truman is going to meet with stalin and churchill in potsdam, germany, after hitler is defeated. i mean, it's a new big three now with harry truman being the president now instead of roosevelt. truman's attitude is going to be very different from that of roosevelt. and some indication of that change of u.s. policy comes right away. remember i mentioned to you that even vice president harry truman had not been kept informed of the manhattan project. one of them is, there's a few things you need to know. we've been working on a bomb. it's the biggest, baddest bomb around. here in potsdam, truman gets the word that it works. we have successfully detonated an atomic bomb. it works. and so he goes over to stalin and says to him, yeah, hitler's been defeated. we want to cooperate with you, but i need to let you in on a little secret. the secret is, we're going to end this war with japan because we have an atomic weapon, the likes of which, again, the world has never seen. that was supposed to be news to stalin. it wasn't. he already knew. really ironic, our own vice president harry trum

truman has a very tough stance against stalin. he's talking tough. we've got the bomb and you don't. our experts had told truman that it would probably be at least five, if not ten or maybe even more than that years down the road before the soviet union would ever have the ability to successfully detonate an atomic bomb. and so we can fly all these planes in to re-supply and help the people of west berlin, fly over soviet-controlled air space, and they won't be shot down. we have the bomb and they don't. eventually the airlift is over in may of 1949. stalin was trying to drag this thing out and see if our resolve would weaken. it didn't. we've got planes taking off and landing 24/7. it's a battle of wills, and we won out. when it's all said and done berlin is going to be a divided city. we're going to string up barbed wire. >> how did the takeover of the west happen? was it just like a 24-hour descent of troops? >> yes. basically he's going to have forces along the interior separating east and west berlin as well as simply move them in. since west ber

truman will meet with stalin and churchill in germany after hitler is defeated. it's a new big three with harry truman being the president. truman's attitude is different. some indication of that change of u.s. policy comes right away. even harry truman was not kept informed. it was like okay, a few things you need to know. one is we have been working on a bomb. you know what? it's the biggest baddest bomb around. truman gets the word that it works. we have detonated an atomic bomb. it works. he goes over to stalin. lit her has been defeated and we want to cooperate with you, but i need to let you in on a secret. the secret is we are going to end this war with japan because we have an atomic weapon the likes of which the world has never seen. they were kept in the dark, but stalin already knew. we have soviet spies in the united states. they passed information along that we were working on it and close to it. he knew we were very close to having a successful nuclear weapon. well, what truman is going to do then is to give the japanese an opportunity to surrender w

he wanted to warn truman that stalin was bringing down an iron curtain across europe. as russia morphed into the soviet union, the abuses of communism spread across eastern europe. british and american diplomats were followed, harassed, and even expelled. no foreign journalists were allowed in. you can see dictators in syria, iran, north korea, where they get their inspiration for censorship of the media and walked down or strangle hold on social media sites on the internet. in poland, several thousand people were sent horrifyingly to the very concentration prison camps that the allies, and in some cases, the red army had liberated it. of course, soviet officials wanted to stop word of these abuses from leaking out and those subjected to paranoia and depression end. the government he set up his anything but representative. in time, the way moskal rewarded the heroic patriots of the polish underground movement, who had fought the entire length of the war against the nazi occupation was by sending them to prison or indeed to their death. russia was a country, let us reme