Though this treat he was able to have his way at the Yalta conference. Truman thought of America as the World’s atomic power and was assured by Cabinet advisers; America would reign supreme in the arms race. However Joseph Stalin was also attempting to build Russia’s power in this arms race too. Truman began to get tough on Russia in 1946 when there were strong protests in the Iran against Russian Troops. The Soviets had denied sharing control of the Turkish Straits as they had claimed they would not have.
Political factors were greatly influential of Truman’s final decision to drop the bomb and the threat of Russian military who were soon to advance in the region had its impact. Finally, America had a device which they had spent millions of dollars on which could dramatically end the war without the loss of American lives. The decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had many influential factors which ended up being catastrophic for the Japanese. As the war continued there was little progress between Japan and America. With this was the losses of lives of both the American and the Japanese.
Kennedy asked how many American causality’s there would be if one of the Soviet Union’s missiles would go off in the United States. The response to his question was around 500,000 (found in the interview). JFK realized the damage that a nuclear war could cause. He believed that if America went to war with the Soviet Union and won, it would be a pointless victory due to all the causality’s. JFK did what he could to ease the tension between the two nations.
In order to end the conflict of the World War II, a weapon that surpassed all other conventional weapons of that time would need to be created. In 1939, rumors of Nazi Germany pursuit to manufacture an atomic bomb and insure their victory in the war terrified the scientist that sought refuge in America. It also heightened the urgency for America to create the atomic bomb first. Albert Einstein was the one of those refugee scientists that was alerted to Germany's intent and wrote letters
Furthermore Cuba was only 90 miles off the coast of America, which meant these missiles, particularly the long-ranged weapons could reach major American cities. This greatly worried the USA and suggests the Cuban Missile Crisis was the point of highest tension during the Cold War as the threat to America was now so physically close and for the first time Cuba and the USSR were working well as one. Moreover placing missiles in Cuba was a power move from Khrushchev as he looked to test the USA and get an upper hand in arms race, which in turn increased tensions as it provoked a quick response from Kennedy. Within four days of learning about the missiles, on the 20th October Kennedy decided on a blockade of Cuba. Khrushchev placed missiles in Cuba to see if Kennedy would back off or face up to aggression and the blockade was certainly an aggressive move.
The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima Japan, eventually killing over 170,000 people in Hiroshima alone. Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki which eventually claimed the lives of over 80,000 people. This incredible weapon was only possible thanks to experimentation and government spending to make sure we had a weapon that would outmatch any opponent, and it was well worth it. Thus eventually concluding World War Two. Now there are obvious reasons why the government would want to cut military spending, and the obvious reason is expense.
Why Was the Berlin Blockade so Important? By early 1948 Stalin had control of most of Eastern Europe. The Americans responded to this by making the Western Europe wealthy and pro-American because they saw the Soviet Union as a threat and a weak Germany could be taken over by communism and a strong Germany could act as a buffer against communism. On the other hand Stalin thought that a strong Germany could repeat the invasions on 1914 and 1941 so he stripped them of all useful equipment and machinery. In 1947 Britain and France decided to join their zones together (Bizonia) and then a few months later France joined to make it (Trizonia).
Soviet and US relations changed dramatically between 1945 and 1947, there were many reasons to explain why and how this happened. Firstly, one reason was the end of WW2. During the Second World War, America and the USSR were members of the Grand Alliance in order to oppose Hitler, but when this war finished there was nothing to bring the Communists and Capitalists together. Therefore, the two countries went from allies to progressing enemies after Germany was defeated. This developed until a confrontation, from Western and Eastern Europe, in a nuclear arms race.
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing” – Dwight Eisenhower Discuss this quote in relation to historian’s views on the United States decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. On August 6th and August 9th 1945, atomic weapons were used as weapons for the first and only time in human history. President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan has since created some of the most controversial debates in history. Historians have been divided since that day, as to whether or not it was necessary to drop the atomic bombs, and what the real reasons for dropping them were. In fact, the debates behind using the atomic bombs against Japan began even before the decision was made.
Such a poor choice this was, to split the nuclei of atoms. When the U.S. developed the first atomic bomb in the 1940s, other countries soon followed. Relations with Russia had been strained since the 1890s, even as allies in the second world war, and as the United States and then Soviet Union began building stockpiles of nuclear weapons, tension broke out again. “"Cold war" is the term given to the competition, conducted through means short of direct military conflict, between the United States and the Soviet Union since World War II.”(Foner, p. 1). The threat of “mutually assured destruction” kept everyone on edge during this time, and has since lessened since the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War.