The Dawn of the Cold War

Learn how, after being brothers in arms during World War II, the Allies would soon become divided in peace. How did a post‑war conference in Crimea lead to the Cold War? This is the story of a face‑off that pitted the two most powerful men on the planet for eight years: Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, and Truman, the president of the United States. Their confrontation held the world in suspense and led to the Cold War. When Truman came to power in the spring of 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union were still allies fighting Nazi Germany. But once Hitler was defeated, the antagonisms and ambitions that had been put to sleep resurfaced. In a few months the positions froze and the two blocs stood against each other, irreconcilable, marking the beginning of the Cold War. This film recounts this pivotal period in our history, a time of high tension as the United States and the USSR acquired atomic weapons, with events such as Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” the Berlin blockade, and the Korean War. Until Stalin’s death in 1953, crises followed one another. Thanks to declassified archives, the exceptional testimonies of former spies and President Truman’s grandson, we relive the story from the inside and understand how the terrible spiral of the Cold War was put in place.