Iron Curtain

the siege of the city came to an end, a Hungarian civil servant heard the same silence on the streets of Budapest. I got to the Castle District, not a soul anywhere. I walked along Werbõczy Street. Nothing but bodies and ruins, supply carts, and drays . . . I got to Szentháromság Square and decided to look in at the Council in case I found somebody there. Deserted. Everything turned upside down and not a soul . . .

Even Warsaw, a city already destroyed by the time the war ended the Nazi occupiers had razed it to the ground following the uprising in the autumn grew silent when the German army finally retreated on January 16, 1945. W³adys³aw Szpilman, one of a tiny handful of people hiding in the ruins of the city, heard the change. Silence fell, he wrote in his memoir, The Pianist, a silence such as even Warsaw, a dead city for the last three months, had not known before. I could not even hear the steps of the guards outside the building. I couldn t understand it. The following morning, the silence was broken by a loud and resonant noise, the last sound I expected : the Red Army had arrived, and loudspeakers were broadcasting, in Polish, the news of the liberation of the city.

This was the moment sometimes called zero hour, Stunde Null: the end of the war, the retreat of Germany, the arrival of the Soviet Union, the moment the fighting ended and life started up again. Most histories of the communist takeover of Eastern Europe begin at precisely this moment, and logically so. To those who lived through this change of power, zero hour felt like a turning point: something very concrete came to an end, and something very new began. From now on, many people said to them

authorities shut down choral singing societies, bird-watching clubs, anything that might nourish an independent social sphere. The story is told both with artistry and scholarship.
David Frum, The Daily Beast, Favorite Books of 2012

A meticulously researched and riveting account of the totalitarian mind-set and its impact on the citizens of East Germany, Poland and Hungary. . . . Even as it documents the consequences of force, fear and intimidation, however, Iron Curtain also provides evidence of resistance and resilience.
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Deeply researched, exciting. . . . A masterful work that will be read profitably by both laymen and scholars. . . . It is the best book on its subject, and will remain so for quite a while.
Christian Science Monitor

Disturbing but fascinating history. . . . With precision in her narration and penetrating analysis, Applebaum has written another masterful account of the brutality of Soviet rule.
Publishers Weekly, starred review, Best Book of 2012

A dark but hopeful chronicle that shows how even humanity s worst can fracture and fall.
Kirkus Reviews, starred review, Best Book of 2012

Magisterial . . . Anne Applebaum is exceptionally well qualified to tell [this story]. Her deep knowledge of the region, breadth of view and eye for human detail makes this as readable as her last book, on the Gulag.
Daily Mail (UK)

A true masterpiece. . . . Impressive. . . . Applebaum s description of this remarkable time is everything a good history book should be: brilliantly and comprehensively researched, beautifully and shockingly told, encyclopedic in scope, meticulous in detail. . . . First and foremost of [the book s achievements] is Applebaum s ability to take a dense and complex subject, replete with communist acronyms and impenetrable jargon, and make it not only informative but enjoyable and even occasionally witty.
The Telegraph (UK)

A masterly synthesis in English of recent research by scholars in these countries, and of the range of memoirs by participants and survivors.
The Guardian (UK)

Applebaum s excellent book tells with sympathy and sensitivity how unlucky Eastern Europe was: to be liberated from the Nazi dictatorship by the only regime that could rival it for inhumanity.
The Independent (UK)

So much effort is spent trying to understand democratization these days, and so little is spent trying to understand the opposite processes. Anne Applebaum corrects that imbalance, explaining how and why societies succumb to totalitarian rule. Iron Curtain is a deeply researched and eloquent description of events which took place not long ago and in places not far away - events which contain many lessons for the present.
Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World

Iron Curtain is an exceptionally important book which effectively challenges many of the myths of the origins of the Cold War. It is wise, perceptive, remarkably objective and brilliantly researched.
Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad and The Second World War

This dramatic book gives us, for the first time, the testimony of dozens of men and women who found themselves in the middle of one of the most traumatic periods of European history. Anne Applebaum conveys the impact of politics and ideology on individual lives with extraordinary immediacy.
Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire and A World on Fire: Britain s Crucial Role in the American Civil War

Anne Applebaum s highly readable book is distinguished by its ability to describe and evoke the personal, human experience of Sovietisation in vivid detail, based on extensive original research and interviews with those who remember.
Timothy Garton Ash, author of The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of 89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague