Just over fifty years ago, Soviet and American troops met at the River Elbe and rejoiced at the defeat of Nazi Germany. Their optimism was short lived. This film tracks the growing tensions between these two superpowers, from the post-war world of the late 1940s through the early 1960s, as the hope for peace swiftly disintegrated into a "cold" war. Here eyewitnesses recall the meeting on the Elbe, the impact of Stalin, Churchill and Khrushchev, propaganda wars between the two nations, the Berlin blockade, the Hungarian uprising and the installation of the Berlin Wall.