A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Cold War 1149

times more destructive than those that had leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
During the 1950s, children in the United States participated in mock air
raid drills, putting their heads between their knees to practice bracing for
the shock of a nuclear explosion, as if such a position would make the slight­
est difference in the case of a nuclear attack. The United States and the

Soviet Union drew up plans to evacuate American and Soviet leaders into
elaborate shelters from which they could order the launching of more mis­
siles and bombs. Britain exploded its first atomic bomb in 1952, France in

1960. China, too, before long had “the bomb.” In the 1970s, Israel, India,
      and Pakistan gained nuclear capability.
      The Cold War focused on a series of crises that, drawing world attention,
      exacerbated tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The

Soviet Union claimed that the Western Allies had unilaterally broken agree­

ments reached at the Potsdam Conference. In July 1948, Soviet troops

blocked trains and truck routes through the Soviet zone of occupation in

East Germany to prevent supplies from reaching the Allied half of Berlin.

The Allies began a massive airlift of supplies to West Berlin; at times, planes

landed in Berlin every three minutes, bringing much-needed food, medicine,

and other necessities. After secret negotiations, Stalin backed down, allow­

ing trucks to roll through the German Democratic Republic beginning in

1949, the year of that state’s creation. Berlin remained divided into eastern

and western zones.

A Greek soldier stands guard during the Civil War in 1947.