cynthiachung | “By destroying communism in his [Hitler’s] country, he had barred its road to Western Europe…Germany therefore could rightly be regarded as a bulwark of the West against communism.” (1)
– The Earl of Halifax, aka Lord Halifax (British Ambassador to the U.S. 1940-1946, Secretary of State for British Foreign Affairs 1938-1940, Viceroy and Governor-General of India 1926-1931)
Everyone is aware of the Iron Curtain speech delivered by Winston Churchill, who was no longer British Prime Minister by then, on March 5, 1946.
However, it is not Churchill who is the originator of the phrase, but rather Nazi German Foreign Minister Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk who made a speech in Berlin on May 3, 1945, which was reported in the London Times and the New York Times on May 8, 1945. In the speech, Krosigk uses the Nazi-coined propaganda phrase “Iron Curtain,” which was used in precisely the same context by Churchill less than one year later.
Following this German speech, only three days after the German surrender, Churchill wrote a letter to Truman, to express his concern about the future of Europe and to say that an “Iron Curtain” had come down. (2)
This sharing of policy between Nazi Germany and England should not come as a complete surprise.
Richard Cottrell writes in “Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe”:
“After NATO was established in April 1949, the secret armies gradually came under the direct control of the new military alliance. NATO carefully established departments of clandestine warfare which managed the secret armies and allocated their tasks. Only a few trustworthy intimates were to know of their existence. As each secret unit was eventually exposed, the name Gladio came to be applied to all of them.”
However, the expected Soviet invasion never occurred. And thus, these secret armies found another purpose, they were to be used against the people.
The desire was that by staging false-flag operations that were blamed on communists, this would in turn invoke panic and revulsion and would send voters flocking to the welcoming arms of a secure Right-wing government.
Richard Cottrell writes:
“Bands of secret soldiers and their cohorts were ordered to shoot, bomb, maim and kill their own citizens. The United States forbade any sovereign European states to seat communist ministers in government. All movements of the Left fell under suspicion as cloaks for Moscow.”
Italy, who had the largest and most powerful communist party in Europe, would be first on the list.
The Communist Party of Italy, admired for leading the fight against Mussolini, was expected to win in Italy’s first post-war election in June 1946. This, of course, was considered intolerable under the Iron Curtain diktat.
Investigative journalist Christopher Simpson writes in his book “Blowback,” how a substantial part of the funding for the opposition to the Communist Party of Italy, which was the Christian Democratic Party, came from captured Nazi assets, (largely held by the Americans). This intervention tipped the balance in favour of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party, which hid thousands of fascists in its ranks.
The Christian Democratic Party would be the dominating party in Italy for five decades, during the Operation Gladio years, until it was dissolved in 1994.
In order to ensure that no further communist support were to arise in Italy, Operation Gladio, with knowledge and support by the CIA, MI6 and European intelligence agencies, led a campaign of brutal violence against Italians that stretched the better part of two decades known as the “years of lead,” the anni di piombo.
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