WINSTON CHURCHILL AND DWIGHT EISENHOWER
March 8, 1946

There was a roar of excitement in Richmond as Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister who led Great Britain in World War II, and General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, descended upon the city. Traveling by motorcade through the packed crowd of flashing cameras and eager citizens, Churchill brought the world’s eyes to Richmond.

Despite the cheers, the visit was all business. Just three days before, Churchill had warned Americans: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Their mutual wartime ally, the Soviet Union, now threatened Eastern Europe and, in Churchill’s eyes, the very world peace for which the Second World War had been fought. In Richmond, Churchill called for Anglo-American unity in a new global conflict that would become known as the Cold War.

Churchill party visits Capitol, March 8, 1946, Courtesy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch; Winston Churchill with Field Marshal Henry Maitland Wilson (left) and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and in the background (from left), Gov. William M. Tuck, Speaker of the House Thomas B. Stanley and Lt. Gov. Lewis “Pat” Collins II, March 8, 1946, Courtesy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch