> It is true too that it was the US and allied authorities who raised up the Iron Curtain, because they could not allow the effects Marshall Aid to be spread too thin, but needed to restrict their aid to west Europe, and let the east go under.
Do you mean Stalin would have permitted the eastern countries to accept the Marshall Plan? He specifically forbade them to.
Granted, that's just what Washington was expecting him to do. But the alternative, as the Americans saw it, was to let the *west* go under, which they weren't prepared to do.
SA