USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Stalin and the Soviets wanted to expand communism into Europe and around the world; Truman, his nation, and the free world wanted to preserve freedom where it existed and spread it where it did not. World War II had merely revealed that the ideals of two former allies directly conflicted with one another.

Detailed explanation-2: -Washington and Moscow competed in numerous ways: over money and natural resources like oil, over allies, over weapons technology, over influence and prestige, over space exploration, over ideas. The Cold War relationship between the two rival nations was often tense.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Soviet Union dominated Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. After World War II, it formed the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance of European communist states meant to counter NATO.

Detailed explanation-4: -As World War II transformed both the United States and the USSR, turning the nations into formidable world powers, competition between the two increased. Following the defeat of the Axis powers, an ideological and political rivalry between the United States and the USSR gave way to the start of the Cold War.