Winston Churchill: Iron Curtain Speech (1946)
Audience
Winston Churchill wrote his speeches with the expectation that they would be read and studied, similarly to how he had read and studied speeches as a young student at Harrow. Besides his audience at Westminster College, he clearly expected that other informed people would read his words and react to them. The Westminster College audience received Churchill's words with warm appreciation, interrupting him several times for applause. This made sense; they heard the tenor of the entire speech, which was far less focused on the coming diplomatic breakdown with the Soviet Union, and far more centered on the future of the United Nations and the continuation of the wartime alliance between the United States and Britain. However, the speech was mainly reported for its stunning notion that an “iron curtain” had settled over Europe just ten months after V-E (Victory in Europe) Day; as a result, initial commentary was mostly unfavorable. While members of Churchill's own...
