Excerpt from the "Iron Curtain Speech" (also known as the "Sinews of Peace speech"), March 5, 1946

Reprinted from 'Iron Curtain' Speech Fifty Years Later,
published in 1999

"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.… All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in … the Soviet sphere, and all are subject … to Soviet influence … and … [an] increasing measure of control from Moscow."

On March 5, 1946, wearing his top hat and cape and smoking a cigar, former British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) traveled with U.S. president Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53) to the American Midwest to Fulton, Missouri. In Fulton, he visited the campus of small...