Nuclear Weapons since World War II

• ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS due on Sept 12• 1) What event in 1991 ended the threat of aCivilization ending nuclear war?2) What is the major fear TODAY from nuclearWeapons

NO NEW WORD WALLNO NEW SATREMEMBER TO STUDY FOR TEST FRIDAY

The atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved to be much more

awful than anyone had expected

At the same time, the wartime friendship between the West and

the USSR was breaking down.

Stalin, dictator of Soviet Union, wasdetermined to have a BUFFER of

friendly (i.e., communist)countries between the USSR and

Germany

Truman perhaps thought he coulduse the threat of the atomic bomb to get Stalin to back down on this.

Stalin who had ordered the deaths of millions of his own people did not back down from threats but doubled down

on efforts to spread communism.

Stalin set up communist countries in all of EAST EUROPE & created IRON

CURTAIN.

The Cold War divided Europe into TWO BLOCKS—West was democratic and East

was communist.

NATO was WESTERN ALLIANCENORTH ATLANTIC TREATY

ORGANIZATION

WARSAW PACT was communist organization.

The world was stunned when the USSR created its own atomic bomb in 1949.

There had been spies in American program giving secrets to Communists.

In a few years both sides had developed a HYDROGEN BOMB- even more

powerful.

Both sides soon had enough fire power to destroy the world many times over.

School children practiced “Duck and Cover” drills.

When the USSR launched SPUTNIK the first earth satellite in 1957

The United States went into a panic that we were behind the Russians.

The closest that the world ever came to World War III was the

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS of October, 1962.

Fidel Castro had staged a revolution in the 1950s and made

Cuba a communist state.

In early October 1962, an American U2 spy plane photographed Russian

missiles in Cuba.

President Kennedy announced that the US would put a naval

blockade around Cuba and that the Russians had to move the

missiles.

For 13 days the world held its breath. Would someone start

shooting???

Finally Soviet leader Khrushchev agreed to remove Russian missiles

Six months later the US quietly removed OUR missiles from Turkey.

After this scare, the US and the USSR agreed to stop testing

nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. All tests would be

underground. Actually DISARMING and doing away with missiles proved to be

VERY hard.

With the fall of communism in 1991, the threat of a world ending

nuclear war finally went away.

States like North Korea can neverhave enough bombs to blow up

the world.

Today about 8 countries have nuclear weapons, but they have not

been used in war since 1945.

Big threats are IRAN getting bomb and using on SMALL COUNTRY OF

ISREAL and also TERRORISTS using one

bomb against a city