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Leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union meet to discuss how Germany will be divided when the war ends, and the USSR agrees to join the war against Japan, as well as continue to allow free elections in Eastern Europe.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies, being replaced by his successor, Harry S. Truman, pressing Stalin much harder than FDR.
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The United States and Soviet Union put aside their differences to form the United Nations, a 50 nation organization intended to prevent future war and conflict, voting on a number of issues and peacefully resolving events.
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Truman presses Stalin to allow free elections in Eastern Europe, but Stalin refuses and later declares that the two economical ideologies of capitalism and communism cannot exist together.
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As the Soviets pushed back Nazi forces out of Eastern Europe, they cast themselves over the surrounding countries, providing a "buffer" for Russia, later using those countries to instill communist ideals and governments in each.
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After Truman declared it was time to stop "babying the Soviets" he adopted the policy of containment, which pushed the Soviets back and prevented their spread by making alliances and helping out weaker countries.
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Winston Churchill described the spread of Soviet influence over its bordering countries as an "iron curtain" casting a shadow over Europe with its communist ideals.
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Truman made his speech on preventing communism by spreading capitalism, and this famous speech in which he made it clear that the U.S. would always help those in the minority trying to escape oppression.
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The Marshall Plan was proposed to help rebuild and strengthen Western Europe after WW2, and the U.S. proposed that they spend $12.5 billion to aid those countries before the Soviets could reach them.
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While the 3 allied nations in West Germany merged into one nation, the Soviets responded by taking West Berlin hostage and blocking all travel in or out of East Germany. The U.S. responded to this hissy fit by airlifting 2.3 million tons of supplies into West Berlin to keep the Soviets from gaining control over it.
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As all of these events unfolded, war started to emerge through diplomatic hostility. Both sides began to use spying, propaganda, and other secret operations, forcing the world to start taking sides.
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As a result of the Berlin blockade, fears of Soviet aggression worsened, leading to the creation of a defensive military alliance between 12 countries referred to as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), promising to come down on any attack on any other NATO member with an overabundance of military force.
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After countless planes over West Berlin, the Soviets finally relinquished their grasp on the area and lifted the blockade.
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As the Soviets developed their own first nuclear bombs, the two superpowers had now both become nuclear superpowers.
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With the Soviet Union now on the same destructive level as the United States, Truman authorized the development of a new, more powerful bomb fueled by hydrogen.
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By utilizing the fusion of hydrogen instead of the splitting of atoms, the new H-bomb was successfully tested for the first time, shortly followed by the Soviet counterpart a year later.
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In response to NATO, the Soviets felt it necessary to implement their own alliance, known as the Warsaw Pact, as part of their own containment policy.
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Soviets announced the development of the first rocket that could travel great distances to hit a target in another continent, an intercontinental ballistic missile.
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With rockets now powerful enough to push itself over oceans, the Soviet Union used this new rocket to push the world's first unmanned satellite into orbit.
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After the rejection of an open sky policy from the United States, the president authorized use of high flying spy planes above the Soviet Union. After the Soviets shot one down, tensions grew to an all time high.