The Allied Powers was an alliance of several countries that was formed in 1939 with the goal of containing the spread of Germany and its rival fascist Axis Powers alliance. France, the United Kingdom, and Poland formed an alliance in 1939 to prevent Nazi Germany from invading Poland, but the German invasion of Poland resulted in France, Poland, the UK, and its various colonies declaring war on Nazi Germany and beginning World War II. The ensuing conflict would see more countries enter the Allies as Adolf Hitler unwisely chose to make more enemies, and the Allies would soon be divided into the democratic Western Allies and the communist Comintern alliance, which was headed by the Soviet Union and manned by its puppets, mostly leftist partisans. The Allies would envelop the Axis Powers from two sides, and the war would result in an Allied victory after the fall of Berlin and Prague in May 1945 and the bombing of Japan in August–September of that same year. The Allied Powers would end along with the war, as the Western Allies formed NATO to combat the spread of communism while the USSR set up communist puppet governments in Eastern Europe. The end of the Allied Powers led to the start of the Cold War in 1947, and European cooperation would not be seen again until the creation of the European Union.
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