Iron Curtain

Most famously, this phrase refers to the impenetrable social, cultural and political barrier that Soviet Russia set up between Eastern Europe and the West after WWII. The phrase is most often attributed to Winston Churchill in a speech he made in America 5 March 1946, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” There is also evidence that he used the phrase earlier in a telegram to President Truman 12 May 1945. Churchill certainly popularised the phrase, but there is evidence to suggest that he did not coin it. Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, who was German born, is documented as using the phrase in 1914 to describe her antipathy towards Germany after the Germans had invaded Belgium. “Between them (the Germans) and me there is now a bloody iron curtain, which has descended forever.” It also appears in a little known work Through Bolshevik Russia (1920) by Mrs Philip Snowden, chapter two, page 32, “We were behind the ‘iron curtain’ at last!”