Hanging the Iron Curtain January 23, 2012

Hanging the Iron CurtainJanuary 23, 2012

The “Big Three” at Yalta, Feb. 1945

The “Iron Curtain”by 1949

Poland’s government-in-exile during WW II(the “London Poles”)

Wladislaw Sikorski(1881 – 1943)

Stanislaw Mikolajczyk(1901-1966)

Yellow Border = Poland from 1920-1937Darker Brown = Poland since 1945

The massacres at Katyn(perpetrated by Soviet security forces, April-May 1940;

uncovered by Nazi occupiers in April 1943)

Wladislaw Gomulka(1905-1982)

Leader of the Polish Workers’ Party(“Lublin Poles”)

Warsaw rebuilt… over the course of decades

German Breslau…rebuilt as Polish Wroclaw

German Danzig…rebuilt as Polish Gdansk

László Rajk (1909-1949)as Hungary’s interior minister

Jan Masaryk(1886-1948)

Pro-communist demonstrations in

Prague

The “Prague coup” (February 1948):

Triumph for Klement Gottwaldov

Masaryk’s mysterious death (March 1948)

The resignation of Edvard Benes (June 1948)

Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980)

Yugoslavia during World War II

The federal states of

Yugoslavia (1945-1991)

Stalin and Tito… before the “split”

Hungary: Rajk on trial, 1949

Czechoslovakia: Rudolf Slansky on trial, 1952