Problems between the Soviet Union and the United States had been building before and during World War II. The two countries’ economic and political systems were incompatible. They had built-up resentments toward each other over previous events. The Americans

The Soviets were deeply resentful that the United States had not recognized their Communist government until 16 years after the Revolution. The United States was furious with Joseph Stalin for signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler. Still hopes for world peace were high at the end of the war. The United Nations was formed in 1945 and the headquarters were built in New York City. The UN was intended to promote peace, but it soon became the place where the two superpowers competed to spread their influence throughout the world.

Potsdam Conference The Soviets had agreed in vague language at Yalta to allow free and open elections in Poland and other Eastern European nations. In 1945, the Soviets prevented free elections in Poland and democratic parties, resulting in a pro-communist government in Poland. Stalin: “…not only a question of honor for Russia, but one of life or death.” The Soviet army occupied Eastern European nations refusing to permit free elections and self- determination, and there was little the West could do.

U.S. Establishes a Policy of Containment Policy of containment---an effort to block the Soviets’ attempts to spread their influence by creating alliances and supporting weaker countries. This policy began to guide the Truman administration’s foreign policy. Winston Churchill was the first to use the term “iron curtain” to describe the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and closing off the East from the West.

The conflicting U.S. and Soviet aims in Eastern Europe led to the Cold War. Cold War: state of hostility short of direct military confrontation that developed between the two superpowers. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union tried to spread their political and economic influence wherever they could. Eventually the Cold War spread to Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

President Truman declared that the United States should support free peoples throughout the world who were resisting takeovers by “armed minorities” or “outside pressures”. Western Europe was in economic chaos. Most of its factories had been bombed or looted. Many Europeans could not find work. Millions of people lived in refugee camps.

The winter of was the worst in centuries, with below-zero temperatures and record-breaking snow. June 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that the United States provide aid to all European nations that needed it. Marshall: this move directed “…not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos”.

The plan was a great success both economically and politically. Nutrition improved. Industry grew. By 1952, Europe was flourishing and Communist parties had lost much of their appeal to voters.

History Alive At the close of World War II, the Soviet Union occupied eastern Germany, including Berlin, and the Western powers—France, England, and the United States—controlled western Germany. As part of post-war negotiations, the Russians agreed to divide Berlin among the four powers as well. Berlin became an “island” in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany.

The Western powers agreed to plan a separate West German government without the Soviets and began printing new, stable, ad deflated German currency. The Russian response was to shut down the railways and highways from the Western zones into Berlin. They argued that since the Western powers no longer sought to unite Germany, they had no reason to stay in Berlin. The West began flying round-the-clock missions into Berlin, supplying up to 13,000 tons of goods at a cost of $5 million per day.

The American flyers succeeded in supplying Berlin with 2.5 million people entirely from the air. To the world, the Russians looked like monsters trying to starve women and children. Ten months later, Stalin lifted the Berlin blockade in exchange to some concessions from the West. Berlin Airlift

This is a young Mao Zedong (Tse-Tung), a Communist revolutionary in China. In 1949, the corrupt Nationalist government in China fell to the long- standing Chinese communist revolution led by Mao. Within a month, the new Communist government signed a mutual defense and economic aid package with the Soviet union. The United States had strongly supported the Nationalist government against the communists. Now China, a nation of 500 million people, and a strong ally during the war, had “turned communist.” This event fueled Cold War tempers in the U.S.

A few weeks following the end of the Berlin blockade, the United States entered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO pledged to regard an attack on the U.S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, or Canada as an attack on itself. NATO and the Marshall Plan began an era of American military, political, and economic dominance over Europe. The treaty divided the world into two superpower camps. NATO headquarters located in Brussels, Belgium was opened in October 1967.

In September of 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb, thus ending the American nuclear monopoly. Truman immediately announced this to the American people and indicated that the U.S. would begin to produce a more powerful hydrogen bomb. National Security advisors counseled Truman to increase peacetime military spending to $50 billion a year because of the fear that Soviet military capability was now superior to the West.

American soldiers in Korea