Winston Churchill: Iron Curtain Speech (1946)
Impact
Churchill tends to be credited for recognizing the changing nature of the relationship between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union; because he helped design the “iron curtain” to a minor extent, such is hardly a surprise. The “sinews of peace” was a concept for which he deserved far greater credit, though few people read or heard the entire speech. In effect, the last nineteenth-century imperialist transformed himself into the first credible twentieth-century internationalist.
The “special relationship” Churchill defined as central to the “sinews of peace” was hardly the given that Americans see it as today. In the nineteenth century, cultural affinities between Britain and the United States were recognized, especially as immigration changed the nature of American citizenship and intellectuals began to define the world in terms of “races.” Yet at the same time, no American forgot that the United States was originally a rebellious colony that had freed itself...
