The main Cold War developments from 1945–49 took place on the ground, rather than in science labs. The USA and USSR clashed primarily over the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe. However, even this was to take second place to a stunning Soviet announcement in 1949.

The Arms Race

As the chronology below shows, the Cold War was to be punctuated from 1949 onwards with announcements concerning weaponry.

• August 1949: The USSR detonated its first atomic bomb. This caused great concern in the USA. US Intelligence had predicted that the USSR would not be able to develop a bomb until 1953.
• US Strategic Air Command (SAC) developed policy of constant readiness. SAC Commander Curtis Le May identified 6000 targets in the USSR to be hit in the event of war.
• Korean War 1950–53: Real fears that this conflict would trigger a nuclear war.
• November 1952: The USA detonated the first hydrogen bomb. The H-bomb was 1000 times more powerful than the atom bomb.
• August 1953: USSR detonated its own H-bomb.
• March 1954: USA developed an H-bomb small enough to be dropped from a bomber.
• September 1954: USSR dropped a test H-bomb from a bomber.
• July 1956: USA developed the U2 spy plane to spy on Soviet weapons development.
• May 1957: USSR developed the first ICBM.
• October 1957: USSR launched Sputnik satellite into orbit around the Earth. This meant that the USSR had the technology to launch rockets out of the Earth’s atmosphere along with complex guidance systems to get the rocket to the right place. This technology could be applied to missiles with nuclear warheads. Public opinion in the USA was shocked by Soviet advances in the ‘Space Race’.
• January 1958: USA put a satellite into orbit.
• 1959: USA developed sophisticated Atlas and Minuteman ICBMs. USA also developed Polaris missiles that could be fired from submarines. The US public was alarmed by the fear that the USSR had many more nuclear missiles than the USA. US President Eisenhower knew this was not the case from intelligence reports, but did not tell the American public.
• April 1961: Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.
• October 1961: USSR detonated the largest H-bomb ever seen, with more power than all the explosives used by all sides in the Second World War.
• Deterrence: USA and USSR both continued to build stockpiles of nuclear weapons to deter the other side from using their nuclear weapons. The policy became known as MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).
• October 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis: Possibly closest point in history to nuclear war.

The Peace Race

In November 1962, the USA and USSR showed signs that they had learned the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis. They signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in Moscow, agreeing not to test new nuclear weapons. From this point on the superpowers carried out a curious game of:

• spying on their opponents as they developed new technology
• copying this technology
• denying everything
• making offers about disarmament at the same time

The real progress came in the early 1970s. US President Nixon, despite his reputation for being a crook, did much to ease Cold War tensions. He pulled the USA out of Vietnam and he improved relations between the USA and China, and then with the USSR. After long and difficult negotiations the superpowers signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 1) in 1972. Part of SALT 1 was a commitment to work towards SALT 2. The talks continued to look promising until 1975, but then matters took a downturn. The USSR introduced SS20 missiles into Europe that could be used in a limited battlefield situation. In response, the USA developed and introduced Cruise and Pershing missiles. By 1979, all hopes of SALT 2 had collapsed.

At the same time, both superpowers were bogged down in local conflicts. The USA was struggling to cope with what it perceived as hostile governments in Central America and Iran. The USSR had entered its own version of the Vietnam War in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, little or no progress was made on disarmament during the early 1980s. In fact, matters got very much worse when US President Reagan introduced his plans to spend billions of dollars on Star Wars. This was a system using satellites and lasers that could supposedly shoot down incoming missiles. To Americans it was the ultimate defence. To the Soviets it meant that the USA could launch a nuclear attack without fearing a nuclear response.

In the end, it was money and a new Soviet leader that changed the situation. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the USSR. He wanted to reform the USSR and he knew it could not afford to keep spending 20 per cent of its wealth on weapons. In 1987, he met President Reagan and offered to cut weapons by 50 per cent, whatever the US did. It was the beginning of a process that was to see the end of the Cold War and the end of the USSR as well.

How did the Nuclear Arms Race affect civilians?

Civilians in the West were deeply concerned about the nuclear arms race. In the communist states, the evidence is not entirely clear about how people felt. As a general rule, it seems that people in the USSR knew less about the arms race because the media was so closely controlled by the government. However, we also know that people in the USSR and Eastern Europe were very sceptical about their own media. They did not always know what was happening but they did not always trust their own media’s version of events. Having said this, people in the West were not kept fully informed either. For example, an American B47 bomber crashed in Norfolk in 1957. No one was ever told that the fire caused by the crash came within minutes of setting off two nuclear bombs and devastating East Anglia. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a US radar station mistook an American satellite for incoming Soviet missiles and was minutes away from triggering a full nuclear ‘response’ attack on the USSR.

Despite the secrecy, people did express their concerns about nuclear weapons. Most American towns in the 1950s and 1960s took precautions against a nuclear attack. Others expressed their opposition to nuclear weapons. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the team that developed the atom bomb, was opposed to the H-bomb. He felt it was wrong to develop a more powerful bomb in peacetime. Others felt that the vast amounts being spent on weapons simply to intimidate the other side was morally wrong.