-
Yalta/Postdam Conferences
The major issue at Potsdam was the question of how to handle Germany. At Yalta, the Soviets had pressed for heavy postwar reparations from Germany, half of which would go to the Soviet Union. -
Long Telegram
The Long Telegram was an 8,000 word long telegram written by George Kennan on February 1946. The Long Telegram did two things. The first thing that it did was address the threat of the Soviet Union's foreign policy. The second thing that it introduced the "containment" policy. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was a metaphor for the extreme political and ideological division that separated Western Europe from the Soviet Union and its satellite states in the east. -
Novikov Telegram
The Soviet response to The Long Telegram was The Novikov Telegram, in which the Soviet ambassador to the USA, Nikolai Novikov, warned that the USA had emerged from World War Two economically strong and bent on world domination. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic. Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government of the GDR on 13 August 1961.