<P> All German theatres had to install an iron curtain (eiserner Vorhang) as an obligatory precaution to prevent the possibility of fire spreading from the stage to the rest of the theatre . Such fires were rather common because the decor often was very flammable . In case of fire, a metal wall would separate the stage from the theatre, secluding the flames to be extinguished by firefighters . Douglas Reed used this metaphor in his book Disgrace Abounding: "The bitter strife (in Yugoslavia between Serb unionists and Croat federalists) had only been hidden by the iron safety - curtain of the King's dictatorship". </P> <P> A May 1943 article in Signal, a Nazi illustrated propaganda periodical published in many languages, bore the title "Behind the Iron Curtain". It discussed "the iron curtain that more than ever before separates the world from the Soviet Union". The German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his weekly newspaper Das Reich that if the Nazis should lose the war a Soviet - formed "iron curtain" would arise because of agreements made by Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference: "An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered". The first recorded oral intentional mention of an Iron Curtain in the Soviet context occurred in a broadcast by Lutz von Krosigk to the German people on 2 May 1945: "In the East the iron curtain behind which, unseen by the eyes of the world, the work of destruction goes on, is moving steadily forward". </P> <P> Churchill's first recorded use of the term "iron curtain" came in a 12 May 1945 telegram he sent to U.S. President Harry S. Truman regarding his concern about Soviet actions, stating "(a) n iron curtain is drawn down upon their front . We do not know what is going on behind". He was further concerned about "another immense flight of the German population westward as this enormous Muscovite advance towards the centre of Europe". Churchill concluded "then the curtain will descend again to a very large extent, if not entirely . Thus a broad land of many hundreds of miles of Russian - occupied territory will isolate us from Poland". </P> <P> Churchill repeated the words in a further telegram to President Truman on 4 June 1945, in which he protested against such a U.S. retreat to what was earlier designated as, and ultimately became, the U.S. occupation zone, saying the military withdrawal would bring "Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward". At the Potsdam Conference, Churchill complained to Stalin about an "iron fence" coming down upon the British Mission in Bucharest . </P>

Who was president when the iron curtain fell