The Iron Curtain was the political and physical boundary that divided Europe from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1990 and 1991.
The term described both literal barriers — razor wire, fortified walls, minefields and watchtowers along the western border of the Eastern Bloc — and the broader ideological divide between Soviet-aligned states in the east and NATO members in the west. Winston Churchill popularised the phrase in his 5 March 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri, declaring that “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” East of the line lay Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, the three Baltic states and the USSR. West of it, earlier cultural and economic connections were severed, replaced by entrenched military alliances and mutual distrust. The barrier began to fall with the collapse of communist governments across Eastern Europe in 1989, followed by German reunification in October 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. The depopulated border zones became accidental wildlife refuges, today preserved as the European Green Belt.
