of a different kind of war, the Cold War, an enduring ideological battle between the democratic West and the Soviet bloc. The United States emerged from the war as the strongest power in the world, and the Soviet Union intended to challenge that strength. There were signs of tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union before the end of the war. The tensions increased after the war. There is disagreement on the precise beginning of the Cold War, but the Cold War is seen as deriving from the historic background of Soviet-American relations and from the specific events of 1945 through 1948.
In fact, the alliance between the Soviets and Americans during the war was an aberration from the norm since the Russian Revolution. American hostility toward the Soviet Union began with American animosity toward communism. America also had an image of the Soviets as a government that had negotiated a separate peace with Germany in 1917, leaving the West to fight the war alone. Americans had also been unhappy with the many attacks on the American capitalist system, and such attacks were particularly unwelcome in the 1930s when capitalism was in trouble. The Stalinist purges of the 1930s were also remembered, as was the short-lived pact between Stalin and Hitler in 1939. Soviet hostility toward the United States also had deep roots. The Soviets remembered American opposition to the revolution in 1917, and the refusal by America to diplomatically recognize the new Soviet government until 1933. The U.S. had also sent troops into the Soviet Union at the end of World War I, and the Soviets believed this was to overthrow their system. Russia had been excluded from world affairs after World War I until World War II, and this was resented. Most Russians also deeply distrusted industrial capitalism. World War II seemed to bring the two together, but events in the war also more deeply separated them. Americans were hostile to the Soviet invas...