As opposition leader, Winston Churchill delivered two speeches in 1946 which went down in history. In Fulton, Missouri, the British Prime Minister urgently warned about the Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe. For that, he coined the term «Iron Curtain» that went down on the east European states. In Zurich, Churchill spoke about the future of the maltreated and destroyed continent of Europe. To never let such a tragedy happen again, Churchill pleaded for «building a kind of United States of Europe» with the reconciliation of Germany and France as its core. At the time of his famous speech «Let Europe arise!» in Zurich on 19 September 1946 France was not ready for a reconciliation. The wounds of the Nazi’s war crimes were still too fresh. All the more, Churchill needs to be acknowledged for his visionary political thinking. Interestingly, Churchill said that Great Britain would not be part of the United States of Europe but it would assist realising the project. Considering the recent Brexit-decision of the British population, Churchill’s speech in Zurich becomes more topical again these days.
