Iron curtain

• By 1946, the Soviets had a large amount of control over Eastern Europe, in terms of the Satellite states and in general countries under soviet influence.

  • The satellite states were Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Belarus.
  • Communist governments had also been set up in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland which ultimately provoked the speech.
• Churchill's iron curtain speech took place in Fulton, Missouri. This heightened tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union, as Stalin presumed that what Churchill said must have echoed the views of the USA, as it was ultimately Truman who would have been showed the speech first (as it took place in the USA) and agreed to its being public.
• In the iron curtain speech, Churchill described communism as a threat to world freedom and peace.

  Combined with the Novikov telegram, Stalin felt as though communism was being attacked and so strengthened Soviet forces and set up a campaign of anti-west propaganda. The speech, whether intended to or not, made hostility between the East and the West, worse.