Download Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear by Lawrence S. Wittner PDF

By Lawrence S. Wittner

Confronting the Bomb tells the dramatic, inspiring tale of ways citizen activism helped shrink the nuclear palms race and forestall nuclear struggle. This abbreviated model of Lawrence Wittner's award-winning trilogy, The fight opposed to the Bomb, exhibits how a world, grassroots campaign—the biggest social circulation of contemporary times—challenged the nuclear priorities of the nice powers and, finally, thwarted their nuclear objectives. in accordance with immense examine within the documents of peace and disarmament firms and in previously most sensible mystery executive documents, vast interviews with antinuclear activists and govt officers, and memoirs and different released fabrics, Confronting the Bomb opens a different window on probably the most very important problems with the trendy period: survival within the nuclear age. It covers the total interval of important competition to the bomb, from the ultimate phases of the second one global conflict as much as the current. alongside the way in which, it presents attention-grabbing glimpses of the interplay of key nuclear disarmament activists and policymakers, together with Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, Albert Schweitzer, Norman Cousins, Nikita Khrushchev, Bertrand Russell, Andrei Sakharov, Linus Pauling, Dwight Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, John F. Kennedy, Randy Forsberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helen Caldicott, E.P. Thompson, and Ronald Reagan. total, even if, it's a tale of well known mobilization and its effectiveness.

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Additional info for Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford Nuclear Age Series)

Example text

Furthermore, scientists in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia held meetings to discuss the international control of atomic energy. Moreover, small groups of Hungarians, Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechs, and East Germans showed an interest in world government. In Czechoslovakia, The Anatomy of Peace had a wide circulation, and reviews of it appeared in almost all Prague newspapers during 1947. Nevertheless, in the Soviet Union, pacifist organizations, like other antimilitary groups, had long ago been banned and effectively destroyed.

By contrast, there was little overt resistance to nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. To be sure, Soviet scientists did receive antinuclear literature mailed to them by their Western counterparts, and some expressed guarded signs of dismay at the Soviet Bomb project. Furthermore, scientists in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia held meetings to discuss the international control of atomic energy. Moreover, small groups of Hungarians, Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechs, and East Germans showed an interest in world government.

In India, where Gandhi repeatedly condemned nuclear weapons, pacifists held ceremonies in New Delhi on August 6, 1949, to mark World Peace Day. Small world government organizations emerged in Brazil, India, Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Often these diverse groups had overlapping concerns. Joining the world federalist movement, the Argentina Pacifist Association publicized world federalism in its journal and displayed photos of Britain’s Atomic Train exhibition. Although issues of poverty and national independence frequently eclipsed concerns about nuclear weaponry among people in the Third World, an August 1947 survey found that 66 percent of Mexican respondents favored an international agreement to prohibit the manufacture of atomic bombs.

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