The Cold War: Nuclear Weapons

Figure 1.--The Ban the Bomb movement was born in Britain by a series of marches between the British Aldermaston nuclear facility and London (1959). At their height in the early 1960s tens of thousands of people paricipated. They were peak of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Similar demonstrations also took place around the world, but were especially important European, especially Germany. Here were demonstraions in the Soviet Union an Soviet puppet states in Eastern Europe, but these were organized by the Soviet Government and were not aimed at demnding that the Soviet Government renounce nuclear weapons.

The American Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb was generated out of fear that the NAZIs were developing such a weapon. The NAZIs had the capacity to do so, but Hitler's view that nuclear physics was Jewish in nature prevented substantial resources from being committed to the NAZI project. In the end, the Manhattan Project would not deliver a bomb until after the NAZIs surrendered (May 1945). The Americans tested the first atomic bomb (July 1945). Had the NAZI armed forces not have been defeated by that time, he first use would have surely been Berlin. But the bomb would be used to force a Japanese surrender. Japan at the time was being destroyed by conventional measures, the fire bombing of city after city. But the shock of the atomic bomb gave the Emperor the ability to discredit the military and the excuse needed to finally end the War (August 1945). President Truman hoped that possession of atomic bombs would give the United States the military superiority to counter the huge Soviet superiority in conventional weaponry. That superiority was achieved at great economic cost which would be a factor in the ultimate end of the Cold War. The Soviets entered the nuclear club (1949), much sooner than had been expected. It is no accident that the first Soviet military threat to the United States came a year later in Korea (1950). The Soviet atomic bomb project was greatly aided by Soviet penetration of the Manhattan Project and acquiring German scientists . Britain (1952) and France (1960) followed with their own atomic bombs, but the primary nuclear arsenals were American and Soviet. There is though that Stalin was planning another war in Europe using the Soviet conventional superiority. The Doctor's Plot may have been part of this plan. Ironically Stalin died in pat because when he had a heart attack, his doctor's were being tortured in the Lubyanka by the NKVD (1953). Subsequent Soviet leaders were restrained by the nuclear threat. The bombs the Americans developed to end World War II were fission weapons. The United States (1952) and the Soviet Union (1953-54) soon developed much more powerful fusion weapons. The American bombs during World War II were delivered by bombers because the United States had air superiority over Japan. It is the Germans who developed he one effective delivery system--the ballistic missile. The German V-2 missiles without a nuclear warhead was of no real military value. The American answer to he threat of a sneak attack was he Triad: bomber, land-based missiles, and nuclear submarine fired missiles. During the Cold War, the Soviets attempted to use the Ban the Bomb Movement in Western Europe to weaken Western defenses. The Soviet deploymet of IRBMs would laed to a decisive confrontation (1976). Ironically, just as he atomic bombs ended World War II, nuclear weaponry would end the Cold War--but not as the Doomsday prophets had predicted. General Secretary Gorbachev could see that the moribund Soviet Socialist economy had stagnated and could not support the added cost of President Reagan's Star Wars initiative. This led to a series of reforms (Glasnost and Perestroika) that would ultimately lead to the implosion of the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War (1991).

Created: 3:57 AM 10/27/2024
Last updated: 3:57 AM 10/27/2024