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The "Iron Curtain" is a term coined by Joseph Goebbels, and made famous by Winston Churchill, which refers to the boundary which symbolically, ideologically, and physically divided Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War, roughly 1945 to 1990. Northwest of the Iron Curtain While the Iron Curtain was in place, certain countries of Eastern Europe and many in Central Europe (except West Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Austria) were under the political influence of the Soviet Union. Indeed the Central European states to the east of the Curtain were frequently regarded as being part of Eastern Europe, rather than Central Europe. As an example, it became common in the West to refer to Czechoslovakia (now two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) as part of Eastern Europe. However, the Czech Republic is about as far east as Austria, and Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, is considerably further west than Vienna, the capital of Austria. Berlin, the capital of the reunited Germany, is only slightly to the West of Prague. And much of the Physical Iron Curtain divided Czechoslovakia from Austria to the South. The label of 'Eastern Europe' became a value or political judgement during the Cold War, and many people are offended by being described as Eastern Europeans. Many of the states were members of the Soviet Union itself (the Soviet Socialist Republics), while, with two exceptions, the neighboring countries of the Eastern bloc were ruled by pro-Soviet governments, kept in place by the threat of military force. The two exceptions were Yugoslavia which retained its full independence, and Albania which escaped Soviet influence in the 1960s and aligned itself with China; both Albania and Yugoslavia were Communist states. To the east of the Iron Curtain, the states developed their own international economic and military alliances, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact. West of the Iron Curtain To the west of the Iron Curtain, the countries of Western Europe and Southern Europe, along with Austria, West Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, operated market economies. With the exception of a period of fascism in Spain and Portugal and military dictatorship in Greece, these countries were ruled by democratic governments. Most states to the west of the Iron Curtain — with the exception of neutral Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland — were allied with the United States within NATO. Economically, the European Community and the European Free Trade Association were the Western counterparts to COMECON. The Iron Curtain as a physical entity
Origins of the Iron Curtain The first recorded use of the term iron curtain was in 1819, in the general sense of "an impenetrable barrier". It was used during World War II by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and later Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk in the last days of the war; however, its use was popularized by the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who used it in his "Sinews of Peace" address March 5, 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri: After its fall, a section of the Berlin Wall was transported to and erected at Westminster College. Reactions At first, many countries in the West widely condemned the speech. Much of the Western public still regarded the Soviet Union as close allies, in context of the recent defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan. Many saw Churchill's speech as warmongering and unnecessary. In light of Soviet archives now public, many historians have now revised their opinions. cf (John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know 1997)" Although the phrase was not well received at the time, as the Cold War strengthened it gained popularity as a short-hand reference to the division of Europe. The Iron Curtain served to keep people in and information out, and the metaphor eventually enjoyed wide acceptance in the West. In the Soviet Union, the speech was seen by Stalin as reinforcing his view that a future conflict with the West was inevitable. Over the following months, through a mixture of persuasion and purges of those holding contrary views, the Soviet Union did indeed come to see the West as a threat, rather than the ally they had been during World War II. The Cold War had begun in earnest. Antagonism between East and West The antagonism between the Soviet Union and the West that led to Churchill's speech had various origins. The United Kingdom, France, Japan, Canada, the United States and many other countries had backed the White Russians against the Bolsheviks during the 1918–1920 Russian Civil War, and the fact hadn't been forgotten by the Soviets. In the build up to World War II and in the face of the Western appeasement of Hitler the Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, one of the intentions being to divide the border states between them to form a buffer zone. Following the war Stalin was determined to acquire a similar buffer against Germany with pro-Soviet states on its border, leading to strained relations at the Yalta Conference (February 1945) and the subsequent Potsdam Conference (August 1945). In the West, there was not only opposition to Soviet domination over the buffer states, but the fear grew that the Soviets were building an empire that might be a threat to them and their interests. And, in particular, Churchill was concerned that the United States might return to its pre-war isolationism, leaving the exhausted European states unable to resist Soviet demands. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had announced at Yalta that after the defeat of Germany, US forces would be withdrawn from Europe within two years (Antony Beevor Berlin: The Downfall 1945, p80). See also Cold War (1947-1953) and its origins Earlier usages of the term There are various earlier usages of the term "Iron Curtain" pre-dating Churchill. Some suggest the term may have first been coined by Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians1 after World War I to describe the political situation between Belgium and Germany, in 1914. An iron curtain, or eisener Vorhang, was an obligatory precaution in all German theaters to prevent the possibility of fire from spreading from the stage to the rest of the theater. Such fires were rather common as the decor often was very flammable. In case of fire, a metal wall would separate the stage from the theater, secluding the flames to be extinguished by firefighters. Douglas Reed used this metaphor in his book Disgrace Abounding (Jonathan Cape, 1939, page 129): "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." On February 25, 1945 Joseph Goebbels wrote of an "iron curtain" in his weekly newspaper Das Reich: The Year 2000 The first oral mention of an Iron Curtain was in a broadcast by Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk to the German people on May 2, 1945: The first recorded occasion on which Churchill used the term "iron curtain" was in a May 12, 1945 telegram he sent to US President Harry S. Truman: (US Dept of State, Foreign Relations of the US, The Conference of Berlin (Potsdam) 1945, vol. 1, p. 9) Churchill repeated the words in a further telegram to Truman on June 4, 1945 in which he protested against such a US retreat to what was earlier designated as, and ultimately became, the US occupation zone, saying the military withdrawal would bring (Ibid., p. 92) At the Potsdam Conference, Churchill complained to Stalin about an "iron fence" coming down upon the British Mission in Bucharest. Allen Dulles used the term in a speech on December 3, 1945, referring to only Germany: The Iron Curtain monument There is an Iron Curtain monument in the Southern part of the Czech Republic at approximately (48.8758 N, 15.8737 E). A few hundred meters of the original fence, and one of the guard towers, has remained installed. There are interpretive signs in Czech and English that explain the history and significance of the Iron Curtain. This is the only surviving part of the fence in the Czech Republic (though a number of guard towers and bunkers can still be seen. Some of these are part of the Communist Era defenses, some are from the never-used Czech 'mini-Maginot line' in defense against Hitler, and some towers were, or have become, hunting platforms). Analogous terms A variant of the Iron Curtain, the Bamboo Curtain, was coined in reference to the People's Republic of China. A field of cacti surrounding the U.S. Naval station at Guantanamo Bay planted by Cuba was occasionally termed the "cactus curtain". As the standoff between the West and the countries of the Iron and Bamboo curtains eased with the end of the Cold War, the term fell out of any but historical usage. | |||||||||
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