Download or read book The Iron Curtain written by Bruce L. Brager and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visiting Central Europe, in 1962, a visitor would not see a real "Iron Curtain." There was no huge piece of grim drapery splitting Europe between Communist dictatorships and democracies. The Iron Curtain represented the Central European part of the Cold War, the generally peaceful, but highly dangerous, forty-year competition between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. The Iron Curtain symbolically represented the attempt to permanently, artificially, and arbitrarily split one part of Central Europe from the other. Although there was no real iron curtain, there was lots of steel in the form of barbed wire, ground radar, watchtowers, and machine guns in the hands of troops willing to use them. The boundary between democracy and totalitarianism was clear. This book tells the story of the Iron Curtain, and the Cold War it so vividly represented, from the start of World War II to its end with the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Book jacket.

Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Patrick Wright and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. . .' With these words Winston Churchill famously warned the world in a now legendary speech given in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. Launched as an evocative metaphor, the 'Iron Curtain' quickly became a brutal reality in the Cold War between Capitalist West and Communist East. Not surprisingly, for many years, people on both sides of the division have assumed that the story of the Iron Curtain began with Churchill's 1946 speech.In this fascinating investigation, Patrick Wright shows that this was decidedly not the case. Starting with its original use to describe an anti-fire device fitted into theatres, Iron Curtain tells the story of how the term evolved into such a powerful metaphor and the myriad ways in which it shapedthe world for decades before the onset of the Cold War. Along the way, it offers fascinating perspectives on a rich array of historical characters and developments, from the lofty aspirations and disappointed fate of early twentieth century internationalists, through the topsy-turvy experiences of the first travellers to Soviet Russia, to thetheatricalization of modern politics and international relations. And, as Wright poignantly suggests, the term captures a particular way of thinking about the world that long pre-dates the Cold War - and did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Download or read book Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain written by Jim Willis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling book describes how everyday people courageously survived under repressive Communist regimes until the voices and actions of rebellious individuals resulted in the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe. Part of Greenwood's Daily Life through History series, Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain enables today's generations to understand what it was like for those living in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, particularly the period from 1961 to 1989, the era during which these people-East Germans in particular-lived in the imposing shadow of the Berlin Wall. An introductory chapter discusses the Russian Revolution, the end of World War II, and the establishment of the Socialist state, clarifying the reasons for the construction of the Berlin Wall. Many historical anecdotes bring these past experiences to life, covering all aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain, including separation of families and the effects on family life, diet, rationing, media, clothing and trends, strict travel restrictions, defection attempts, and the evolving political climate. The final chapter describes Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and the slow assimilation of East into West, and examines Europe after Communism.

Download or read book Retracing the Iron Curtain A 3 000 Mile Journey Through the End and Afterlife of the Cold War written by Timothy Phillips and published by The Experiment, LLC. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across 3,000 miles and over eight decades, this epic new people’s history of the Cold War makes eye-opening sense of a defining 20th-century conflict—and how it continues to shape our world today. Initially a victory line where Allies met at the end of World War Two, the Iron Curtain quickly became the front of a new kind of war. It divided Europe from north to south for a staggering forty-five years. Crossing it in either direction was always a political act; in many cases, it was a crime to even talk about doing so. New generations have grown up since these borders came down, freed from the restrictions of the Cold War era. But what has the Iron Curtain left in its wake? Timothy Phillips travels its full 3,000-mile route—from inside the Arctic Circle to where Armenia meets Azerbaijan and Turkey—to craft this epic new people’s history of a defining 2oth-century conflict. Here, in the borderlands where a powerful clash of civilizations took form in concrete and barbed wire, he uncovers the remarkable stories of everyday people forever imprinted by life in the Curtain’s long shadow. Some look back on the era with nostalgia, even affection, while others despise it, unable to forgive the decades of hardship their families and nations endured. A director recalls the astonishing night his movie premiered in East Germany—November 9, 1989, the very night the Berlin Wall fell. And a railroad worker recounts the 1951 hijacking of a passenger train from Czechoslovakia that breached the Curtain, granting those aboard immediate asylum in the West. These narratives, by turns harrowing and heartening, paint a vivid portrait of the new Europe that emerged from the ruins. Phillips reveals the Iron Curtain’s profound impact on our world today—even as he punctures the fault lines we draw. Publisher’s note: This book was published in the UK under the title The Curtain and the Wall.

Download or read book The Iron Curtain written by Fraser J. Harbutt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1988-10-13 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was forty-two years ago that Winston Churchill made his famous speech in Fulton, Missouri, in which he popularized the phrase "Iron Curtain." This speech, according to Fraser Harbutt, set forth the basic Western ideology of the coming East-West struggle. It was also a calculated move within, and a dramatic public definition of, the Truman administration's concurrent turn from accommodation to confrontation with the Soviet Union. It provoked a response from Stalin that goes far to explain the advent of the Cold War a few weeks later. This book is at once a fascinating biography of Winston Churchill as the leading protagonist of an Anglo-American political and military front against the Soviet Union and a penetrating re-examination of diplomatic relations between the United States, Great Britain, and the U.S.S.R. in the postwar years. Pointing out the Americocentric bias in most histories of this period, Harbutt shows that the Europeans played a more significant part in precipitating the Cold War than most people realize. He stresses that the same pattern of events that earlier led America belatedly into two world wars, namely the initial separation and then the sudden coming together of the European and American political arenas, appeared here as well. From the combination of biographical and structural approaches, a new historical landscape emerges. The United States appears at times to be the rather passive object of competing Soviet and British maneuvers. The turning point came with the crisis of early 1946, which here receives its fullest analysis to date, when the Truman administration in a systematic but carefully veiled and still widely misunderstood reorientation of policy (in which Churchill figured prominently) led the Soviet Union into the political confrontation that brought on the Cold War.

Download or read book Through the Seams of the Iron Curtain written by U. S. Military and published by . This book was released on 2018-11-04 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the same Cold War context in which the CIA's Book Program covertly sent Western literature behind the Iron Curtain into the Communist world, Christian missionaries also used covert (and some overt) methods to smuggle Bibles to the Underground Churches of the Eastern Bloc. This thesis describes the main smuggling routes and locations and consolidates several privately published, first-hand accounts of retired Bible smugglers, with academic works providing additional insight. It follows the timeline of events leading to the greatest expansion of smuggling operations in the 1960s through the 1980s, and it examines the methods, effects, extent of success, and motives for smuggling this contraband-Bibles-which many Soviets considered dangerous to the stability of Communism. After outlining the activity in individual Eastern Bloc nations, this thesis draws parallels between Ashutosh Varshney's use of the theories of instrumental and value rationality and the internal motivations that drove most Bible smugglers to their work-even in the face of great personal loss. Finally, this work draws a connection between the covert actions of the Underground Church and Bible smugglers and the Soviet and satellite governments' loss of legitimacy in line with Sabrina Ramet's assertions in Social Currents in Eastern Europe.It is almost unnecessary to explain why some smugglers have maintained their cover to this day: The East has opened, but some of these men and women still have a criminal history on the record books of the nations within which they were caught smuggling. Not every legal battle became moot when the Berlin Wall fell-at least some prior smugglers felt this was the case based on their secrecy in recent printed accounts. Because of the sensitivity of the topic, some authors published using pseudonyms in order to maintain anonymity for those in the account. Nevertheless, several of the personally published accounts represent oral historical accounts of participants that provide unique first-person perspectives on the operations, the successes and failures, and the value of the work of smuggling Bibles into closed countries. Aside from the primary source books and the few scholarly articles, current articles about social currents and religious trends will help to establish the currency of the social concerns such as freedom of religion, legitimacy of government, and authoritarian oppression addressed here.Undisputed is the secularization forced on Eastern European nations under Communism. The Soviet system was built on an institutional atheism, in which children were forcibly indoctrinated so as to separate them from the "superstitious" faith of their families-occasionally separating them from the families themselves. Christians were arrested, imprisoned, fined, tortured; they lost their jobs, their titles, and sometimes, even their lives, if they would not denounce their faith in favor of atheism. The first-hand accounts also give a picture of the communist mindset in Poland and Czechoslovakia early in the Cold War beginning in the decade before the focus time-period. They seem to make up the main body of primary sources that tell these stories-and, importantly, they overlap with and mostly complement each other on many points, as will be discussed shortly between Henderson, Brother Andrew, Wurmbrand, Heinila and Babcock, especially.

Download or read book Perforating the Iron Curtain written by Poul Villaume and published by Museum Tusculanum Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cold War history research of the recent years suggests that the East-West detente process of the 1970s was a more significant element than previously believed in understanding and explaining the processes, on both sides of the East-West divide, which led to the peaceful end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. This anthology is a contribution to this research. The dozen articles elucidate the European detente process from grass-root - as well as diplomatic - levels, including the Helsinki Conference Final Act of 1975 on respect of human rights and human contacts across the Iron Curtain of the Cold War. The articles are based on recently opened state and private archives from West and East Europe, as well as the US. They are written by a mix of internationally distinguished senior scholars and younger promising researchers from the US, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, and Denmark.

Download or read book Through the Iron Curtain written by Eva Wonka and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who wants to come on a trip behind the Iron Curtain...The Global Adventures Series bring exciting, dangerous, and true stories about men and women who served God faithfully and lived a life for His glory.Smuggling the Bible into former communist countries...Traveling to foreign places without knowing the language...Teaching the Bible secretly among Christians in Romania...Experiencing the dangers of the Secret Police...Learning to trust the Lord to do the impossible...In this edition, hear the riveting stories about Tom, David, Margareta and Jozef.Who wants to come with me on a trip behind the Iron Curtain?

Download or read book The Wall written by Peter Sís and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I was born at the beginning of it all, on the Red side-the Communist side-of the Iron Curtain." Through annotated illustrations, journals, maps, and dreamscapes, Peter Sis shows what life was like for a child who loved to draw, proudly wore the red scarf of a Young Pioneer, stood guard at the giant statue of Stalin, and believed whatever he was told to believe. But adolescence brought questions. Cracks began to appear in the Iron Curtain, and news from the West slowly filtered into the country. Sís learned about beat poetry, rock 'n' roll, blue jeans, and Coca-Cola. He let his hair grow long, secretly read banned books, and joined a rock band. Then came the Prague Spring of 1968, and for a teenager who wanted to see the world and meet the Beatles, this was a magical time. It was short-lived, however, brought to a sudden and brutal end by the Soviet-led invasion. But this brief flowering had provided a glimpse of new possibilities-creativity could be discouraged but not easily killed. By joining memory and history, Sis takes us on his extraordinary journey: from infant with paintbrush in hand to young man borne aloft by the wings of his art.--Publisher information.

Download or read book Breaking Through the Iron Curtain written by Jana L Jenkins and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE IRON CURTAIN WAS THE POLITICAL, MILITARY, AND IDEOLOGICAL BARRIER ERECTED BY THE SOVIET UNION AFTER WWII sealing itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies off from open contact with the West and other non-communist areas. It was under these conditions that Jana Jenkins took her children and dared the impossible: leaving Soviet Czechoslovakia. Travel to the West out of Czechoslovakia was governed by complicated rules to ensure citizens did not defect. Parents were able to leave the country for short visits to the West, but children were left behind to ensure their return. Attempting to leave the country with children was classified as a criminal act, and punishable by removing the children and sending the parents to prison. This was the risk when Jana and her three children boarded a train for West Germany in 1970. She didn't know God at the time and carried the burden of this risky decision on her shoulders. She was afraid, but God had a date with her on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Download or read book Trapped Behind the Iron Curtain written by Marita Patos and published by . This book was released on 2017-02 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marita's book is about life under a tyrannical government during the Cold War in East Germany. This is the first book of its kind in the United States of America.

Download or read book Imposing Maintaining and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain written by Mark Kramer and published by Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain.

Download or read book The Iron Curtain Has Fallen Cold War for Kids US Military History Grade 7 Children s American History written by Baby Professor and published by Speedy Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2024-04-15 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the intense rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War in this engaging history book for Grade 7 students. Learn about the Space Race, the nail-biting Cuban Missile Crisis, and the complex Vietnam War. Essential for educators, homeschooling families, and school librarians, this book unpacks the pivotal events that shaped a significant era in U.S. history, making it an indispensable resource for any American history curriculum.

Download or read book Escapes from Behind the Iron Curtain written by Zoltan Bartok and published by Nook Press. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a "stubborn" individual who did not let evil forces control his destiny. The author was accused of sabotage on the 10th anniversary of the 1956 revolution. He was 17 years old. He tried to escape through the Hungarian-Yugoslav border with one of his classmates. Caught by border patrol, he was jailed and treated very badly. He barely survived the month-long ordeal. Stamped as an enemy of the state, he was taken to a labor camp at age 19: he had to do forced labor instead of regular military service. Against all odds, he was able to break free from the communist bloc at age 23. Of course, given the brainwashing his generation was subjected to, when he reached the Italian shore, swimming from Yugoslavia during a night in August of 1973, his quest for freedom was just beginning. After spending 6 months in Italy, he was admitted to the USA as a political refuge. In 1976, after the communist governments signed the Human Rights Declaration at the 1975 Helsinki Conference, he believed that the amnesty the Hungarian government issued was credible and returned to his homeland. How he managed to free himself again and survive the torture he had to endure when captured on the Yugoslav-Italian border in the fall of 1977 is also described in "Escapes from behind the Iron Curtain.""

Download or read book Iron Curtain Twitchers written by Jennifer M. Hudson and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines cases of rhetorical antagonisms and collaborations between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. The author analyzes relations from cultural and political angles and investigates mutual perspectives at both the government and grassroots levels.

Download or read book Faith and Devotion written by Laszlo Geder and published by . This book was released on 2008-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the occupation of Hungary in 1945, Stalin crushed the democratically elected Hungarian Parliament and the political parties. A Communist dictatorship was established. The Secret Police, directed by the Soviet KGB, persecuted, arrested the members of the opposition and closed the escape route to the West with the Iron Curtain. The lives of many families were destroyed by the Communist system. This is a story of a family, where the father dies in 1946 and the mother marries an American Hungarian who visits Hungary in 1948. The marriage is approved by the Communist authorities, but the wife and her two teenage children from her first marriage are not allowed to leave Hungary to the U.S. They try to escape through the Iron Curtain. They are caught and imprisoned. After 9 years of separation, the wife and her daughter are allowed to leave Hungary, but her son, a young physician can not follow. He never gives up plans to join his family in America. This finally happens in 1974 when he misleads the ever watching Secret Police. He establishes a successful career in Medicine and Medical Research in the U.S.

Download or read book Cultural Exchange the Cold War written by Yale Richmond and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Exchange and the Cold War describes how these exchange programs (which brought an even larger number of Americans to the Soviet Union) raised the Iron Curtain and fostered changes that prepared the way for Gorbachev's glasnost, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War."--BOOK JACKET.