16 July 1945: The Allied leaders - Churchill, Truman and Stalin - meet in Potsdam to discuss a new order in war ravaged Europe.
6 March 1946: Competing political influences in Europe are becoming so apparent that the recently ousted Churchill tells an American audience: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” The Manchester Guardian reproduces the speech in full.
8 June 1947: The Marshall Plan is announced in reaction to the perceived Soviet threat to western Europe. It will flood Europe with American money, aiming to produce a bulwark against communism.
21 October 1947: “Reds under the bed” - fears abound that a “fifth column” have infiltrated American society at all levels. The result is widespread persecution and, famously, the Hollywood blacklisting of artists deemed un-American.
2 April 1948: The Berlin Blockade is ordered. Stalin’s response to American interference is to attempt to starve out the western zones of Berlin, a capitalist enclave far into Soviet territory.
15 October 1949: Chinese Marxists establish control over the country.
28 June 1950: Soviet-backed North Korea invades US-backed South Korea, causing fears of a direct conflict between the superpowers.
7 March 1953: Stalin dies. The Moscow home service announces: “The heart of the collaborator and follower of the genius of Lenin’s work, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist party and of the Soviet people, stopped beating.”
2o June 1953: The height of American paranoia is realised with the trial and execution of the Rosenbergs, a couple found guilty of conspiring to pass on atomic secrets to Russia.
17 March 1956: Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounces the dictator in a fiery speech to the Communist party.
24 October 1956: Hopes for a softening of Soviet policy are swiftly undone when Khrushchev sends tanks to crush a popular uprising in Hungary.
8 January 1959: Fidel Castro seizes power in Cuba, having deposed the US-backed dictator Batista. There are fears Castro will align Cuba with the Soviet bloc.
October 1962: American spy planes reveal that the Soviets are shipping missiles to Cuba. President Kennedy warns the American public that the eastern seaboard is under direct threat, and Cuba is placed under naval blockade. The peril of nuclear war inches ever closer.
