Iron Curtain

[MissDon]

Where did the term Iron Curtain originate?

[Piljim]

It was Winston Churchill who first described an Iron Curtain falling across Europe. I'm not quite sure as to the exact details of his speech, but it was soon after the war had finished. He was, of course, describing the forming of two distinct power blocs in Europe - the capitalist, American-dominated West, and the communist, Soviet-dominatied East. This was shown most clearly in Germany which had been divided into different zones in the wake of her defeat. Even Berlin was divided into four zones - the French, British, American and Soviet. In the 1960s, this gave rise to the erection of the Berlin Wall, the most graphic illustration of Churchill's Iron Curtain.

[allen ives]

From Stetin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. (Winston Churchill, speech at Westminster College, Fulton, USA, March 1946.)

[woolley]

Winston Churchill popularised the term, but he wasn't the first to use it. Goebbels used it in Feb 1945 in Das Reich.. Ethel Snowdon used it in 1920, refering to Russia. In 1914, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium spoke of an iron curtain between her and the Germans. It was also used in the Earl of Munster's journal in 1819.

[SRAYN1]

You'll find a whole feature on this subject, just click here article 669