could maintain amicable relations, though he realized that conflicts would surely arise between the globe's most powerful nations. Truman hoped that the United States and the U.S.S.R. Never fulfilling this promise, it established a Polish Communist-dominated puppet government in the spring of 1945 as the first of what would later become its eastern European satellites. At the Yalta conference in February 1945, the Soviet Union agreed in general terms to the establishment of freely elected governments in recently liberated areas of eastern Europe. One of the most important flashpoints was Poland. Problems with the Soviet UnionД®ven before the end of World War II, tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States began to mount as both nations looked to shape the post-war international order in line with their interests. The Japanese agreed to surrender on August 14 and then did so, more formally, on September 2. On August 9, that weapon hit Nagasaki, Japan. military proceed with its plans to drop a second atomic bomb. Two days later, hearing no word from the Japanese government (which was in deep negotiations about whether to surrender), Truman let the U.S. Estimates of the casualties are notoriously slippery, but upwards of 100,000 people, perhaps-mostly civilians-perished instantly. On the morning of August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. With figures for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands mounting and Japanese leaders offering few concrete hints of agreeing to the President's terms for unconditional surrender, Truman endorsed the use of the bomb against Japan. power, while hardly determinative, also weighed on the President's mind. The possibility of bringing the war to an earlier conclusion was exceedingly attractive the added heft this new weapon might give to perceptions of U.S. The top-secret Manhattan Project was at work on an atomic bomb, a device that one of the President's advisers described 'as the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.' While attending the Potsdam summit in July, Truman learned that a test of the bomb had been successful. Truman knew that another option might exist. The invasion would likely prolong the war for at least another year and cost, by one estimate, over 200,000 American casualties. As Truman took office, military planners anticipated that total victory would require an Allied invasion of Japan. In the Pacific, however, the end of the war with Japan seemed farther away. When Truman ascended to the presidency on April 12, 1945, World War II in Europe was almost over within a month, Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered. Over the coming decades, the NSC became a significant instrument of American foreign policy. While underdeveloped and undernourished during its first years of existence, the NSC grew in prestige and power due to U.S. Finally, the Act established the National Security Council (NSC) to advise the President on issues related primarily to American foreign policy. The National Security Act also created the Central Intelligence Agency, the leading arm of the nation's intelligence network. Two years later, the NME was renamed the Department of Defense and made an executive department. It unified the Army, Navy, and Air Force under a National Military Establishment (NME) headed by a civilian Secretary of Defense. Truman also reorganized the nation's military and national security apparatus with passage of the National Security Act in 1947. Marshall and Acheson proved inspired leaders and sometimes brilliant architects of United States foreign policy. Acheson, a former undersecretary of state, in 1949. Marshall, in turn, was succeeded by Dean G. Marshall, Army chief of staff during the war, who had attempted to mediate the Chinese civil war during 1946. Byrnes handled the opening rounds of negotiations at the postwar conferences of allied foreign ministers, but he proved problematic for the President. At the State Department, Truman replaced FDR's last secretary of state, Edward Stettinius, with former senator, Supreme Court justice, and war mobilization director James F. Truman inherited Roosevelt's national security team, though he would transform it-in terms of both personnel and organization-during the course of his presidency. In sum, Truman's foreign policy established some of the basic principles and commitments that marked American foreign policy for the remainder of the twentieth century. Truman intervened with American troops in the conflict between North Korea and South Korea and he supported the creation of the state of Israel in the Middle East. Truman guided the United States through the end of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the dawning of the atomic age. Truman confronted unprecedented challenges in international affairs during his nearly eight years in office.

Text of the long telegram