The first item should be the Yalta Conference. At Yalta, Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan if he received major concessions in Eastern Europe. Roosevelt hoped that he could negotiate with Stalin later about the fate of Eastern Europe, but he never got the chance, dying in April 1945. The Yalta Conference demonstrated that the Soviet-American relationship would be tense after the end of WWII. Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe would ultimately lead to the early role of the CIA being to plot ways to roll back Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe.
The second item would be the United States using the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One reason the United States used atomic weapons to end the war against Japan was to demonstrate to the Soviets that they were the new major world player. The bomb was supposed to be top secret, but Stalin knew about the bomb's development before Truman. The Soviet Union dropped their own atomic bomb in August 1949, thus leading to an arms race that would last forty years.
When the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin in order to drive the Western powers out, the United States led a coalition that stood its ground. Between 1948 and 1949, the United States used bombers to airlift food and medicine to their besieged sector. The Soviet Union did not want direct confrontation, so the blockade ended. The Berlin Airlift signified that the United States would not back down against Soviet aggression in Europe.
In 1949, Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People's Republic of China, thus making China into a Communist state. Members of the "China Lobby," most notably Henry Luce, editor of Time, declared that the United States committed a serious blunder in letting China go to the communists even though China had been fighting communist revolutionaries for years. Truman and his circle was seen as being soft on communism and this led to the election of Eisenhower in 1952. The Untied States also started to pay more attention to events in Asia, thus leading to conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.
Finally, Winston Churchill delivered the "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946 in which he declared the stark difference between Soviet tyranny and Western freedom. By painting this as a war of good against evil, Churchill mobilized voters to pick candidates with strong foreign policy records. The United States remained on a war footing in terms of building armaments and enlisting men with a peacetime draft. The Soviets and Americans had been allies in 1945; by 1946, they were clearly rivals.
There were many events from 1945 to 1950 that really brought about the onset of the Cold War. One was the Potsdam Conference, at which President Truman confronted the Soviets about the fact that a Stalinist government had been set up in Poland and agreed to the division of Germany into occupation zones that would eventually develop into East and West Germany. The tensions at this conference are sometimes said to represent the outbreak of the war itself. Potsdam also yielded the Potsdam Declaration, in which the Allied Powers demanded the immediate and unconditional surrender of Japan. A second important event in the onset of the Cold War was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs in August of 1945. The threat of atomic weapons was one of the defining features of the Cold War, and it was the devastation of these Japanese cities that ushered in the atomic age. On February 22, 1946, American diplomat George Kennan, stationed in Moscow, sent his "Long Telegram" to analysts in Washington. This telegram offered an assessment of Soviet intent and strategy that was rooted in the history of Russia as well as the ideological assumptions of the modern Soviet Union. Most significantly, it recommended a policy of "containment" of Soviet expansionist ambitions that would inform American foreign policy throughout the Cold War. Finally, in 1947, President Harry Truman proclaimed what has become known as the "Truman Doctrine." Specifically aimed at the situations in Greece and Turkey, which were locked in struggles between communist and anti-communist forces, it committed the United States to resist the spread of communism. In other words, the nation was adopting the foreign policy course set out by Kennan.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/potsdam-conf
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/george-kennan-sends-long-telegram-to-state-department
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history
One critical event in the development of the Cold War was Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in Missouri in March of 1946. During this speech, Churchill popularized the term "iron curtain," which put a name to the rising paranoia the West felt toward the Soviet Union. Soon afterward, the United States developed the "Truman Doctrine" to try and prevent the further spread of communism.
Beginning in June of 1948, East Germany put a blockade around West Berlin, a western-controlled zone that was surrounded by Communist sectors. The British and Americans airlifted food and supplies into West Berlin in what was called the Berlin Airlift. Partly in response to the Berlin Airlift, in 1949, the Western allies formed a defensive bloc called NATO, otherwise known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. When North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, Western troops aided South Korea during the Korean War. Later, in 1955, provoked by the Korean War and the formation of NATO, the Eastern allies formed their own defensive alliance called the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War was marked by escalating tensions, leading to the Vietnam War in 1965.
There were several developments in the Cold War between 1945 and 1950 that impacted the foreign policy of the United States. In February 1945, Stalin agreed at the Yalta Conference to allow free elections to occur in Poland. However, this promise was not kept. This signaled to the United States and its Allies that Stalin could not be trusted. Some people felt this was the beginning of the Cold War.
In March 1947, President Truman and his advisors developed the policy of containment. This policy was designed to try to keep Communism from spreading. It led to the creation of the European Recovery Plan, which provided aid to nations to rebuild their economy in order to resist the spread of communism.
In June 1948, the Soviet Union cut off all land access to West Berlin. The Soviet Union hoped to force the United States, France, and Great Britain to abandon their zones in West Berlin. Instead, the Berlin Airlift began to fly supplies into West Berlin. Eventually, the Soviet Union ended the blockade.
In July 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed. This military alliance was formed in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The United States and several European countries formed NATO in response to the threat of the Soviet expansion of communism.
In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations, led by the United States, helped South Korea in this conflict in order to keep South Korea as a free, independent, and noncommunist country.
http://www.history-of-american-wars.com/cold-war-timeline.html
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/kennan
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