In August, 1961 three million Berliners woke up to discover their world had been thrown into chaos. In total secrecy a 28-mile ring of steel had been erected in the dead of night, forming a barrier between east and west Berlin and tearing the city in two. This new and exclusive film tells the incredible story of how that night of 13th August unfolded, and traces the events leading up to the partition of this historic European city. Using eyewitness reports and letters from the families and soldiers that lived through the nightmare, the film also uses East German sources and archive footage taken from the 12 hours leading up to the erection of the wall. The Night The Iron Curtain Closed provides a chilling account of how, overnight, a new country was born, an old country was cut in half and how the Berlin Wall heralded the birth of the Cold War.