Hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union-commonly called a “Cold War”-quickly emerged from the fears of future military conflict in devastated and vulnerable areas.

The end of the Second World War had indeed left a lot of unfinished business. A future war would be even worse than what citizens had just witnessed. Americans began to worry about the consequences of other countries, especially Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, acquiring and possibly using this horrific new technology. Originally appearing in the New Yorker magazine and later published as a bestselling book, Hersey’s descriptions warned readers that the greatest achievements of modern science promised more death and destruction, if not carefully controlled. In August 1946, only a year after the end of the war, journalist John Hersey published a searing account of the horrific suffering created by the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Americans celebrating their victory with loved ones also looked ominously toward a dangerous, complex, and potentially violent postwar world. Happiness, however, was also a fleeting emotion.

Happiness was evident in the street parades, the family reunions, and the new births (“the baby boom”) that filled American society immediately after the war. For American citizens who saved and sacrificed in the 1930s and early 1940s, the next decade promised unprecedented security and abundance. American farmers also benefited from mass production and distribution, selling enough food at war’s end to feed populations around the globe. Above all, the United States had developed the capability to produce more military and civilian goods (aircraft, cars, radios, and guns, among many other items) than the rest of the world combined. The shocking atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved this point. Thanks to generous government investments and the immigration across the Atlantic of some of Europe’s best minds, American science and technology had advanced beyond all peers. American soldiers had decisively defeated the seemingly invincible German and Japanese militaries. The country that had suffered from dust bowls, economic depression, and a devastating attack on its Pacific naval fleet in the last decade-and-a-half emerged as the dominant global actor. The late summer of 1945 marked the height of American power.

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