Stalin early on had raised tensions in central and Eastern Europe through a number of actions. At Tehran Churchill's plans to invade the Balkans were discredited and dashed leaving central and Eastern Europe open to Soviet domination after the focus was shifted permanently towards North Western Europe - namely Normandy and France. Stalin had violated a number of agreements in post war Eastern Europe such as in Poland where, even after given assurances, free elections were denied and the country was turned into an effective communist satellite for the Soviet Union - with much of Eastern Europe now acting as buffer states for the USSR as they had intended shape events there. These events were characterized in Churchill's so called "iron curtain" address at the Westminister College in Missouri in which he described the subjugation and antipathy that had developed between East and West over the future of Europe and Red Army occupation.

Stalin would also be responsible for the Berlin Blockade after controversy erupted over the introduction of the Deutschmark in West Germany and its introduction to West Berlin, with the possibility of revitalizing the German economy as the currency was now backed by the assurances and support of the ambitious Marshall plan. Stalin had no desire for a resurgent German economy - and especially not an enclave in West Berlin of capitalist decadency creating an eye sore for him and his communist cronies running the East German government. The Blockade was intended to cut off aid to Berlin and prevent access from the Americans and the British in supplying the Berliners. This of course led to the famous Berlin Airlift that successfully brought in food and supplies through a constant airbridge - defeating soviet aspirations and tactics in attempting to deprive the allies of their conduit to Berlin.

This represented the first major international crisis of the Cold War - which was directly instigated by Stalin's policies and directives to his ministers, including his long serving foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Furthering tensions between East and West would be the Soviet Unions successful testing of a nuclear bomb on 29 August 1949 in the Kazakh SSR. This would trigger an arms race between the United States and the USSR - one which the US was already ahead in - in terms of both bomb technology and delivery through strategic bombers. Though curiously the Soviets had already captured and copied the famous B29 Superfortress after a number made emergency landings in Soviet Territory after bombing runs on Japan in World War II. The fact that the Soviets had both an atomic bomb, and a possible delivery system through their own strategic bombers represented a massive challenge and fright for the US in the immediate after math of World War II.

Stalin contributed directly to this through his aggressive policies and directives that often flew in the face of allied doctrine or interest. Both Stalin and Churchill knew this eventuality would come to fruition as Churchill had always been a staunch resistor of Soviet policy and aggression in Europe - even before the out break of the second world war. Both knew the balance of power would shift between them, but it would be between the new super powers of the United States and a victorious Soviet Union - Britain would never regain her former glory as a powerful empire.