Reading Winston Churchill’s Sinews of Peace | A Primary Source Close Read w/ BRI

0:03 Hello. Welcome to another edition of the Bill of Rights Institute’s Primary Source Close Read where we take you through important sources in US history. My name is Mary Patterson and I am a senior specialist in the content team here at the Bill of Rights Institute. And I am joined by my illustrious colleague part man, part myth, senior Fellow Tony Williams.

0:27 Hi Mary. Hi Tony. So we’re really excited to be with you today because we are going to be walking through Winston Churchill’s Sinews of Peace address. And you may know this address as the Iron Curtain speech. I think that’s how a lot of people refer to it in their classrooms.

0:48 And as I said, we’re looking at really important sources in US history and right away I noticed Winston Churchill he’s not an American and it’s and the title of the address references piece. So I’m assuming this is going to have to do with the post World War II world.

1:08 So Tony, maybe you could give us some context. So why is Winston Churchill giving this address and what was he hoping to achieve? Sure Mary. Yeah, a little bit of general background and then maybe some more specific on the actual delivery of the speech. We have World War II winding down in late 1944,

1:33 early 1945, and really important to note that Churchill, Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union and also Franklin Roosevelt in the United States, they meet at Yalta at a summit and they decide some of the major decisions in the course of the post-war world in which they try to cooperate

1:59 with their visions about what they want, their different visions and interests. One of the really important decisions that come out of Yalta was that Eastern Europe, which was covered in large part right now by the Red Army and was occupied by the Red Army as it pushed the Nazis backward into Germany, that Eastern Europe was going to enjoy

2:23 free elections, it was going to enjoy democratic governments, they could be friendly to the Soviet Union who wanted a buffer zone, but they were supposed to be self ruling free societies. And FDR and Churchill were particularly worried about the outcome of Poland

2:44 and specifically demanded free elections and free government there. As the spring rolls on, the Allies eventually do defeat Nazi Germany in early May and FDR had died about a month before that. And so you have a new president which is really important to know, Harry Truman.

3:07 And he by and large continues FDR’s policies and World War II then comes to an end. But there were some really troubling events in Eastern Europe, particularly tied to the fact that the Soviet Union was largely reneging

3:31 on its Yalta agreement to provide those free elections in Poland and free government as well as in Eastern Europe broadly. So Churchill saw some really troubling signs and really understood the danger going on there. But don’t forget, Churchill is actually voted out of office, right. World War II comes

3:56 to an end, and he’s immediately voted out of office. I think the British people just sort of needed him for the war, and the war came to an end, and I think it was just sort of exhausted. And they elect Clement Attlee as the new Prime Minister.

4:17 So these events are going on, and there’s a lot of increasing tension between the east and west, between especially the two superpowers, the United States and USSR, that’ll play itself out over 1946, 1947.

4:38 Churchill is invited to give his speech at Westminster College in Bolton, Missouri. He’s out of office. He is a private citizen, but he does accept that invitation, and he accepts that invitation to come to the United States with whom he feels the British have a special relationship, as we’ll talk about, and particularly in Truman’s home state

5:02 of Missouri, and to deliver a very important speech explaining his view of the Cold War and explaining the dangers of what’s going on over in Eastern Europe to an American audience, and really, he hopes, a worldwide audience, particularly in the free world.

5:24 Okay, so it’s 1946, and the World War II is over. Churchill is out of office. He comes to the middle of the United States. He’s in Missouri with President Harry Truman at a small college talking about this. So the Allies, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the USA, they survived the war, but can they survive this peace?

5:47 Because there’s tensions between them. Is that a fair set up for this? Yeah, absolutely. That’s the real deal for the citizens of Fulton, Missouri. They got two world leaders to come and Truman is in the audience that he’s giving us. I think that’s really interesting to know. So let’s dive in to the speech. And we should say these are excerpts from the speech.

6:07 This is not the full address. So this section here, I think, is really, I think, trying to instill upon the United States what an important moment this is for them in time. Like, you have won the war and you’re at the pinnacle of world power.

6:29 It’s awe inspiring. And you have this sense of duty time with a sense of duty. And I almost read this as don’t laugh, but you probably will. In the movie Spiderman, where Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. I think that’s sort of what he’s saying. This is a moment, and the stakes are high, so don’t blow it.

6:54 I was just thinking the same thing, so I won’t laugh. Okay. Yeah absolutely. I think it’s important to note also some context that the power of the British empires is in many ways being eclipsed, and it’s been eclipsed by the United States.

7:15 During the course of the war, they became the senior partner, if you will, just the vast economic, industrial, and also manpower military power of the United States during World War Two really made the United States the senior partner and leader of the free world.

7:38 It really became what some historians called the American Century. The British were a little uneasy about that, about their declining power. And Churchill sort of even maybe fix it personally because he identifies so much with the British Empire. But that’s really important to know because he’s trying to

8:01 explain to the United States, which is really the world superpower representating the free world against the Communist Soviet Union. Churchill is prodding them. He’s prodding his ally, his partner, senior partner, to take their obligations to the free world very seriously during this developing Cold War.

8:24 Really, as I think we’ll talk about, promotes that what’s called a special relationship between the British and Americans. Right? And he starts off by saying, you must feel this sense of duty. You the American people. But then he goes on and he’s talking about we English speaking people. So even though the British Empire is waning at this time, I think he still is.

8:47 It fair to say he still sees a role for Great Britain and their empire will become the Commonwealth in this American century as the junior partner. Yeah, very much so. In the United States. And FDR and Truman specifically never lost sight of how important the British were in all of this.

9:10 Okay, let’s move on. So he said that he’s told the American people, we have a great opportunity here, but this is a really important opportunity in this world, post war world. And now we’re moving on to the threats that he sees and basically tyranny.

9:34 And who specifically is he talking about here? We’re talking about tyranny in the world. Yeah. Actually, the Soviet Union, he spoke frequently, had warned about Nazi tyranny right. And Japanese militarism during World War II. Italian fascism had fought the forces of totalitarianism in World War II.

9:59 And now, almost immediately, as that war ends, a new war, the Cold War develops. And Churchill is warning Americans, he’s warning the world about Communist tyranny, totalitarianism. Right? These go by different names,

10:20 and yet Churchill saw them all as tyrannical, all as totalitarian. And I think he has a very strong moral vision in this speech. Right? I think he’s saying, look, the free world, these democratic nations, however imperfectly they achieve it, they’re devoted to individual liberties.

10:42 They are devoted to equality under the law. They have free speech and so forth. Government. And these tyrannical states, they’re all characterized by a lot of the same characteristics a police state, unlimited government, usually a one party state,

11:06 typically with some kind of dictator, very illiberal meaning. People don’t really enjoy individual liberties. There’s a stark moral difference, in Churchill’s view, and it’s one that was shared by FDR, it’s one that’s shared by Truman at the time and a lot of other statesmen and policymakers,

11:30 not only on the American side and British side, but really throughout the west. They’re very concerned about the nature of the Soviet system and how expansionary and how aggressive it is. So it’s almost like this terrible world war has ended, but it’s like there’s not a chance really to pause and rest, like there’s this new threat.

11:52 And Churchill seems to be very prescient in understanding just how much of the threat it is. I think he is. I think he is very prescient in understanding the threat and the nature of the city, which he had been concerned about for decades. And there is a great fatigue, there is an exhaustion.

12:15 There was Second World War that caused as many as 50 million deaths or more. People are displaced by the millions throughout Europe. They’re just simply homeless and nowhere really to go. There’s very physical destruction in Europe. There is a lot of starvation and hunger, just devastated economies.

12:39 So you’re right, and the people are not really ready for this. People want some kind of return normalcy in the United States, over in Europe, they want some basic necessities. And yet we go from a war against these massive war states, these tyrannies,

13:01 over, to a cold war with the superpowers, or even at least in the United States and the Soviet Union only a few years after, armed with nuclear weapons. The world is a very dangerous place, yet here we are. So there’s the United States, and I think this is what Churchill is

13:24 alluding to here, but not only the United States. He references this inheritance of the English speaking world. Of course, the United States having taken their cultural hearth in Great Britain, and they have the tradition of Magna Carta and due process and all these things. This is one option, and the Soviets are presenting a very different option.

13:45 And Churchill, I think, is just trying to say here the stakes are quite high. They couldn’t really be higher. This is that solemn moment. It’s our obligation to proclaim in fearless tones our principles, because naturally, speaking as Churchill, if I may allow myself to do that, if people have the choice, this is what they are going to want.

14:07 They’re not going to want the police state, they’re going to want individual freedoms. People didn’t vote for the Soviet Union to come over and impose dictatorship on Eastern Europe, or even on their own country. Stalin had killed tens of millions of people over in the Soviet Union.

14:28 It’s a brutal system, right? It’s a horrific vision which doesn’t match either the yearnings of human nature, but also this English and American tradition of rights, of self government, of limited government, of individuals being left alone and enjoying going through their lives,

14:53 working and enjoying their family life and civil society and so forth. Again, however imperfectly they’re applied, this is the vision that’s shaping Churchill’s thinking about the world. And it shows you just how much the Americans and British do have in common.

15:14 I mean, there are differences, certainly, with the British Empire. And FDR was supporting decolonization of post empire. So there were tensions there were differences, sure. But by and large, we shared the same principles and outlook about the nature of human beings and their yearnings for freedom and self rule.

15:38 I do find it a little interesting that he’s, of course, holding up the Declaration of Independence as this example of having all of these ideals and these principles and that the Declaration of Independence was addressed to his it was the breakup letter, if you will. So it’s kind of interesting how it’s come full circle there.

16:03 We’re letting bygones be bygones, but truly those principles animate both societies fundamentally water under the bridge. And now we’re moving on because we have a common enemy for a much bigger threat, right? Bigger fish to fry.

16:23 So here we go again. People have the right to have free elections, a secret ballot to change their form of government. So these ideas, natural law and all of these things that we have in our Declaration Independence and in our system of government, this should be what everyone and they have the right to do these things.

16:46 And Stalin and the Savannah are getting in the way of that. And. Do think it’s worth pointing out. So I think in 1946, a lot of people didn’t quite understand just how bad the Soviet regime was. I know George Orwell writes Animal Farm in 1946, because a lot of people, especially socialist,

17:08 and Orwell himself was a socialist, didn’t understand just how brutal it was. And I think Churchill, again, Churchill really did understand this is bad news, and he always understood it to be bad news. So I think the urgency of what he has to say, people are finally listening a little bit more. I don’t know if that I think so.

17:30 Maybe not. Be well, at least let’s understand where the civil union came from. Right. The United States finally extends recognition in 33 when FDR becomes president. And so they were largely shunned by the world community, and only in the into the 40s were more

17:53 broadly accepted, and they suffered terribly fighting the Nazis. They lost as many as between soldiers and civilians, maybe 15, 20, 25 million people, and they had been invaded twice by Germany in only 20 years. Stalin, and especially the southern people do have an interest in their security

18:21 on that border with Germany, on that frontier off to the west. So they did bear a lot of the burden of fighting against the Nazis. And we were allies. Right. It was an uneasy relationship at times, for sure, but we sent them lease aid to them,

18:44 probably in the millions or certainly billions of dollars, a great deal of military financial aid to them to keep them afloat. Right. We really didn’t need them as an ally. And Churchill, churchill was no fan of allying with the Russians, but as a paraphrase to a quote, he said something that he would bargain

19:08 with the devil if it meant defeating Hitler. And so sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And so it’s an uneasy, worst time alliance, and it certainly doesn’t last. It doesn’t last throughout the war. This is really a temporary alliance for the duration of the war, and then it falls apart pretty much right at the end of the war.

19:34 I think Churchill has so far, he’s really set up his audience by saying, this is a very solemn moment. There’s this great responsibility. Here are the two options. There’s the English speaking people’s way of free elections, et cetera, et cetera, and then there’s the police state. And then I love this part here. So we’re at least I don’t know, we’re good ways into the speech.

19:55 He says, I’ve come to the crux of what I have traveled here to say. So it’s like, get to the point. And here he’s mentioning this special relationship between the British Empire and the United States. So in this world, this partnership, this special relationship, I think this is where that phrase comes

20:16 from, is going to ensure that this piece can last. If we’re talking about sinew like these fibers that hold something together, this is what’s going to hold this piece together against this threat. No, I think so. I think Churchill sees that and he uses phrases like English speaking people, kindred spirits.

20:37 He talks about their common purpose, their fraternal association. He sharing the same principles, as we’ve said, in many of the same characteristics of self governance. And he really does think that this is going to be the heart. Churchill did actually also see a lot

20:58 of room and the central importance of Europe unifying, whether that’s militarily, economically, even politically. He was an advocate of that early on and that will eventually bear fruit in the Common Market and the EU and so forth.

21:25 But he really sees that the relationship of the United States and the British is really the core of that. The core of the relationship for the west is not going to be with Germany because they’re being sort of rehabilitated, if you will. It’s not really between England and France. As important as that relationship is, it’s really Churchill sees,

21:49 and probably not incorrectly, the main power and strength, the foundation of the free world in Europe and the United States. The Atlantic relationship facing off the Soviet union is really going to come from these two countries, right? So I think if you think of it as a group

22:09 project, which I am not always a fan of the group project, or wasn’t when I was growing up in school, but someone has to or sort of comes forth as the strongest voice there, and I would argue you need that. So I think that’s sort of this world organization, this UN that’s developing United Nations after World War II,

22:35 it’s a community of nations, but there has to be someone, the glue, the sinew holding it together, and that’s the English speaking peoples. The UN is created at the end of World War Two, right? And what’s interesting is the UN had a complex relationship with

22:56 a lot of nations because it was made up of individual nations. But then also, what do you do about regional security pacts like NATO in a few years, in 1949. What do you do about the Monroe Doctrine and American security ties with those nations?

23:17 What do you do about the British Empire and the trading system? So the unit had to negotiate that. And it did make some compromises. It was saying, Okay, well, these existing relationships are important, so they allow them. But what happened is,

23:38 in a negative way, the world lined up in a very bipolar way on two ends of the spectrum here, the free world and the Communist world. And that led to tension and the threat of nuclear annihilation for 50 years. So these sort of regional pacts can be good, they can have good consequences and bad consequences.

24:00 But yes, the United States and British were sort of at the center not only of NATO and the Atlantic world, but in many ways the UN. As well. And he mentioned a special relationship in the whole that the United States and the British empire will play in this new world.

24:23 But now he’s going back to describing the Soviet sphere. And we have another very this is the iron curtain, another famous phrase that he drops in the speech. So it’s really I mean, as imagery goes, I think it’s pretty spot on if you think about it. Just all these places are in this

24:44 and the people living there that have just gone through this horrific war, like you mentioned, the destruction in Europe, the United States, of course, we had the attack on Pearl Harbor, but we weren’t fighting this war in our country, so we didn’t see the level of destruction across Europe that Churchill saw, having dealt with the woods

25:05 and everything and people throughout Europe saw. And they’re just utterly wrecked. And now they have this iron curtain of the Soviet way of cutting them off in a way from this free world. It’s remarkable imagery. Right. We have Churchill oratory in many ways, it’s finest, right?

25:28 Or among its finest, from Statin in the Baltic to Tries in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended upon the continent. Behind that wall I all the capitals of the ancient states of central ancient Europe. And he enumerates all these historic capitals, all these famous cities, and the populations around them lie

25:49 in what I must call the Soviet sphere, right, and are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high and in many cases interesting measure of control from Moscow, right. So they’re in the Soviet sphere. They’re being controlled some more or less at this point, but they’re being controlled from outside control.

26:14 And that’s not what World War II was fought for. It was fought against Nazi tyranny, against totalitarianism, fought against outside control or domination. And this goes all the way back to the Atlantic charter. Even before the United States enters the war, churchill and FDR meet and enunciate

26:38 the principles of some basic principles of freedom. And these are continually enunciated throughout the war by these two statesmen as an expression of the ideals of the free world against all these forms of totalitarianism in World War II. And now, tragically,

27:01 Churchill is warning about that same thing in very sort of oratorically ringing tones about this iron curtain and in many ways with the building of the Berlin wall and with just how close eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were during the cold war, in many ways, it’s a very act, it’s a very appropriate

27:24 metaphor, one that really even after the cold war, I think continues to resonate. Yeah absolutely. And then he goes on here to reference dividing of Germany and how, again, just being very prescient, and this is exactly what ends up happening. And I’ve been to Berlin personally, and you can see the wall just cutting

27:49 through it’s, exactly this marker of these two different worldviews. And the things that people would go through to try to leave east ruling and get over I mean, it’s hard for a lot of Americans in 2020 to understand, but Churchill really kind of sees it coming, I think, and he says it’s so much more eloquently than I am.

28:12 Russia’s bad, and we got to do something about it. This is oratorial fireworks that only Churchill can give. And like you said earlier, this is not what we fought the war for. And he says it right here. This is not the liberated Europe we fought to build up, and it’s not going to be a permanent piece. This is not a good foundation for the post war world.

28:37 And we forget sometimes these were great leaders during the most horrific and greatest war that had ever been fought by human beings. And they may have gotten us meaning the free world gotten us through this, and yet the desire was for peaks, right?

29:01 Churchill may have been a warlord, in a sense, and a great leader, but the natural condition of human beings, I think, is really more on a piece. I mean, war may be embedded in human nature and unavoidable tragically, but on the other hand, there’s a very strong natural desire for peace.

29:21 And people don’t want to live in a world dominated by war, as in World War II, nor did they want to live with the Cold War. They didn’t want these two superpowers and the threat of nuclear annihilation, and yet they had to deal with the world as it was. And so Churchill, Truman, even us,

29:44 they’re facing off against the Soviet Union are really desiring peace, right? And they want a free world because it’s more conducive to peace than the forces of communism and fascism. And totalitarianism right certainly is shown by history.

30:05 It’s never worked out to the benefit of the people living under the system. This portion of his speech here, again, I think he’s to me, I think I almost see him, as I tried to tell you guys, and nobody was listening to me, but I think just this warning again, he’s specifically mentioning Germany here

30:28 and how he saw Hitler, he’s violating the Treaty of Versailles, and we’re going in this direction towards war. Appeasement is not the answer. But even with regard to the Soviet Union, from the very beginning of the Russian civil war, he was anti Bolshevik. So I think he just wants people to listen and take it seriously. We were sucked into this awful whirlpool

30:50 and this great imagery, and we can’t let that happen again. We have to let history teach us to. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it can certainly give us pointers, perhaps as how to act or not to act. And I think that’s really what I think he’s trying to say here. While he’s in the political wilderness in the 1930s, while he’s sort of out,

31:13 if you will, in the British system and warning about the growing Nazi threat. That’s not appease, that happens. And so this is a warning don’t appease the Soviet Union like the free world appeased Hitler. Right? And that appeasement metaphor

31:36 historical example is very powerful in shaping the minds of policymakers of the leaders of these three countries and will resonate for decades among them, in terms of they were even talking about achieving during Vietnam and after, I’m not even sure, maybe it’s completely gone away, this metaphor, but yeah,

32:00 very much shaped western leader’s, policymaker’s understanding of the threat of allowing any victories on the Comunist side. And for good or for real, I had some good and some bad consequences we got in the United States, for example,

32:20 we got involved in Korea, Vietnam, other wars because of this appeasement metaphor, because we’re afraid of allowing this to, quote unquote, happen again. And this is a very important metaphor that’s sort of almost overlooked in a lot of ways, but yeah, it really shapes coldwear thinking policy, I think.

32:44 So this is all of the speech that we are going to look at today, but if you are interested in reading more about Winston Churchill and the Sinews of Peace address, it is in our the Bill of Rights Institute’s new online free US history textbook life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. So if you head on over to mybri.org and click on Educate, you can find it there.

33:08 And we’ll also link to it in our show notes underneath our video and you definitely check it out. And if you can listen to Churchill giving the speech himself because he sounds a lot nicer than Tony, or me reading it. No offense to Tony or myself, but just not the same. But thank you so much for listening

33:30 with us today and you can check out other or videos that we have here and other primary sources and we hope you’ll join us again soon.