nations of Eastern Europe, Churchill warned, were falling "not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow." At the time of the speech, it was clear that a Communist government would be established in Poland, and it seemed likely that Stalin's influence would prevail in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and of course Soviet-occupied East Germany as well. Yugoslavia and Albania were also communist countries, but not directly under the influence of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Churchill's speech was a warning that the struggle of World War II was to be followed by another, different type of conflict. Combined with the so-called "Long Telegram" from American diplomat George Kennan, which urged the US government to adopt a policy of "containment," this speech was one of the most important documents of the early Cold War. It was intended to serve as a sort of wake-up call to the United States, which would necessarily become the leader of any opposition to Communism. The phrase came to symbolize the divide between eastern and western Europe, and that between communists and the West more generally, that persisted until 1989.