Even before the war ended, tensions had emerged between the Allies, as the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain each looked ahead to a postwar world that would be very different from the world of the 1920s and 1930s. Within five years, the Soviet Union and the United States had organized competing alliances, each aimed at thwarting the other’s perceived efforts at expansion and global domination. The development of nuclear weapons brought a terrifying new dimension to Cold War conflict. Ironically, despite the ever-present threat of nuclear war between 1949 and 1991, these years were among the most peaceful of Europe’s long history. American aid gave the Western European economies the means to recover, and the means to develop a consumer-oriented society, where the good life was measured in access to modern conveniences for everyday life. Meanwhile, those excluded in Western society, from women to the colonized, began to press, sometimes violently, for cultural and economic equality. ■