‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent’ 
Winston Churchill 

From 1946 until 1990 there was a virtual Iron Curtain that barred all access from the capitalist west to the communist east, that was under the direct and deeply controlling influence of the Soviet Union. 

The End of WWII

After Nazi Germany and all puppet states under its control were liberated in 1945 on VE Day, the leaders of the UK, US, France and USSR split Germany between them. Almost immediately the USSR implemented a rigorous security scheme. This severely limited the access between the UK and US’s sectors in the west, and the Soviet controlled sector to the east. 

In 1946 former UK prime minister Winston Churchill declared that an Iron Curtain had descended across eastern Europe. Arguably, this was the start of the Cold War.

From 1946 Stalin was put in charge of re-organising governments of eastern European states. Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Albania, all of which became Communist and, in essence part of the USSR know as the Eastern Bloc. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were allies until their respective demises in 1991 and ’92.  

The Berlin Airlift

In no other place was the Iron Curtain more visible than Berlin. The city itself was split into four by the victors of the war. Although Berlin was situated more than 100 miles into East German territory West Berlin was under direct control of the democratic West German government. It was the last liberal light in the Eastern Bloc. 

In 1948, the USSR was so desperate to gain control over West Berlin that they blockaded all of the West German supply routes on land, including passenger trains and buses on the Autobahn. This resulted in the Berlin Airlift. 

The USSR made sure that any goods that were coming from the west had to be inspected by the Stasi, the East German secret police, massively delaying and limiting the goods that could be transported from the west to Berlin. 

In conversation with UK Prime Minister Clement Attlee, US President Harry Truman agreed that the NATO allies would use the three permissible air corridors to and from West Berlin to transport goods. The air corridors were also patrolled by US and UK air forces. By May 12th 1949 the Soviets relented and the airlift was over after 15 months. Nevertheless supply flights to west Berlin continued for another three months, just in case the Soviets tried to starve West Berlin again. In total the allies flew 148,000,000 km in the process. Almost the distance from Earth to the sun. 

Emigration Until 1950

In the period between 1946 and 1950 over 15 million people migrated from the Soviet controlled Eastern Bloc and the west. Restrictions put in place in 1950 effectively prohibited emigration completely. Between 1950 and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990 just over 13 million had left the Eastern Bloc to the west. 75% of these migrants did so under a bilateral agreement called ethnic migration.

This is the first part of a trilogy covering  the Iron Curtain and political unrest in Europe during the Cold War. Keep visiting our website for parts two and three that will come later this week.