This Day in History -- The Iron Curtain

On this day in 1946, on a stage at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill declared:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has fallen 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 what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.

The origins of the Cold War are complex, controversial, and to some extent still obscure. No fixed date signals its onset. But Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" speech marks a formal recognition of its existence and is therefore an important marker.

I seem to be blogging a lot about Churchill lately. Must be something about the times we live in.