Cuban Missile Crisis

On August 6, 1945, the world changed forever. The United States had sent a B-29 bomber plane named "Enola Gay" to fly over the industrial city of Hiroshima, Japan and drop the first atomic bomb ever Ð'- "Little Boy" . The world had never experienced anything like it. One hundred thousand died almost instantly -- most of them were civilians. Three days later, in Nagasaki, another bomb -- "Fat Man" Ð'- was dropped. This time roughly forty thousand died. The people of the world were glad to see that the bombs ended most destructive war ever, but over the course of the forty years the world feared a nuclear battle that could wipe out all humankind off of the face of the Earth. The images that were coming from the aftermath of the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki affected almost every person in the world in all aspects. The image of the mushroom-shaped cloud and the desolate city would remain in every person's mind as an image of destruction and as a warning of the danger of a nuclear war.

The Manhattan Project was the code name for an effort to create an atomic bomb during World War II. It was named for the Manhattan Engineer District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because most of the early research was done in New York City . Refugee physicists sparked the project soon after German scientists had discovered nuclear fission in 1938. Many American scientists feared that Hitler and the Germans would produce a nuclear bomb; consequently, they contacted Albert Einstein to write a letter to United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help the production of the first nuclear bomb. Roosevelt agreed to assist the scientists and they began the Manhattan Project. The development took place at laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, located on an isolated mesa. The project was to be kept classified under all circumstances. The scientists working at the plant could not even tell their wives about their work, unless they worked there themselves. All the mail in the town was censored; everybody was restricted to a two hundred mile radius and residents were forbidden to tell their friends where they lived. No one in the community had a name; rather everyone was either a "sir" or "mister".

The most serious threat to the security of the project was the hiring of Klaus Fuchs who was found guilty of obtaining top-secret documents and sending them to the Soviet Union. He allowed for the Soviets to create their own atomic bomb and caused fear among the American people.

The decisions to actually use the bomb the first time were critical. Firstly, President Roosevelt never lived to see the final product of the Manhattan Project. He died on April 12, 1945 at Warm Springs, GA, at the age of 63 and Harry S. Truman became his successor. All the responsibilities were soon placed on the new president. Truman knew nothing about the bomb and its effects, but decided quickly to use it on the Japanese. The president was warned that the bomb was very powerful and that it should not be used unless the Japanese refused to surrender. Nevertheless, Truman decided to go along with his plan and bomb Japan until they surrendered. Truman wanted revenge from the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor, except that it would be one hundred times as devastating.

On August 6, 1945, the aircraft Enola Gay flew over Hiroshima and dropped the first atomic bomb ever. At approximately 8:15 AM the bomb exploded about two thousand feet above ground, where today a building stands, called the "A-Bomb Dome". It took almost a minute for the bomb to explode after its descent from the plane. The world would be changed forever. The pilot of the Enola Gay, Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, wrote, " A bright light filled the planeÐ'... we turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud Ð'... boiling up, mushrooming." . Many people who saw the bomb say that it was like "another sun"; the heat released burned everything in its path, including people. The winds from the blast tore down houses and buildings in a 1.5-mile radius .

Three days later, another bomb Ð'- the "Fat Man" Ð'- was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Although the energy created by this bomb was greater than the "Little Boy" dropped in Hiroshima, the damage was slighter. Approximately forty thousand died outright and seventy thousand in total had died by the end of the year due to radiation.

An estimated two hundred thousand people died in total due to the effects of the bombings. Many people still argue whether the bombings were necessary or not. The devastation became more real in 1996, when new video footage was released in 1996. The footage was found by accident in a Tokyo film vault. It shows images of people walking through the rubble with trees stripped of their leaves, babies with their entire bodies covered with burns and men whose hair had been burned off and skin had melted from their heads.

Shortly after the war was over, the relation between the United States and the Soviet Union started getting tense. During the Manhattan Project, the Soviets started looking into the building of their own nuclear Bomb. The Soviets tested their own bomb four years after the United States dropped the first one on Japan.

The United States and Russia were already engaged in the Cold War, and both countries were now in a race to build up their armed forces. The Arms Race was a competition between both countries to scare each other by creating bigger, more powerful missiles and bombs. Usually the United States was more advanced than the Soviet Union in technology and the Soviets tried to catch up as quickly as possible and neither stopped. The American people thought that the Russians had more, better missiles than the United States had because of Soviet Premier Khrushchev boasting over his country's status. Eventually, American officials show this to be false. As the Cold War continued, the fear of a nuclear holocaust grew and proposals for arms reduction began, but the fear still remained. In 1961, the United States formed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which dealt with the government policy concerning nuclear testing and arms control. In May of 1972 the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) came to an end and a treaty had been signed by United States and the Soviet Union to limit the production of anti-ballistic missile systems. Since then, many arms control treaties have followed, but nuclear arms were still being built.

Throughout the Cold War people feared nuclear war, but the world was never closer to one then during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There would be no winner in a nuclear war; only destruction would remain. For fourteen days in