COLD WAR SPEECHES: 1940s
Winston Churchill's Speech at Fulton, Missouri
(5 March 1946)
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 the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow....
The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these eastern states of Europe, have been raised to preeminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.... Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts - and facts they are - this is certainly not the liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.
Josef Stalin's reply to Churchill (14 March 1946)
In substance, Mr. Churchill now stands in the position of firebrand of war. And Mr. Churchill is not alone here. He has friends not only in England but also in the United States of America.
In this respect, one is reminded remarkably of Hitler and his friends. Hitler began to set war loose by announcing his racial theory, declaring that only people speaking the German language represent a fully valuable nation. Mr. Churchill begins to set war loose, also be a racial theory, maintaining that only nations speaking the English language are fully valuable nations, called upon to decide the destinies of the entire.
The German racial theory brought Hitler and his friends to the conclusion that the Germans, as the only fully valuable nation, must rule over other nations. The English racial theory bring Mr. Churchill and his friends to the conclusion that nations speaking the English language, being the only fully valuable nations should rule over the remaining nations of the world.
President Harry S. Truman's Congressional Address
(12 March 1947)
The people's of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech, and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free people to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and ordered political processes.
Sources: Churchill - The Congressional Record, 79th Congress, 2nd Session, A (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office), pp. 1145-1147; Stalin - New York Times, March 14, 1946, p. 4; Truman - The Congressional Record, 80-th Congress, 1st Session A (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office), vol. 93, p. 1981.