From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
Iron Curtain
is a term related to the
Cold War
. It means the border between the states that were members of the
Warsaw Pact
(in
Eastern Europe
), and those that were not (then called
The West
).
This border was between
East Germany
and
West Germany
, between
Czechoslovakia
and
Austria
, and between
Hungary
and
Austria
.
At the end of World War II
Austria
, Germany and
Berlin
were divided into four zones. In 1955, a
treaty
was signed. The treaty said that the Allied forces must leave Austria. In return, the Austrian government promised to do certain things, like not form a territorial union with Germany and recognise certain
minorities
, amongst others. The whole of
Europe
was separated into a Soviet Union zone in the East and a neutral or US-dominated zone in the West.
[1]
The splitting of Europe, Germany and especially Berlin into two political blocks was part of the Cold War between the United States of America and other western countries on one side and the Soviet Union and its allies on the other. The wartime Allied Forces split after their common enemy,
Nazi Germany
, was defeated in May 1945.
The idea of the Iron Curtain was referring to the separation of the communist Europe compared to the democratic west, it was the idea that what was happening in the
satellite states
and in Russia was secret to the rest of the world.
Satellite state
refers to a country being controlled by another, in this case Russia was controlling countries such as Hungary, Poland, Romania,
Bulgaria
and others which were previously controlled by Germany in WW2.
The idea of the Iron Curtain was made public by
Winston Churchill
, former
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
, in 1946 when he was invited to speak at
American University
by
Harry S. Truman
(the American president at the time). Churchill's speech was seen by
Nikita Khrushchev
; leader of the USSR from 1958 until 1964 as a declaration of war, as Churchill urged a struggle against the
Soviet Union
.
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Inner German border at
Point Alpha
-
Border fence
-
Bunker, one side
-
Bunker, other side