9781422282823

jeopardizing any vital Soviet interests, such as control of Eastern Europe or influence in postwar Germany. This proved to be impossible: the 1945–1947 period showed that differences between East and West, soon known as the Cold War, were not based on misunderstandings but instead stemmed from mutually exclusive visions for the postwar world. Where Stalin was convinced of irreconcilable enmity, American leaders took almost two years to come to the same conclusion—and that Stalin would not follow the American lead. Already early in 1945, during the war, Stalin charted his own course in occupying Poland, where he imposed communist rule. Of course, that summer Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman, casually told the Soviet leader of the successful test of an atomic weapon, the result of a top-secret programWashington had pursued with Britain during the war without informing the Soviet Union. The U.S. military, seeking a speedy end to the war in the Pacific, next made its own decisions in using the other two available bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

U.S. president Harry S. Truman (on left) followed by Soviet premiere Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference on August 1, 1945. During the meeting, Truman casually told Stalin about the U.S. testing of an atomic weapon, which the United States used on Japan just one week later.

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SCIENCE AND THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II