Question

Which world leader warned of an "iron curtain" descending across Europe after World War II?

A. The quick end to the fighting in the Pacific was due to a large-scale amphibious assault on the Japanese mainland.
B. The quick end to the fighting was a result of negotiations and a peace treaty signed between the United States and Japan.
C. The quick end to the fighting was primarily due to the surrender of Germany in Europe.
D. The quick end to the fighting was a result of the United States unilaterally withdrawing from the conflict.

Answer 1

Winston Churchill coined the term "iron curtain" in a speech in 1946 to describe the division between Western capitalist democracies and Eastern Communist states influenced by the Soviet Union, which marked the onset of the Cold War.

Step-by-step explanation:

The world leader who warned of an "iron curtain" descending across Europe after World War II was Sir Winston Churchill. He made this declaration during a speech in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, indicating the division of Europe into capitalist democracies in the West and Communist states under Soviet influence in the East.

This metaphor effectively captured the geopolitical reality of post-war Europe and the beginning of the Cold War era. Churchill's speech is historically significant as it highlighted the ideological conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union, which would dominate global relations for the latter half of the 20th century. The term "iron curtain" came to define the strict boundary that separated Eastern and Western Europe until the end of the Cold War in 1991.