Plenty of significant political events affected the position of the United States in world affairs as the Cold War began. Harry S. Truman, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as president following his death on April 12, 1945, would serve as the 33rd President of the United States throughout this period until the inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953.

After victory in Japan was declared in August of 1945, Truman faced the ultimatum of standing in ideological opposition to the Soviet Union as diplomacy drastically heated up between the two nations following the fall of Nazi Germany. Within the first four months of his presidency, even before the famous Potsdam Conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, Truman had met with Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s number two, in Washington to discuss foreign policy as well as U.S.-Soviet relations. The drastic difference between Roosevelt’s and Truman’s style of negotiation (Truman spoke much more bluntly, as he had been a Missouri farmer for much of his life and never attended college) led Molotov to declare that he had never been spoken to in such a manner, to which Truman replied that if the Soviets shifted to support the United States’ postwar plans, he would never have to speak that way again. This exchange on all accounts proved to the Soviets that they would face a formidable opponent in Truman as he fundamentally changed the shape of U.S. foreign policy.

By 1947, President Truman established the “Truman Doctrine,” a foreign policy initiative established in response to Soviet advances in Greece and Turkey. Under the main tenets of the Truman Doctrine, federal aid would be given to support both nations’ economies and militaries to better contain the threat of communism. In 1949, Truman’s policy of containment became the foundation for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as it spread to define an ideological conflict that saw American and Soviet values, including but not limited to capitalism and communism, divided by what Winston Churchill termed the “Iron Curtain.” It is this historical flashpoint that is seen as the true beginning of the Cold War, which would last for nearly half a century, until 1991.

In 1948, President Truman won a close presidential election, defeating Republican Thomas Dewey under circumstances which prompted newspapers such as the Chicago Daily Tribune to incorrectly declare Dewey as the winner. In the same year, just months before, Truman approved the Marshall Plan, which gave billions of dollars in federal aid to countries affected by the devastation of World War II, and helped to bolster his policy of containment.

By the end of 1949, the newly formed state of Israel had been admitted to the United Nations, and the allied Berlin airlift effort had delivered countless thousands of tons of provisions to the people caught in the midst of one of the first major conflicts of the Cold War, as the Soviets had ordered a blockade on Western access to Berlin, which ended by mid-year.

Ultimately, the late ‘40s proved a pivotal time for American foreign policy and a great challenge for President Truman. By the beginning of the 1950s, the United States would be thrust into war in Korea, and the Soviets would begin the ever-critical space race, but in this era, an ever-modernizing world in terms of industry and economic expansion was just beginning to shed light on a period of unprecedented prosperity— and ideological worry— heralded by the time Dwight Eisenhower took office.

I look forward to answering any other questions you might have.

(Source: personal knowledge. I’m a huge fan of Truman, and the postwar period in general!!)