 The origins of NATO are intertwined with the origins of the Cold War. This video will therefore outline the sense of looming Cold War in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and some of the key events that substantiated this perception, from the perspective of Western Europe and the United States. It will then assess the main political initiatives and events that led to the creation of NATO in 1949. From 1945 to the end of 1946, the wartime allies started to gradually drift apart. The death of American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt impacted on the personal relationship that had been created between the big three, the wartime leader, Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. The end of the war in Europe in May 1945, moreover, deprived the allies of the main, dramatic necessity to cooperate. At the same time, Stalin's policies in Eastern Europe, where he sought to consolidate the Soviet sphere of influence, together with the US testing of the atomic bomb, strained the relationship between the two emerging superpowers. The occupation of Germany by the US, the UK, France and the Soviet Union provided the main testing ground of the incapacity to cooperate with Moscow. The German question, as the division of Germany came to be called, emerged as the most tangible and symbolic issue of the looming Cold War. As the American Charles de Afer at the Soviet Embassy, George Kennan famously wrote in his long telegram of February 1946, the Soviet Union seemed to live in antagonistic capitalist encirclement, in which, in the long run, there could be no permanent peaceful coexistence. Impervious to the logic of reason, according to Kennan, the Soviets were, instead, highly sensitive to the logic of force. The perception of the emergence of two antagonistic blocks was emphatically confirmed by Winston Churchill's iconic speech of March 1946. 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 their populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. At the same time, the Civil War in Greece dramatically revealed the extent of the British economic difficulties following World War II, and consequently the United States gradually became the cornerstone of European recovery. When London declared in February 1947 that it was unable to continue to provide aid to Greece, but that without such aid the communist factions were likely to prevail in the conflict, Washington was compelled to act. In a landmark speech to Congress in March 1947, US President Harry Truman requested authorization to grant aid to Greece in the fight against communist expansion. He also requested aid for Turkey, which was, from the US perspective, exposed to Soviet influence. This statement came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, and would provide the political pillar of the emerging US strategy of containment of the Soviet Union. In parallel with the declaration in support of Greece and Turkey, the United States formulated an economic program to foster the recovery of Western Europe. In June 1947, the US Secretary of State George Marshall announced an aid program in theory proposed to all European countries, provided they would coordinate among themselves the receipt of American aid. The following year, the US Congress approved the so-called Marshall Plan, and in April 1948, US aid to Europe initiated under the European recovery program. Given the program was conceived for capitalist market economies, the Eastern European countries under Soviet influence declined to participate in the program. The division of Europe in two blocks, also from an economic point of view, was thus becoming a concrete and tangible reality. The unresolved issues of Germany and the implications of the European recovery program combined to create the first real Cold War crisis, the Berlin blockade of 1948-1949. When the French, British and Americans decided to introduce a single currency in their occupation zones, in order to be able to extend Marshall Plan aid to the Western sectors, the Soviet Union refused to agree to the introduction of the Western currency in Berlin, which was also divided into four occupied zones like the rest of Germany. The level of tension escalated in June 1948, but since Berlin lied deep within the Soviet occupied zone and no agreements on Western access to Berlin had been negotiated, Stalin believed he was in a position of strength. In response to the Western move, he blocked all access routes to Berlin. Faced with the dilemma, either risk war or abandon West Berlin, the Truman administration opted for an airlift of supplies to the Western sectors of the city. The airlift lasted almost a year until May 1949, providing proof of both America's commitment to West Berlin and the US capacity to sustain the airlift for many months. War not being an attractive nor realistic option, Stalin was forced to back off. The Western zones of Germany proceeded towards the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany. In response, the Soviet occupied zone became the Democratic Republic of Germany. By 1949, the division of Germany in two states came to symbolize the division of Europe. The escalation of tension during the Berlin blockade prompted the Western European countries and the United States to start negotiations on a permanent security pact. For the United States, joining a permanent alliance was a profound turning point. The traditional principle, which stated back to George Washington's admonition to avoid entangling alliances, was reversed with the Vandenberg resolution of June 1948. This paved the way for the US to take part in regional accords that required continued commitments when these directly related to the defense of American national security. On their part, he Western European countries had already joined together with the signing of the Brussels Treaty in March 1948. As the Berlin blockade was coming to its end, on April 4, 1949, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Denmark and Iceland signed the North Atlantic Treaty. While America took on the leadership of the Western block, questions surrounding the credibility of the US commitment, the territorial scope of the alliance and the need for a coordinated European contribution started to surface immediately and would later characterize the history and development of the alliance.