IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

Atomic and nuclear weapons

The Second World War ended when the USA used atomic bombs to force the Japanese to surrender. This, however, was the beginning of a new form of warfare, far more destructive than the conventional methods of fighting on land, sea and the air – nuclear warfare.

The atomic bomb was developed in the United States between 1942 and 1945 by a team of scientists working on the Manhattan Engineer District project at Los Alamos in New Mexico. The bomb was tested on 16 July 1945. On 6 August, a B-29 bomber, the Encola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later a second was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Both caused appalling damage and horrific casualties and left a legacy of cancer and other radiation-related diseases. It was clear that atomic bombs were the weapons of the future.

As relations between the USSR and the USA worsened in the years after the Second World War, both sides began to develop their weapons so as to be able to ‘outgun’ their opponents. Nuclear weapons became more and more powerful. In 1949 the USSR detonated its first atomic bomb. Three years later, the USA detonated the first hydrogen bomb, 1000 times more powerful than the atom bomb. Within a year, the Soviet Union had its own H-bomb.

By the end of the 1950s both sides had developed H-bombs small enough to be dropped from a bomber and ICBMs, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. The USA had developed Polaris missiles which could be fired from submarines. In 1957 the USSR launched the Sputnik satellite into orbit around the earth. They now had the technology to launch rockets out of the earth’s atmosphere and guide them to a target. This technology could be applied to missiles with nuclear weapons.

At the same time, their development acted as a deterrent. Each realised that in a nuclear war, they would suffer appalling destruction. Once Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles were invented in the 1950s, it was certain that both could retaliate in the event of an attack. The idea was to have so many nuclear weapons that they could not all be destroyed if the other side was to strike first. The enemy would not dare strike first for fear of retaliation. This was known as a situation of MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, however, brought the two Superpowers close to nuclear warfare. USA spy planes found photographic evidence of Soviet missile sites on Cuba. Kennedy, the US President, blockaded the Caribbean island and demanded the removal of the missiles. Khrushchev backed down and eventually agreed to remove the missiles. War had been averted.

Both sides were now more prepared to discuss arms limitation. In 1963 the Test Ban Treaty prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere and under water. Only nuclear tests deep underground were permitted. Five years later, the USA, USSR and the UK signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty to stop the spread of atomic weapons to other countries. In 1972, the Soviet Union and the United States signed the Strategic Arms limitation Treaty (SALT 1) limiting the number of missiles to be held by both sides. A similar treaty (SALT 2) was signed in 1978 but later suspended by the Americans when the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

Meanwhile, in the 1970s and 1980s, both sides continued to develop even more sophisticated and destructive nuclear weapons. The USSR had developed extremely complex missiles that could carry many nuclear warheads. In 1977 they began replacing out-of-date missiles in Eastern Europe with new SS-20 nuclear missiles. The USA saw these missiles as a new type that could be used in a limited nuclear war confined only to Europe. In response, President Carter allowed the US military to develop Cruise Missile. By 1979 the USA had stationed Pershing missiles in western Europe as an answer to the SS-20s.

Finally, in 1982 President Reagan gave the go-ahead for the Strategic Defence Initiative (Star Wars), a multi-billion dollar project to create a system using satellites and lasers that could destroy missiles before they hit their targets. If developed, this was likely to increase the risk of nuclear war as the USSRE would be likely to get its retaliation in first, before its development, and attack US missile bases. The collapse of the Soviet Empire at the end of the 1980s bought an end to the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.

Warfare at the end of the 20th century

Links