All language subtitles for Cold War - S01E02 - Iron Curtain (1945–1947) (480p x265 EDGE2020).eng

NARRATOR:
Fulton, Missouri,

a quiet little town
in the Midwest.

Not much has changed
since 1946.

[ Projector running ]

Less than a year
since the war had ended,

the flags were up
to welcome Winston Churchill.

But he came to Fulton

bringing a somber message
for the world.

CH U RCH I LL: From
Stettin in the Baltic

to Trieste in the Adriatic,

an iron curtain has
descended across the continent.

Behind that line
lie all the capitals

of the ancient states
of central and eastern Europe --

Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,

Vienna, Budapest,

Belgrade, Bucharest
and Sofia.

All these famous cities

and the populations
around them

lie in what I must call

the Soviet sphere.

The speech
was not well received

in the United States.

It was thought to be
too tough a speech

and the President was
criticized by some

for having Churchill over.

Just goes to show
how history changes.

Now it's one of the great
speeches

that's ever been made,

because it helped
warn the world

about the danger of the Soviet
aggrandisement.

D ♪

BRANAGH: Back from
overseas came the Americans.

For the second time
in a century,

the United States had been
pulled into a world war

far
from its own shores.

[crowd cheering ]

[foghorn blows]

300,000 Americans
never came home.

But the rest returned
to a country

wealthier and happier
than ever before.

MAN: I sort of eased
back into contentment.

I said, "Gee, this is
wonderful."

People seemed to have
a little cushion

of money now,
you know,

which, you know,
back in the depression years,

no one had
any money.

You just had
about enough money

to put food on the table
and a roof over your head

and keep your insurance
policy in effect, you know.

Before the war
we had 15%,

maybe sometimes more
unemployed.

A very stagnant,
unhappy economy

and the war --
war production --

production of munitions,
production of armaments --

put enormous sums
of money into the economy,

put millions of people
to work

not only men, but women --

Rosie the Riveter --

and we emerged
from the war

with virtual
full employment.

[foghorn blows]

ARONSON: As soon as the war
was over, the factories realized

"Hey, the Americans have
been without a car

since before the war."

Let's get back
into automobile production.

And of course the people
were anxious for an automobile.

There was
gasoline available.

Foodstuffs became available.

So the economy definitely
was on the rise.

BRANAGH: War and
the post-war rush to spend

put American capitalism
back on its wheels.

BRANAGH:
In the first summer of peace,

The Soviet soldiers
rode home.

They were awed to find
themselves still alive.

[ Reporter speaking Russian ]

In the crowds
that welcomed them,

it was the lucky ones who found
their sons or husbands.

Some 27 million
Soviet civilians and soldiers

did not live to see this day.

[woman speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: We met the
soldiers with flowers, bread,

anything we could
get hold of.

We kissed complete strangers
we were so happy.

Our spirits were rising.

We even dared hope
that those who had gone missing

might still be alive.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: The whole
of Russia had been destroyed.

Everything from
the borders to Moscow

lay in ruins.

There were lots of people
with no homes to go to.

BRANAGH:
Where the Germans had passed,

nearly 70,000 villages
had been destroyed.

Cities lay
in rubble.

Stalin's pre-war achievements,

the factories and apartment
blocks of the Five-Year Plans

had been wrecked
by the invaders.

[ Gordeyeva speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Things which
before the war hadn't seemed too bad

were completely
destroyed.

People were living
in ruins.

It's impossible
to describe the suffering.

You can only understand it
if you've lived through it

and seen it
with your own eyes.

BRANAGH:
For Russians, the end of the fighting

brought an instant
of pure joy.

[speaking Russian ]

BRANAGH:
Berlin,

the final battlefield.

The capital
of Hitler's Reich

had fallen
to the Red Army.

Dazed Berliners
waited to see

what the conquerors
would do to them.

But there was
no organized massacre

the survivors were allowed
to live as best they could.

Stalin even ordered his troops
to feed the Berliners.

But the soldiers looted homes,

and all over the city
they hunted down women.

[Speaking German ]

INTERPRETER:
More and more Russians came by.

They looked through
the window,

then one of them
suddenly came in.

I was baby-sitting.

He took the child from my lap

and gave it a toy and some
cigarettes to play with.

That was
the first time I was raped.

It was terrifying.

Afterwards I couldn't speak.

BRANAGH:
Stalin's police chief Beria

and foreign minister Molotov
tour Berlin.

Germany was divided
into four occupation zones

and each of the Allies
took a sector

of the German capital.

The allies had decided

that Germany should compensate
them for war damage.

[speaking Russian ]

Marshall Zhukov said,
"We have fought long and hard.

We've captured Berlin.

We have the moral
and legal right to take out

as much as possible
in reparations.

We don't know
what the future holds."

BRANAGH: The German population
was forced to help the Russians

seize industrial resources.

Not just machines,

thousands of
craftsmen and scientists

were kidnapped and taken
to the Soviet Union.

Central Europe was reverting
to the Dark Ages.

This was a space without law,
shelter, or mercy --

a continent of nomads.

Millions of people uprooted
by the Nazis

were struggling home.

Now it was the turn
of the Germans

to be the victims.

From the Mediterranean
to the Baltic,

the victors were shaping Europe
in their own image.

Poland, the invaders' route
to Russia,

obsessed Stalin.

Eastern Poland had been
annexed by the Soviet Union.

As compensation,

the allies shifted the whole
country westward,

giving Poland the eastern
territories of Germany.

The Germans were expelled.

Poles, whose own homelands
had been seized

by the Soviet Union,

now took over German
farms and houses.

[Speaking German ]

INTERPRETERI
In the fall of 1945,

a young Polish woman,
19 years old,

and an older man
from the militia

entered our house.

The girl asked, "Who does this
house belong to?"

And my mother said,
"To us."

And Hanja, that was
the Polish girls' name,

said "Now it's mine."

From then on
it was Hanjafs house.

6:00 in the morning,
the militia came

and banged the butts
of their weapons

against the door,

"out!"

Even though I was
only a child,

I knew this was it.

BRANAGH:
From all over Europe,

some 12 million Germans
were expelled

from lands they had
lived in for centuries.

Today it's called
"ethnic cleansing."

Then the allies called it
"population transfer"

and the British helped
to move the Germans out.

Victory in London.

From six years of war,
Britian emerged happy,

but inwardly exhausted.

For the moment, people cheered
for King and the empire

as if nothing had changed,
or ever would.

The King's new Prime Minister
was Clement Attlee.

The British voters had
swung leftwards,

and Churchill was out.

In foreign policy,
the new Labour government

held tightly
to the American alliance.

Ernest Bevin,
the new Foreign Secretary,

was a trade union veteran
who mistrusted communists.

He had backed Churchill's
intervention

in the Greek
Civil War.

British interests were
at stake here.

The concern was
that the conflict might

threaten Britain's oil route

from the Middle East
through the Mediterranean.

The strongest resistance
movement,

the communists,
reached for power.

But they didn't know
that Stalin had told Churchill

that he had no interest
in a communist Greece.

The British Army moved in.

The Civil War
was long and cruel.

But Stalin kept his word,

and left the Greek communists
to their fate.

The Soviet Union now dominated
the nations

along its western border.

At first Stalin did not
impose a Soviet system

on his new empire.

Instead, he built up

pro-Soviet coalition
governments.

But the communists
made sure

that the police and security
were in their hands.

The Yalta Conference had
given Russia

control
of central Europe.

We knew perfectly well
what the Russians

interpreted
as democracy and all that,

but then we were allies
fighting a war together.

We couldn't very well say
to Stalin,

"Now we are going
to write down

our interpretation
of Western democracy

and you've got to sign up

and say this is your
interpretation."

It wasn't possible.

We began to receive cables
from American representatives

in the -- what we were all
later to call

the satellite countries --

on the behaviour
of Soviet troops

with respect to the people
of Poland,

of Bulgaria, Romania,
Yugoslavia and so on.

So trouble was
in the air.

What would happen is that
such and such,

a prominent member of
the Peasant Party of Bulgaria

would be kidnapped.

Simply,
would disappear.

Or other figures who were
not acceptable for inclusion

in the People's Democratic
new regimes

would be disappeared.

BRANAGH: in Berlin, where the
allies jointly supervised city life,

the communists were careful.

MAN: The ideas was at
the beginning to cooperate,

and gradually, gradually,
to build up the party,

making the best
organized party,

the most militant party,
the most active party,

and gradually increase
the influence

on the other parties

and gradually take over
the whole situation

but not at once.

We should already prepare
for building up the police.

The man for personnel
who changes personnel.

The man for education.

So we were flabbergasted --

we -- only three
or four comrades

and everybody else
the social democrats

and bourgeois democrats
and so on.

So one of us asked
and said,

"It must look democratic,

but we must have
everything in our hands."

Many Germans
perfectly well understood

that brown,
the Nazi colors,

were becoming red
overnight.

After all, the methods in some
ways were the same,

or at any rate
very similar,

of forcing people to do
things against their will.

For me, my only comparison

was always the Soviet Union
under Stalin.

And comparable
to the Soviet Union under Stalin

in 1935 to '45,

'45 to '46-'47 in Germany
was wonderful.

It was much less terror
than which I had witnessed

the 10 years before
in the Soviet Union.

BRANAGH: Soviet Communism
had stood the test of war.

The Red Army was
the biggest on earth,

and General Eisenhower came
to pay his respects

to the world's
newest superpower.

But Stalin feared encirclement
by the capitalist powers.

At home
he watched for treachery.

Those who had been
taken prisoner by the Germans

and seen a glimpse
of the West,

might become disloyal.

They were being arrested
in thousands.

The Americans
knew what was going on.

WOMAN: We had a maid whose
husband was a Prisoner of War.

When he finally was
repatriated and came back,

it was a great reunion.

Life was wonderful again,
the family was reunited.

Six months later
he was arrested

because he had been
a German Prisoner of War.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Some were there
because of a general decree by Stalin.

Some were deserters
and thieves...

some White Russian Emigres...

some Poles
from the Home Army.

I entered a whole new world.

Prison camps were
my university.

BRANAGH:
Poland --

in the wreckage
of Warsaw,

the Poles began
to clear the ruins.

The Poles had fought
the Germans on every front,

East and West.

Now they worked together
to rebuild their country.

Some loathed the new
semi-communist government

tied to Moscow.

But others found reasons
to accept it,

and live with it.

[man speaking Polish]

INTERPRETER: The
most important thing for me

was for my mother and sister
to come from Siberia,

and for us to begin
rebuilding the country.

We also needed to secure
our borders

which were seriously
threatened.

Staying in the army
gave me that chance.

BRANAGH: In Moscow,
Poland's new puppet leaders

were taken to the opera.

The Poles agreed
to a close alliance

with the Soviet Union.

Stalin promised to defend
the new Polish frontiers

against any German attempt
to win back

the lost territories.

Stalin was
at the zenith of his power.

His colleagues felt terror
in his presence.

The Russian diplomats,
like all other

Russian officials
or party members or whatever,

lived in terror
of the great man,

and justifiably so,

because if they gave
unpopular advice,

they might find themselves
in a concentration camp

or with a bullet
in the back of their heads.

It wasn't very easy
to give good advice to Stalin

if it was
unpalatable.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: Stalin was
cheerful and in high spirits.

At his side were
the main guest, the interpreter,

and Soviet guests, too.

The waiters came in
with the main course.

I think it was turkey.

One of them, whilst he
was pouring the sauce,

dropped some red liquid

on Stalin's sand-colored jacket.

Everybody stopped eating.

They were in a state of shock
about what would happen

because the stains looked
like drops of blood.

But Stalin
didn't react.

He continued to talk
with his neighbor.

Then another waiter came up
to him with some water

and offered
to sponge it out,

but Stalin said,
"No, no."

And he was
absolutely calm.

People saw that things
seemed to be okay.

Everyone began
eating again

and the routine continued.

BRANAGH:
To mark the Soviet elections,

Stalin made
a grand appearance.

[thunderous cheers
and applause]

To his exhausted people,

he promised no rewards,
but only more effort,

more Five-Year Plans
for heavy industry.

Then, in cloudy words,

he warned that capitalism
and imperialism

made future wars
inevitable.

Did this mean war

between the Soviet Union
and the West?

Abroad,
alarm bells rang.

I read the speech
with care

and interpreted it
as being

a delayed declaraion
of war

against the United States.

There wasrft any doubt
about it --

if you read the text
carefully,

what he was
talking about.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: The speech
was interpreted in the West

as no less than
a prediction of World War Ill.

I don't think
this was right though.

Stalin didn't say
anything new

or different
in that speech.

He said what
he had always believed --

that with imperialism
and capitalism,

war was inevitable.

What the Russians were
thinking in terms of was that --

and I think Stalin thought
in these terms --

was that communism was
one day going to rule,

be the dominant ideology
in the world

and all countries gradually were
going to become communist.

And in the meantime
you didn't --

in Stalin's idea --

start dangerous wars
which you might lose,

but if you had a good chance
of pushing the cause along

you always pushed it along.

BRANAGH: Stalin had
relaxed his dictatorship

during the war,

but now he was tightening it
once more.

The Soviet Union's obvious
suspicion of the West

disturbed Washington.

An American diplomat
in Moscow,

George Kennan was asked
what he thought was going on.

When they finally sent me
a telegram

expressing their
astonishment and concern

because the Russians were
dragging their feet

about joining
the International Bank,

I thought, "Well,
for goodness sake,

I can't answer that
in one question.

They're going to have
to give me space."

And I sat down
and tried to give

a picture of this government
as it emerged from the War.

TUCKER: One of the strengths
of Kennan was his awareness

that the Russia
in which we were living,

Stalin's Soviet Russia,

Communism,
people called it,

actually drew in very many ways
upon the Russian past.

I had to go right back
to page one

and to try to tell them
things that I felt

they'd forgotten
during the war.

This all hangs together
with this whole question

that this was
the same group of people

who had dealt
with Hitler,

had tried to deal
with Hitler at our expense

and never had changed
their views about us.

BRANAGH: Kennarfs Moscow
Embassy cable became history --

and 8,000-word prophecy

that the Soviet Union was
in the mood

to expand across the world,

and must be contained.

The day that telegram
was drafted,

I, unfortunately
or fortunately,

had the night duty
in the code room

and was rather
perturbed about it

because I happened to have
a very heavy date that night.

There was a dance
at one of the other Embassies

and I wanted to get out
as early as possible.

About 6:30 or 7:00,
George comes walking in

with this six-part cable
which he wants to send out

and I took a look at it
and I said it was nice,

"But let's not send it out.

Let's wait
until tomorrow."

And I tried to talk him
into not sending it.

He said,
"Washington wants it.

They're going to get it
and you stay here and do it."

[ laughs ]

BRANAGH: Kennarfs
telegram alarmed Washington.

Days later, its message
was reinforced

when Churchill arrived
in the United States

as President Truman's guest.

CLIFFORD: They began
to get to know each other.

Mr. -- Our president
said to Mr. Churchill,

"Now we'll be on this trip
quite a while

and I would be glad
if you would call me Harry."

Well, Mr. Churchill said,

"I'll be glad to if you will
call me Winston."

Mr. Truman said,
"I don't believe I can do that."

He said, "I consider you
the First citizen in the world,

and I just don't believe
I can call you Winston."

Winston Churchill said,
"If you can't call me Winston,

then I can't call you Harry."

The President said,
"On that basis, we'll do it."

So, it was Winston and Harry
from that time on,

and they got on
very well.

BRANAGH: Churchill was due
to speak to a college audience

at Fultin
in Truman's home state.

Privately, he showed Truman
what he was going to say.

The President, not sure
that the American public

was ready for an attack
on its wartime Soviet ally,

let Churchill test the water.

Mr. Churchill is one
of the great men of the age.

He's a great Englishman.

[ Applause ]

He's a great Englishman

but he's half-American.

[ laughter and applause]

From Stettin
in the Baltic

to Trieste
in the Adriatic,

an iron curtain has
descended across the continent.

Behind that line lie
all the capitals

of the ancient states
of central and eastern Europe.

Except
in the British Commonwealth

and in the United States,

where communism is
in its infancy,

the communist parties,
or fifth columns, constitute

a growing challenge and peril
to Christian civilization.

Whatever conclusions
may be drawn from these facts,

and facts they are,

this is certainly not
the liberated Europe

we fought to build up.

Nor is it one which contains

the essentials
of permanent peace.

Immediately after that,
Stalin came out

with answers to a foreign
correspondent's questions

in which he compared Churchill
to Hitler.

And decried
Churchill's speech

as a call --

a belligerent call to arms

against Soviet Russia.

BRANAGH:
Since 1945,

America had been
extending its influence

and power all over
the world.

Stalin
grew nervous.

He put pressure on Turkey
to grant the Soviet Union

a military presence
in the Dardanelles

and the Bosporus.

America and Britain feared
a threat to the Suez Canal.

They were determined
to keep Turkey free

of Soviet interference.

When the Turkish Ambassador
in Washington died suddenly,

Truman used America's biggest
battleship,

the USS Missouri,
to deliver the body to Istanbul.

ELSEY: This was
a symbol to Stalin,

"Don't push us,
and don't push Turkey,

because if you push
Turkey, we'll be there."

BRANAGH:
Iran, like Turkey,

lay on the southern borders
of the Soviet Union,

and for centuries
had been hostile to Russia.

During the War,

Soviet and British troops
had occupied Iran

to protect
their oil supplies.

They even celebrated
their partnership there.

The old Shah,
thought to be pro-German,

was dethroned and replaced
by his son,

Mohammad Reza Pahlevi.

There was an agreement
that, once the War was over,

the British and Soviet troops
would both pull out.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER: When the
occupation was due to end,

Stalin didn't
want to leave.

He wanted
to stay on.

This created problems.

There was lots of pressure
put on us --

pressure from the British --

and, in fact,
the Soviet Union had

no legal right to stay there.

BRANAGH: Iran presented
the Security Council

of the newly founded
United Nations

with its first crisis.

NARRATOR: That's Mr. Gromyko
proposing to the Security Council

that the hearing
of the Persian case

should be postponed.

BRANAGH: The Soviet Union
tried to prevent further discussion.

They lost.

NARRATOR: Mr. Gromyko and
the other Russians then walked out.

Their dramatic exit seems
to have caused

no obvious reaction
at the time,

though we can imagine what most
of those present were thinking.

One good thing, however,
emerges from this incident.

The Security Council had
stood its ground.

BRANAGH:
Six weeks later,

Stalin ceremonially withdrew
his forces from Iran.

But Truman, shaken
by his behavior,

suspected that Stalin was
aiming at world domination.

He said, "I want to be
in a position

to document our concern.

Go back over
the recent agreements

and list one by one
the violations

in which
the Soviets have engaged.

I was then Mr. Clifford's
assistant,

and he turned
the task over to me.

We talked about it
a bit,

and I said, "Well, it seems
to me that --

that's only scratching
the surface,

a list of agreements
broken.

This is much more fund--

There are much more
fundamental problems

in our relations
with the USSR than that.

So let's go at it
in a somewhat broader way."

We spent weeks on it then,

interviewed most
of the top officials

in the United States.

There was absolute
unanimity,

in all
of the agencies concerned,

as to the nature
of the problems we had,

and the kind of response
we were going to have to make.

We ended up the report
by saying

the policy of our country

should be set
and clearly set.

The Soviet Union constitutes
a real menace

to freedom
in this world.

Freedom in Europe,
freedom in the United States.

So we must prepare for it.

BRANAGH: The Clifford-Elsey
report was kept secret.

The report concluded that
"a war with the USSR

would be more total --
more horrible

than anything
previously known."

The United States still had
the monopoly

of atomic weapons.

At Bikini Atoll
in the Pacific,

two atom bombs were
detonated in July, 1946.

The warning to Stalin
was plain.

From now on, all the big powers
worked frantically

to develop their own
atomic and biological weapons.

At the Paris Conference
of Foreign Ministers,

Molotov was determined
to maintain

joint allied control
of Germany.

But his American counterpart,
Secretary of State Byrnes

wanted Germany to pay
no more reparations.

For Molotov,
Byrnes was too concerned

with German opinion.

He was outraged.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER:
Molotov was nicknamed Mr. No,

but if he had been
a Mr. Yes,

Stalin would not
have kept him on.

Stalin needed
a Mr. No,

someone capable of finding out
the maximum information

about the other side's
position.

Molotov would squeeze
the other side

to its absolute limit.

When he had totally exhausted
these methods,

it was Stalin's turn.

He would come back
and resolve matters

with a friendly smile.

BRANAGH:
It was at Paris

that the wartime alliance
began finally to break up.

The Americans and the British
were impatient to develop

stable economies
in their zones of Germany,

without Soviet interference.

I“ [ fanfare ] I“

NARRATOR:
Stuttgart, Germany.

Scene of an event that marks
a new phase

in Europe's destiny.

Secretary of State
James F. Byrnes is here

to set forth the policy
of the United States on Germany.

A speech, widely interpreted
as marking the end

of America's appeasement
of Russia,

Byrnes tells the Germans
and the world...

It is not in the interest
of the German people,

or in the interests
of world peace,

that Germany should become
a pawn or a partner

in the military struggle
for power

between the East
and the West.

I listened
to the Byrnes Stuttgart speech

with marked approval,

because in fact I had
written most of it,

and I -- those of us
who worked on it --

and Byrnes, were not thinking
in anti-Soviet terms.

The American people
want to return

the government of Germany
to the people of Germany.

And the American people want
to help the German people

to win their way back
to an honorable place

among the free
and peace-loving nations

of the world.

BRANAGH:
In 1945, the Allies had approved

Poland's annexation
of Germany's eastern provinces,

up to the Oder
and Neisse rivers.

But now Byrnes suggested
that the new frontier

was unfair to Germany,
and might be changed.

[Speaking Polish]

INTERPRETER:
It was a shocking statement.

It made us think
that our western border

was being questioned
by the Germans

and by other
western countries.

It was one of the most
important things

that strengthened
our ties with the Soviet Union.

NARRATOR: More pictures
have arrived from Moscow.

They show the everyday scene

in the Soviet capital's
famous Red Square.

And what's in their shops?

Well, here's a glimpse
of the sort of things

now on display.

These new fashions,
our cameraman tells us,

are so expensive that they are
quite beyond the means

of ordinary people
in Russia today.

BRANAGH: Ordinary people were
much worse off than the reels showed.

[speaking Russian ]

INTERPRETER:
It was a very hard time.

I had a son who was
one and a half years old.

He used to get a plate
from the cupboard

and walk after me
saying, "Give me. Give me."

But I had nothing to give him.

We used to go
to the market and buy horse feed.

BRANAGH:
On the collective farms,

war damage
and the death

of so many workers
at the front,

were deepening
a grave food shortage.

MAUTNER: I took a trip
down through the Ukraine

and it was the time
of the '47 famine

that was going on
down there

about which nothing was
heard in the outside world.

The Soviets were talking
about great grain harvests

and everything else.

We got down there.

On the train stops
you would see

children with distended bellies
begging for bread.

At the Odessa itself,

people lying out
in the streets

outside the hospitals where
they couldn't take them in,

starving to death.

There was malnutrition
everywhere.

BRANAGH: In Germany too,
hunger and disease were spreading.

The nightmare of
the western allies was

that poverty would drive
the Germans toward communism.

[woman speaking German ]

INTERPRETER: There
was never enough food.

We were always hungry.

In those days,
we went on scavenging trips.

We went to farmers
and begged.

Sometimes we got something,
other times nothing.

BRANAGH: America's
General Lucius Clay reflected,

"There is no choice

between being a communist
on 1,500 calories a day

and a believer in democracy
on 1,000."

Aid to Germany cost Britain
over a million dollars a day.

But British supplies
were not enough

to save thousands of Germans,

who died that winter
for lack of food and fuel.

Britain too
was weakening.

The fierce winter
of 1946-47

brought industry
to a standstill.

The country's economy,
undermined by six years of war,

began to seize up.

Coal ran out,
electricity failed,

and food rationing
grew even tighter.

You know,
people forget again.

We never had bread
rationing during the War.

We had bread rationing after it.

And that was because we were
pouring wheat into Germany

to prevent mass starvation
there.

That was a bad winter
altogether.

It was cold
and the crops were bad,

people were unhappy,

and the Communists were making
strenuous gains

here, there,
and the other place,

particularly in Italy
and in France,

but also in Germany.

BRANAGH: The British
could no longer afford

all their heavy commitments
in the Mediterranean.

They told the Americans
they intended to pull out.

CLIFFORD: The message
came and it was flat.

It said, "Great Britain is
withdrawing

from both economic aid
and military aid

to Greece and Turkey.

This simply crystallized
the opinions

in the executive branch

that the United States
had to move

and move very, very quickly.

The prospect didn't look good
at all for Europe

or for the United States,
or for anybody.

BRANAGH: In Washington,
President Truman went to Congress.

From now on, he announced,

the United States would contain
the advance of communism

anywhere on the globe.

This, at last, was
the official declaration

of the Cold War.