Cover

Half-title

Series information

Title page

Copyright information

Table of contents

List of figures

Notes on contributors

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: the Cold War as an imaginary war

Recent historiography on the nuclear age

The scope of this volume

Some general conclusions

Notes

2 The apocalyptic fiction: shaping the future in the Cold War

The weapon of the future

The future with the Bomb

Security through risk: MAD

Tit for tat

Communication

The obscene desire for the Bomb: Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe

Notes

3 Building peace, fearing the apocalypse? Nuclear danger in Soviet Cold War culture

Lampooning the enemy; constructing peace

An unimaginable war

Atomic Armageddon

Popular reactions

Conclusion

Notes

4 Sixty years and counting: nuclear themes in American culture, 1945 to the present

Notes

5 The imaginative landscape of nuclear war in Britain, 1945–65

The atomic bomb

The hydrogen bomb

Conclusion

Notes

6 German angst? Debating Cold War anxieties in West Germany, 1945–90

Notes

7 After Hiroshima: Günther Anders and the history of anti-nuclear critique

The making of an anti-nuclear militant

Conceptualising the atomic age

At the limits of the imagination

Conclusion

Notes

8 Hiroshima/Nagasaki, civil rights and anti-war protest in Japan’s Cold War

Japan’s Hiroshima: domestic politics and space for criticism

Historical contexts of nuclear discourse in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Freedom of movement in the free world?

Human rights as a Cold War concept: the search for a shared language

Ralph Featherstone: civil rights and Vietnam

Searching for a common ground

Defining wars

Conclusion

Notes

9 Catholic anti-communism, the bomb and perceptions of apocalypse in West Germany and the USA, 1945–90

Images of a nuclear war in Catholic popular belief

Catholic anti-communism and support for nuclear weapons

‘Dialogue with the world’ as a way to nuclear disarmament

Conclusion

Notes

10 ‘The nuclear arms race is psychological at its roots’: physicians and their therapies for the Cold War

The Cold War from a medical perspective

IPPNW as a peaceful alternative model to the Cold War

Psychological expertise in IPPNW

Emotions and politics: IPPNW’s legitimacy in the political arena

Scenarios of insanity; enlightenment as therapy

Conclusion

Notes

11 Imagining the apocalypse: nuclear winter in science and the world

Imagining Mars; imagining nuclear war

Nuclear winter

The peer review process

Nuclear winter and the world

Nuclear winter in the Soviet Union

Nuclear winter as metaphor

Conclusion

Notes

12 Images of nuclear war in US government films from the early Cold War

Civil defence films – limited destruction and effective protection

Nuclear test films – real explosions and deeper ambiguities

Conclusion

Acknowledgement

Notes

Index