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A New Look at Churchill'S ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Henry B. Ryan
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Extract

Churchill's ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946, was a major effort to promote both a strengthened Anglo-American combination and a firmer western front against the Soviet Union. In the months between his electoral defeat and his talk at Fulton he had viewed Soviet consolidation in Europe with continuing concern, probably coupled with despair at his own inability to do very much about it. This presidential invitation, however, to deliver an address at an American college could provide a means to push to the fore the policies that he believed in. Certainly, the effect of his talk can be overestimated, but, despite its failure to create the very close alignment Churchill hoped for with the United States, it undoubtedly contributed to hardening western positions towards the Soviets.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 895 - 920
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

2 For a description of his mood, see Moran, Lord, Winston Churchill: the struggle for survival, 1940–1965 (London, 1968, paperback edn), pp. 311–44.Google Scholar See also Yergin, Daniel, The shattered peace: the origins of the cold war and the national security state (Boston, 1977), pp. 174–5.Google Scholar

2 Good examples of this view are provided in F.O. 371–44539, paper AN 3373 and AN 3657. weekly political summaries dated 5 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1945, respectively. Unless otherwise stated, manuscript material referred to in this article is located in the Public Record Office.

3 See Cab. 129, vol. 1, C.P. (45) 144, memorandum, 1 Sept. 1945 for Attlee's statement; Hansard vol. 419, cols. 1363–6 for Bevin's, made on 21 02 1946Google Scholar; and vol. 420, col. 749 for McNeil's made on 11 Mar. 1946.

4 PREM 8 (349), minute, 27 Sept. 1945.

5 The passages are quoted from the New York Times, 6 Mar. 1946, which recorded and transcribed the talk.

6 MrsPhilip, (Ethel) Snowden, , Through Bolshevik Russia (London, 1920), p. 32Google Scholar.

7 Herz, Martin F., Beginnings of the cold war (Bloomington, Ind., 1966), pp. 86 and 107, n. 20Google Scholar.

8 Trevor-Roper, Hugh (ed.), The Goebbels diaries: the last days (London, 1978)Google Scholar, entry for 18 Mar. 1945. This entry can also be found in the Observer, which serialized this edition of the diaries. See the issue of 26 Feb. 1978.

9 Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War (London, 1954), vi, 498Google Scholar.

10 PREM 3 (356/13), p. 1123.

11 Foreign relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), ‘Conference of Berlin (Potsdam) 1945’, 11, 362. See also Byrnes, , All in one lifetime (New York, 1958), p. 293Google Scholar.

12 Hansard, vol. 413, col. 83–4. See also the discussion in McNeill's, William H.America, Britain and Russia: their co-operation and conflict, 1941–6 (London, 1953), p. 629Google Scholar.

13 New York Times, 16 Nov. 1945.

14 Churchill, The Second World War, vi, 437–9.

15 Ibid., pp. 431–4.

16 For Truman's speech, see New York Times, 28 Oct. 1945. Churchill's remarks to the house of commons can be found in Hansard, vol. 415, cols. 1290–1300, and to Truman in the Truman papers, Truman Library, Independence, Mo. (hereafter cited as ‘Truman papers’), secretary's file (PSF), letter, 8 Nov. 1945.

17 Acheson, , Present at the creation (London, 1970), p. 150Google Scholar.

18 New York Times, 10 Feb. 1946, English text broadcast by Moscow radio.

19 FRUS, 1946, VI, 695 n.

20 FRUS, 1946, VI, 696. Kennan, George, Memoirs: 1925–1950 (Boston, 1967), pp. 292–5Google Scholar.

21 Harriman, W. Averell and Abel, Elie, Special envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (London, 1976), p. 548Google Scholar.

22 FRUS, 1946, VI, 676.

23 New York Times, 28 Feb. 1946.

24 Ibid., 1 Mar. 1946.

25 Hansard, vol. 419, cols. 1363–6.

26 Ibid., col. 1349.

27 Truman papers, confidential file, letters, McCluer to Vaughan, 30 Nov. 1945 and Clark Clifford to Kenneth Marshall, 30 Apr. 1946. Donovan, Robert J., Conflict and crisis: the presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948 (New York, 1977), p. 190Google Scholar.

28 Truman papers, official file; Donovan, Conflict and crisis, p. 190. In his memoirs Truman devotes only three sentences to the talk, pointing out simply the hostile Soviet reaction which he thought was intended to divert attention from Russian troop movements in Iran. See Truman, Harry S., Memoirs (2 vols., New York, paperback edn, 1965), 11, 117Google Scholar.

29 Attlee papers, University College, Oxford (hereafter cited as ‘Attlee papers’), box 4, Churchill file. In the event, his daughter Sarah went also.

30 Ibid., telegram, 30 Oct. 1945.

31 Ibid., telegram, 31 Oct. 1945.

32 Halifax papers, Churchill College, Cambridge (hereafter cited as ‘Halifax papers’), A4.410.4.11, letter, 6 02 1946Google Scholar.

33 Attlee papers, box 4, Churchill file. Churchill in his letter had asked for ‘suitable facilities’, for which he offered to pay, and for the ‘necessary currency arrangements’. By facilities he probably meant telegrams, the diplomatic bag, plus secretarial and other embassy assistance, including a place to stay in Washington. Yergin seems to assume from the correspondence of Churchill with HMG and of Attlee with Halifax that the Labour government knew and approved beforehand what Churchill would say in America. This, I believe, is reading far too much into what was actually said. See Yergin, The shattered peace, P. 175.

34 The copy of this reply in the Truman papers, secretary's file, is dated 16 Nov. That in the Attlee papers, box 4, Churchill file, is dated a day later. The latter copy likely bears the date it was decoded and retyped in Number 10 Downing St and delivered to Churchill.

35 F.O. 371–51633, paper AN 1246, telegram, Halifax to F.O., 15 Apr. 1946.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Byrnes papers, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina (hereafter cited as ‘Byrnes papers’), folder 558, no. 14.

39 Williams, A prime minister remembers, pp. 162–3.

40 Byrnes, James F., All in one lifetime (New York, 1958), p. 349Google Scholar.

41 Halifax's, diary, Borthwick Institute for Historical Research, University of York (hereafter cited as ‘Halifax's diary’), 8 02 1946Google Scholar.

42 Halifax's diary, 10 Feb. 1946.

43 Ibid., 11 Feb. 1946.

44 Entry for 8 Feb. 1945, for example.

45 Attlee papers, box 4, Churchill file. Churchill returned to Florida 12 Feb., not 11 Feb. as Wright's words might imply. Furthermore, it was not really a weekend, but a period Sunday through Tuesday that Churchill was in Washington.

46 Ibid., my emphasis.

47 Attlee papers, box 6, file Bevin, E. record of conversation, 25 09 1946Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., box 4, Churchill file and Dalton's diary, London School of Economics and Political Science, 25 Feb. 1946.

49 Halifax's diary, 12 Feb. 1946 and also Birkenhead, Lord, Halifax (London, 1965), P. 559Google Scholar.

50 In his memoirs Pearson says Churchill rang up Canadian Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King and asked him if he could come to Washington to comment on the speech or if Churchill might send him the text, but that King referred him to Pearson. See Through diplomacy to politics (London, 1973), pp. 233–4Google Scholar.

51 Halifax's diary, 3 Mar. 1946.

52 Ibid., 17 Feb. 1946.

53 Ibid., 6 Mar. 1946.

54 Ibid., 18 03 1946 and also Birkenhead, , Halifax, p. 560Google Scholar.

55 Cab. 128, vol. 7, CM. (46) 14th conclusions, minute 1, confidential annex, 11 Feb. 1946.

56 Halifax had been scheduled for nearly a year to retire in the spring of 1946. See his letter to Churchill of 30 Apr. 1945, and Churchill's telegraphed reply of 18 June 1945. See also Halifax's letter to Churchill of 3 Dec. 1945, which shows that Bevin agreed generally with this schedule, fixing Halifax's departure from Washington for 1 May 1946. Halifax papers, A4. 410. 4. 11.

57 Byrnes papers, folder 557, ‘Memorandum of the Press and Radio News Conference, February 15, 1946’.

58 F.O. 371–51606, paper AN 458, supplement to weekly political summary, 18 Feb. 1946.

59 Unfortunately in this regard, all Bevin's private papers for the years he was foreign secretary regardless of their dates remain closed until 1982, thirty-one years from his death.

60 Cab. 128, vol. 5, CM. (46) 23rd conclusions, minute 6, 11 Mar. 1946.

61 British officials, at any rate, felt that Churchill's popularity and influence in America were enormous. H.M. Embassy Washington reported shortly after his defeat that Churchill had ‘a very large American following’ and said ‘the extent to which Mr Churchill had gripped the American imagination is reflected in the nationwide cartoons and editorial tributes to what one paper called “This great Gladiator who bestrode the Continents like a Colossus”’. F.O. 371–44537, paper AN 2366, weekly political summary, 4 Aug. 1945.

62 Time magazine called it ‘a magnificent trial balloon’, a description with which J. L. Gaddis, to whom I am indebted for the quotation, concurs. See The United States and the origins of the cold war, 1941–1947 (New York: London, 1972), p. 307Google Scholar. Gaddis, however, feels Churchill confused the issue by coupling the Soviet question with that of an Anglo-American alliance (p. 309). This may well be, but the Anglo-American question was at least as important to Churchill as the other.

63 Cab. 128, vol. 5, C.M. (46) 23rd conclusions, minute 6, 11 Mar. 1946, and 25th conclusions, minute 1, 18 Mar. 1946.

64 F.O. 371–51624, paper AN 748, minute, Mason to Bevin, 12 Mar. 1946. Bevin noted on this minute, ‘The whole show needs a change’, referring probably to the government's information services, which, in fact, were in the process of being restructured.

65 F.O. 371–56356, paper N 6449, draft answer to a parliamentary question, 6 May 1946.

66 Williams, Francis, whose accounts of these events have figured rather importantly, states in A prime minister remembers (London, 1961), 162Google Scholar, ‘The immediate reaction of the Foreign Office was one of consternation.’ In Nothing so strange (London, 1970), p. 244Google Scholar, he says of the foreign office ‘It was thrown into a great tizzy by Churchill's Fulton speech, on which neither Attlee nor Bevin nor our Embassy in Washington had, of course, been consulted.’ If the foreign office was really in a tizzy, it was certainly under control by the time it committed anything to paper. Everything I have seen indicates solid approval of Churchill's talk from the start by nearly everyone except Hector McNeil. Williams is, of course, simply in error regarding the embassy in Washington not being consulted.

67 F.O. 371–51624, paper AN 748, telegram.

68 Hansard, vol. 420, col. 760.

69 Ibid., col. 761.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Williams, , A prime minister remembers, pp. 163–4Google Scholar.

73 Ibid., pp. 164–5.

74 F.O. 371–56355, paper N 6286, telegram, Cavendish-Bentinck to F.O., 13 May 1946.

75 Ibid.

76 F.O. 371–51606, paper AN 656.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.

79 F.O. 371–51633, paper AN 1246, minute, 13 May 1946.

80 Ibid., various reports in Mar. and Apr. 1946.

81 Ibid., telegram, Halifax to F.O., 8 Mar. 1946.

82 New York Times, 9 Mar. 1946.

83 Ibid.

84 F.O. 371–51633, paper AN 1246, telegram, Halifax to F.O

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid., or New York Times, 16 Mar. 1946.

87 F.O. 371–51633, paper AN 1246, telegram, Halifax to F.O., 8 Mar. 1946.

88 F.O. 371–51607, paper AN 742, telegram, Halifax to F.O.

89 The postwar loan which the British government was requesting from the United States.

90 The text of this talk was cabled by Halifax to Bevin the day it was made. See F.O. 371–51633, paper AN 1246. The text is also in the New York Times, 17 Mar. 1946.

91 Hansard, vol. 420, col. 749.

92 New York Times, 12 Mar. 1946.

93 Ibid.

94 F.O. 371–56781, paper N 3315, telegram, Roberts to F.O., 11 Mar. 1946.

95 New York Times, 12 Mar. 1946.

96 Ibid.

97 Matthews, Herbert, New York Times, 12 03. 1946Google Scholar, and F.O. 371–56781, paper N 3315, BBC monitor report, 11 Mar. 1946.

98 F.O. 371–56781, paper N 3315, telegram, Roberts to F.O., 11 Mar. 1946.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid.

101 New York Times, 14 Mar. 1946, text of the interview based on the Moscow broadcasts.

102 F.O. 371–56781, paper N 3442, telegram, Roberts to F.O., 14 Mar. 1946.

103 Ibid., minute, 16 Mar. 1946.

104 Ibid., telegram, Roberts to F.O., 14 Mar. 1946.

105 PREM 8 (349), telegram, Peterson to F.O., 28 May 1946.