Incompatible Universalisms: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Beginning of the Cold War

At the end of World War II vast parts of Europe, Russia, and Asia lay in ruins. Between 60 and 70 million people, a majority of them civilians, had lost their lives in the worst carnage in human history. Millions of displaced people wandered around Europe. For the fi rst and only time in history, nuclear weapons had been used in a war and against civilians. “No other confl ict in recorded history,” wrote historian Tony Judt, “killed so many people in so short a time.”1