Churchill reminded people that in the 1930s he warned against the appeasement of Hitler and Nazi Germany, but “no one listened, and one by one we were all sucked into a terrible vortex.” He added: “This kind of thing must never happen again.” He said he did not believe the Soviet Union was seeking new conflicts, but wanted “the fruits of the war and the indefinite extension of its power and doctrine.” He warned that if Western democracies do not come together to protect their nations, united nations chartera founding document outlining the key principles of international relations, “Then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.”
In his long-running weekly magazine, Letters from America, for the first time in 50 years, veteran BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke recalled how muted Western public opinion had been to Churchill’s warnings. “Just 10 months after the Nazis surrendered, it was probably not the right time to warn the public about the threat posed by the Soviet Union,” he said. “I think most people in most free countries either sighed at Churchill’s words or got better and got angry.” Mr Cooke said that while many saw Churchill as “his old grumpy self, a warmonger”, “unfortunately we were wrong and the old debunker was right again”.
Establishment of NATO
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was furious at his former ally’s speech, comparing Churchill to the Nazis. he I wrote The Communist Party’s newspaper Pravda stated: “Hitler began provoking war by promulgating his racial theory, declaring that German-speaking peoples were the only fully worthy nation. Mr. Churchill also began provoking wars with his racial theory, claiming that English-speaking nations were the only fully worthy nation and were called upon to decide the fate of the entire world.”
In an effort to calm the situation, both the US and British governments initially distanced themselves from Churchill’s speech. But a year later, President Truman committed the United States to the role of champion of world democracy, pledging to stop Soviet expansion and the spread of communism. The Truman Doctrine, as it came to be known, led to the creation of NATO and later to U.S. involvement in the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.
Eventually, Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” would become a physical and metaphorical barrier with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1961. For 28 years, the Iron Curtain separated not only families and friends, but entire countries. After the Wall finally came down in 1989, the University of Westminster was visited separately by the leaders of the two superpowers. It is a symbolic location chosen to mark the end of the Cold War. 1990, US President Ronald Reagan Celebrated 1st anniversary A sculpture by Churchill’s granddaughter Edwina Sandys was dedicated to signal the demolition of the wall.
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
