The cold war was a state of political hostility short of open warfare. The Cold War lasted from 1945 to 1990 and was between the U.S and the Soviet Union. The U.S and Soviet Union's relationship unraveled during WWII due to Stalin signing the nonaggression pact with Germany, eventually Germany violated that pact. The Soviet Union also blamed the allies for not invading German-occupied France until 1944 leaving German pressure on the Soviet troops. The U.S did not trust the Soviets because their two very different forms of government, the U.S had a democratic government while the Soviets were communist. The leaders at Potsdam were Stalin, Churchill, and Harry Truman representing the U.S. The issues discussed were the allied control of defeated Germany, war reparations, the Oder/Neisse line (the border between Germany and Poland), and Russia joining the war in the far east. The postwar goals for the U.S are differ from the postwar goals of the Soviet Union. The U.S postwar goals were: to encourage spread democracy in different countries stop the spread of communism, rebuilding european governments (Marshall Plan), reunite Germany to stabilize it and, to increase security in Europe. The Soviet postwar goals were not to help other countries but to protect their own by rebuilding it's damaged economy using eastern Europe's industrial equipment and raw materials, controlling eastern Europe to protect Soviet border, keep Germany divided to prevent waging war. The Soviets also wanted to spread communism which was easy to do since after the war poverty was at a high. The characteristics of communism are abolition of private property, heavy income tax, no rights of inheritance, central banks, and basically the government owns everything. The United States is a capitalist economy and the characteristics a very different. A capitalist economy characteristics are private property, freedom of enterprise, freedom of economic choice to work or to not work, competitive market system. The Soviets wanted to protect themselves from another invasion so they occupied a strip of colonies around its border. The United States adopted the a policy of containment stating that communism needed to be contained and isolated, or it would spread to neighboring countries. An early example of the U.S putting this policy into action is the Truman Doctrine which provided support to countries that rejected communism. The U.S aided Turkey and Greece with 400 million dollars. The Marshall Plan provided food, machinery and other materials to rebuild Western Europe, the Marshall Plan provided 12.5 billion dollars to Western European countries.