Iron Curtain  

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The "Iron Curtain" was the symbolic, ideological, and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War, roughly 1945 to 1991. At both sides of the Iron Curtain, the states developed their own international economic and military alliances, COMECON with the Warsaw Pact on the east side with the USSR as most important member, and the NATO and the European Community on the west side, with the United States.

The Iron Curtain took the shape of border defenses between the countries of Western and Eastern Europe, most notably the Berlin Wall, which served as a longtime symbol of the Iron Curtain altogether.

See also

• Berlin Wall
• Cold War
• Danube River Conference of 1948
• Eastern Bloc
• Removal of Hungary's border fence
• Revolutions of 1989
• Telephone tapping in the Eastern Bloc
• Western betrayal

Post Cold War:

• European Green Belt, a body of conservationists preserving the former Iron Curtain security zone which has become a wildlife preserve
• Iron Curtain Trail, a long-distance cycling route within the European Green Belt

Geography:

• Blue Banana at the west of the curtain