Following the April 1949 signing of the Atlantic Pact and led by then-led by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded by 12 member states in London on May 18th, 1950. Their purpose, as they claimed, was their dedication to "the preservation of peace" and to the defense of Western Europe against supposed military threats. Not only did the creation coincide with the heightened tensions of the Cold War and the political partitioning of Germany, but it also extended its invitation to West Germany to join the fold on May 9th, 1954 with the intent of re-arming it. This was a violation of the 1945 Potsdam agreement which posited that the partition of Germany was supposed to be temporary and that all of Germany was to be 'de-Nazified'; instead, we saw the development of West Germany into a Western puppet state. The Soviet Union saw the aforementioned invitation to West Germany and its re-arming as a provocation and, in the following year, established the Warsaw Pact in response.
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