"Europe and the Soviet-American Rivalry" Study Notes

The Soviet Union and the United States - two nuclear-armed superpowers - confronted each other in a simmering conflict known as the Cold War. The tense relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union started in the closing months of World War II. Some scholars attribute the hardening of the atmosphere between the two countries to Harry Truman's assumption of the presidency in April 1945, after the death of the more sympathetic Franklin Roosevelt, and to the American possession of an effective atomic bomb. Evidence suggests, however, that Truman was trying to carry Roosevelt's p…