He urged a negotiated settlement with the Soviets, to prevent tensions from bursting into an active war neither side wanted. Now, one by one, Churchill called off the names of European capitals lost to the вЂњSoviet sphere.вЂќ He worried that this growing Communist bloc of nations would expand in the world unless a вЂњfraternal associationвЂќ (the United States, Great Britain, and the rest of вЂњEnglish-speaking worldвЂќ) stopped its Cold War appeasement. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot. вЂњThere never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely actions than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. вЂњLast time, I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention,вЂќ Churchill recalled, almost melodramatically. Plainspoken Harry indicated its important message needed to be heard.Д¬hurchill argued that StalinвЂ™s unchecked expansion in Central and Eastern Europe posed the same risk for world conflict as HitlerвЂ™s aggressive Germany once did in the 1930s, when Winston was a lonely voice in the political wilderness. Truman, who appeared next to Churchill onstage, had reviewed and approved the speech beforehand. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.вЂќ вЂњThis is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. вЂњAn iron curtain has descended across the Continent,вЂќ Churchill lectured, wearing the honorary cap and robes of an Oxford don before a nationally broadcast audience. He warned that if the West didnвЂ™t act swiftly and with determination, another conflict, with the totalitarian Communist regime looming in Moscow, awaited them. Winston wanted to wake up America, content with victory in World War II and ready to return to its isolationist slumber. He would reinvent himself once again as a world statesman, his voice both familiar and brand new.ДЄt Fulton, Churchill rewarded TrumanвЂ™s confidence with a stellar performance. Rather than fade away with his glorious victories of the past, he decided to embrace, almost prophetically, the future of the postwar world with its atomic dangers. Instead of retirement, he chose vigorous, almost defiant engagement. But this address in Fulton, entitled вЂњThe Sinews of Peace,вЂќ also provided another turning point in ChurchillвЂ™s long life. With the American presidentвЂ™s blessing, his clarion call for Anglo-American resistance to the Soviet UnionвЂ™s вЂњIron CurtainвЂќ (his metaphor for the spread of communism dividing up Europe) would launch the decades-long Cold War. Only months after being turned out of high office, Churchill journeyed to a college gym in nearby Fulton to give one of the most significant speeches of his career. When asked that year about his secret of success, the old warhorse advised, вЂњConservation of energy-never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.вЂќ After a long train ride from Washington, the seventy-one-year-old former British prime minister was careful not to exert himself too much. The two grinning politicians were surrounded by dour security agents (standing guard on the running boards) as the limo drove through the state capital on March 6, 1946. In an open-air limousine convertible, Winston Churchill sat beside RooseveltвЂ™s successor while thousands of Missourians waved and greeted them at the train station. Old Glory and the Union Jack draped the streets of Jefferson City, Missouri-the perfect symbolism for a visit by President Harry Truman and the man who Truman said had saved Western civilization. This excerpt is from When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys by ICIJ member Thomas Maier. ChurchillвЂ™s 1946 speech at Fulton, Missouri, warning against his former Communist ally during World War II, set the stage for a new conflict known as the Cold War, which lasted for decades and still haunts international relations today. Surprisingly voted out of office after World War II, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill privately became an advocate for an Anglo-American first strike atom bomb attack against the Soviet Union, as once secret FBI records indicate.

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