A DIVIDED EUROPE

The end of the Second World War saw a drastic redrawing of the borders
of Europe. Germany was cut in half and occupied by the four Allied 
powers.The Russian defeat of Germany left Stalin with millions of
Red army troops ocuupying half of Europe. 

In May 1945, the Red Army ocuupied Poland,Rumania,Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia,Eastern Germany,Hungary and much of Austria as well
as the Baltic states. Whilst the Allies quickly restored a measure
of freedom to western germany and self-governent soon followed,Stalin
had no such intentions of releasing the eastern states to pursue their
own destinies. Prague,Warsaw,Bucharest,Budapest and Berlin all had
puppet communist regimes thrust upon them whilst the real anti-communist
groups who had returned from exile to run these nations were quickly
annihilated and disappeared into the Gulag.

In the United States at a dinner in his honour,Winston Churchill quickly
spoke out against the new darkness which had descended over half of 
Europe and coined the phrase `The Iron Curtain`, the name stuck and
for the next 44 years, the Iron Curtain was to symbolise the divided
post-war Europeand the nuclear Cold War.

Austria shook off the Red stranglehold and achieved a measure of
neutral independence. Yugoslavia too, stood up against Stalin and
pursued its own brand of Communism.

During the following decades, repeated attemps in East Europe to
achieve some measure of freedom were savagely supressed by the
Soviets - however in 1989, the walls started to tumble and finally
the slow and painful process of European reunification began.....