Sites and stories of the Cold War division and its aftermath. Full narrative coming soon.
Capital of Memory
Brandenburg, DE
Pearl of the Danube
Budapest, HU
City of Music and Courage
Saxony, DE
City of Resurrections
Masovian, PL
Cycling the Cold War Border
Anne Applebaum · 2012
Applebaum's landmark history traces how Soviet power dismantled civil society across Eastern Europe—from Poland to East Germany—turning a patchwork of nations into satellites of Moscow's will. Essential reading for understanding the geography of memory the Iron Curtain Trail now traverses.
Madeleine Albright · 2012
Former US Secretary of State Albright uncovers her Czech Jewish family's fate during World War II, interweaving personal memoir with the tragic history of a city that survived Nazi occupation and then fell behind the Iron Curtain. A profound double portrait of Prague and a family's hidden past.
Bernardo Bertolucci
A haunting study of fascism, complicity, and memory set against the architecture of Fascist Rome and Paris.
Carol Reed
A masterwork of post-war noir set in occupied Vienna — sewers, shadows, and moral ambiguity on the fault line of Cold War Europe.