Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe (1945-1948)

As the Red Army occupied Eastern European countries during the war, it installed communist or communist-friendly governments. Between 1945 and 1948, the USSR systematically transformed these governments into one-party communist regimes loyal to Moscow. By 1948, communist governments controlled Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and (more independently) Yugoslavia and Albania.

Western leaders watched in alarm. Churchill, out of office but still a major voice, gave a famous speech at Fulton, Missouri in March 1946:

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe."

The phrase "Iron Curtain" entered the political vocabulary as the standard term for the dividing line between Western Europe (capitalist, democratic, eventually aligned with the U.S.) and Eastern Europe (communist, Soviet-aligned).