In many ways, the Cold War began even before the guns fell silent in Germany and in the Pacific in 1945. Suspicion and mistrust had defined U.S. Soviet relations for decades and resurfaced as soon as the alliance against Adolf Hitler was no longer necessary. Competing ideologies and visions of the postwar world prevented U.S. president  Harry S Truman  and Soviet premier  Joseph Stalin  from working together. Thus leading into the start of the Cold War and the epic power struggle that will ensue, dividing the world into Freedoms and Democracy or Conformity and Communism. During World War II, Vietnam was a French colony under Japanese occupation. Soon after Japan surrendered in 1945, the Viet Minh in the August Revolution, entered Hanoi and Ho proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, government for the entire country. Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh became head of the government. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt had spoken against French rule in Indochina and America was supportive of the Viet Minh at this time. The Truman Doctrine was a US policy to stop Soviet expansion during the Cold War. United States President Harry S. Truman pledged to contain communism in Europe and elsewhere and impelled the US to support any nation with both military and economic aid if its stability was threatened by communism or the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of the president's foreign policy and placed the U.S. in the role of global policeman. As Eric Foner reminds us, the Truman Doctrine "set a precedent for American assistance to anticommunist regimes throughout the world, no matter how undemocratic, and for the creation of a set of global military alliances directed against the Soviet Union." National Security Council Report 68  (NSC-68) was a 58-paged top secret policy paper issued by the  United States National Security Council on April 14, 1950, during the presidency of  Harry S. Truman. It was one of the most significant statements of American policy in the  Cold War. NSC-68 largel