The Eastern Bloc, NATO, and its Building Tensions

If there was any original front-line for the Cold War, it was the new German border. Named the “Iron Curtain”, the East-West Germany, in addition to the East-West Berlin border, was the definitive line between the Soviet forces and Western allies. Countries that consisted of the Eastern Bloc were mentioned in the last post, with the addition of the People’s Republic of China under their leader Mao Zedong. The Western Allies included America, Great Britain, Canada, and multiple others, who created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, in 1949. Also, by this time the Soviets had acquired their own atomic bomb, putting both sides on an even playing field. There were now two groups at play in the world. The Soviet Republics, and the Democratic States. This caused each side to make their own doctrines and plans, stating officially what their position is and how they’ll act on it. In 1947, Harry Truman unveiled his doctrine, The Truman Doctrine, which focused on the idea of containment, where in this case meant subduing and stopping the spread of communism The Capitalist economy versus that of a Communist one. And there were a lot of countries that were still out there, just waiting to get recruited. Which is also what lead to the first major war since World War Two.