March 5th this year marks the 75th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s visit to Fulton, Missouri, which was his only visit. On the campus of Westminster College, the former Prime Minister delivered his well-known “Iron Curtain” speech. At that time, US President Harry S. Truman sat by, and former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin made a fierce condemnation in Moscow. Today, Churchill’s trip to Fulton is regarded as a symbolic moment of ideological polarization in the early Cold War. And this speech is also one of his most admired speeches, which can be equated with the speech in the summer of 1940.
For these two reasons, it is impossible to talk about the anniversary, but this time the problem is even bigger. With the passage of time, Churchill’s comments will inevitably have some ups and downs, and politicians who are respected by their contemporaries may become the object of criticism and even be humiliated in the future. This is particularly evident in 2020. The black man’s life is also his life. The movement changed the focus of people’s evaluation of Churchill. He changed from a freedom hero who resisted the Nazis to an active defender of the British Empire. People’s views on Churchill are increasingly polarized-the hero on the right and the villain on the left-and both parties take his image out of context. Churchill was one of the most important leaders in the 20th century. It is necessary for us to look at him more comprehensively and stereoscopically. In this understanding, Churchill is a complex and vivid person, not a symbol or a devil. His speech in Fulton in March 1946 is a good starting point for research, because the connotation of this speech goes far beyond the slogan “The Iron Curtain slowly falls in postwar Europe”. In fact, Churchill himself did not take “The Iron Curtain” as the topic of his speech, but set it as “the lifeblood of peace”.
In June 2020, in front of Churchill’s statue in London, a BLM demonstrator held up the slogan “Racism is also a plague”. Image source: James Eades/Unsplash
Come down in one continuous line with his lifestyle. Churchill’s trip to Fulton was a prudent act of self-promotion-a thoughtful gesture in the face of the crumbling wartime alliance and a blow to his defeat in the July 1945 general election. The victory of the Labor Party marked the biggest rout of the Conservative Party since 1906. Churchill, who changed from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party and returned to the Conservative Party camp for the first time in the 1920s, first tasted the taste of being in a high position. In 1945, the Conservative Party played Churchill’s trump card in the election campaign-calling on voters to “help him accomplish the great cause”-so that the shame of failure had personal significance. Clementine Churchill noticed that her husband was exhausted after five years of hard life as a wartime leader. “Failure may be a good thing,” she said in a comforting tone. “Look at that node,” Churchill murmured. “It’s really a bad thing to turn it into a good thing. “
Churchill was very lucky. Sir harold alexander, Commander-in-Chief and Field Marshal of the British Army in Italy, has just invited him to visit the camp on Lake Como in Italy. There, Churchill began to paint wholeheartedly, and he once left this hobby during the war. On September 8, he told Barron Moran, a personal doctor, “I restored my balance through painting.” He also wrote a letter to his beloved wife, Clementine, which said, “I have a strong sense of relief, which is increasing day by day, while others need to clean up all kinds of mess that comes with it.” Then, Churchill admitted: “It’s a blessing in disguise. “
But life by Lake Como is only temporary comfort. Moran compared the loss of political power to a major operation that hurt the muscles and bones. Other former leaders used a similar metaphor: German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who was experienced in politics, was ousted by his colleagues in 1963, when he was 87 years old. In his words, it’s like all his hands and feet have been cut off. Although Churchill was only 70 years old in the autumn of 1945, vultures pecking at the wreckage seemed to have surrounded him. The Conservative Party claimed to support the younger generation, and the public opinion at that time was also surging, as if Churchill would soon give way to his “legal heir” Anthony Eden.
Anthony Eden Image source: Imperial War Museum
In the second half of 1945, Churchill did show signs of quitting politics many times. He didn’t have the energy to deal with the daily party affairs. He gave Aidan most of the work in the House of Commons. On December 15th, he said to the Duke of Windsor who gave him support in the abdication crisis in 1936 (that is, King Edward VIII of England who abdicated in 1936, when Churchill was one of his few supporters), “It is very difficult to lead the opposition, and I feel more and more that it is not worth the loss to continue playing like this. “But what did he have to do then? He is not interested in publishing big books. Churchill put down the writing of British National History in 1940 and let it rot in that pile of documents. He also lacked the spirit or physical strength to write post-war memoirs. He still yearns for power and the sense of meaning brought by power-this ability to do great things is the spiritual pillar of his life. Once, at the bottom of the campaign, he told the doctor in dismay, “I have nothing to say to them.” The man who let the lion roar in 1940 has nothing to say to his country and the world now.
Of course, he still received many invitations to speak from all over the world, but most of them were politely rejected by the secretary. He was also invited to attend the annual “John F. Findlay Green Foundation Lecture” by an unknown college in the inland rural areas of the United States. This invitation was originally intended to sink into the sea as usual, but there was a scribbled note at the end of the invitation: “This is a great school in my hometown. I hope you can come. I will introduce you to everyone. Best wishes-Harry S. Truman Churchill told Truman that he planned to “rest and recuperate” in Florida in winter, unable to cope with four lectures. But he replied to Truman: “In view of the world situation, I think I still have the responsibility-and I am very interested-to give a speech in university of westminster. Thank you for your praise.”
As Churchill himself pointed out, Fulton’s attraction does not come from the small university town itself (8,000 people, with an average of 350 classes a year), but from the American president sitting on the podium and his future influence. This ensures that his words will be heard by the whole world in the true Churchill style. He spent a lot of time on the content and expression of his speech and revised it with his secretary on the train until the last moment. Similar to many of his speeches, his arguments are extremely ingenious, breaking the stereotype that Churchill is just an orator who is good at playing with words.
Churchill National Museum of Westminster College Image source: amdromus/Wikimedia Commons
The speech has four themes. The first theme-which people are most familiar with-is his announcement that “from Stiding in the Baltic Sea to Trieste in the Adriatic Sea, an iron curtain has crossed the European continent”. Churchill said that in the “Soviet sphere of influence” to the east of this line, people were under “high pressure and various control from the Soviet Union” and the word “Iron Curtain”-according to Churchill’s own memory-can be traced back to the fire prevention device he saw in the Victoria Theatre when he was young. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it wandered between Russia and the West. Later, Josef Goebbels used it to describe the Red Army’s March into Europe. Churchill took over the word in May 1945. Like a sommelier, Churchill spent several months carefully comparing and scrutinizing similar expressions before publicly using the word “Iron Curtain” in the House of Commons on August 16, 1945-the alternative was “veil” or “screen”. However, the word is famous all over the world because of Churchill’s outstanding performance in front of Truman. Churchill used it to describe postwar Europe concisely and forcefully, even if it was slightly simplified.
It is Churchill’s habit to pursue the depth of history. He also recalled the 1930s, which is still fresh in his audience’s memory. He warned that the dispute with the Soviet Union could not be solved by “appeasement policy”, which was the second golden sentence he said in Fulton. “The lesson of appeasement” has become the correct nonsense of the diplomatic community after the war, from South Korea to Vietnam, from Suez to the Iraq war. But Fulton’s speech may be the first time that the British deliberately used the word “appeasement” against the Soviet Union in public. In this way, Churchill occupied the moral high ground. “The last time I saw it coming, I shouted to my compatriots and the world, but no one cared. One by one, we fell into a terrible whirlpool. We must make sure that this will not happen again. This is a historical lesson announced by a prophet who was thrown into the wilderness last time. Fulton’s speech is also a kind of self-defense.
Churchill not only gave a warning, but also gave a solution, which was condensed in his other two golden sentences. Instead of appeasement, he called for the establishment of a “fraternal alliance” between English speakers, which was based on “the special relationship between the Commonwealth, the British Empire and the United States”. Churchill insisted that this relationship not only depends on special affinity, such as language, but also depends on military cooperation, common weapons, common bases and even common citizenship. It was Lord Halifax who first foresaw a “special alliance” with the United States. He reluctantly competed with Churchill for the position of war leader before the war and lost. After the fall of France, he talked about this relationship in a memo. But the word “special relationship” was first used publicly in World War II, and it was Churchill who used it again in the House of Commons speech in November 1945. Similar to the Iron Curtain, Fulton’s special environment has successfully attracted the attention of the United States and the world.
On March 5, 1946, Churchill gave a speech at Westminster College. Image source: George Scadding-Life Photo Album /Getty
But these two words are not the title of Churchill’s speech. Instead, he chose “the key to peace”, which is an old saying that money is the key to war. More importantly, Churchill believed that the Anglo-American alliance was an important pillar for maintaining peace. He refuted the view that war is inevitable, and the Russians “only worship strength, and the most disrespectful thing is weakness, especially military weakness.” Churchill believed that it is possible to negotiate with the Soviet Union on the basis of the strength provided by special relations, which is the only way to prevent the third world war. Therefore, his goal is to reach a good understanding with the Soviet Union in all aspects under the universal authority of the United Nations and on the basis of “all forces in the English-speaking world.” Churchill added on the train, “This is the solution that I sincerely recommend to you in this speech. I named it “the key to peace”
In Churchill’s view, the most important of the four golden sentences is the special relationship. He told the audience that this was the “core” message he wanted to convey. At the time of Churchill’s speech, the wartime alliance was teetering and was troubled by the debate on whether the United States should provide postwar loans to Britain and whether it should jointly develop atomic bombs. Churchill’s key points can also be clearly seen from the structure of his speech. He first talked about the “two major crises” of the contemporary era, namely “war and tyranny”, and advocated that the United Nations could not operate effectively without special relations. Only then did he introduce the topic of “Iron Curtain” to prove that he advocated that the “brotherhood alliance” should be consolidated as soon as possible, otherwise he would learn these lessons for the third time in “a war school”. Churchill did not propose to establish an Anglo-American axis to deal with the Cold War, but used the risk of the outbreak of the third world war to prove the importance of special relations.
In this case, why is Fulton’s speech understood as the fuse of the Cold War? Churchill himself should bear some responsibility. This man is talkative, but he just hesitates about the title. The original title of the speech was “On World Events”, in the vernacular. The day before his speech, he changed the topic to “the key to peace”. Many pre-emptive texts obtained by the media do not use this expression, which affects the balance of reporting to some extent.
However, in explaining the repercussions caused by Fulton’s speech, context is more important than content. At the time of Churchill’s speech, the former Soviet Union and the United States were arguing at the United Nations about the Red Army’s failure to withdraw its troops from northern Iran as promised. Of course, Churchill’s comments on Russia have the most headline news effect at this time, especially when his comments are packaged by this sensational expression. In addition, Moscow launched a strong counterattack against Churchill in the media. Most notably, the Russian newspaper Pravda published Stalin’s views on Fulton’s speech in the Q&A section on March 13th. And The New York Times vividly broadcast the play on the front page of Thursday, March 14th:
“Stalin accused Churchill of starting a war and flouting the Anglo-Russian agreement; Soviet tanks entered Tehran.
Russian leaders compared Churchill to Hitler because of his kindness to the United States.
The Soviet Union claimed to win the war.
Stalin accused Fulton of making a speech that was tantamount to “declaring war on the Soviet Union”. He said that Churchill tried to prove that English-speaking countries were “the only valuable countries that should rule the rest of the world” and described this as a “racist theory” based on language: “It is easy to remind people of Hitler and his companions. “
The escalation of the situation was unexpected, but Stalin paid attention to Churchill for quite a while. A few months ago, Pravda published a speech by Churchill praising Stalin (calling him a “real great man”) on November 7, and also praised the contribution of “noble Russian people” to the victory of the allied forces. Stalin, who was uneasy in the Black Sea at that time, gave a sharp rebuttal to his Politburo colleagues: Churchill “needed these eulogies” to “cover up his hostile attitude towards the Soviet Union.” Stalin also warned that foreigners praised Russia mostly for “flattering”, which may be the introduction of his subsequent battles, trying to eliminate the “universalism” tendency formed by the Soviet Union during the war, so as to exclude allies and regain control of his country. Stalin’s almost abusive response was fermented with Churchill’s own wording, making Fulton’s speech one of the overtures of the Cold War. Churchill and Stalin, in the Kremlin. Image source: Getty Images
The Iranian crisis and Stalin’s anger made the British and American governments try their best to get rid of Fulton’s speech. In London, more than 100 Labour MPs jointly launched a motion asking Prime Minister Clement Attlee to deny the tone and content of Churchill’s speech. Attlee flatly refused, saying that the former Prime Minister only spoke in his personal capacity. However, Fulton’s speech was not far from the official British policy. Attlee was persuaded by Churchill’s earlier argument and said to him, “I firmly believe that your Fulton speech will bring good results.” “
The Truman administration has held close consultations on this matter. In fact, Truman read this speech on the train trip from Washington to Fulton with Churchill.