[A-List] Source of Iron Curtain Phrase

[Michael Keaney]

It appears that there were earlier uses of the phrase. Goebbels was
certainly Churchill's most immediate predecessor, but the first time the
phrase was employed in English was by Ethel Snowden, wife of Philip the
future "Iron Chancellor", in 1920, following a visit to Russia. She wrote a
book of her visit in which she spoke of being "behind the Iron Curtain at
last". There is an apparently well-researched history of the phrase and its
genealogy at

http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/chris.holt/home.informal/bar/politics/iron.curtain

All the same, the fact that Goebbels' use was so close in its anticipation
of Churchill's, and was meant in exactly the same way and in the same
context, adds an interesting twist to the tale. That Churchill was forced to
admit to Gallacher that he had indeed borrowed it from Goebbels is
sufficient proof of what had inspired him to use the phrase in the first
place.

Michael