DIVIDED by an IRON CURTAIN W ORLD WAR II 1939 45 officially ended in Europe in May 1945 But a new and different type of conflict was just beginning In the last years of the war the army of the Soviet Union had pushed the Germans and their allies out of Eastern Europe Although the Soviets were liber ating countries such as Poland Hungary Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia they had other motives They wanted to control those countries politically and establish a buffer zone to keep their country safe from future attacks across its western borders They also wanted to impose their political philosophy known as communism on them Though 1 8 million strong in 1939 the Soviets Red Army was ill-prepared to face Nazi Germany
Major Western nations such as the U S Great Britain and France were nervous about such developments and believed they had to do some thing to limit Soviet territorial expansion and the spread of communism The Soviets had been allies of the Western powers during much of World War II as all were common enemies of the Germans The relationship was not necessarily based on mutual trust though As the Soviets con tinued staking claims throughout Eastern Europe British prime min ister Winston Churchill described their activities as being like drawing an iron curtain or building an iron fence In a March 5 1946 speech Churchill said From Stettin in the Baltic in Poland to Trieste in the Adriatic in Albania an iron curtain has descended across the conti nent Churchill and other Western leaders saw the Iron Curtain as an invisible but very real political barrier separating countries that favored capitalism and democracy from those that believed in communism Starting in 1946 a war was waged across the Iron Curtain for more than 40 years For the most part this war was fought not with tanks fighter planes warships or bombs Instead the Cold War featured build ups of destructive weapons by both sides threatening standoffs and new and inventive methods of spying on each other COVERT OPS FLOATING SPIES During the 1950s the U S tried using unmanned balloons to spy on the Soviet Union As part of Operation Moby Dick balloons with cameras attached were launched from Scotland Norway Germa ny and Turkey The plan was to have them float from west to east across the Soviet Union taking pictures until they reached the Pacif ic Ocean where they would be picked up by American navy vessels Many balloons were lost and at least one camera was recovered by the Russians In the 1950s many people reported seeing unidentified flying objects UFOs in the sky that they thought came from other planets Some of these may have been American balloons 0909
10 CHAPTER ONE SPY VS SPY O N APRIL 12 1945 U S president Franklin D Roosevelt died of a massive stroke and vice president Harry S Truman was sworn in as his successor Twelve days later Truman was given his first brief ing on the Manhattan Project the program to create the atomic bomb Until he became president Truman had been told nothing about the top-secret project Amazingly Russian leader Joseph Stalin already knew all about America’s secret weapons program The Soviet Union had many spies in the U S before 1945 including some scientists work ing on the Manhattan Project itself such as German-born physicist Klaus Fuchs Like many of the other spies Fuchs was a devoted com munist and was happy to help the Soviets learn how to create their own atomic weapons and keep up with the U S The infiltration of the Manhattan Project occurred during World War II but it was a forewarning of the conflict to come Some of the most important soldiers during the Cold War were agents moles double agents and defectors all working against each other to discov er or protect secrets Most key events in the Cold War featured spy vs spy confrontations
Soon after Truman’s swearing-in opposite he faced decisions about the usage of atomic weapons above 1111
