The Truman administration's decision to embark on an arms build-up in 1950 was a critical event. For the first time other than a World War, the United States became a global military presence. Unlike the World Wars, in this instance the deployment lasted decades, altering the nature of the Cold War and the United States' global role. Such a decision deserves a book dedicated to understanding the strategy and politics behind it. The Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race serves that purpose. The Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race reviews the state of American military affairs in the late 1940s and describes the role of atomic power in American strategy. It also outlines the factional fighting within the Truman administration over military spending and deployments and considers the Truman administration's perceptions of Soviet military power and intentions. The author presents a fascinating account of the strategy and politics behind the Truman administration's decision to engage in a massive arms build-up that initiated the Cold War arms race.

The Truman administration's decision to embark on an arms build-up in 1950 was a critical event. For the first time other than a World War, the United States became a global military presence. Unlike the World Wars, in this instance the deployment lasted decades, altering the nature of the Cold War and the United States' global role. Such a decision deserves a book dedicated to understanding the strategy and politics behind it. The Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race serves that purpose. The Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race reviews the state of American military affairs in the late 1940s and describes the role of atomic power in American strategy. It also outlines the factional fighting within the Truman administration over military spending and deployments and considers the Truman administration's perceptions of Soviet military power and intentions. The author presents a fascinating account of the strategy and politics behind the Truman administration's decision to engage in a massive arms build-up that initiated the Cold War arms race.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE The first full account of how the Cold War arms race finally came to a close, this riveting narrative history sheds new light on the people who struggled to end this era of massive overkill, and examines the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today. Drawing on memoirs, interviews in both Russia and the US, and classified documents from deep inside the Kremlin, David E. Hoffman examines the inner motives and secret decisions of each side and details the deadly stockpiles that remained unsecured as the Soviet Union collapsed. This is the fascinating story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and a previously unheralded collection of scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies changed the course of history.

In 1983, more than one million Germans joined together to protest NATO’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe. International media overflowed with images of marches, rallies, and human chains as protesters blockaded depots and agitated for disarmament. Though they failed to halt the deployment, the episode was a decisive one for German society, revealing deep divisions in the nation’s political culture while continuing to mobilize activists. This volume provides a comprehensive reference work on the “Euromissiles” crisis as experienced by its various protagonists, analyzing NATO’s diplomatic and military maneuvering and tracing the political, cultural, and moral discourses that surrounded the missiles’ deployment in East and West Germany.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a riveting account of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. In the Reagan-Gorbachev era, the United States and the Soviet Union came within minutes of nuclear war, until Gorbachev boldly launched a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the 1986 Reykjavik summit and the incredible events that followed. In this thrilling, authoritative narrative, Richard Rhodes draws on personal interviews with both Soviet and U.S. participants and a wealth of new documentation to unravel the compelling, shocking story behind this monumental time in human history—its beginnings, its nearly chilling consequences, and its effects on global politics today.

This volume examines the origins and early years of the Cold War in the first comprehensive historical reexamination of the period. A team of leading scholars shows how the conflict evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and sociopolitical environments of the two world wars and interwar period.

In Freeze!, Henry Richard Maar III chronicles the rise of the transformative and transnational Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Amid an escalating Cold War that pitted the nuclear arsenal of the United States against that of the Soviet Union, the grassroots peace movement emerged sweeping the nation and uniting people around the world. The solution for the arms race that the Campaign proposed: a bilateral freeze on the building, testing, and deployment of nuclear weapons on the part of two superpowers of the US and the USSR. That simple but powerful proposition stirred popular sentiment and provoked protest in the streets and on screen from New York City to London to Berlin. Movie stars and scholars, bishops and reverends, governors and congress members, and, ultimately, US President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev took a stand for or against the Freeze proposal. With the Reagan administration so openly discussing the prospect of winnable and survivable nuclear warfare like never before, the Freeze movement forcefully translated decades of private fears into public action. Drawing upon extensive archival research in recently declassified materials, Maar illuminates how the Freeze campaign demonstrated the power and importance of grassroots peace activism in all levels of society. The Freeze movement played an instrumental role in shaping public opinion and American politics, helping establish the conditions that would bring the Cold War to an end.