How did people cross the Iron Curtain?

Around 5,000 people made it out, however, often using innovative means. One man crossed via a wire cable shot by bow and arrow from the roof of a building to a relative on the other side. Others escaped by swimming across Berlin’s Spree River, via tunnels, or by hot air balloon.

How did people escape the Iron Curtain?

In the first six months of 1956, at the apex of Communist terror, seven hundred escape attempts were successfully thwarted by the Iron Curtain: an overwhelming military presence with machine gun towers at every mile, trained dogs, and a 10-foot-wide freshly ploughed strip of grass riddled with land mines between two …

What was life behind the Iron Curtain?

The Iron Curtain was a figurative and ideological wall — and eventually a physical one — that separated the Soviet Union from western Europe after World War II. The name, widely attributed to Winston Churchill, hinted that life in the USSR was secretive and very different from other western, capitalist countries.

How many people died crossing the Iron Curtain?

Iron Curtain’s 100,000 Dead. Up to 100,000 people are now believed to have died at the hands of East Germany’s former communist rulers and the Soviet occupiers that preceded them.

Why was the Iron Curtain significance?

Iron Curtain, the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas.

What did the Iron Curtain symbolize?

The Iron Curtain was a political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and its allied states.

Why was the Iron Curtain important?

Why was it called Iron Curtain?

Churchill meant that the Soviet Union had separated the eastern European countries from the west so that no one knew what was going on behind the “curtain.” He used the word “iron” to signify that it was impenetrable. …

How hard was it to cross the Berlin Wall?

The Wall changed Berlin from being one of the easiest places to cross the border, from the East, to be one of the most difficult. The number of escapees fell further to 868 per annum during the 1970s and to only 334 per annum between 1980 and 1988.

What was the goal of Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech?

Iron Curtain speech, speech delivered by former British prime minister Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, in which he stressed the necessity for the United States and Britain to act as the guardians of peace and stability against the menace of Soviet communism, which had lowered an “iron curtain” …

What world leader gave the famous speech about the Iron Curtain quizlet?

1964 Speech delivered by Winston Churchill at Fulton, Missouri where he said “An iron Curtain has descended across Europe”, the curtain refereeing to communism.