The end of World War II had left the world in a state of flux. The world that emerged from the war was a very different place to how it existed in 1939. New power blocs had formed and old and new friends kept a wary eye on one another. New growing powers were also emerging in Asia, South America, and Africa, either opposed to the great powers or supported by them. Proxy wars proliferated, where powerful nations struggled for dominance within the smaller conflicts of other nations and independence movements.

In the decades following the war the Germans had reunified and become increasingly diplomatically and politically independent. They had also seen a revival of nationalist movements with increasing demands from these elements for the return of former German lands lost to Poland following the war.

By 1960 the fledgling North Atlantic Treaty Organisation had fallen apart, and while Britain and the United States remained close, they often disagreed on various international policies. The Americans focused on their anti-communist crusade, while the British focus on their own post war economy and forging a new alliance from the nations of their former colonial empire.

The Soviet Union sponsored communist movements all around the world, seemingly opposed by American interference at every turn. While extending the hand of friendship to independence movements around the developing world, they at the same time brutally tightened their grip on the Communist bloc countries of eastern Europe. This did not go unnoticed among the other global players.