Posted

Index
to the Traditional Enemies of Free
Speech
Alphabetical index (text)

Ron
Kurtz
reveals, , Churchill’s unlikely source for the historic phrase ‘Iron Curtain’

Churchill’s unlikely source for the historic phrase “Iron
Curtain”

YOU may have discussed this already in your writings, but
I have just read an article by Dr. Joseph Goebbels
(‘Das Jahr 2000,’ Das Reich, February 25, 1945, pp.
1-2) that includes the following passage:

If
the German people lay down their weapons, the Soviets,
according to the agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill,
and Stalin, would occupy all of East and Southeast Europe
along with the greater part of the Reich.

An iron curtain
would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the
Soviet Union, behind which nations would be
slaughtered.
(Source: German
Propaganda Archive of Calvin College).

Like everyone else, I have always believed that
Winston Churchill coined the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’ in a speech after the war. It was rather startling to see Dr.
Goebbels use the phrase several years earlier (assuming the translation is correct), and with precisely the same meaning (representing the westernmost boundary of Soviet domination).

Have I stumbled onto something significant here, or is this just one of the many cases in which public credit for a phrase or writing is attached to the wrong author (for instance, many of the livelier phrases and stories attributed to Mr. Churchill were actually originated by Dr.
Samuel Johnson and recorded in Boswell’s biography)?

Ron
Kurtz
Los Angeles, CA

Churchill
index

Free download of David Irving’s books Bookmark the download page to find the latest new free books

David
Irving comments:

YOU are quite right.
Among the BBC monitoring items brought to Churchill in the first days of March 1945 was the text of the latest leader article in Das Reich by Dr Joseph Goebbels.
He used the phrase ein eiserner
Vorhang.

The BBC daily monitoring report featured the latest Goebbels leader article, as soon as it came over the wires. The Völkischer
Beobachter shortly used the same phrase in its main front-page headline, which read, I seem to remember,
AN IRON CURTAIN IS
FALLING ACROSS EUROPE.

I remember being shocked when I saw this headline in a bound volume of the VB at the Wiener Library in London in 1961, when I was researching my book on the February 1945 air raids on
Dresden. Count Schwerin von Krosigk also used the phrase,
“an Iron Curtain,” in his broadcast on May 2, 1945
(quoted by The Times the next day.) Churchill then resuscitated the phrase in his famous speech at Fulton,
Missouri, in March 1946. Needless to say he did not reveal his source.

See Also