“After the downfall of Nazi Germany, the United States established a de facto expectation that it had a right to have sole possession of the world's nuclear artillery to prevent irresponsible use of nuclear technology."
- American University, Katzen Arts Center
This expectation was not held by the Soviet Union, who had known about the Manhattan Project long before even Vice President Truman because of spies. “Under the leadership of physicist Igor Kurchatov, a Soviet nuclear development program was established in 1943. A successful prototype bomb was developed in 1949," aided greatly by Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project.
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- American University, Katzen Arts Center
This expectation was not held by the Soviet Union, who had known about the Manhattan Project long before even Vice President Truman because of spies. “Under the leadership of physicist Igor Kurchatov, a Soviet nuclear development program was established in 1943. A successful prototype bomb was developed in 1949," aided greatly by Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project.
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
Joe 1
Above: The Joe 1 prototype.
Below: Explosion of Joe 1 on September 3rd, 1949. Images courtesy of the Nuclear Weapons Archive. |
“The first Soviet nuclear test, code named ‘First Lightning' by the Soviets and Joe 1 by the Americans, detonated a plutonium bomb, the RDS-1. This device was an exact copy of the U.S. Gadget/Fat Man design." -Kenneth Condit, chief of the Histories Branch of the Historical Division, U.S. Marine Corps Doyle Northrup's, the physicist who first detected the explosion of RDS-1, account of the test.
Click on the paper for a larger version. |
“After Joe 1's successful test, the U.S. realized its main nuclear foe was the Soviet Union, not Germany."
-William Burr, a senior analyst for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Because of this perceived threat along with the spread of McCarthyism - “the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence... (which) has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents" - in the U.S., policy makers thought it their responsibility to use nuclear deterrence as a strategy to prevent expansion of the Soviet Union and a Soviet-started nuclear war.
“Thus, the arms race began."
-Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Nuclear technology developed much further, and in 1950, a much stronger and “handy" bomb was made.
-William Burr, a senior analyst for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Because of this perceived threat along with the spread of McCarthyism - “the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence... (which) has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents" - in the U.S., policy makers thought it their responsibility to use nuclear deterrence as a strategy to prevent expansion of the Soviet Union and a Soviet-started nuclear war.
“Thus, the arms race began."
-Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Nuclear technology developed much further, and in 1950, a much stronger and “handy" bomb was made.
THE Hydrogen Bomb (h-bomb)
“It is part of my responsibility as Commander in Chief of the Armed forces to see to it that our country is able to defend itself against any possible aggressor. Accordingly, I have directed the AEC to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or Super bomb."
-President Harry Truman, January 1, 1950
-President Harry Truman, January 1, 1950
“On January 31, 1950, President Truman reluctantly ordered the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with development of the hydrogen bomb. Political leaders of every shade of belief supported the decision, as did the American public, most statesmen of the western world, the Vatican, and others. The decision was taken, and was generally approved, because the Soviet Union had refused to agree to a workable scheme of international control of armaments, and had thus given the United States no choice but to engage in an arms race of unprecedented magnitude and intensity. The security of the United States and of the whole free world depended, it was almost universally agreed, upon victory or at least parity in this race...
The hydrogen bomb utilized nuclear fusion instead of nuclear fission."
-Myres S. McDougal and Norbert A. Schlei, Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, on the right of the U.S. in the atomic war, explaining that the H-bomb was unavoidable.
The hydrogen bomb utilized nuclear fusion instead of nuclear fission."
-Myres S. McDougal and Norbert A. Schlei, Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, on the right of the U.S. in the atomic war, explaining that the H-bomb was unavoidable.
Footage from the first successful U.S. full-scale thermonuclear hydrogen bomb test on November 1, 1952, part of Operation Ivy, dubbed “Ivy Mike."
Please click on the images below in order to learn more about the “Ivy Mike" experiment. Scroll through using the arrows on both sides after clicking on a picture. Images courtesy of the Nuclear Archives.
Utilizing their espionages, the Soviets quickly reciprocated.
“On August 12, 1953 the Soviet Union detonated a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site in northern Kazakhstan. Work on the super-bomb had begun in 1946, three years before the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. In the spring of 1954, the United States tested its own two-stage super-bomb in the Pacific. This type of ‘deliverable' weapon was replicated by Soviet physicists and first tested on November 22, 1955."
- Lewis Siegelbaum, Professor of Russian History Raw footage from the first Soviet hydrogen bomb test, RDS-37. Condolences for the original Russian voiceover.
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The explosion of the Soviet Union's first hydrogen bomb, RDS-37.
“On August 12th, 1953, the Soviet Union acknowledged that it had successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb... The weapon was more powerful than the hydrogen bomb the United States had detonated in 1952. Additionally, the Soviet hydrogen bomb was a breakthrough in nuclear technology because it was small enough to fit in an aircraft: deliverable." - Los Alamos National Laboratory |
Please click on the images below for additional statistics on USSR/US nuclear activity.
“During the Cold War, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers."
-Francis J. Gavin, first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy studies
The H-Bomb allowed the Soviet Union to have the same nuclear capacity as the United States. Both nations thought it their right to continue policies of nuclear militarism, yet both nations knew that if they realistically deployed these accumulated bombs, the world would no longer exist.
This concept was named Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
-Francis J. Gavin, first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy studies
The H-Bomb allowed the Soviet Union to have the same nuclear capacity as the United States. Both nations thought it their right to continue policies of nuclear militarism, yet both nations knew that if they realistically deployed these accumulated bombs, the world would no longer exist.
This concept was named Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
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