Herald Português

The Cold War · 5 chapters · 25 min

The Iron Curtain: How the Cold War Began

1945 to 1949Europe, Washington and Moscow

The story in brief

Three allies win a war and divide a continent. One builds a bomb, and a spy hands it to another. A speech names the line, a plan of money splits Europe in two, and a blockaded city is fed from the sky for eleven months. By 1949 both sides have the Bomb, and the world has two camps.

The chapters

  1. Chapter 1 · 5 min · Free

    The Big Three

    Three men in a palace by the Black Sea, one country they all want, and a promise that can be read two ways.

    Sources: Yalta agreement (1945); FRUS 1945; Roosevelt to Congress (1945)

  2. Chapter 2 · 5 min · Free

    The Bomb

    A light brighter than noon in the desert, a hint at a conference table, and a spy who has already told Moscow everything.

    Sources: Stimson memos (1945); Orwell, Tribune (1945); RERF

  3. Chapter 3 · 5 min

    An Iron Curtain

    Two secret telegrams that mirror each other, a speech in a Missouri college gym, and a promise to the whole world.

    Sources: Kennan and Novikov telegrams (1946); Churchill at Fulton

  4. Chapter 4 · 5 min

    The Marshall Plan

    A quiet speech at a graduation, an offer open to everyone, and a foreign minister who walks out.

    Sources: Marshall at Harvard (1947); FRUS 1947; Zhdanov (1947)

  5. Chapter 5 · 5 min

    The Airlift

    A city of two million cut off by land, fed from the sky for eleven months, and a pilot with two sticks of gum.

    Sources: FRUS 1948; North Atlantic Treaty (1949); Truman (1949)

Who’s who

The people you meet. Each one is a hero card you can collect.

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt32nd President · Elected four times · At Yalta
  • J. Robert OppenheimerPhysicist · Director of Los Alamos · Doubter of the H-bomb
  • Winston ChurchillWartime Prime Minister · Orator · The Iron Curtain Speech
  • George C. MarshallArmy Chief of Staff · Secretary of State · Nobel Peace Prize
  • Gail HalvorsenAirlift Pilot · Uncle Wiggly Wings · The Candy Bomber
  • Harry S. Truman33rd President · The Buck Stops Here · The Truman Doctrine

What you’ll be able to tell

This story belongs to the journey “Dividing the World”. By the end of it, you can tell where the iron curtain came from, and why the spies were real but the list was not.

Stories in this journey

  1. The Iron Curtain: How the Cold War Began
  2. The Red Scare: Spies, Lists and Witch Hunts

Sources

  • The Yalta agreement
  • FRUS
  • Kennan and Novikov telegrams
  • Churchill at Fulton
  • The Truman Doctrine
  • Marshall at Harvard
  • The North Atlantic Treaty

Photo credits for this story

The Cold War: every story