The Cold War

A Freeze In Relations

The fighting of WWII, was over. Russia had beaten the Germans that had encroached upon her soil, they had also advanced through the satellite countries that surrounded her, and had reached the edge of Berlin.

The Allies had started to reclaim captured Europe to free the Europeans. When the American Rangers and the British Commandos started their advance through North-Africa, the German Force and their allies the Italians started to crumble, until North Africa was eventually freed from capture.

British Commandos with the assistance of the Canadians and the Americans raced through Sicily freeing the occupants as they roared through the towns and villages.

It was quick but it was not easy and many people lost their lives; non more-so that the Italians who changed sides, that were captured by the Germans when their counter-attacks succeeded; for they shot every Italian officer they captured.

Howevere, the allies then advanced through Italy and eventually had the Germans on the run. The allies drove the Germans back into their own country forcing their surrender.

The Allies reached the centre of Berlin before the Russians could get there; The Russians asked the Allies to stay where they were, and they would continue their advance and meet them in the centre. Not foreseeing the Russian's intentions?

Sharing The Spoils Of War

The Allies disagreed about how the European map should look, and how borders would be drawn, following the war. Each side held dissimilar ideas regarding the establishment and maintenance of post-war security.

The western Allies desired a security system in which democratic governments were established as widely as possible, permitting countries to peacefully resolve their differences through international organizations.

Given the Russian historical experiences of frequent invasions and the immense death toll they had suffered, estimated at 27 million, and the amount of destruction the Soviet Union sustained during World War II. But the Soviet Union intended to increase security by dominating the internal affairs of countries that bordered it and which she had occupied.

It Nearly All Went Up In Smoke

Why the world nearly ended 50-years ago when the USSR and the USA Confronted each other on the German border; both daring the other to make the first move to fire the first shot or to press the Atomic Weapons button.

It's amazing how a bureaucratic bungle in Berlin almost brought about armageddon. Fifty years ago in 1961, the planet found itself poised on the brink of nuclear war. And all because of a misunderstanding about travel permits.

It was two months after the construction of the Berlin Wall. The four countries governing Berlin - France, the Soviet Union, the UK and the US - had agreed that all personnel would be able to move freely in any sector of the city.

But on 22nd October 1961, the US Chief of Mission in West Berlin, E. Allan Lightner, was stopped in his car, which had occupation forces licence plates, while attempting to visit a theatre in East Berlin.

He had crossed the border from the west of the city; controlled by the UK, US and France to the east; controlled by the Soviet Union at a place called Checkpoint Charlie.

Alarmed, the US authorities decided to test the Soviets' toleration of free movement by sending another diplomat over the border five days later. On this occasion the journey passed off without incident.

However, the Soviets decided to respond by sending tanks to Checkpoint Charlie. The US responded in kind, and an armed stand-off began.

Both sets of tanks were 50 to 100 metres from the checkpoint. Both were loaded with live munitions. And both had orders to fire if fired upon.

In 1961 The Cold War Was Raging

Tensions between the east and the west were bad enough without political leaders contemplating an international conflict at a border crossing in Berlin.

Yet for 18 hours from 27th to 28th October, troops and tanks from the rival powers faced each other ready, if necessary, to fire the shot that would begin hostilities and, quite possibly, lead to the launching of nuclear weapons.

Diplomats rushed to resolve the crisis, ultimately involving both the US president, John F Kennedy, and the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev.

Cool heads and the art of compromise prevailed. Kennedy offered to ease up on criticism of the Berlin Wall, which had been built by the East Berlin authorities backed by the Soviets, if Khrushchev agreed to remove his tanks first.

A Soviet tank moved five metres backwards; an American tank did the same. Another Soviet tank withdrew slightly; another US tank did likewise. And so, one by one, the tanks withdrew; and the world had survived another brush with armageddon.

Last Cold War-era

A number of B53 nuclear bombs have now been dismantled in Texas. The huge B53 bombs bears the distinctive design of an air-delivered bomb; they look slightly different from WW II, bombs but they are hugely more efficient at causing massive destruction.

The last of America's most powerful Cold War-era nuclear bombs, the B53, has been dismantled in Texas. Experts have separated around 300lb (136kg) of high explosives from the bomb's uranium "pit".

Weighing 10,000lb, the B53 was the size of a minivan and said to be 600 times more destructive than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

It was first put into service at the height of the Cold War in 1962, and remained in the US arsenal until 1997. The bomb was designed to hit targets deep underground, such as bunkers in which military and civilian leaders might be sheltering.

It was carried by B-52 bombers, the "bunker busters" used five parachutes to land softly on their targets before detonating a nine megaton explosion, in effect simulating an earthquake. They have now been superseded by bombs that burrow into the ground and then explode.

The first B53s were destroyed in the 1980s but several remained in service until 1997, when they were all retired.

'Significant Milestone'

A dismantling programme had to be specially designed for the B53s, which were made with older technology and by scientists who have since retired or passed away.

Thomas D'Agostino of the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said "the programme, which was completed once this final bomb had been dismantled, is a year ahead of schedule."

The head of the NNSA, he called the decommissioning of the last B53 a "significant milestone". "The world is a safer place with this dismantlement."

The B53 was a weapon developed in another time for a different world. Today, we're moving beyond the Cold War nuclear weapons complex that built it towards a 21st Century nuclear security enterprise.

After disassembly, the uranium pits from the bomb will be temporarily stored at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, where the dismantling was carried out.

The plant is the only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility in the US. The plant is also likely to be involved with future disassembly projects as older weapons are retired.

According to figures released by the US state department in May 2011, the US has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its current stockpile, down from 31,255 in 1967.

USA And USSR Tensions

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World – primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies – and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies.

Although the chief military forces never actually engaged in a major battle with each other, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions and strategic conventional force deployments.

Both giving extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

After the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, the USSR and the US saw each other as profound enemies of their basic ways of life, which were so different.

The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it had occupied, annexing some and maintaining others as satellite states of the Umion, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact, in 1955–1991.

The US financed the recovery of western Europe and forged NATO, a military alliance using containment of communism as a main strategy (Truman Doctrine). Some countries aligned with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and others formed the Non-Aligned Movement.

Cuban Project and Cuban Missile Crisis

A U.S. Navy P-2 of VP-18 flying over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban Missile Crisis. America was continuing to seek ways to oust Castro following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy and his administration experimented with various ways of covertly facilitating the overthrow of the Cuban government.

Significant hopes were pinned on a covert program named the Cuban Project, devised under the Kennedy administration in 1961.

In February 1962, Khrushchev learned of the American plans regarding Cuba: the "Cuban project" was approved by the CIA where they stipulated the overthrow of the Cuban government in October, possibly involving the American military.

It was one more Kennedy-ordered operation to assassinate Castro. Preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were undertaken, in response to the information gained.

Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions, and ultimately responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade and presented an ultimatum to the Soviets.

Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba again.

The Cuban Missile Crisis in October–November 1962, had brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before. It further demonstrated the concept of a mutually assured destruction, that neither nuclear power was prepared to use their nuclear weapons, both fearing total destruction via nuclear retaliation.

The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear arms race, to start nuclear disarmament and improving relations, although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.

In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement. Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism-Leninism.

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