March 5th 1946 Churchill gives "Iron Curtain" Speech in Fulton, MO
Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address[30] of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College, used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe:
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 what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
Much of the Western public still regarded the Soviet Union as a close ally in the context of the recent defeat of Nazi Germany and of Japan. Although not well received at the time, the phrase iron curtain gained popularity as a shorthand reference to the division of Europe as the Cold War strengthened. The Iron Curtain served to keep people in and information out, and people throughout the West eventually came to accept and use the metaphor.[31
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain#Iron_Curtain_speech