Winston Churchill Didn’t Originate “Iron Curtain”
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels used it several times before Churchill made it famous
Undoubtedly, “Iron Curtain” was one of the most-used Cold War phrases. Popular history attributes the metaphoric barrier separating Soviet-controlled Europe from the rest of the continent to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In fact, credit for coining the phrase to describe the Soviet Union’s policies likely belongs to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Churchill was traveling in the United States in early 1946 when Westminster College in President Harry Truman’s home state of Missouri invited him to speak. Although Churchill was no longer prime minister, Truman accompanied him to the Fulton, Mo., college. In the March 5, 1946, speech, Churchill said:
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…
