. The only way for the Allies to supply their sectors in Berlin was to fly in supplies. Stalin would not dare to shoot down Allied planes with America's atomic supremacy. Flights into Berlin lasted for 11 months and when in became clear that the Allies would stand firm, Stalin gave in. The Allies remained in their sectors in Berlin.
1. The Cold War began as a result of suspicious that the democratic west had about the USSR and vice versa.
After 1945 the USSR feared a Western invasion of her new satellites and the west feared the spread of Marxism.
2. Relations between the major powers got worse at the end of the Second World War
This occurred especially at Yalta (February 1945), Potsdam (July 1945) and Paris (1946). At Paris, Molotov refused to accept the west's ideas about not taking reparations and about wanting free elections in Eastern Europe.
3. Germany was divided into four occupation zones:
USSR gained the lion's share and surrounded Berlin
4. In 1946, Churchill at Foulton, Missouri said:
'An iron curtain is descending on Europe extending from Stettin in the north to Trieste in the south.'
He nearly got it right. The metaphorical line that separates the communist east from the democratic west should not end at Trieste because although Yugoslavia was communist it was independent of the USSR (under Tito). The satellites = Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Albania, Czechoslovakia and Eastern Germany.
Official America anti-Soviet policy began with the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) where American aid was offered to European countries which bordered onto Communist countries. This was extended by the Marshall Plan (June 1947) which offered aid outside Europe. This was designed to stop the spread of Communism – called CONTAINMENT.
The USSR set up Comminform (Cominform) in September 1947, which Stalin said was a news agency, but really it was a means of Russifying the economic policies ...