On the Edge – Part One: Turning Point Berlin

The "big three" Allied leaders, Attlee, Stalin, and Truman, left the Potsdam conference in August 1945 satisfactorily and posed in a cheerful mood for the press photographers. The former Allies felt relieved and looked forward to peace and security after six years of war. However, the calm and peace among the Western allies proved short-lived. While the armies of the Western world were quickly disbanded, the Soviet Union kept its army at war strength and maintained its strategic positions in Eastern Europe and the Far East. By threatening military action, which it could successfully carry out because of its military power, the Soviet Union imposed its will on its neighboring countries. It put such pressure on Western nations that they yielded on crucial political issues. U.S. and Soviet interests were coming into opposition. It was an ideological battle between Russian communism and capitalism in the democratic Western nations. This book is part one of the series on U.S. Air Force reactions during the Cold War; author Cees Steijger examines the circumstances under which some events brought the world to the brink of a third world war. During the Cold War between East and West, humanity lived on the edge of collapse, only narrowly escaping the apocalypse a few times.