The "Iron Curtain" was the boundary which symbolically, ideologically, and physically divided Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War, roughly 1945 to 1991. The first recorded use of the term was in 1920 by Ethel Snowden in her book Through Bolshevik Russia. German politician and Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels was the first to refer to an "Iron Curtain" coming down across Europe after World War II, in a manifesto he published in the German newspaper Das Reich in February 1945. The term was not widely used until March 5, 1946, when it was popularized by Winston Churchill in his "Sinews of Peace" address.
