ANDREW GLASS
On this day in 1947, Bernard Baruch, the multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term “Cold War” to describe the increasingly chilly relations between two World War II Allies: the United States and the Soviet Union.
Baruch used the phrase in a speech to the South Carolina House of Representatives, where his portrait was being unveiled.
“Let us not be deceived;” Baruch said, “we are today in the midst of a Cold War. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success.”
In September 1947, Walter Lippmann, Baruch’s friend and one of the day’s most widely read journalists, used “Cold War” in his New York Herald Tribune column.
The phrase caught on — to describe the bipolar diplomatic and military rivalry between the nuclear superpowers.
Baruch was born in Camden, S.C., in 1870, the son of German-Jewish immigrants.
After making a fortune on Wall Street, he usually wintered at Hobcaw Barony, his 17,500-acre estate on the South Carolina coast.
He bought the property in 1905.
Winston Churchill knew Baruch and was on the way to see the financier when he was hit by a taxi in 1931. Churchill later coined his own memorable term “Iron Curtain,” during a speech in Fulton, Mo., on March 5, 1946.
Baruch would often sit in Lafayette Park, across from the White House.
He would famously talk about domestic and world affairs with a wide range of people who came by to see him.
In 1960, on his 90th birthday, a bench in that park was dedicated to him. He died in 1965.
Source: “Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend,” by James Grant (1997)
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