Noun

Singular Iron Curtain

Plural -

Iron Curtain

1. (historical) The dividing line between western Europe and the Soviet controlled regions, especially during the Cold War.

   5 March 1946: From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. — speech by Winston Churchill

The Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological 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:

• the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and Warsaw Pact on the east side, with the Soviet Union as most important member of each
• the European Community and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the west and south, with the United States of America as the area's military powerhouse

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 Curtain as a whole.

Demolition of the Iron Curtain started in Hungary during the summer of 1989 (e.g., Removal of Hungary's border fence and the Pan-European Picnic), when thousands of Eastern Germans began to emigrate to West Germany via Hungary on September 11, foreshadowing the fall of the Berlin Wall.