Fulton Speech

Yesterday it was 70 years since Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech, also known as Fulton Speech. It was the first salvo in what later became known as Cold War. It was also the start of what can only be described as a massive propaganda campaign in convincing Western public opinion in hostile intentions of Soviet Union and imminent attack of those nasty Russkies, who just lost 27 million of own people and had their country destroyed, on everything Sir Winston held so dear--the myth of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism. 

Today, when archives are opened and the truth of the Cold War is finally emerging, position of Sir Winston, a man of many talents, becomes as clear as never before. Speaking in plain language--the guy was a sore, in fact, bitter frustrated loser. It would be later that both Churchill's daughter and his personal dentist Lord Moran would describe a heavy feeling of jealousy Churchill experienced towards relations FDR and Stalin had. Churchill might have been a crafty politician but great military strategist he was not. He presided over, in fact precipitated, Great Britain's departure from the status of global power precisely for the reasons that great strategist he was not.  As Correlli Barnett succinctly observed:

        

Barnett, The Collapse Of The British Power, page 593

It is unenviable fate for a statesman to preside over the collapse of own state, for Churchill it was also unbearable to lose elections in 1945 and be left without "job". All that happened to Churchill in the most dramatic fashion and it left a scar. By the mid-WW II his strategy was heavily criticized by Britain's main ally, the United States, as was stated in General Stanley Embick's memorandum on "primrose path", which was circulated at Casablanca.    

  

David Eisenhower, Eisenhower At war, 1943-1945, page 21.

  

Later, Churchill would recite his experiences of WW II in what can only be described as the most self-serving memoirs of them all The Second World War, with volume The Grand Alliance being especially the case in point--an unbelievable combination of false narrative and self-aggrandizing. Yet, the results were clear by 1946--two superpowers emerged, the USA and USSR, and it was up to them to form a new world in which Great Britain would remain important but secondary player. And so "The Iron Curtain" descended. The greatest historical secret of Anglo-Saxon world that USSR did not have any plans for attacking and conquering Europe was locked into the vault of bodyguards of lies of none other than Churchill's creation:

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/winstonchu111291.html

"In wartime truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

And Churchill followed his own dictum to the last letter--he lied. Today, 70 years later we still live in the world of Sir Winston, in the world which Stanley Embick's memorandum is as relevant as it was in 1942. We see it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine. We see it in unrelenting propaganda and lies of the Western media, we see and hear it in words and actions of West's political class. This time, however, The Iron Curtain, the real one, is descending. Rephrasing Sir Winston: "From Riga in the Baltic to Varna in the Black Sea, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."  But one can lie only for so long.......