On This Day: Winston Churchill warns of ‘Iron Curtain’ dividing Europe

MARCH 5, 1946: Winston Churchill warned of a Soviet-imposed 'Iron Curtain', dividing capitalist and communist Europe, in one of his most famous speeches on this day in 1946.

The former wartime Prime Minister also coined the term 'special relationship' as a name for the Anglo-American alliance in his landmark address to a U.S. audience.

But it was most significant for warning of a new, communist peril facing Europe at a time when most people viewed the USSR warmly for helping to defeat the Nazis.

Mr Churchill, who stood beside U.S. President Harry Truman, successfully used the speech to change American and British perceptions of their eventual Cold War enemy.

He controversially told an audience at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri that a 'shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately light by the Allied victory'.

Mr 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 of control from Moscow.'

Mr Churchill also used his 'Sinews of Peace' speech to advance the notion of a bond between the English-speaking people of the world serving the good of mankind.

In the final passage, filmed by British Pathé, he added: 'If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure.

[On This Day: Churchill suffers election defeat]

'On the contrary there will be an overwhelming assurance of security. If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength seeking no one's land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men; if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the highroads of the future will be clear, not only for our time, but for a century to come.'

[On This Day: Hungarian Uprising against Soviet domination begins]

The speech, given eight months after Mr Churchill had lost the leadership of Britain following Labour’s landslide election win, was received very badly at the time.

Many in the U.S. congress described it as 'shocking' and one American newspaper accused the Conservative leader of 'declaring ideological war against Russia'.

The Soviet press did not print the speech and dictator Joseph Stalin is said to have labelled the former British premier as a 'warmonger' when he heard it.

Yet the anger belies the fact that American, British and Soviet leaders knew that the relationship between the former allies were badly deteriorating.

[On This Day: Soviet forces enter Berlin]

So Mr Churchill, whose reputation for prescience was founded by being among the few British politicians who warned against the Nazi threat in the 1930s, simply spoke a truth no official wanted to publically acknowledge.

Indeed, a British Foreign Office report later claimed that the speech provided 'the sharpest jolt to American thinking of any utterance since the end of the war' and would 'set the pattern of discussion on world affairs for some time to come”.

[On This Day: Joseph Stalin dies]

The U.S. and Soviet Union spent the next 40 years in bitter opposition and the during the Cold War 'Iron Curtain' – a phrase Mr Churchill borrowed - was mostly vividly represented by the Berlin Wall.

In 1990 – a year after this division fell - former President Ronald Reagan praised Churchill’s foresight as being like a 'firebell in the night'.