Once allies against HItler, the Soviet Union and the United States confront each other at the end of World War II. Looming over the postwar landscape is the awesome, mushroom-shaped cloud of the atomic bomb.

In the months following their victory in World War II, the alliance between the Soviet Union and the West quickly proves to be little more than a marriage of convenience. Suspicion clouds relations -- while a curtain descends over Europe.

With hunger and discontent plaguing postwar Europe, the U.S. proposes an aid program to rebuild the ruined continent.But the Marshall Plan also solidifies the deep ideological differences between East and West.