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What followed was a dangerous struggle for supremacy between two superpowers, the U.S. suddenly had the upper hand among the powers who were allies in the war. With a devastating and proven weapon in its armory, the U.S. used the atomic bomb to force Japan’s surrender.
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( Subscriber exclusive: For Hiroshima's survivors, memories of the bomb are impossible to forget.) had just successfully tested a weapon of “unusual destructive force.” It was a nuclear weapon capable of destroying entire cities, the most dangerous and powerful armament the world had ever seen.
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President Harry Truman took aside Soviet premier Joseph Stalin to share some explosive news: The U.S. One of the most important moments at Potsdam was not captured in a memo or proclaimed at a press conference. The talks were meant to forge a lasting peace, but within 18 months, a Cold War began that lasted more than four decades. The great powers split Germany into occupation zones, recognized a Soviet-backed government in Poland, and partitioned Vietnam, monumental decisions that shaped the postwar global order.
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As World War II dragged to an end in 1945, the leaders of the “Big Three” allied powers-the United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain-met in Potsdam, Germany, to hash out terms to conclude the bloodiest conflict the world had ever seen.
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