But conflict spread to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In Europe, the dividing line between East and West remained essentially frozen during the next decades. The establishment of NATO also spurred the Soviet Union to create an alliance with the communist governments of Eastern Europe that was formalized in 1955 by the Warsaw Pact. In 1949, the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the first mutual security and military alliance in American history. When the Soviets cut off all road and rail traffic to the city in 1948, the United States and Great Britain responded with a massive airlift that supplied the besieged city for 231 days until the blockade was lifted. The Marshall Plan (1947) provided billions of dollars in economic assistance to eliminate the political instability that could open the way for communist takeovers of democratically elected governments.įrance, England, and the United States administered sectors of the city of Berlin, deep inside communist East Germany. The Truman Doctrine (1947) pledged aid to governments threatened by communist subversion. It set up pro-communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, and eventually in East Germany.Īs the Soviets tightened their grip on Eastern Europe, the United States embarked on a policy of containment to prevent the spread of Soviet and communist influence in Western European nations such as France, Italy, and Greece.ĭuring the 1940s, the United States reversed its traditional reluctance to become involved in European affairs. The Soviet Union was determined to have a buffer zone between its borders and Western Europe.
Tensions were apparent in July during the Potsdam Conference, where the victorious Allies negotiated the joint occupation of Germany. But the alliance began to crumble as soon as the war in Europe ended in May 1945. The Soviet Union and the United States had fought as allies against Nazi Germany during World War II. But the two superpowers continually antagonized each other through political maneuvering, military coalitions, espionage, propaganda, arms buildups, economic aid, and proxy wars between other nations. Soldiers of the Soviet Union and the United States did not do battle directly during the Cold War.
Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumĪfter World War II, the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its satellite states began a decades-long struggle for supremacy known as the Cold War.
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