Winston Churchill’s warning is still relevant today

“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.”

When Churchill made that speech 70 years ago today it was seen as something a little short of an old aristocratic warlord’s call to arms to stop the advance of communism.

Even if the speech formalised the Cold War, some contemporary historians now argue that it was made more in sadness than in anger. They argue that Churchill, who had just been stood down by a war-weary British electorate, thought the terror and hardships of the preceding years — nearly 50m dead — were hardly worth it if it meant no more than one totalitarian regime replacing another.