Engineering Britain's Superweapons

Amid the turmoil of World War II, an uncomfortable alliance arose between societies with diametrically opposed ideologies. The aggression of the fascist Axis forces had thrown down a worldwide challenge that could only be answered by the combined power of the Soviet Union and the Western allies.

With the defeat of the Axis in 1945, winners and losers began counting the cost of the war. It is estimated that, of military casualties alone, Germany had lost 3.5 million, the Western allies 0.9 million and the Soviet Union a colossal 14 million. Countless millions of civilian casualties can be added to this list.

Mistrust and Fear

In the subsequent power vacuum, countries were divided and swallowed up by the former allies, setting the stage for what would be called (for the first time in 1948) the Cold War - a state of almost paranoid mistrust and of fear of a third world war, the potential death-counts of which could far exceed those of the second one.

The borders dividing eastern and western Europe became collectively known as the Iron Curtain - a phrase coined by Winston Churchill in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946 - and its most dramatic manifestation was the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The opposing political systems - eastern Communism and western Capitalist Democracy - settled down into a tense watchfulness occasionally interrupted by a highly charged face-off.

Very Real Threat

Billions of dollars, pounds and rubles were poured into weapons systems, war technologies and spying activity to support what was essentially a race for both supremacy and balance. Although only rarely in direct conflict (hence the term 'Cold' War), both sides goaded and engaged each other through foreign policy and, more intimately, through relatively small, third-party wars, such as those in Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s.

The threat to both sides was always present and very real. Two atomic weapons had already been used in warfare, at the end of World War II, and everybody understood that their mass deployment would result in what was perhaps aptly known as MAD: mutually assured destruction.

Kitchen Table and Bedroom Door

At times, the reality of an atomic war came very close, such as when the world held its breath during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. And those who were in Britain in the early 1980s are unlikely to forget the government leaflets coming through the door explaining how to build a nuclear shelter out of a kitchen table and a bedroom door in just four minutes.

This doom-laden atmosphere lasted nearly 50 years. The collapse of the Soviet Union as a superpower in the early 1990s effectively ended the Cold War and its associated arms race. The crippling cost to just one of the runners had taken its toll.