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Winston Churchill proclaimed an "iron curtain" had come down across Europe. By
early 1946, the Soviet Union had control or influence over the Eastern European
countries it had liberated from Germany. The Soviets saw this as necessary for
their security, while the West saw it as aggressive. While touring the United
States, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced:
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"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, all these famous cities and the
populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one
form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing
measure of control from Moscow."
Many historians cite this speech as the formal end of the alliance between the
United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union and the beginning of the cold war.
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