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Soviet Union and United States join in alliance as result of the invasion,
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British prime minister Winson Curchill, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet premier Josef Stalin agreed on a military plan to end the war adn a subsquent joint occupation of Germany. Stalin promised to allow free elections in Poland.
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Soviets defeated the German army in Berlin. Nazi leaders signed surrender letters soon after.
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The Soviet Union and the United States agreed to recognize each others' influence over regions where their respective troops remained at the end of the war.
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The United States successfully tested the world's first atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
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Stalin established Soviet-controlled governments in Easter European countries occupied by his Red Army, including Poland.
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On March 12, 2947, President Truman made a speech on national television stating that it was the obligation of the United States to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure." Truman asked for and recieved from the US Congress $400 million to privide assistance to Greece and Turkey.
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The United States introduced the Marshall Plan to prived $17 billion in aid for the economic recovery of Europe.
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Great Britain had been supporting the Greek government in its fight against the Communists. However, British funding soon ran dry and Britain appealed to the United States for help.
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The authors of NSC 68 warned that Soviet military capability was now "sustantially superior to that of the West and continuing to improve at a more rapid rate." As a result, the council recommended that Truman increases US military spending to $50 billion a year, which he did within two years.
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In 1948 France, Great Britain, and the United States announced plans to introduce a new form of currency in Germany.
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Soviets protested by institution a formal blockade on Berlin, closing all road, rail, and water routes to and from the city. Shortly afterward, Stalin cut off the inhabitants of West Berlin from all supplies of fuel, power, and food.
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United States began airlifting supplies to Berlin in an attempt to aid West Berlin without starting an armed conflict with the Soviet Union.
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Mao Zedong successfully led the Communist Revolution in China. Mao's Communist government quickly allied itself with the Soviet Union, and both countries signed a mutual defense and economic aid agreement.
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The United States joined western nations such as Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO's member nations formed a military alliance to protect each other from Soviet aggression.
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Stalin reopened all routes into Berlin on May 12, 1949
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Increased American alarm over the spread of communism in Asia. After World War II, the northeast Asian country of Korea was divided at the 38th parallel into two countries: North Korea, supported by the Soviet Union, and South Korea, supported by the United States and the United Nations.
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Communist North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations quickly condemned the invasion and authorised sending troops to the region under the leadership of US general Douglas MacArthur.
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In 1952 the United States successfully tested an even more powerful nuclear device, the hydrogen bomb.
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Korean War ended in a stalemate in July 1953.
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The Soviet Union formed a similar military alliance with Eastern European nations such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, known as the Warsaw Treaty Organization, or Warsaw Pact.
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In 1956 Hungarian citizens began rioting and demanded more freedom from their Communist government. They threatened to return to a parliamentary democracy if their demands were not met. The new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, quickly dispatched the Soviet Red Army with tanks to the Hungarian capital of Budapest.
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The soviet Union built a wall, called the Berlin Wall, between East and West Berlin to prevent people from escaping to the west.
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The Soviet Union stopped a similar uprising in Czechoslovakia.
