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 many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.

Winston Churchill in “Sinews of Peace,” delivered at Westminster College on March 5, 1946

On March 5, 1946—75 years ago—Winston Churchill delivered the “Sinews of Peace” at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. “Special relationship” to describe US-UK relations and “Iron Curtain” both became household terms after the speech, and some, particularly Russian historians, point to this moment as the official start to the Cold War.

At the time, Churchill was serving as leader of the opposition in Parliament after losing the UK general election in 1945. The world was recovering from the Second World War and ready for peace. Many in the United States and elsewhere were optimistic about future relations with the Soviet Union, an American and British ally just a few months before, and the possible peace that might come from the United Nations, whose Security Council started its first session in London in January 1946. Yet the former and future prime minister delivered a startling message to Americans who were largely unprepared to countenance the prospect of a looming, decades-long conflict against communism after winning the war against fascism. Though the American public was not ready for Churchill’s message, at least some in the US government were. “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (or “The Long Telegram”) by George F. Kennan, the deputy chief of mission of the United States to the Soviet Union, arrived secretly to the State Department in Washington, DC, in February 1946. In July 1947 under the pseudonym “Mr. X,” Foreign Affairs published this article describing the need to contain the USSR.

Many Americans disliked and criticized the speech. For instance, Christianity and Crisis editor and founder Reinhold Niebuhr called it “ill-timed and ill-advised” in the only reference his journal made to it in 1946. He and others in the publication were discussing the possibility of US-USSR cooperation or alliance, and how the new United Nations might benefit global order with “world government.” Niebuhr blamed Churchill for unwisely heightening tensions and undermining a “creative solution” to the “atomic bomb problem.” Yet Churchill better understood what the Soviets had already done in Eastern Europe. The problem was not the speech, but the Soviet actions the speech exposed. While many Americans dreamed of an alliance with Moscow and “Uncle Joe” (the friendly image of Joseph Stalin in Western media), they forgot that the Soviet Union had a vote on whether they wanted to be an ally or adversary.

In this episode of the Foreign Policy ProvCast, Joseph Loconte and Mark Melton discuss the “Sinews of Peace,” the post-World War II situation in Eastern Europe, why the American public and media disliked Churchill’s message, what President Harry Truman knew about the speech beforehand, whether or not the future special relationship between the US and UK was obvious in March 1946, and the speech’s legacy.

Loconte also co-wrote an article with Nile Gardiner about the “Sinews of Peace” for National Review.

Rough Transcript

Mark Melton

Welcome back to the Foreign Policy ProvCast. My name is Mark Melton. I’m the managing editor of Providence. And today I’m speaking with Joseph Loconte. He is the director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American studies at the Heritage Foundation. And today we’re going to be talking about the Iron Curtain speech, officially known as The Sinews of Peace speech, which was given on March 5th, 1946, seventy-five years ago. And so Winston Churchill gave this speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Winston Churchill was serving as leader of the opposition after losing the UK General Election in 1945. And as I said, the speech is known as the Iron Curtain Speech. It’s where we get the term ‘special relationship’ to describe the US-UK relationship. For some people, it starts the Cold War, though some of the dates vary, but this is one possible official start to the Cold War.

Well, first off, thank you so much again for joining us today. And my first question is, could you describe the speech’s historical context?

Joseph Loconte

Yes, Mark. It’s great to be with you. Thanks for having me here. It’s an amazing moment in American diplomatic history because you remember the Second World War has ended -1945 in the fall. So here we are just a handful of months later in 1946. The United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain had been allies through the Second World War in defeating the Nazis, defeating the Japanese. So here are these triumphant allies in 1945, a few months later now, 1946. And Winston Churchill is warning about a new threat, a new totalitarian threat, what he describes as the Iron Curtain.

And I’ll read you the lines here, uh, from Churchill because they are, uh, they’re so remarkable. It’s such a turning point, in a sense, in world history. “A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory,” Churchill says. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

He’s talking about the European continent: Eastern Europe now controlled, effectively controlled by the Soviet Union, Western Europe, still liberal, democratic, and relatively free. Who could have imagined that kind of division of forces and ideologies, once the Second World War had begun? That the nation that had been our ally, the Soviet union, engaged in this fight to liberate the European continent is now engaged in a real sense, not in a liberation, but in a complete domination of half of that continent. And Churchill is really the first statesman -this is the, this is the important thing about Churchill- he is the first major statesman to acknowledge what has already happened in Eastern Europe. Not what’s going to happen, but what already has happened. No one has really the backbone, the gumption to say it.

Mark Melton

Right, and talking about the gumption to say it, like I know in hindsight, we can kind of look at this day and be like, “well, of course, we’re going to have a cold war that’s going to happen.” But there is, I’ve noticed like some, some hints in American public opinion that that might not be the case or that Americans may not realize it so much. And I, you know, thinking specifically about in Providence, we publish and comment and analyze old articles from Christianity and Crisis, usually around the 75th anniversary. And this is a publication by Reinhold Niebuhr, who is a Christian realist, the father of Christian realism, according to many. And when I read through some of these, like some of their policy prescriptions seem, uh, seem kind of odd. Because there’s some… In 1945, there’s one piece I’ve found that talks about, well can we have an alliance with the Soviet Union? Or should we have an alliance against the Soviet Union? And I think that kind of, it kind of forgets that the Soviets have a choice. They have a vote in whether or not they’re going to be our friend or our adversary. And, uh, and actually I found the only, only piece in 1946 I could find that mentions Churchill’s speech here at Westminster College is from April when Reinhold Niebuhr called it, quote “ill-timed and ill advised.” And so it looks like Reinhold Niebuhr was not a fan of the speech. So could you give us kind of a review or kind of, what was the public opinion in America about geopolitics at this moment?

Joseph Loconte

Yeah, it’s an excellent question Mark. Here’s where as an historian, we want to walk as much as we can into their world, into the world particularly of the Americans and the Brits at this moment. So they’ve, they fought the bloodiest war that civilization has ever faced, the Second World War. The Brits have been through six years of war. We’ve been through four years of it. It’s engaged our national economies. It was an existential battle, wasn’t it?…for human freedom. We’re decisive in our victory. And yet you can easily understand why both Americans and Britons would be war weary, war weary. You, you finally defeated the Nazi menace, both, uh, the fascist menace, the Japanese, the Germans, and the Italians. It didn’t take too much to defeat the Italians, that’s another story. But of course, you’re war weary, and no one wants to be now engaged in another ideological conflict, or God forbid another military conflict.

So it’s a very natural reaction to say, look, the Soviet Union was our ally during the war. Why would we want to pick a fight with them now? Uh, in 1946, we have no stomach for it, no resources for it, no national will for this thing. And so what Churchill is doing is once again, he is going completely against the conventional wisdom in establishment Washington and probably in establishment Great Britain as well. He’s against the grain. But once again, he has a much more realistic grip on the situation than his critics do. And I have to say Reinhold Niebuhr also does not fully appreciate what has happened behind the Iron Curtain… what has happened to Eastern Europe in the absorption of those countries into the Soviet fold?

Mark Melton

Well, that’s one of the nice things about going to these primary texts to see what people were actually thinking at that actual moment.

Joseph Loconte

Exactly.

Mark Melton

…Instead of asking them, what were you thinking of five, 10 years ago? Like actually read what they wrote in their diaries or op-eds or whatnot.

Joseph Loconte

Exactly.

Mark Melton

And so what role did this speech play in shaping US opinion? Because obviously if Reinhold Niebuhr is having to talk about it, even though he clearly doesn’t want, he still has to mention it. It seems to have had some impact on what Americans were thinking and talking about.

Joseph Loconte

Well, this is where historians are going to part company. They’re going to have a real debate on this, which is fine. It’s a good, healthy debate, Mark. How much did Churchill’s speech initiate the cold war? How much did it accelerate the cold war?

I’m working on a book project on this right now on Churchill, Stalin, FDR at Yalta, 1945. The Yalta meeting was their last war time meeting of the big three in 1945. They haven’t yet won the war, but they’re confident they’re going to. Stalin made a whole host of promises, in 1945 at Yalta about democratic freedom in Eastern Europe and all those countries where the Soviet army had occupied. He was promising free and fair democratic elections in those countries. None of that happened. Virtually every promise that Stalin made at Yalta, he broke. And that’s becoming clear to most people who are, uh, I would say, uh, politically awake and morally sane.

It’s becoming clear to most people by 1946, that something’s wrong in the Soviet block… something’s desperately wrong in Eastern Europe. The expectations though are, “wait a minute, why isn’t Stalin fulfilling his promises?” And that creates a kind of disillusionment because I think what Churchill is doing is he’s -as I said a minute ago- he is underscoring the reality. The problem now is there’s a disillusionment going on on the American side. Stalin had been built up as Uncle Joe, an aspiring Democrat who would love to join the United Nations and be a force for good in the world. That’s Franklin Roosevelt’s doing. That’s part of Roosevelt’s legacy is setting up the American people for a deep sense of disillusionment. But now FDR is dead and Harry Truman is in office and Truman was by, uh, Roosevelt’s side throughout the Second World War. So Truman has a much more realistic perspective on the situation. It’s Truman who invited Winston Churchill to give the speech, the cold war speech, over there at Westminster College. Can we blame Winston Churchill and that speech for somehow accelerating the Cold War? My response to the story would be “absolutely not, Churchill has brought to light the situation and is now, alerting statesmen to the danger, to the real danger.”

Mark Melton

And this wasn’t one of my original questions, but do you think Truman knew what Churchill was going to say? Like, I would guess he would, but I haven’t really thought about it in that angle.

Joseph Loconte

Well, Truman was asked, of course, after Churchill delivered the speech, “was he aware of the speech that Winston Churchill was going to deliver?” They had traveled by train together from Washington, out there to uh, to Fulton, Missouri. And they clearly did discuss the speech. Truman knew exactly what Churchill was going to say, but when he was asked that question afterwards, he dissembled. He said he was not aware of the speech. So Truman is aware again, the American people were not prepared for the speech, for this message. And it was not well received in the American press at all. Uh, Walter Lippmann, the very well-known, journalist, very influential liberal journalist, also called it, like Niebuhr, “especially ill timed… a mistake.” It was savaged by other other press: the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, etc. but as usual, the liberal press got it wrong.

Let me point this out here Mark. At almost the same time our chief diplomat in Moscow, George Kennan -this is when Kennan sent to the State Department from Moscow his quote unquote “long telegram” laying out his vision for a doctrine of containment, containing the Soviet union because they were going to be needed to be contained because they had visions of global domination. That’s George Kennan, our chief diplomat, and that telegram arrives literally within days of Churchill’s speech. So if anything is affecting American foreign policy, it’s the message from Kennan and our own State Department about where the Soviet Union is.

Mark Melton

No, as you were talking, I was thinking about how, I mean I hear speeches or read the transcripts of speeches all the time. And so my guess would be a speech by itself isn’t going to start the Cold War. There have to be facts on the ground that correspond with it.

Joseph Loconte

Exactly.

Mark Melton

So Churchill briefly talks about the special relationship between the US and the UK. Now, this relationship has not always been sunshine and lollipops. During World War Two, some British complained about American troops being “overpaid and over here.” Later, after this speech, when Churchill was Prime Minister again, he and Eisenhower, butted heads a bit over Egypt and the Suez Canal before the crisis there. And so with Eisenhower being antagonistic toward colonialism and Churchill defending it… so one of my questions here is, was there a risk that the special relationship would fall apart, the same way that the American and Soviet relationship was going to fall apart? And it seems obvious now, in hindsight, that the US and UK would work together, but was it always so obvious in 1946?

Joseph Loconte

Excellent question Mark. I don’t think it was obvious, in the sense that it was not clear at all to most Americans, that we were going to bind our political future to that of Western Europe and the protection of Western Europe. That’s what Harry Truman set out in the Truman Doctrine. And once we set that out, once we established that as a national priority, that we are going to defend Western Europe against the Soviet Union -that’s the great enemy now, Soviet Communism not the Nazis, they’re defeated. Now it’s the Soviet Union. Once we decide to establish NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Marshall Plan, the economic bailout of those Western European countries, then it becomes obvious that Great Britain is going to be a crucial partner in all of these endeavors -in NATO, in the Marshall Plan, in the defense of Western Europe. Britain will be our most important and reliable ally. Churchill sees that, I think with a kind of foresight and almost prophetic quality, that others don’t. I’ll read you a few lines from Churchill in his speech if I could, because it is, um, it’s just so remarkable I think the insight he had into the shared democratic traditions of the United States and Great Britain… Why that was so important for world peace.

He says, “we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man, which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and through which the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, English common law, find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.” And then he closes “here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind.”

So you see what he’s done Mark, he’s taken this great political liberal democratic tradition, starting really with Great Britain and the Magna Carta, English common law… He’s traced it through the American Declaration and in another place he called our Declaration, the “third great Title Deed in the great title deeds of human freedom:” the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights and the American Declaration. So there’s joint political inheritance in liberal democratic values. Self-government, government by consent of the governed. Churchill is absolutely convinced these two great democratic states have to work together to resist Soviet Communism. And he’s absolutely right, they do.

Mark Melton

I know earlier you mentioned the quote about the, uh, let me pull it up here…. the […] of the iron curtain is coming down. You mentioned that quote here and in that I think right afterward, it talks about how, you know, the communist parties, which were very small in Eastern Europe, he’s saying they’re coming to preeminence, far beyond their power and numbers and that they are seeking to obtain totalitarian control. And quote, “police governments are now prevailing in nearly every case, so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.”

And so could you describe a little bit of what was going on behind the Iron Curtain? I know you alluded to it, but what are some of the different things going on?

Joseph Loconte

Yeah. And I want to also commend if I could, I have to have it right here, Anne Applebaum’s wonderful book, called ‘Iron curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944 to 1956.’ She’s a terrific scholar, Anne Applebaum. It’s a wonderful book. And it really describes the systematic takeover of these East European governments with these active minority parties -communist parties- and the way that they infiltrate, the propaganda, the way that democratic opposition will be muzzled, or sent out to concentration camps.

Poland is the classic example here. Poland was the country that, was really under fierce discussion and debate during the Yalta meetings, because the invasion of Poland, of course, in 1939 is what started the Second World War. Now we have a Poland in 1945 that has been invaded, liberated, supposedly by the Soviet Union, the Soviet army. Well, the Soviet army is still there in Poland. So what’s going to happen to the Polish government. The Polish government that has been, has been in exile, fighting for its democratic freedom. Stalin promises explicitly at Yalta, Poland will have free and fair democratic elections. That doesn’t happen. The Polish democratic opposition is taken out, shuttled off to a prison camp in the Soviet Union. That kind of thing is going on in these other East European countries as well.

East Germany, of course. Eastern Germany is occupied by the Soviet army, Western Germany occupied by the United States, Great Britain and France. So that country is divided down the middle. By the time you get now to 1945, 46, Berlin itself is divided. The city of Berlin is divided. Eastern Berlin is Soviet Communist, Western Berlin, United States, Great Britain and France. So this division is happening. It’s happening within weeks after the close of the Yalta Conference in March… February of 1945. So by the time you get to 1946, there’s been a greater and greater encroachment in these countries and the takeover, the effect of takeover of those countries by these minority communist parties, all supported by Stalin, all supported by the Soviet Union, getting their marching orders.

Mark Melton

So what did Churchill want out of this? Like what was his end goal? Like I think we can kind of guess like, you know, he wanted the US and UK to work together. But like what were also some of his views on strength and weakness and how should the West respond?

Joseph Loconte

You know Mark, it was not obvious at all in 1946 that the United States was going to commit itself to the defense of Western Europe. That was not obvious. If you think about what happened during the First World War, after we defeat Germany, the United States does not join the League of Nations. It doesn’t sign the Treaty of Versailles. Uh, doesn’t really get involved in European affairs in any major way, as the two great totalitarian ideologies begin their March through Europe: communism, and fascism. So the great fear that Churchill has is it’s going to be a replay. The United States is once again, okay, “declare victory and go home.” Um, but he’s desperate to avoid that scenario. He desperately wants the United States to commit its military, economic, moral resources to the defense of Western Europe, and to try to contain the Soviet Union. That was not a done deal at all.

So that’s going to mean the practical sharing of information. Uh, Churchill really wanted the United States to share the latest nuclear secrets with Great Britain. We did not. They would go on and develop the bomb on their own. It was a friendly relationship, but even there, it wasn’t as friendly as Churchill would have wanted. But he certainly wanted a sharing of military intelligence, understanding what the Soviet Union is up to, where they are, and of course, a diplomatic friendliness where there could be these, off-the-record conversations about American policy toward the Soviet Union, toward the Eastern block and a collaboration, if you will when tensions arise, when there is a crisis moment.

So for example, when the Soviet Union decides to blockade West Berlin, all traffic into West Berlin in 1947, to try to force the allies out of West Berlin, the United States and Great Britain are working in tandem on that to pull off this amazing airlift: 320 some odd days or longer of continuous round-the-clock air support, getting food and fuel into West Berlin. That is an American-British venture. So exactly the thing that Churchill wanted was that kind of collaboration in a moment of crisis to stand down the Soviet Union. They did it, they used soft power to do it, but it was a tense moment and we really needed the Brits with us on that and they were.

Mark Melton

And so what do you think is the long-term legacy of this speech?

Joseph Loconte

Fabulous question. And I think we’re still going to be unpacking it. Here we are 75 years later. Um, I think it drew clearly, the picture of the world in which the United States and Great Britain, um, had to face as allies. They had to face a world of great ideological divisions and great ideological threat from Soviet Communism. And Churchill’s understanding about the need to project power and strength, not weakness, and to have a military preparedness that reflected that willingness to stand up to Soviet Communism… Churchill’s understanding of that as a statesman, I think the lessons echo into our own day. You had to show strength and resolve on the ground, in your public pronouncements, in your diplomacy, in your economic aid, you had to show strength and resolution in the face of tyranny. So that alliance, the cementing of the alliance of the United States and Great Britain, you can really argue that the great triumphs that we did experience through the Cold War in checking communist aggression, and then finally bringing down the Soviet Union, it was in part, the result of that Anglo-American special relationship.

I don’t think you could really explain the disillusion of the Soviet Empire without it. That’s quite a legacy if I’m correct… if the American-British relationship was that important to the end of the Cold War, I think it was, that’s quite a legacy.

Mark Melton

Well, Jo, thank you so much for joining us today and spending time to talk to us about this very historic speech that, you know… it’s something, it’s not an anniversary I think a lot of people are noticing the same way you would notice like the Day of Infamy or the end of World War II, or the dropping of the bomb, but it is still a very, very powerful historical moment for the United States and the Western world and the 20th century.

Joseph Loconte

Thank you, Mark. Great to be with you.

Mark Melton

Thank you.