Cold War #4

I am starting to put the pieces of this project together. My most recent find was a very long telegram written by the scientists at Los Alamos, Chicago and Oak Ridge laboratories to President Truman about the dangers of atomic weapons. These were highly intelligent, moral men who were extremely concerned about what would happen next. 1945 seems to be an important turning point in the politics of the Cold War. Most students of the Cold War focus on the problems in Germany as the war came to a close. The decisions that were being made in Washington, D. C. concerning atomic technology would have a greater impact on the next 62 years than the problems of Germany and Eastern Europe. Even after the fall of Communism in 1991 the world still had to deal with the issue of nuclear weapons stockpiles. Hopefully by exploring this topic with students they can begin to question who was right when World War II came to a close. When my students discuss what to do about terrorists today some are quick to say we should just bomb the country that they live in. Other students realize that innocent lives could be lost. Maybe if the students knew the facts from the scientists and the politicians perspectives they would take their time making a decision about what to do with the problems the United States is dealing with today.

Cold War #3

I had an opportunity to visit the Kansas Cosmosphere this weekend. The space race is an absolute reflection of the cold war. The scientists of the space program in both the United States and the Soviet Union are a large part of the exhibit. Whether they were Russian scientists, American scientists or German rocket scientists (the precursor to the space program) there was a lot of pride in what they were able to accomplish and some dismay at the same time. For example, when Werner Von Braun, German rocket scientist, successfully launched a V2 rocket against Great Britain during World War II he was quoted as saying "the rocket performed perfectly, it just hit the wrong planet" . If the scientists of the nuclear age are able to count a success of their technology it is certainly the success of the space program both in the United States and Russia. However, this idea leads to further questioning. If there had not been a weapons program, would there have been a Cold War? If there had not been a weapons program, would there have been a space race? And finally, was the development of nuclear technology inevitable?

Historiography of the Cold War

The origin of the Cold War continues to be unclear for historians today. Every school of thought continues to speculate on when the Cold War started. Some scholars date it back to the communist revolution in Russia thus setting the starting date in 1917. Others schools of thought put the Cold War origins in the 1930s with the growth of Stalin's power in the USSR, and his purges. And finally, another school of thought puts the origins of the Cold War at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Massive amounts of documents related to the Cold War are constantly being released putting more information in the hands of scholars. Traditionally the Cold War has been portrayed as primarily a weapons race between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, as more documents related to the Cold War are declassified it is clear that the weapons race was just a part of the Cold War. The Arms Race was a central piece of the Cold war much like a pebble in a pond; the weapons race created ripples in global relations for all countries of the world. Scholars can now study the role of race relations in the United States, Presidential records and the development of atomic weaponry in other World War II powers such as Great Britain, France and Germany. And finally, the former Soviet Union has begun to reveal their role in the arms race so historians can now study both countries Cold War policies.

COLD WAR

Possible topics for the cold war that hasn’t been done to death? I received some documents the other day through the Gilder Lehrman web site. The documents were specifically about the scientists who ‘created’ the science of atomic weaponry. The scientist involved in the Manhattan Project were opposed to the choices being made by the United States government about the management and the use of atomic weapons after World War II. I think this might be interesting to pursue. The documents also mentioned the May-Johnson bill that was proposed to the House of Representatives giving control of atomic weapons completely over to the military. I would like to explore this topic more thoroughly. I know that Robert Oppenheimer ran into some difficulties in the 1950s because of his stance over atomic weapons.