The "iron curtain"
The joy and celebration that was experienced after the meeting in Yalta was short lived. Shortly after negotiations were finalized, the U.S. experienced the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt and soon Harry Truman took his place. Truman was unable to keep up with the USSR’s demands much like Roosevelt did and soon the USSR began spreading its influence.
Stalin soon became very determined to control Eastern Europe. He began attempting to force communist parties into Eastern European governments. He also deployed Russian troops into Eastern Europe in order to assist these new communist parties. Finally, Stalin decided to limit the number of eastern immigrants into Russia. Stalin wanted to completely isolate the USSR as well as members of the WARSAW pact from the rest of the eastern sphere of influence and was determined to spread his communist policies. On March 5, 1946 in a town called Fulton in Missouri, Winston Churchill gave a very well known speech at the Westminster College. During this speech Churchill said, “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” From that day forward, the imagery of an immovable iron curtain was associated with Eastern Europe influence with the USSR. The USSR began isolating itself from the rest of Eastern Europe. Churchill gave the speech to describe the forming irrationality of the Soviet Union and the need to rally with the United States against Russia. The speech is often seen as one of the beginning sparks of the Cold War. |