Iron Curtain: History

The Iron Curtain is a term that received prominence after Winston Churchill's speech in which he said that an “iron curtain has descended” across Europe.
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Born in , Mesmer studied religion, philosophy, law, and medicine in Vienna, Austria, but initially failed to excel at any of these An estimated 25 million Hula-Hoops were sold in its first four months of Isoeb Dzhugashvili was born in in Georgia, then part of the old Russian empire. The son of a drunk who beat him mercilessly and a pious washerwoman mother, Stalin learned Russian, which he Rosa Luxemburg, the leader of a revolutionary faction of the German socialist party during World War I, is born on this day in , in Zamos, Poland, an area that at the time was under Russian control.

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The Joint Chiefs of Staff order a U. Air Force air commando training advisory team to Thailand to train Lao pilots in counterinsurgency tactics. Laos had won its independence from French control in July but the country quickly became a battleground as various factions During his tenure, Miller made baseball the first sport to institute collective bargaining and salary arbitration agreements, and oversaw the advent of free agency The brainchild of Cronkite and CBS, the March 5 show was a test-run to see if the program could be successful.

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The show spawned a popular spin-off, The Colbert All people on board the aircraft were killed. He is charged with a single felony count and three misdemeanors for his stage antics at a Miami concert a few days earlier. When Morrison first got word of the charges for lewd and For those living in Soviet bloc nations, it became gradually more difficult to relocate or travel to other countries. Borders once relatively open became guarded and tightly controlled.

The Iron Curtain

This division was keenly felt in Germany, which was split asunder by Soviet and Allied occupation zones. The twin towns of Sonnerberg and Neustadt found themselves in the Soviet and Allied zones respectively and separated by the Iron Curtain. In July the two towns participated in a soccer game, played on a pitch with a boundary-line formed by the east-west border allowing those on both sides to watch the match without passes. More than 25, spectators attended, some holding up placards demanding the two towns — and indeed the entire German nation — be reunified.

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Optimistic events like east-west football matches and border openings provided some hope that the borders would one day be relaxed or dissolved. But as pro-Moscow governments settled into power in the east, they began to strengthen border controls — to lock out anti-communist infiltrators and demonstrators, as well as preventing an exodus of their own people to the West.

In East Germany began a building program to fortify vulnerable parts of its border, erecting barbed wire, towers, gates and guard posts. Some heavily populated areas fringing the border were cleared of people.

Iron Curtain

Roads, railways and tunnels crossing borders were destroyed, dug up or diverted. The ground near the border was cleared and, in some cases, packed with landmines. In , it had been possible to cross the border into Allied-occupied Germany, if one was determined enough. Within four years, the border was sealed, government-authorised crossings were strictly controlled and unauthorised crossings were dangerous.

The Iron Curtain was not only a political and philosophical concept; it was a real and tangible one.


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It was coined by Winston Churchill in during a speech in Fulton, Missouri. After the Soviets liberated eastern European nations from Nazism, they shaped the political development of these nations. In most cases, Soviet agents orchestrated a pro-Soviet government by organising local socialists in a party or coalition, then giving them power through a coup or rigged election.

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The implementation of the Marshall Plan further exposed the widening divisions between these two blocs, with Soviet bloc nations refusing this aid under directions from Moscow. The prohibition of movement and trade, along with the growth of secret police forces in the Soviet bloc, saw the Iron Curtain firm into an uncrossable border by the early s. This content may not be republished or distributed without permission.

For more information please refer to our Terms of Use. This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation: Like some master architect, Churchill laid out, in a necessarily general but easily recognisable form, much of the future shape of the Cold War.

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He anticipated the formation of an anti-Soviet Western security system, based on the Anglo-American nucleus.