From Hiroshima to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world lived in fear of annihilation by nuclear weapons. Suspicion led to the building of over fifty thousand nuclear weapons, thousands of bombers and missiles, fallout shelters, and a society that thought it could be the last generation of humans on earth. Atomic fear affected, or even drove, popular culture and world politics throughout the period. This course will study nuclear history from Hiroshima forward. Topics include the technology of nuclear weapons, military and political decisions that kept the arms race going, the difficulties of arms control, close calls with disaster (e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis), and the impact on popular culture. Questions include whether nuclear weapons prevented war, what to do about today’s nuclear arsenals, and what the past can tell us about understanding current nuclear crises in North Korea and Iran.

The course will be divided into four main units, with a fifth topic spread throughout the term:

1. This is the way the world ends
     Two widely read/viewed narratives about a final nuclear war.
2. The dawn of the nuclear age
     The building of the first bomb, the decision to use it, and its effects.
3. Strategy in a new world
     How nuclear weapons changed military planning and world politics in the 50s and 60s.
4. Crises and the growing peace movement
     How the Cuban Missile Crisis and Able Archer unfolded, and the concurrent growth of the peace movement.
5. "After" the cold war
     Nuclear proliferation, current events, and a possible restart of the arms race with different adversaries.

• Duck and Cover, Dir. Anthony Rizzo, 1952.
  
• Dr. Strangelove, Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964.
• The Day the Earth Stood Still, Dir. Robert Wise, 1951.
• The Atomic Cafe, Dir. Loader, Rafferty, Rafferty, 1982. [Excerpts]
  
• "The Shelter", The Twilight Zone, Dir. Lamont Johnson, Sept. 29, 1961.
  
• Thirteen Days, Dir. Roger Donaldson, 2000.
• The Day After, Dir. Nicholas Meyer, 1983. (We may skip this one).

• "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”, [Secretary of War] Henry Stimson, Harper's Magazine, 194 (February 1947) [Excerpts]
• Statement on the Bombing of Hiroshima, President Harry S. Truman, August 7, 1945.\
• The Effects of Nuclear War, [U.S. Congressional] Office of Technology Assessment, May, 1979 [Chapter II].
• Nuclear Weapons design, Wikipedia:
• Little Boy – the Basic Weapon Design
• Fat Man – the Technology and Interior of the Bomb
• The Teller-Ulam Hydrogen bomb design, the Basic Principle
• The Bomb for my Pillow, Gregg Ainsworth, a memoir of growing up during the “hotter” years of the nuclear arms race.
• Dr. Strangelove's America, Margot Henriksen, University of California Press, 1997. [Chapter 3 on WISE]
• NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, National Security Council,  April 14, 1950.
      [Particularly sections  VIIIa,b, IXc,d, and conclusion]
• On Thermonuclear War, Herman Kahn, Princeton University Press, 1960. [Chapter 1 on WISE]
• Numerous current event news items, see course links
  

Grading

Last Modified November 7, 2008.
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