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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories. Send them to ouramericanstories.com. They're some of our favorites, and one of our favorite subjects to cover on this show. or stories about American history.
and history in general. And all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. where you can go to learn all the things that are beautiful in life. and all the things that are good in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses go to hillsdale.edu.
Speaking of which, up next... A history story from Hillsdale College President Larry Arne on a perilous time in world history. After World War II, the Soviet Union, our former ally, had become anything but. and the threat of another world war hung over the heads of everyone after they would renege on treaties and stand diametrically opposed to the West. A massive division was appearing between us And them.
The person who would give a name to this division was Winston Churchill, at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri. after being invited to speak there at a low point in his career. Here's Doctor Larry Arn with a story. of the Iron Curtain speech. It was a world-changing fact when he got this invitation, and it came in at a low moment for him.
The July 5th, 1945 election, when they got the votes counted, Churchill had lost in a landslide. And then in October. Three months after. He gets this letter from the president of Westminster College, a man named McClay. and come and give a talk and there's a PS handwritten by Harry Truman.
It's a wonderful college in my home state. If you can come, I will introduce you. And that's a big deal. And that's, you know, wow, he's an important man still. Then of course you never can know when you've been the most important man in the world, whether you will be after you lose your job.
Churchill gets there the day before, March the 4th, 1946. And it's very important that Churchill is a private citizen. I mean he's a member of parliament, but he's not an officer or a representative of the government. And it's also important that with the Labour government, with whom Churchill disagreed about everything and fought like cats and dogs with him. They agreed on one thing.
and that was policy toward the Soviet Union. And so Churchill was liberated by that. If the government had been putting fetters on him, it could have been a flap and messed up everything. It's worth saying the man who was the foreign minister in that government was a left-wing union organizer. that Churchill met during a big strike in the twenties.
and fell in love with him. and brought him into the government. And he became a very important man, and he was faithful to his anti-communism. And You know, the world was hanging on a thread. There are a whole bunch of events going on.
In the world, the Soviet Union announced that they would not leave Persia on the treaty bound date that they were supposed to. and they were putting pressure on the Turks. And uh, you know, Turkey's important to the Soviet Union, and there've always been tension between them. Because they're at the mouth of the Black Sea and if the Soviet Union can control that it can get into the Mediterranean. A few days before This invitation, Truman sent the body of the lately died Turkish ambassador back to Turkey with a huge naval flotilla led by the USS Missouri, the biggest battleship in the world.
one on which the Japanese surrender was taken. The Soviet Union had Overwhelming power. They had a multiple of the tanks of the United States, a multiple of the fighter aircraft. We began a big build campaign about these years. After the war, having stop for a while.
And They still gained on us and the fear was if the Soviet Union attacks to the West, They will reach the channel in six weeks and there's nothing that can stop them. Except for one thing. American nuclear weapons. And that makes an anxious calculation, right? Because will America use those nuclear weapons to save countries far away?
And they had to worry about that a lot. And it's one of the reasons that Churchill was insistent, and the Labour government agreed that Britain should develop its own nuclear weapons. There's a document in the public record office. Produced every year until the end of Churchill's premiership. But the document was production of the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Department.
Its title was The Likelihood of a General War with the Soviet Union. They just think that could happen. And, you know, NATO is formed in these years, and the Marshall Plan, which is aid to Europe from the United States, is launched. And that was very much to help Western Europe recover and get ready to defend itself.
So that was the grim calculations that were going on at the time. Churchill goes to America. He gives a speech at the University of Miami. It's very good about education. And then he goes to the White House on the 4th of March.
and he and Truman ride down on the train. And when uh Churchill gave the speech. It begins in a humorous way. He says, I'm a private citizen. There's nothing here but what you see.
And if you look at a photograph of him giving that speech, what you see is him giving the speech. And just to his right Sits the President of the United States. And that was like really... really artful. You know, it starts out.
The overall strategic conception, Churchill says that with some humor. He says, American generals like to say that, but of course. what he's making fun of is it's a redundant phrase. And uh What is it that we're aiming for? And roughly he says, the paraphrase, Nothing less than the health and safety, the freedom and comfort of every home in every land.
around the world. That's it, you know. sweeping huge thing. And a grand ambition. And the rest of the speech, by the way, is a qualification.
on that. Hey. defines his terms as he goes, The speech actually, through the course of it, it narrows to a point. And the point is what he thinks is the most important point. which is the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain.
And you're listening to Dr. Larry Aaron tell the story of the Iron Curtain speech. and Doctor Arne, in addition to being the president of Hillsdale College, is one of the world's foremost experts. On Sir Winston Churchill. When we come back.
More with Dr. Larry Arne. Here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here. As we approach our nation's 250th anniversary, I'd like to remind you that all the history stories you hear on this show are brought to you by the great folks at Hillsdale College.
And Hillsdale isn't just a great school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for you as well. Go to Hillsdale.edu to find out about their terrific free online courses. Their series on communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again, go to hillsdale.edu and sign up for their free and terrific online courses. Let's be real.
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Malcolm Glabwell here. I recently recorded the first episode of Smart Talks with IBM, where I learned how AI agents are joining AI assistants as a major productivity tool. Let's start with AI agents. AI agents can reason, plan, and collaborate with other AI tools to autonomously perform tasks for a user. Brian Bitzel, an expert from IBM, gave me an example of how a college freshman might use an AI agent.
As a new student, you may not know How do I deal with my health and wellness issue? How many credits am I going to get for this given class? You could talk to someone and find out some of that. But maybe it's a little bit sensitive and you don't want to do that. Bissell told me.
You could build an AI agent, a resource for new students that helps them navigate a new campus, register for classes, access the services they need, and even schedule appointments on their behalf, which in turn buys them more time to focus on their actual schoolwork. we can see patterns of how agents and assistants can help. Employees and customers and end users be more productive, automate workflows so they're not doing certain types of repetitive work over and over again, and streamlining. their lives and making data more accessible to them. 24 hours a day.
To learn more about IBM's AI agents and how they can help your business, visit ibm.com/slash agents. Over 300 channels, zero bills. That's TiVo Plus. Curated movies, news series, and sports highlights. No credit card, no logins, just TV that gets straight to the good stuff.
Grab the remote, press play, and start watching TiVo Plus. Free, binge-worthy, always on. Check us out at TiVo.com. Hey, what's up, it's Marl Lopez? Back to schools.
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We've done your homework. And we return to our American stories and our story on Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech. When we last left off, Churchill was explaining what exactly the West, that is, the free democracies, were aiming for. Let's continue with the story here again. He's Dr.
Laurie Arn. There isn't any reason, science being what it is, he says, for the world not to enter a grand period of peace. But there are these two marauders, war and tyranny. And then he gives detailed plans. what to do about each of them.
And About war? His first solution is the United Nations. He's a great believer in collective security. It'll sound strange to American ears. we don't really think of it as terribly important anymore.
He thought then that the way you stop these tyrants with these modern, extremely dangerous weapons.
Something he learned in 1899. at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in North Africa. He watched the first machine guns called Maxim guns deployed by the British. mow down an Arab dervish army they were called. and take no casualties itself.
Most everybody who saw that rejoiced at that. Churchill was horrified by it. Because he could just have the imagination to think. What if both sides have weapons like this? And of course that dark vision came true in the First World War.
So If we could all band together wishing peace, because Plenty is possible for everyone now, Churchill said, which I believe is very much the case today, and indeed is being realized all over the world. We can focus on that and we can. Live our lives and let people alone. But then the first caveat comes when he's talking about the United Nations. He says it has to have constabulary, it has to have force.
Then he says that It would be criminal madness. to release the secrets Yeah. Nuclear bomb. into the wide world at this stage when it's so divided. Only when we've realized he says the brotherhood of man at some indeterminate future date would that be a wise course.
And then, for the first time in the speech, he introduces the differences in regimes or ways of people governing. And he says, the nations that have the secret of the nuclear bomb. United States, Britain, Canada. they can be trusted with it. because they represent their people.
And they won't use it. for ill whereas If it gets into the hands of these nations that rule by force, and he doesn't mention the Soviet Union, but he does later, but that's what he means. then Lord knows what they'll do with it. You know, soon the Soviet Union would have the nuclear bomb, by the way, because they stole it from us. spies But he dreaded that day.
And he thought, in the meantime, That's the thing, the only thing. that can stop them. He's thinking at large here because He wants to guarantee a future where we don't destroy ourselves in these world wars anymore. And this is his plan to achieve that. It requires a massive adjustment.
Because The Second World War was fought and won. In quantity terms, much more by the Soviet Union than anyone else. They had simply enormous force of the Allies. I think they took four-fifths of the casualties. 80%.
They're our great allies, because it would have been a different story without them. And then, for the first time in the speech, he introduces the expression iron curtain. Churchill had used the expression twice before. in regard to the Soviet Union but not in a place so famous. And he, by the way, titled the speech The Sinews of Peace.
You know, sinews are what connect muscle to bone. But it became known as the Iron Curtain speech because that was a dramatic thing to say and it infuriated Stalin. From Stetien. In the Baltic. To Trieste in the Adriatic.
An iron curtain has descended across the continent. He said, from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, so that means right across the middle of Europe, all the way. An iron curtain has descended upon. Europe. And behind this iron curtain.
The secret police, the uh Regulation of previously private behavior. All of those things that are common to totalitarianism.
Solitarianism is that kind of government where It's so thorough. that they recruit your children. to be spies upon you. And people, in 1984, in that novel, but also in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, their children are forced to go to school. Certain kind of school.
and they're taught terrible things. But you know little kids kind of like that because it's like a big chance to grow up and they're taught that the family is unimportant, that the state provides everything. And they become spies on their on their parents.
So that's what's behind the Iron Curtain. You know, it's vicious and it's... thorough. It's very difficult to get away from it.
So that world, that's uh The darkest world that has ever existed. tied with Nazi Germany. and the worst periods in Chinese history, Churchill conceived the British Empire. As a Elaborate. system of voluntary association.
And but for India, all of the major British colonies were self-governing.
So, you know, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. Canada The United States is an ally. Those were all countries that had their own government. And They contributed a little over 45% of the British war effort in both world wars. And Britain was unable to conscript a single soldier from any of those places.
Churchill's point all the time was This is an association of principle. and love. Right? And the wars, both world wars, would have been different without that love. which was all over the British Empire.
You know, we regard it as a dirty word today, but it very much was not.
So, the legacy of the speech. Turtle indicates A foreign policy built on a union of the free countries. This foreign policy would be Defensive first. Keep the Soviet Union and other tyrannical nations from dominating the world. and then it would exude a constant pressure.
toward freedom and justice everywhere in the world. But he says in an important passage in this Iron Curtain speech, he says, it is not our duty. to intervene in the affairs of nations that we have not conquered in war. And so this is a long-term strategy. To solidify the free countries known as the West, and to, through that unity, to tear the Soviet Union And it's a little bit like Lincoln's strategy about straight s uh about slavery.
Lincoln and Churchill both regarded The Slavery in American History and the slavery that was the Soviet Union. The systems that won't work. Eventually, they're going to collapse, which is, by the way, what happened to the Soviet Union after. two full generations of torturing people to death and distorting their lives and their minds and managing their families. After two generations of that, it collapsed of its own way.
Because it's stupid, right? It's not the way human beings should be governed. The Classics teaches that tyrannies have a lot of trouble lasting a long time. And so Churchill thought as he thought with Hitler. Time is on our side.
We don't have to undertake the disaster of trying to conquer them with their nuclear weapons and their massive armies. We're just gonna have to contain them. That became the strategy containment. And then get stronger ourselves and live our lives in freedom and exercise the maximum influence on them. and everybody else in the world that we can.
And that was the plan that was followed. And it ultimately worked. And we have not had a world war since the second. We're of course lapsing into the dangerous idea that that can't happen anymore. We ought to be aware that it can happen again and we ought to be ready for it.
And you've been listening to Dr. Larry R., and a great job as always to. Monty Montgomery himself. a Hillsdale College graduate, and there is nobody better to talk about such things All things, Churchill. than Doctor Arne.
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It's Mario Lopez. Back to school. It's an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated, a vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect. Everyday moments can become opportunities for someone with bad intentions, whether you're a parent, teacher, coach, or neighbor.
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