<P> The differences between Roosevelt and Churchill led to several separate deals with the Soviets . In October 1944, Churchill traveled to Moscow and proposed the "percentages agreement" to divide the Balkans into respective spheres of influence, including giving Stalin predominance over Romania and Bulgaria and Churchill carte blanche over Greece . At the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Roosevelt signed a separate deal with Stalin in regard of Asia and refused to support Churchill on the issues of Poland and the Reparations . Roosevelt ultimately approved the percentage agreement, but there was still apparently no firm consensus on the framework for a post-war settlement in Europe . </P> <P> At the Second Quebec Conference, a high - level military conference held in Quebec City, 12--16 September 1944, Churchill and Roosevelt reached agreement on a number of matters, including a plan for Germany, based on Henry Morgenthau Jr.'s original proposal . The memorandum drafted by Churchill provided for "eliminating the warmaking industries in the Ruhr and the Saar...looking forward to converting Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character ." However, it no longer included a plan to partition the country into several independent states . On 10 May 1945, President Truman signed the U.S. occupation directive JCS 1067 . The directive, which was in effect for over two years, and was enthusiastically supported by Stalin, directed the U.S. forces of occupation to "...take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany". </P> <P> Some historians have argued that the Cold War began when the US negotiated a separate peace with Nazi SS General Karl Wolff in northern Italy . The Soviet Union was not allowed to participate and the dispute led to heated correspondence between Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin . General Wolff, a war criminal, appears to have been guaranteed immunity at the Nuremberg trials by Office of Strategic Services (OSS) commander (and later CIA director) Allen Dulles when they met in March 1945 . Wolff and his forces were being considered to help implement Operation Unthinkable, a secret plan to invade the Soviet Union which Winston Churchill advocated during this period . </P> <P> In April 1945, President Roosevelt died and was succeeded by Harry S. Truman, who distrusted Stalin and turned for advice to an elite group of foreign policy intellectuals . Both Churchill and Truman opposed, among other things, the Soviets' decision to prop up the Lublin government, the Soviet - controlled rival to the Polish government - in - exile in London, whose relations with the Soviets had been severed . </P>

When did the cold war end and start