Transcript The Cold War Expands (16.3)

The Cold War Expands
Section 16.3
How Quickly Winning can
Change
• 2 Sept 1949 – A B-29 flying over Alaska
detects atmospheric radiation
– It was drifting east from Siberia
• The Soviet Union had an atomic bomb!
The Rules just changed
• 1949 – USSR exploded its first ABomb
– There are now two nuclear
superpowers
– Big Fear for US – the Soviets would
overpower us
1952 – The Hydrogen Bomb
• Built by the Atomic Energy Commission
after Truman ordered it
– Predicted to be 1,000 times more powerful
than an A-Bomb
– Nicknamed the
“Superbomb”
– Edward Teller –
Father of the
H-Bomb
The Difference Between the
Two Bombs
Fission Reaction
(A-Bomb)
Fusion
Reaction (HBomb)
VS.
What This Means…
Comparison of
Fireball Sizes
seen and felt 1,000 km away.
The heat from the explosion
could have caused third
degree burns 100 km away
from ground zero. The
subsequent mushroom cloud
was about 60 km high
(nearly seven times higher
than Mount Everest) and 30–
40 km wide. The explosion
could be seen and felt in
Finland, even breaking
windows there. [6]
Atmospheric focusing caused
blast damage up to 1,000 km
away. The seismic shock
created by the detonation
was measurable even on its
third passage around the
Earth.
Mutually Assured Destruction
• Both sides started to build up their
nuclear programs
– Submarines, planes, missiles…
• MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION –
Policy in which the United
States and the Soviet Union
hoped to deter nuclear war
by building up enough
weapons to destroy one
another
Leadership Changes in 1953
President
Dwight D.
Eisenhower
Premier
Nikita
Khrushchev
Brinksmanship & Massive
Retaliation (U.S)
• Eisenhower and SoS Dulles use
BRINKMANSHIP – pushing the enemy to
the edge of declaring war to win
• MASSIVE RETALIATION – if any ally of the
US was attacked, the attacker would be
overwhelmingly crushed by America
Vs. Khrushchev’s Peaceful CoExistence
• Khrushchev was not as
suspicious or cruel as
Stalin
– Condemned some of the
steps of the Stalin regime
– Moved toward more
peaceful relations with
the West
Co-Prosperity until…
• Hungry tries to break from
the Warsaw Pact in 1956
–The Soviets decimated the
rebellion
–The Americans just
watched, afraid to wage a
nuclear war
Sputnik I (1957)
• 4 October 1957 –
Soviet Union launches
a 184 lbs steel ball
containing a
transmitter into space
• The next month they
send a dog named
Laika
• So now the Russians
have the
technological
advantage…
Reaction to Sputnik
• National Defense
Education Act (1958) –
Teach more math and
science in schools
• National Aeronautics and
Space Administration
(1958) – to coordinate
American space-related
efforts
Spy vs. Spy
• Americans develop the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)
– Eisenhower increases its powers
• Soviets develop the Committee for State
Security (KGB)
Open Skies and the US Incident
• At Geneva Summit in 1955 – Eisenhower
proposed an “Open Skies” treaty to
monitor each other
– Soviets turned it down (secretly too weak to
do it)
• U-2 Spy Plane
– 1 May 1960 – Francis Gary Powers is shot
down over Russia
– Relations collapse…