What divided Eastern and Western Europe after World War II?

In the years immediately following World War II (and really the last days of the war itself in Europe) Western and Eastern Europe became divided because the Soviet Union occupied the countries of Eastern Europe after driving out the occupying German army. The Soviets, under Josef Stalin, established Soviet-style communist governments in these countries, which included Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. Meanwhile Marshal Tito, a leader in the resistance movement in Yugoslavia during the...

In the years immediately following World War II (and really the last days of the war itself in Europe) Western and Eastern Europe became divided because the Soviet Union occupied the countries of Eastern Europe after driving out the occupying German army. The Soviets, under Josef Stalin, established Soviet-style communist governments in these countries, which included Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. Meanwhile Marshal Tito, a leader in the resistance movement in Yugoslavia during the war, established a socialist state in that nation independent of the USSR. The division of Europe was most tangible in Germany, which was divided between the Soviet-dominated East and the Anglo-American-dominated West. Berlin, the capital of Germany, was similarly divided though it lay entirely within East Germany. So it was the establishment of communist states, viewed by the USSR as a necessary buffer zone and by the Americans as the establishment of an "iron curtain", that led to the division of Europe after the war.