



Terry Philpot





So far as the phrase refers to the barrier between the Soviet-dominated half of Europe and the rest, it was coined by one of Hitler's ministers, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, who was appointed foreign minister by Doenitz in the last days of the war. On May 2 1945, he made a radio broadcast in which he said: "In the streets of still unoccupied Germany, a great stream of desperate and famished people is rolling westwards, pursued by fighter-bombers, in flight from indescribable terror. In the east, the iron curtain behind which, unseen by the eyes of the world, the work of destruction goes on is moving steadily forward." (Times, May 3 1945). It is perhaps an uncomfortable fact that the phrase has such a disagreeable authorship and that Churchill, in this instance, wasn't above plagiarism. But fact it is.

Douglas Wass

London