For over a year I’ve been working on the fifth, last and best edition of my Churchill book of quotations. The current edition (e-book and paperback) is Churchill by Himself / In His Own Words. It contains 4000 entries in 350,000 words, all with verified citations. (An appendix contains over 250 popular quotations Churchill supposedly said but never did. You can find these in an up to date list on this site. Click here.)

The new edition may be entitled Churchill: An Encyclopedia of His Greatest Words. At over 5000 entries and a half-million words, it is encyclopedic—but not comprehensive. This is only 2.5% of Churchill’s 20 million published words—books, articles, speeches, letters and papers. But the kernel of his wit, wisdom and timeless relevance is here.

I constantly encounter remarkable things he said that I utterly missed in earlier editions: the “best of the best.” I scoop these up seriatim. All are added to the new edition. Many are there purely because they dawned accidentally on what’s left of my consciousness. Today’s topic is just one of them.

“The most important telegram I ever sent”

On 5 July 1953, Churchill showed Field Marshal Montgomery and his doctor Lord Moran what he thought was his best telegram. It was sent to U.S. President Harry Truman on 12 May 1945. It may be read in full in The Churchill Documents, vol. 21 (Hillsdale College Press, 2021), 1389-90. This was also the first time Churchill used the phrase “Iron Curtain”—an expression that dates at least as far back as Martin Luther in 1521.

Churchill’s message was ominous with foreboding. “I am profoundly concerned about the European situation,” he wrote the President:

The newspapers are full of the great movements of the American Armies out of Europe. Our Armies also are under previous arrangements likely to undergo a marked reduction. The Canadian Army will certainly leave. The French are weak and difficult to deal with. Anyone can see that in a very short space of time our armed power on the Continent will have vanished except for moderate forces to hold down Germany.

Meanwhile what is to happen about Russia? I have always worked for friendship with Russia but, like you, I feel deep anxiety because of their misinterpretation of the Yalta decisions, their attitude towards Poland, their overwhelming influence in the Balkans excepting Greece, the difficulties they make about Vienna, the combination of Russian power and the territories under their control or occupied, coupled with the Communist technique in so many other countries, and above all their power to maintain very large Armies in the field for a long time. What will be the position in a year or two…when we may have a handful of divisions mostly French, and when Russia may choose to keep two or three hundred on active service?

“Surely it is vital now…”

An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind…. All kinds of arrangements will have to be made by General Eisenhower to prevent another immense flight of the German population westward as this enormous Muscovite advance into the centre of Europe takes place. And then the curtain will descend again to a very large extent if not entirely….

Meanwhile the attention of our peoples will be occupied in inflicting severities upon Germany, which is ruined and prostrate, and it would be open to the Russians in a very short time to advance if they chose to the waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic.

Surely it is vital now to come to an understanding with Russia, or see where we are with her, before we weaken our Armies mortally or retire to the zones of occupation. This can only be done by a personal meeting. I should be most grateful for your opinion and advice. Of course we may take the view that Russia will behave impeccably and no doubt that offers the most convenient solution. To sum up, this issue of a settlement with Russia before our strength has gone seems to me to dwarf all others.

Just as an aside, it would seem that we have never really been able to take the view that Russia will behave impeccably….

Reactions in 1953

According to Moran, Churchill quoted this telegram from his final volume of war memoirs (not yet then published). One always has to take the Moran diaries with circumspection. Published in 1966, they differ in many details from what Moran recorded at the time. Lots of things were added after the fact. Nevertheless, according to Moran, Churchill insisted he was “pleading that we should not give up the part of Germany we occupied to the Russians until we had made a firm agreement with them. Truman replied that we had given our word. I argued that this did not hold under the new circumstances, because the Russians had broken their word over Vienna.” (The last Soviet troops left Austria in 1955.)

Montgomery read the telegram. “That was the first mention of the Iron Curtain?” he asked. Yes, Churchill said. “All these telegrams ought to be published,” replied Monty:

People think we are winning the cold war. It is not true. We are losing it—thirty love. The Big Three ought to have met earlier; Potsdam was too late. This all began at Casablanca. Unconditional surrender meant that Russian troops would invade Germany, and once that was decided we ought to have made certain we’d be first in Berlin, Vienna and Prague. It could have been done. If Alex’s command had not been weakened he would have got to Vienna.” [He was referring to General Alexander’s Italian campaign.]

Churchill replied (again according to Moran):

I warned the Americans before Potsdam not to withdraw from any of the part of Germany we occupied until we had a satisfactory understanding. They would not listen. And they will not listen now when I warn them about Germany. At Potsdam I wanted Prussia isolated and Germany divided horizontally and not vertically.

In retrospect

Churchill deemed this his best telegram. He reprised it in his war memoirs (Triumph and Tragedy, London: Cassell, 1954, 444). He reiterated it in a 1954 debate about West German rearmament (The Unwritten Alliance, London: Cassell, 1961, 206). Martin Gilbert included it in the official biography. Larry Arnn republished it in The Churchill Documents. And I missed it—until I fell over the reference to WSC’s best telegram in Lord Moran’s Churchill: The Struggle for Survival (London: Constable, 1966, 450). Well, it won’t miss my new edition.

Further reading

“Origins of Churchill Phrases: ‘Special Relationship’ and ‘Iron Curtain,'” 2019

“Iron Curtain 75 Years On: Churchill and the Fulton Flak,” 2021

The historian Christopher Harmon capably answers a question on the origin of these famous expressions, and kindly asks me to confirm his findings. They are right as usual. (Dr. Harmon wrote a frequently cited monograph, “Are We Beasts?” Churchill on the Moral Question of World War II “Area Bombing.” His five books include the graduate-level textbook Terrorism Today .)

Special Relationship

Chris Harmon writes:

“Special relationship” appears several times (and in surprising ways) in Churchill’s 1946 Fulton speech, “The Sinews of Peace.” It is important never to say that it was coined there.  I believe Churchill coined the phrase in a private letter to Clement Attlee in early October 1945. It appears there are no other printed uses in Churchill’s papers until Fulton. The American press did not pick up on the phrase much at the time. But there was much discussion of the theme of UK-US “fraternal relations” in and after the war. “Fraternal relations” is a favored WSC phrase, used many times. It appears most notably in the marvelous Harvard speech (6 September 1943). There Churchill applied it to the prospect of common British-American citizenship.

It is valuable to read the Harvard Speech and, perhaps, Churchill’s remarks (to most of the leading U.S. commanders) at the Pentagon on 9 March 1946. Introduced by Eisenhower, he lauded among other things the thorough education of the American officer corps. Few remembers that speech in that unusual place.

Fraternal Relationship

Churchill with his preference for precise English preferred “fraternal” to “special.” He used both publicly at Fulton:

Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. This is no time for generalities, and I will venture to be precise. Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all Naval and Air Force bases in the possession of either country all over the world.

Appearances of the phrase “Special Relationship” occupy four pages in my quotations book, Churchill by Himself, 116-19.) But Chris Harmon is right to mention Churchill’s earlier and preferred adjective, “fraternal.” I remember a 1985 London talk by Sir Winston’s last private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne:

We all know the French Republic’s slogan, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. People are very keen on Liberty and Equality. But Winston Churchill liked Fraternity, because the other two sprang from it. I suppose the visible threat of war makes Fraternity an obvious necessary quality. We could do with it now.

“Iron Curtain”

Similarly, Dr. Harmon continues, the phrase “Iron Curtain” was not coined at Fulton:

Precedents are in foreigners’ descriptions of what they were seeing in Bolshevized Russia. Varied usages include Never Despair, the final volume of Martin Gilbert’s great biography. Churchill’s first use is also known: 12 May 1945 in a telegram to Truman (Churchill Archives, CHAR 20/218). It is almost unknown that Churchill poked Stalin by uttering the phrase “iron curtain” during the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. Much later came the famous public use in Fulton.

But the phrase is much older than that. In the Wall Street Journal on 5 March 2021 Mark Loncar tracks it to the religious reformer Martin Luther, in his religious battles with Pope Leo X:

In 1521 Luther wrote an essay, “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit.” The relevant passage is as follows: “The letter [law] does not allow anyone to stand before his wrath. The Spirit does not allow anyone to perish before his grace. Oh, this is such an overwhelming affair that one could talk about it endlessly! But the pope and human law have hidden it from us and have put up an iron curtain in front of it.”

20th Century Iron Curtains

Jonathan Rose in The Literary Churchill tracks “Iron Curtain” to the peace agitator Vernon Lee (1917), Queen Elisabeth of Belgium (1915), and H. G. Wells in The Food of the Gods (1904). “Iron Curtain” was also used in 1918 by the Russian émigré philosopher Vasily Rozanov in Apocalypse of Our Time. Ethel Snowden’s Through Bolshevik Russia (1920) described Russia as being behind an “Iron Curtain.”  Rose says Churchill denied hearing any of these: “No. I didn’t hear of the phrase before—though everyone has heard of the ‘iron curtain’ which descends in a theatre.”

The phrase resurfaced with Goebbels in Das Reich (25 February 1945). As Chris notes, Churchill first used it in a telegram to Truman on 12 May 1945. But its most famous appearances was at Fulton:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain 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…. In front of the iron curtain which lies across Europe are other causes for anxiety….

Ethel Snowden, maybe…

Churchill read voraciously, and stored favorite lines in his capacious memory. I doubt if Churchill read Goebbels, Rozanov or the rest, except for Wells. But I wouldn’t bet against Ethel Snowden, who first used it to describe Russia.

Snowden was a feminist, a pacifist, a teetotaler, a socialist and a suffragette. Perfect for Churchill’s apparently apocryphal quip about all the virtues he despised and none of the vices he admired. So why would she attract Churchill’s attention?

Churchill admired strong-minded, left-leaning women, like Beatrice Webb. Not to mention his wife Clementine, a lifelong Liberal. Or Lady Astor, with whom he nursed a kind of grudging affection. Also, Ethel married Philip Snowden, Labour Member of Parliament who later became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Churchill personally admired Snowden, writing favorably of him in 1931. Snowden died six years later. Churchill wrote a tribute in the Sunday Express and. In the midst of vast political turmoil, Dame Ethel thanked him…

…for your beautiful article on my husband. It is the finest thing which has appeared and bears the brand of sincerity. I am deeply grateful to you, and touched by your kindness beyond the power of adequate expression. Your generosity to a political opponent marks you for ever in my eyes the ‘great gentleman’ I have always thought you. Had I been in trouble which I could not control myself, there is none to whom I should have felt I could come with more confidence that I should be gently treated.

That was certainly the kind of “fraternal” letter which might have drawn Churchill’s interest.