Cold War

Soviet intransigence, as demonstrated in Germany, Korea and other nations, stymied American hopes for Great Power unity. The USSR, Winston Churchill warned in a speech in Missouri early in 1946, was lowering an “iron curtain” across Europe. It quickly drew eastern Germany, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania behind that curtain. In Greece, where political and economic disorder led to civil war, the rebels received support from Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In the Near East, the Soviets kept a grip on Iran by holding troops there. They also tried to intimidate Turkey into giving them privileges in connection with the strategic Dardanelles. In Asia, besides insisting on full control in northern Korea, the USSR, it appeared, had turned Manchuria over to the Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung and was encouraging Mao in his renewed effort to wrest power from Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang government.