the.com/iron curtain
A barrier that divided Europe for decades, separating communist states from the West during the Cold War.
means The political, military, and ideological barrier that sealed off the Soviet-controlled East from the West during the Cold War, blocking travel, trade, and information.
from The phrase existed earlier in theater (the fireproof safety curtain that drops to seal off a stage) and in scattered political writing, but it was cemented in public memory by Winston Churchill's 1946 'Sinners' speech in Fulton, Missouri, where he declared that 'an iron curtain has descended across the Continent' — dividing Europe into Soviet and Western spheres. Churchill didn't coin it outright, but he's the one who made it stick.
- coined by
- Churchill, 1946 speech in Missouri
- actual material
- barbed wire, concrete, watchtowers, paranoia
- ran through
- Germany, splitting one nation into two experiments
- fell in
- 1989, faster than anyone built it