ABSTRACT
In the US, with epic victories secured in Europe and Asia, popular images of World War II were those of courage, sacrifice, and patriotism, but America was the only nation to emerge from years of intense global combat in splendid economic and military condition. President Harry Truman depicted the Soviet Union as expansionist, an imminent threat to US global power and national security. By 1945 the American economy had been transformed into what is best described as a militarized state-capitalism permanent war system based on a deepening partnership of government and armed forces. As the Cold War intensified, fueled not only by global developments but by a sharpening domestic mood of anti-Communism, the US benefitted from rapid economic growth associated with a dramatic rise in consumer goods, spread of the automobile culture, and increasing suburbanization. US global behaviour, in the tracks of the Nuremberg travesty, remains steeped in a political culture of national exceptionalism, imperial arrogance, and glorification of military power.
