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Cold War
(1947-1991)
 The Iron Curtain

The Iron Curtain
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   9.29

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    yugoslavia, occupation, spelled, during, threat, zone, remain, power, conflict, leader, official, conference, eastern, disagree, situation, against
     content words:    World War II, United States, Soviet Union, Soviet Socialist Republics, Eat Germany, North Korea, North Vietnam, In Asia, In Germany, Great Britain

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The Iron Curtain
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     During World War II, The United States and the Soviet Union were allies. They fought together against Germany. Did they remain allies for a long time after the war?
 
2     Not at all. In fact, the war was barely over when the situation began to change. When the United States and the Soviet Union met with the other countries in the peace conferences at the end of the war, the US and the USSR were already beginning to disagree. (USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the official name for the Soviet Union)
 
3     The United States was already a world power and wanted to remain strong. The Soviet Union was rapidly becoming a major world power too, and it wanted to continue expanding its control. At the peace conference, the two countries competed for control of other European countries. The Soviet Union, which was a Communist country, wanted more European countries to become Communist. The United States wanted European countries to remain independent.
 
4     By the end of the war, the number of Communist countries was already growing. The Soviet Union had helped to free many eastern European countries from Germany and Japan during the war. These countries included Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Eat Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and North Korea. After the war, these countries soon became "satellites" of the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia, Albania, and North Vietnam also became Communist countries. In Asia, China was becoming Communist too.
 
5     Germany was divided into four occupation zones after the war. Occupation zones are parts of the country that are controlled by another country. In Germany, one zone was controlled by Great Britain, one by the United States, one by France, and one by the Soviet Union. Soon, East Germany, the zone controlled by the Soviet Union, became a Communist country.

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