The Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. On either side of the Iron Curtain, states developed their own international economic and military alliances:
- Member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, with the Soviet Union as the leading country.
- Member countries of the European Community and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and associated countries with the United States as the leading country.
Physically, the Iron Curtain took the form of border defenses between the countries of Europe in the middle of the continent. The most notable border was marked by the Berlin Wall and its Checkpoint Charlie which served as a symbol of the Curtain as a whole.
The events that demolished the Iron Curtain started in discontent in Poland, and continued in Hungary, German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Romania was the only country in Europe to violently overthrow its communist regime.
Read more about Iron Curtain: Analogous Terms, Pre–Cold War Usage, Fall of The Iron Curtain, Monuments
Famous quotes containing the words iron and/or curtain:
“The greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so constructed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)