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The Cold War (1945-1991) represented a series of localized conflicts and intense diplomatic rivalries between camps led by the capitalist United States and Communist Soviet Union. This era also saw a massive increase in civilian and military technology, including thousands of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them across the planet.

Germany had invaded Russia twice in less than thirty years, causing millions of deaths. Furthermore, Germany was largely destroyed by the current war, with nearly twelve million killed in the conflict. Ethnic Germans were expulsed from various regions of Eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Czechoslovakia, two regimes soon to be loyal to Stalin.

Stalin's terms were harsh. The Soviets controlled the largest of the four Allied Occupation Zones, including half of Berlin and all of its environs. Stalin was not opposed to a unified Germany, but one that was completely deindustrialized and demilitarized. The United States and United Kingdom sought instead to reintegrate Germany into the world community unlike after 1918 but also to have it serve as a bulwark against the spread of Communism. The two sides were at an impasse, leading Stalin to ratchet up pressure. In 1948 the Soviet Union blocked land routes to East Berlin, testing President Truman. Truman responded by organizing the Berlin Airlift. The effort led by the U.S. and U.K. was the largest such effort in history until that point, delivering over 200,000 flights to feed the civilians of Berlin. Stalin's gamble had failed and by 1949 ended the blockade. Distrust between the two sides continued as each zone of occupation solidified around their occupying forces. By 1949, the three Western Allied zones combined to form the Communist-dominated German Democratic Republic and Western-backed German Federal Republic. <ref>Harrington, Daniel, ''Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War.'' Lexington Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. Page 77.</ref>