Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In March 1946, the UK's former wartime leader, Winston Churchill, gave a historic speech which would come to symbolise the beginnings of the Cold War. Churchill had lost power following a crushing election defeat in Britain in 1945. Encouraged by the US President Harry Truman, Churchill agreed to give a speech on world affairs at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. But why did the speech have such an impact. Alex Last hears from the historian Prof David Reynolds of Cambridge University, author of The Kremlin Letters: Stalin's wartime correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt.
Photo: Winston Churchill at the podium delivering his "Iron Curtain" speech, at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri, 5th March 1946 (PA)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and in the BBC World Service, |
| 0:35.0 | with me Alex Last. |
| 0:40.0 | And in today's episode, we go back to March 1946 when Winston Churchill signaled the |
| 0:47.0 | beginnings of the Cold War when he famously warned the world that growing |
| 0:51.9 | Soviet control over Eastern Europe meant an iron curtain |
| 0:56.2 | was descending across the continent. |
| 0:58.8 | This is the story behind that speech. From Stettin, in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, |
| 1:08.0 | an iron curtain has descended across the continent. |
| 1:12.0 | On the 5th of March, 1946, soon after the end of the Second World War, |
| 1:18.0 | Winston Churchill, Britain's former Prime Minister just recently out of office gave what would be a historic |
| 1:25.1 | speech in a packed gymnasium at an obscure college in Fulton, Missouri. The gymnasium |
| 1:32.0 | has been beautified for the occasion. |
| 1:35.0 | There is a grand podium, there are flowers all around. |
| 1:39.0 | The dignitaries are all arrayed in academic dress and funny hats. |
| 1:45.0 | Churchill has simply said that he will give a talk on world affairs. |
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