The birth of NATO

In the years after 1945 the non-communist governments of Western Europe looked uneasily at the huge Russian armies grouped just behind the barbed-wire fences of the Iron Curtain. They feared that Stalin might order his soldiers to overrun them. In February 1948, their fears increased. With Russian support a communist government took control in Czechoslovakia. Then, in June, Stalin started the blockade of Berlin.

These events convinced President Truman that Western Europe needed more than economic aid. In 1949 he invited most of its nations to join the United States in setting up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This was an alliance of nations who agreed to support one another against threats from the Russians and set up combined armed forces to do this.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington in April 1949. The following September Americans heard the news that the Russians, too, could now make atomic bombs. This persuaded Congress to vote millions of dollars to equip NATO's armed forces. In 1951 General Eisenhower, one of the United States' best known generals of the Second World War, was placed in command of these forces. Soon thousands of American soldiers were in Europe once more.

Bryn O'Callaghan: An illustrated history of the USA; Longman, Harlow, 1990/1996, page 119