Global Concerns in the Cold War, Part I

Hello readers! It's been a few weeks since I last posted an update here on the blog. I've been busy with work and putting lesson plans together for the upcoming school year, but I'm back so let's get right into it!


Tensions between the US and Communist nations increased during and after the Korean War. As the Cold War intensified, the US and the Soviet Union competed for power around the world. They engaged in a dangerous competition to build up their supplies of nuclear weapons–which would lead to the creation of the intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM for short.


The Arms Race

After almost 30 years of totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin died in 1953. His death brought no letup in the Cold War tensions. A new Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, predicted that communism would destroy the Western democracies. By the end of the 1950s, the US and the Soviet Union had emerged as world superpowers. Superpowers are countries whose military, economic, and political strength are so great that they can influence events worldwide.

In the 1950s, the two nations began an expensive and dangerous arms race. An arms race is a contest in which nations compete to build more and more powerful weapons. In 1952, Americans exploded the first hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb. Soon, the Soviets had their own H-bomb. China joined the race by exploding its own atomic bomb in 1964; three years later, China exploded an H-bomb. Britain and France also developed nuclear weapons.

No country wanted to use nuclear weapons and risk a deadly counterattack. Instead, the nuclear nations stockpiled, or collected, their nuclear weapons. By the 1970s, the Soviet Union and the US had enough weapons stockpiled to destroy each other many times over. This idea of a deadly counterattack if one nation uses their nuclear weapons is call mutually assured destruction.

With the superpowers having stockpiled nuclear weapons, the US entered the Atomic Age. And as a result of the Atomic Age, everyday life in the US changed…similar to how students today have lockdown drills and fire drills at school, everyone had to be prepared for the possibility of nuclear war and there were “duck and cover” drills that people had to know; also, the ways Americans purchased products was affected because of the arms race and the Cold War.


Shopping Mall Fallout

After the successful launch of the Soviet nuclear bomb, Americans sought ways to protect themselves and their families, and turned to bomb shelters; some of these bomb shelters were underground, similar to steel-and-concrete reinforced foxholes, while others were inconspicuous public places such as schools and hospitals. As America was growing increasingly prosperous with its new status as a major industrial complex and a global superpower, families experienced an increase in disposable income. This meant that more people would be shopping for pleasure rather than necessity. Enter the American shopping mall! Now, this is information that I had posted in a previous blog post and have also shared on "The Half-Pint Historian Podcast", so bear with me if you've seen this content from me before, but for those of you who haven't, this is some information that is sure to get you thinking!

The first shopping mall in America was designed by Victor Gruen, who had immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. He was an architect and would design many small shops and boutiques in the U.S.; he would also design the first shopping mall and it would opened in Edina, Minnesota in 1956, and the mall, the Southdale Mall, would be commissioned by the Dayton family, the owners of Target. Gruen's shopping malls were designed to be self-contained downtown centers where any Americans could spend their leisure time, but with the devastation that nuclear weapons were capable of, and the Cold War being in full-swing at the time he was designing the first mall and several others to come, Gruen also wanted shopping malls to act as nuclear fallout shelters.

Obtaining advice from numerous civil defense contractors, the Southdale Mall, and the others Gruen would design, would have features similar to shopping malls we see today—food courts, ample water fountains and restroom access, locking gates on store entrances, stores facing one another, numerous entrances and exits and even "hidden" hallways and access points, a central arboretum with real plants, at least two anchor stores, and other features. However, the most important feature in nearly all shopping malls in the U.S. as a result of World War II, which is still a major feature today, is where the mall is located—ten miles away from the city centers; if a hydrogen bomb were to be dropped on the major cities in any given state, those outside its eight-mile blast radius would survive. Malls tend to be outside the city centers so if a nuclear strike does occur, the people inside the malls at the time would survive the strike.

The idea of shopping malls operating as nuclear fallout shelters never really became popular, but it is interesting to think about the effects of World War II and the Cold War on our lives even today. Other places that do operate as public emergency shelters typically include: schools, fire departments, police departments, corrections facilities, town halls, and sometimes even shopping malls.

Along with the arms race, and the creation of the shopping mall, the Cold War era also saw the space race, where the US and the Soviet Union competed for dominance in the final frontier.


The Space Race

The Space Race began in 1955 when both countries announced that they would soon be launching satellites into orbit. The Soviets took the US announcement as a challenge and even established a commission whose goal was to beat the US in putting a satellite into space.

On October 4, 1957 the Russians placed the first successful satellite into orbit. It was called Sputnik I. The Russians had taken the lead in the Space Race. The Americans successfully launched their first satellite four months later called the Explorer I. The Soviets again won the race for putting the first man into space. On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man to orbit the Earth in the spacecraft Vostok I. Three weeks later the US launched the Freedom 7 and astronaut Alan Shepherd became the first American in space. Shepherd's craft did not orbit the Earth, however. It was nearly a year later on February 20, 1962 when the first American, John Glenn, orbited the Earth on the Friendship 7 spacecraft.

The Americans were embarrassed at being behind the Space Race. In 1961 President Kennedy went to congress and announced that he wanted to be the first to put a man on the Moon. He felt this was important for the country and the western world. The Apollo Moon program was launched.

In conjunction with the Apollo program the US launched the Gemini program which would develop technology for use on the Apollo spacecraft. Under the Gemini program the Americans learned how to change the orbit of a spacecraft, spent significant time in orbit to learn how the human body would be affected, brought two spacecraft together in a rendezvous in space, and also went on the first space walks outside of a spacecraft.

After many years of experiments, test flights, and training the Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched into space on July 16, 1969. The crew included astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. The trip to the Moon took three days.

Upon arriving Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moved to the Lunar module, called the Eagle, and began their descent to the Moon. There were some malfunctions and Armstrong had to land the module manually. On July 20, 1969 the Eagle landed on the Moon. Neil Armstrong stepped outside and became the first man to walk on the Moon. With his first step on the Moon, Armstrong said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

With the Gemini and Apollo programs the US had taken a huge lead in the Space Race. In July of 1975 with relations between the US and the Soviet Union beginning to thaw, the first US-Soviet joint mission occurred with the Apollo-Soyez project. The Space Race was effectively over.

It was because of the Space Race that the National Aeronautics and Space Association, NASA, was founded as a part of the National Defense Education Act, with the goal of producing more rocket scientists and teachers.


Star Trek

Science fiction had been popular for quite some time in the US and the advances in technology during the years of the Space Race helped boost its popularity.

“Star Trek” aired from 1966 to 1969. Created by Gene Roddenberry and produced by Desilu Productions (owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez), “Star Trek” is set in the years 2266-2269 and shows the voyages of the crew of the Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701. Roddenberry created the show to rival other sci-fi shows of the time, such as “Buck Rogers” and others. But “Star Trek” was unique as it boasted a multi-racial and multi-ethnic cast, showing Roddenberry’s ideal world where everyone, even green-blooded aliens from other galaxies, was created equal.

The show was unsuccessful at first and failed to gain advertisers’ attention. But after the original series went off the air, the show became popular in syndication. Roddenberry’s ideal world sparked interest from people of all ages for its storylines and the messages in the episodes. Today, there are a total of 12 television shows and 13 movies. Other TV shows and movies have even taken elements from "Star Trek" and incorporated those elements, or have been so inspired by the franchise that the newer product looks nearly identical (a great example of this is "The Orville" with Seth MacFarlane).

The show imagined a humanity so exceptional it had reached out to the stars: a great interplanetary alliance called the Federation, a union of planets that represented all Roddenberry believed human civilization could achieve. But the episodes were full of cautionary tales of science warped by hubris: Artificial intelligence run amok, weapons of mass destruction, computers that ruled entire civilizations. Only through a fierce commitment to human independence and ingenuity were the heroes of the Enterprise generally able to emerge victorious. This was Cold War allegory at its finest: technology could lead us down the path to destruction if in the wrong hands, but if combined with a belief in the individual human spirit it could take us to the stars.


This was a longer post, so be sure to be on the lookout for part two, where I'll be examining struggles happening in emerging nations.