Churchill's "Iron Curtain" Speech

Nine months after Sir Winston Churchill failed to be reelected as Britain's Prime Minister, Churchill traveled by train with President Harry Truman to make a speech. On March 5, 1946, at the request of Westminster College in the small Missouri town of Fulton (population of 7,000), Churchill gave his now famous "Iron Curtain" speech to a crowd of 40,000. In addition to accepting an honorary degree from the college, Churchill made one of his most famous post-war speeches.

As President Truman accompanies Churchill to Westminster College for what was titled the "Sinews of Peace" speech, the term "iron curtain" was used and coined for the first time in the context of describing the division of Europe into East and West.

These wonderful photos above are from that significant day in post-World War II history. The button shown above, struck for that occasion, is one of my most prized and most valuable political buttons in my collection.