Impact of Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech???

It was the first "declaration" of war and it was the formalisation of the unsaid "curtain" that existed between the East and West. It was more symbolic rather than inciting of further tensions.

i was revising this and in the textbook it said he built a 1600km fence from the baltic sea in the north to the black sea in the south. i always thought it was a metaphorical border and did not realise that he actually built a fence. this is true isn't it?

it says in the edexcel textbook "Stalin built the Iron Curtain - a 1600 km fence separating the Western and Eastern sphere of influence from the Baltic sea in the north to the Black sea in the south."???????

The Iron Curtain took physical shape in the shape of border defenses between the countries of the western and eastern Europe. These were some of the most heavily militarized areas in the world, particularly the so-called "inner German border" — commonly known simply as die Grenze in German — between East and West Germany. The inner German border was marked in rural areas by double fences made of steel mesh (expanded metal) with sharp edges, while near urban areas a high concrete barrier similar to the Berlin Wall was built. The barrier was always a short distance inside East German territory to avoid any intrusion into Western territory. The actual borderline was marked by posts and signs and was overlooked by numerous watchtowers set behind the barrier. In some places a "death strip" was constructed on the East German side of the barrier, in which unauthorized access would be met with bullets. The strip of land on the West German side of the barrier — between the actual borderline and the barrier — was readily accessible but only at considerable personal risk, because it was patrolled by both East and West German border guards. Shooting incidents were not uncommon, and a total of 28 East German border guards and several hundred civilians were killed between 1948–1981 (some may have been victims of "friendly fire" by their own side).


Elsewhere, the border defenses between west and east were much lighter. The border between Hungary and neutral Austria, for instance, was marked by a simple chain-link fence which was easily removed when it became the first part of the Iron Curtain to be dismantled in 1989. On June 27, 1989, the foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn, ceremonially cut through the border defenses separating their countries.

In parts of Czechoslovakia the border strip became hundreds of meters wide, and an area of increasing restrictions was defined as the border was approached. Only people with the appropriate government permissions were allowed to get close to the border.

The creation of these highly militarized no-man's lands led to de facto nature reserves and created a wildlife corridor across Europe; this helped the spread of several species to new territories. Since the fall of the iron curtain several initiatives are pursuing the creation of a European Green Belt nature preserve compound.

What do you expect? - it's an Edexcel textbook

Out of interest, do you have the ISBN and page number? I'd be interested to see for myself using something like Amazon's "SearchInside!".

"to protect eastern eurpose from Western influence, in 1946 Stalin built the 'Iron Curtain', a 1600 km fence cutting off communist countries of Eastern europe from the non communist West"

e.g.

The "Iron Curtain" was the symbolic, ideological, and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War, roughly 1945 to 1991. To the east of the Iron Curtain, the states developed their own international economic and military alliances, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact and certain countries of Eastern Europe and many in Central Europe were under the control of the Soviet Union.

No this is not true, there was no physical barrier across Europe except for in Berlin.

I never thought it was physical at all!

It was just a metaphorical divide between East and West