The Iron Curtain
HIn late 1946 the former
British prime minister, Winston Churchill, remarked that an “iron curtain”
was descending across the middle of Europe.
HThe Soviets used force
and threats to press their advantage and by 1947 and 1948 gave Communist
groups in Eastern
Europe the green light to govern in roughly the same repressive way the USSR itself was
ruled.
HIn July 1947 Soviet
foreign minister Molotov served notice that the USSR would not participate
in the Marshall Plan.
HThe globe-girdling
political, diplomatic, and economic conflict between blocs—for the most part
between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet
Union—known as the Cold War had begun.
