FROM FRIENDS TO ENEMIES

After uniting to defeat the Nazis, east and west were soon divided once more

- SPENCER MIZEN

It was the mother of all PR opportunities. A photo call from the heavens. On 26 April 1945, an American 2nd lieutenant called William Robertson shook hands with a Soviet counterpart, Alexander Sylvashko, on the banks of the River Elbe in front of assembled cameramen.

A day earlier, near the very spot where Robertson and Sylvashko embraced, an American patrol had made contact with Soviet soldiers for the very first time during the campaign to wrestle back Europe from the Nazis. Now, to mark this momentous occasion, Robertson and Sylvashko exchanged pleasantries to the click of cameras and the hum of news reports being relayed back to Washington and Moscow.

The convergence of American and Soviet troops south of Berlin was a moment of huge military significance. With German armies now cut in two, the final defeat of Adolf Hitler's forces lay just a few short days away. Yet this was a meeting of enormous symbolism, too. For month after bloody month, the armies of the United States, the Soviet Union and their allies had battled their way across Europe with one common purpose to defeat Nazism. Their meeting on the Elbe that spring day was emblematic of what could be achieved when the world's two rising superpowers stood side by side. Robertson and Sylvashko may have been the faces of different cultures and competing ideologies, but when the US and Soviet Union joined forces, no nation could stand in their way.

Fast forward two years, and another American commanded the world's attention. Yet this one wasn't embracing a Soviet brother-in-arms - and the smiles and amity had been replaced by stony-faced defiance.