946, the Soviet Union cut off all contacts between the West and the occupied territories of Eastern Europe. In March 1946, Winston Churchill warned that an icon curtain has descended across the Continent of Europe. He made popular the phrase Iron Curtain to refer to Soviet barriers against the West. Behind these barriers, the U.S.S.R. steadily expanded its power. In 1946, the U.S.S.R. organized Communist governments in Bulgaria and Romania. In 1947, Communist took control of Hungary and Poland, and the Czechoslovakia early in 1948. These countries became controlled by the U.S.S.R. Yugoslavia also joined the communist bloc. Communists led by Josip Broz Tito then took over the government. The war against Japan was not as devastating as the United States had expected. One by one, the important cities of Japan were bombed. Some bombings were targeted at military sites; others were terror bombings of civilian populations. Hiroshima, a city know for its military importance, evacuated non-essential citizens for fear of an American attack. The decision to drop the bomb was made by Harry Truman. Hiroshima was destroyed by the atomic bomb just a few days after the Postdam conference in which Truman announced the existence of the bomb to his allies in order to show military superiority. Cold War tensions increased in the early 1980s resulted from the Soviet intervention in Afganistan and from continued American fear of Soviet and Cubal influence in thr Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Amrica. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his administration adopted a policy they called linkage, tying any U.S. arms agreement to consideration of Soviet Expansion.According the historians the Cold War was never really a war, and so it never officially bega or ended. Perhaps the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 will be remembers as the symbolic end of the Cold War....
