Focus! Focus!

For both 466 and 450 people, the events of World War II and the postwar, in which Europe becomes divided after coming together in the defeat of Hitler, can be really confusing--especially since most of us don't get any systematic history instruction in high school. So here is a way to try to make sense of the narrative. This is one of the fundamental questions of the Cold War, and I always ask it on the midterm in one form or another:

A)In the Ken Burns documentary “The War,” viewers learn about the titanic struggle between the US, Great Britain and the USSR on the one hand and Germany, Italy and Japan on the other in World War II. Victory was a team effort, requiring a common strategy, coordination and millions of casualties. How did it happen that this “marriage” ended in divorce, with victorious allies becaming bitter enemies, glowering at each other across barbed-wire borders, just a couple of years after that happy meeting in Berlin? In other words, how did we get a nasty, antagonistic Cold War after the successful conclusion of the Hot War?

In other words, how do we get an acrimonious divorce so soon after this spectacularly successful partnership??