ABSTRACT
Wars always harm soldiers, but World War II had wrecked civilians, cities, towns, and fields more than any human conflagration had since the horse-blood-drinking Mongols of Genghis Khan had galloped over the Asian steppes 800 years earlier. In July 1945, President Harry S. Truman waited to meet Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at Potsdam, near Berlin. Truman had a secret he wanted to share with Stalin. On July 18, at the Potsdam Conference, President Truman hinted to Stalin that the United States had a powerful weapon of extraordinary destructive power. Stalin did not act surprised because he was not surprised. His scientists were working on their own atomic bomb, thanks in part to the information they received from spies like Klaus Fuchs. This exchange between Truman and Stalin was the start of the Cold War. If this was not the start of the Cold War, it was at least a lowering of the temperature.
