The Atomic Age (Winter 2020)

Instructor: Karl Hall

Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 15:30-17:10

Place: N13/308

Number of credits: 4 

Course level: MA

Prerequisites: None: no background in history of science and technology is assumed. 

"On my way to the bakery on the morning of August 7, 1945," recalled Andrei Sakharov, "I stopped to glance at a newspaper and discovered President Truman's announcement that at eight a.m. the previous day, August 6, an atom bomb of enormous destructive power had been dropped on Hiroshima. I was so stunned that my legs practically gave way. There could be no doubt that my fate and the fate of many others, perhaps of the entire world, had changed overnight." Sakharov was far from alone in seeing the atomic bomb as a rupture in history, and our aim in this seminar will be to understand how this state of affairs came about, and what consequences the coming of the "atomic age" has had for historical sensibilities in the twentieth century.

Coarse goals: The atomic bomb was always already international, even in the American case. So was the Soviet bomb -- and not just because of spies in the Manhattan Project. No nation has subsequently acquired the atomic bomb without help from outside, yet histories of the atomic age are primarily told through national lenses. Though this course is not driven primarily by the challenge of writing transnational and international histories of the Cold War, it offers unusual proxies for thinking about the changing nature of geopolitics and especially East Bloc relations in the middle decades of the twentieth century. We will range widely in this seminar, which does not presume any technical expertise or prior training in the history of science, but does presume an interest in Cold War cultures. Our questions for study include the following: What can the political economy of radium tell us about gendered roles in science? Why did scientists become involved in military enterprises, and how did their experience change the structure of higher education in the postwar era? What happens when scientific institutions achieve industrial scales? How was this "fateful" weapon understood on the eve of its first use? Why were Hiroshima and Nagasaki targeted, and how did the treatment of radiation victims shape the understanding of the Bomb over a longer timeline? How did the Soviets and Americans understand each others' nuclear capacities, and what does this mean for the historiography of the Cold War? Can one distinguish the "peaceful atom" from its warlike cousin? What were the small states' roles in atomic alliances with the superpowers? How did other states attempt to break the atomic monopoly? What new knowledge regimes emerged in the Cold War that need to be incorporated in our understandings of this "existential" conflict? The seminar offers us the opportunity to address these questions in their technical, historical, and moral dimensions.

Requirements and assessment: 12-15-page (double-spaced) research paper (40%); annotated bibliography (10%); class presentation (20%); discussion leader (10% + 10%); class participation (10%).

Research paper is due April 14.

Learning outcomes: Students will acquire a basic knowledge of the atomic age from the Manhattan Project to the development of deterrence doctrines during the Cold War. They will also gain experience applying standard methods of historical textual analysis to an unfamiliar corpus of works. Beyond this the class will also offer the opportunity to test the relevance of various methods of historical inquiry (biography, diplomatic history, social history, gender history, transnational history) to the ideas and institutions centered on the power of the atom.

Marie Skłodowska Curie, Autobiographical Notes (1923): skim chapter 1, then attend more closely to chapter 2.

Maria Rentetzi, “Designing (For) a New Scientific Discipline: The Location and Architecture of the Institut für Radiumforschung in Early Twentieth-Century Vienna,” British Journal for the History of Science, 38 (2005): 275-306.

Further reading:

Lawrence Badash, "European Origins," Radioactivity: Growth and Decay of a Science in America (1979), 5-16.
Ernest Rutherford, "The Scattering of α and β Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom," Philosophical Magazine (1911). 
Arne Hessenbruch, "Calibration and work in the X-ray economy, 1896-1928," Social Studies of Science 30 (2000): 397-420. 
Maria Rentetzi, Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early Twentieth Century Vienna (2007; print edition 2008). [on-campus access]
Matthew Lavine, "Crazes," The First Atomic Age: Scientists, Radiations, and the American Public, 1895-1945 (2013), 25-87.
Margaret C. Malley, Radioactivity: A History of a Mysterious Science (2011).

Assigned reading:

Charles Weiner, "A new site for the seminar: The refugees and American physics in the thirties," in The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960, eds. D. Fleming and B. Bailyn (1969), 190-228.

Richard Rhodes, "Machines," The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), chapter 6.

Further reading:

Tibor Frank, Double exile: Migrations of Jewish-Hungarian professionals through Germany to the United States, 1919-1945 (2009).

Julianna Puskás, "A magyarországi kivándorlás sajátosságai a két világháború között (1920-1940)," Akadémiai Értesítő 88 (1981): 735-745. 

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Assigned reading:

Lise Meitner, letters to Otto Hahn; Kopfermann to Bohr, in Klaus Hentschel and Ann M. Hentschel, Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Sources (1996).

Einstein's letter to Roosevelt (2 August 1939).

V. Khlopin, "Conclusion of the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences on UIPhT fellows Invention Which Was Sent to the Agency of Military Chemical Defense" (17 April 1940).

Decree No. 2352 cc of the State Committee of Defense, "On the Organization of Work on Uranium" (28 September 1942).

Ruth Lewin Sime, "Toward the discovery of nuclear fission," "The discovery of nuclear fission," Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (1996). [on campus access only]

Further reading:

Alan Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler.

P. Josephson, Yu. Ranyuk, Yu. Tsekhmistro, and K. Hall, "Science and the periphery under Stalin: Physics in Ukraine," in Trischler and Walker, Physics and Politics Research and Research Support in Twentieth Century Germany in International Perspective (2010), 197-226.

David Holloway, "Nuclear prehistory," Stalin and the Bomb, chapter 2.

Graetzer and Anderson, The Discovery of Nuclear Fission: A Documentary History (1971). [excerpts in file below]

Assigned reading:

Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts (selections)*

Kevles, The Physicists, chaps. 19–20.

Screening of documentary film The Day After Trinity.

Further reading:

*See Alex Wellerstein's analysis of the transcripts.

Robert Serber, The Los Alamos Primer (1943)
Mark Walker, "Lightning war," and "The German achievement in the American shadow," in German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939–1949 (chapters 1 and 5).
Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb
Peter Galison, "Laboratory war: Radar philosophy and the Los Alamos man," chapter 4 in Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (1997).

For a good starter bibliography on the Manhattan Project, see Alex Wellerstein, "The Manhattan Project," Encyclopedia of the History of Science (2019).

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Assigned reading:

Victor Weisskopf, “Working on the Bomb," in The Joy of Insight (1990), 122-155.

Richard Feynman, "Los Alamos from below," in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (1985).

Denise Kiernan, The Girls of Atomic City (2013), 109-130.

Further reading:

Paul Forman, "Independence, not transcendence, for the historian of science," Isis 82 (1991): 71-86.

Erica L. Fraser, “Masculinity in the personal narratives of Soviet nuclear physicists,” Aspasia (2014): 45-63.

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Please prepare for sessions [6] and [7] as if they were one session, with this source-based session embedded in the middle of session [7], which provides the broader frame. From this rather large corpus of primary sources we will limit ourselves to the ones relevant to the regional interests of those registered for the course. This session should be devoted entirely to student presentations of early European and global understandings of the violence unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Choose a cluster of readings in one language and prepare to discuss the scope of their accounts of the distant events in Japan. Keep in mind that tremendous information asymmetries prevailed in the early days, so be as concrete as possible about where the newspapers are getting their information. Think carefully about what is NOT present in the early accounts as well, and how local and regional politics might help frame the events. Collaboration is encouraged in cases where more than one student is covering a given cluster. 

Czech: 

"Atomová puma sensací světa" (second page) Lidová Demokracie (8 August 1945), "Na prahu nového světa atomová bomba," Mladá Fronta (8 August 1945), "Nová zbran: atomová bomba," Rudé Právo (8 August 1945), "Strašlivá síla utajená v jediné pumě," Svobodné slovo (8 August 1945), "Atomistika převrací svět techniky," Mladá Fronta (9 August 1945), "Zničit atomovou pumu?" Právo Lidu (14 August 1945). See also some articles from Bojovnik. First pictures of the destruction in early October.

Hungarian:

"Atombombákkal zúzzák szét Japánt," Szabad nép (8 August 1945), "Az atombomba megváltoztatja a világ képét," Világ (8 August 1945), "Az atómrombolás a hadviselés szolgálatában," Népszava (8 August 1945), "Az atómbomba lehetetlenné tesz minden újabb háborút," Világ (9 August 1945), "Hirosima város 60 százalékát elpusztította az atombomba," Szabad nép (9 August 1945), "Ledobták a második atómbombát," Világ (10 August 1945), "Egynapos háború," Szabad nép (11 August 1945), "Az atómbomba," Világ (14 August 1945). [on campus access]

Polish:

"Bomba atomowa o potwornej sile wybuchowej," Życie Warszawy (7 August 1945), "Na Japonię zrzucono 1-sza bomba atomowa," Gazeta Żołnierza (8 August 1945) (p. 2), "Pierwsza bomba atomowa spadła na Japonię," Dziennik Polski (8 August 1945), "60 procent Hiroshimy znikło z powierzchni ziemi," Dziennik Polski (9 August 1945), "Wojna rosyjsko-japonska i bomby atomowe," Gazeta Żołnierza (10 August 1945), "Bomba i polityka," Gazeta Żołnierza (11 August 1945) (p. 3), "Nauka i nieuctwo," Gazeta Żołnierza (12 August 1945), "Córka Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie współtwórczynią bomby atomowej," Dziennik Polski (15 August 1945), "Refleksje nad wielkim odkryciem," Tygodnik Powszechny no. 24 (2 September 1945), 3-4 . If you have time, you can also look at the brochure by Mieczysław Wolfke, Bomba atomowa (1945).

Romanian:

"Prima experiență în 'bomba atomică'," Scânteia (9 August 1945), "O revelație in tehnica războuilui: bomba atomica," Scânteia (16 August 1945). [They don't seem to use stable URLs, so once you're at the Univ. of Bucharest site you'll have to run a search for Scânteia.] 

Yugoslav:

See Yugoslav newspapers folder; "Novo orožje in japonski odpor. Velika rušilna moč nove atomske bombe," Primorski dnevnik (Trieste) (8 August 1945). 

Greek:

Coverage in Eleutheria on 7 August 1945 and 8 August 1945.

[East] German:

"Atombomben auf Japan," Berliner Zeitung (8 August 1945), "Entfesselte Atomenergie," Neue Zeit (8 August 1945), "Die Atombombe," Berlinger Zeitung (9 August 1945), "Die Wirkung der Atombombe" and "Atombomben im Dahlem," Neue Zeit (9 August 1945), "Der Gnadenstoss," Neue Zeit (11 August 1945). [Registration required; you may download all the PDFs from this folder.]

Austrian:

"Japans Schicksal ist entschieden," Arbeiter Zeitung (8 August 1945); "Atombombe - Die Weltsensation," Neues Österreich (8 August 1945); "Was uns erspart blieb: die Atombombe," Österreichischer Volksstimme (8 August 1945); "Welt im Banne der Atombombe," Das kleine Volksblatt (8 August 1945); "Die Wunderwaffe," Arbeiter Zeitung (9 August 1945); "Atombombe auch auf Hafenstadt Nagasaki," Das kleine Volksblatt (10 August 1945); "Zweite Atombombe abgeworfen," Österreichischer Volksstimme (10 August 1945). First pictures for Austrian readers.

Swiss:

"Die Atombombe," Neue Zürcher Zeitung (7 August 1945), "Les Américains ont mis au point la construction de la bombe atomique," Feuille d'Avis de Neuchatel (7 August 1945), "La bombe atomique a un pouvoir dévastateur indescriptible," Feuille d'Avis de Neuchatel (9 August 1945), "Betrachtungen zum Problem der Atombombe," Neue Zürcher Zeitung (10 August 1945).

Russian:

"Заявление Трумэна о новой атомной бомбе," Izvestiia (7 August 1945) (p. 4), "Заявление Трумэна о новой атомной бомбе," Vecherniaia Moskva (7 August 1945), "Заявление Трумэна о новой атомной бомбе," Pravda (8 August 1945) (p. 4), "Заявление Трумэна о новой атомной бомбе," Советская Сибирь (8 August 1945) (p. 4). [And for good measure, Brooks Atkinson, "Atomic bomb irks public of Russia," New York Times (25 November 1945).]

Latvian: 

"Trumena paziņojums par jaunu atomu bumbu," Cīņa (9 August 1945); "Atomu bumbas — Jauns pagrieziens kara vesture," Latvju Vards (11 August 1945).

Finnish:

"Atoomipommeja Japaniin," Laatokka (7 August 1945); and further coverage the next day; "Toinen atoomipommi tuhuonnut Nagsakin kaupungin," Laatokka (9 August 1945).

Norwegian:

"Atombombe med fantastisk sprengkraft sluppet over Japan," Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad (7 August 1945), "Fullstendig revolusjonering av det industrielle liv? President Truman gir sensasjonelle opplysninger," Arbeiderbladet (7 August 1945); "Atom-bomben vil skape en helt ny tidsalder," Arbeiderbladet (8 August 1945). 

Turkish:

"20,000 ton dinamite muadil tek bomba," Cumhuriyet (7 August 1945), "Bütün dünyada heyecan ve korku," Cumhuriyet (8 August 1945), "Atom bombası," Cumhuriyet (9 August 1945) (p. 2), "Atom bombasının esrarı," Cumhuriyet (13 August 1945). [Access to further articles via paywall: we will acquire as necessary.]

Italian:

"La bomba atomica," La Stampa (7 August 1947), "Il mondo tiene il fiato," La Stampa (8 August 1945), "Tutti i viventi uccisi a Hiroscima," La Stampa (9 August 1945), "Il discorso di Truman," La Stampa (11 August 1945).

Spanish:

"Norteamérica utiliza la bomba atómica," Duero (7 August 1945); "Exito de la 'Bomba atomica'," Duero (8 August 1945); "Terribles efectos de la primera bomba atomica," Duero (9 August 1945); "Otra bomba atomica sobre la ciudad de Nagasaki," Duero (10 August 1945).

Dutch:

"Atoom-bom vaagt gehele stad weg," De Waarheid (7 August 1945), "Atoombom zal Japan vernietigen," De Tijd (7 August 1945), "'Aanzienlijke schade' door atoom-bommen," De Waarheid (8 August 1945), "Hirosjima in rook gehuld," Het vrije volk (8 August 1945), "De atoombom," De Waarheid (14 August 1945).

French:

"Une bombe atomique," L'Époque (7 August 1945), "La bombe atomique constitue un premier avertissement," and "Bombe atomique Révolution cosmique," L'Époque (8 August 1945), "Nagasaki reçoit le deuxième bombe atomique," Ce soir (10 August 1945), "'Sous l'effet de la bombe atomique...'," Ce soir (11 August 1945). 

British India:

"World's Deadliest Bomb Hits Japan," The Times of India (7 August 1945), "Great Power of the Atomic Bomb," The Times of India (9 August 1945), "Terrible Power of Allies' New Weapon," The Times of India (9 August 1945), "Second Atomic Bomb Attack on Japan," The Times of India (10 August 1945), "Atomic Bomb Will Not Stop Far East War," The Times of India (10 August 1945).

British:

"Atomic bomb in use against Japs," Daily Mirror (7 August 1945), " The atomic bomb," The Guardian (7 August 1945), "'Rain of ruin' threat to Japan," The Guardian (7 August 1945), "Destruction at Hiroshima," The Guardian (9 August 1945), "Atomic clue reached us through German censorship slip," Sunday Mirror (12 August 1945), "Why fear the atom?" Daily Herald (14 August 1945).

American:

"Atomic Bomb Revolutionizes War; Hits Japan Like 20,000 Tons of TNT," New York Herald Tribune (European Edition, 7 August 1945), "Atomic Bomb Story!" Chicago Tribune (7 August 1945), "Atomic Bomb Wiped Out 60% of Hiroshima," New York Times (8 August 1945), "Atomic Bomb Crews Story," Chicago Tribune (8 August 1945), "Atom Bomb Loosed on Nagasaki; 2D Big Aerial Blow," New York Times (9 August 1945), "2D Atomic Bomb Rips Japs," Chicago Tribune (9 August 1945), "The Story Behind the Atomic Bomb," New York Times (12 August 1945).

Assigned reading:

Handy to Spaatz, order to drop the atomic bomb (1945). [See Spaatz on the cover of LIFE magazine (20 August 1945).]

Henry L. Stimson, "The decision to use the atomic bomb," Harper's Magazine 194 (February 1947), 97-107. (Or see this OCR version.)

Michael Gordin, Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War (2007), chapters 1, 2, 7.

Compare the photographs of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo in "War's ending," LIFE magazine (20 August 1945).

Further reading:

Henry De Wolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (1945).
Kenneth T. Bainbridge, Trinity (1945).
Gar Alperovitz et al., The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (1995).
Spencer Weart, "The news from Hiroshima," Nuclear Fear (1988), chapter 6.

J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan, rev. ed. (2009).
Wilson D. Miscamble, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War (2007).
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (2004).
Wand Wilson, "The winning weapon? Rethinking nuclear weapons in light of Hiroshima," International Security 31 (2007).
Barton J. Bernstein, "The atomic bombings reconsidered," Foreign Affairs 74 (1995): 1-27.
Barton J. Bernstein, "Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the "Decision"," Journal of Military History 62 (1998): 547-570.
Murray Sayle, "Did the Bomb end the war?" The New Yorker (1995).

Michael D. Gordin, "The embrace of atomic bomb orthodoxy and revisionism," Reviews in American History 40 (2012): 500-515.

You can watch a debate on Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb (2014).

Alex Wellerstein has collected some early "Atomic editorial cartoons" at his blog.

Assigned reading:

"Stalin's secret order: Build the bomb 'on a Russian scale'," 25 January 1946, from Cold War International History Project Bulletin no. 4 (1994): 5.

Andrei Sakharov, “The Tamm Group,” "The Installation," and (excerpt) "1953", Memoirs (1990), chapters 6, 7, 11.

David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (1994), chapter 5 (Getting Started), Chapter 7 (The Post-Hiroshima Project), chapter 10 (The Atomic Bomb).

"Russia has the bomb," The New York Times (25 September 1949).

Further reading:

Vladislav Zubok, "Stalin and the nuclear age," in Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945 (1999).

V. P. Vizgin, История советского атомного проекта: Документы воспоминания исследования (2002).

Iurii Raniuk, Лабораторія № 1. Ядерна фізика в Україні (2002) and Лаборатория № 1 и Атомный проект СССР, 1938–1956 (2011). 

Атомный проект СССР: документы и материалы (1998-2010).

G. A. Goncharov and L. D. Riabev, "О создании первой отечественной атомной бомбы," Успехи физических наук 171 (2001): 79-104.

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Assigned reading:

Michael D. Gordin, Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly (2009), ch. 3, ch. 5.

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Discussion leader: Tijana

Assigned reading:

Peter Galison and Barton Bernstein, "In any light: Scientists and the decision to build the superbomb, 1952-1954," Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 19 (1989): 267-347.

David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (1994), chapter 14 (The Hydrogen Bomb).

Additional reading:

German A. Goncharov, "Beginnings of the Soviet H-Bomb Program," Physics Today (November 1996): 50-55.

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Assigned reading:

Federal Civil Defense Administration, Facts About Fallout (1955).

Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (2013), Introduction, Part 1.

See the brief photo essay on the work of Emmet Gowin on the Nevada Test Site. 

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Assigned reading: 

Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (2013), Part 2.

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Assigned reading:

Zbynek Zeman and Rainer Karlsch, Uranium Matters: Central European Uranium in International Politics, 1900-1960 (2008), 69-117.

Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africa and the Global Uranium Trade (2012), 6-16.

Further reading:

Jonathan E. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores: The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943-1954 (1986).

John Krige, "Hybrid knowledge: The transnational co-production of the gas centrifuge for uranium enrichment in the 1960s," British Journal for the History of Science 45 (2012): 337-357.

Assigned reading:

Joseph Rotblat, Pugwash — The First Ten Years (1967) (including the Russell-Einstein manifesto)

Jessica Wang, "Scientists and the problem of the public in postwar America, 1945-1960," Osiris 17 (2002): 323-347.

Alexei Kojevnikov, "Dialogues about knowledge and power in totalitarian political culture," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30 (1999): 227-247. (Move quickly to the section on the postwar period, p. 239.)

Further reading:

"After Pugwash: The Soviet reaction," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists no. 9 (1957): 314-317.

Eugene Rabinowitch, "The Third Pugwash Conference," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists no. 9 (1958): 338-340.

Alison Kraft and Carola Sachse, eds., Science, (Anti-)Communism and Diplomacy: The Pugwash Conferences on Science and Worlds Affairs in the Early Cold War (2019). 

The Pugwash Conferences and the Global Cold War Scientists, Transnational Networks, and the Complexity of Nuclear Histories, special issue of Cold War Studies (2018).

Kevles, The Physicists, chaps. 21–23.

John Gaddis, et al., eds., Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945 (1999).

Hoffmann György, "A Pugwash-mozgalom egy évtizede," Akadémiai Értesítő 75 (1968): 374-381.

Assigned reading:

"No new types of freaks," Science News Letter (4 November 1950): 290.

John Hershey, "Panic grass and feverfew," Hiroshima (1946/1985), 66-90. Take a few moments to read the opening lines from the original publication in The New Yorker (31 August 1946) as well. (See separate link below.)

Angela N. H. Creager, "Dividends," in Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine
(2013), 143-179.

Sakharov, "Nonthreshold biological effects," Memoirs, ch. 14.

Further reading:

E. B. Lewis, "Leukemia and ionizing radiation," Science 125 (1957): 965-972.

"Radiation and man," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists no. 1 (1958). 

Laura Sembritzki, "Maiak 1957 and its aftermath: Radiation knowledge and ignorance in the Soviet Union," Jahrb. f. Geschichte Osteuropas 66 (2018): 45-64.

Luis Campos, Radium and the Secret of Life (2015).

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Assigned reading:

Frank Tinsley, "Atomic planes are closer than you think," Mechanix Illustrated (August 1955). (Just for fun, no need to spend much time on this.)

Sonja D. Schmid, "Celebrating tomorrow today: The peaceful atom on display in the Soviet Union," Social Studies of Science 36 (2006): 331-365.

Individual assignments (choose ONE according to language preference):

"Press release, Atoms for Peace speech, December 8, 1953," Eisenhower Presidential Library; also reproduced here.

John Cockcroft, "The future of atomic energy," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1955): 285-288.

A. Hrynkiewicz, "Konferencja Międzynarodowa w Genewie poświęcona pokojowym zastosowaniom energii atomowej," Postępy Fizyki 6 no. 6 (1955): 662-674. [Click through to the volume and number; the PDF link apparently does not work, so you will have to use the DJVU reader.]

Eugene Rabinowitch, "International cooperation of atomic scientists," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12 (February 1956): 34-37, 61.

Pál Lénárd, "Beszámoló az atomenergia békés felhasználásával kapcsolatban rendezett genfi nemzetközi értekezletről," Tarsadalmi Szemle 10 no. 10 (1955): 139-145.

Ferd. Herčík, "Zpráva o mezinárodní konferenci pro mírové vyuzití atomové energie v Zeneve," Casopís Lékar̆ů C̆eských 95 (1956): 105-108.

V. A. Leshkovtsev, "Сессия Академии наук СССР по мирному использованию атомной энергии," Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk 57 (1955): 503-517.

Werner Kliefoth, "Nachdenkliches zur Atomkonferenz," Physikalische Blätter 10 (1955): 442-444. 

Paul A. Ladame, "L'Esprit de Genève," La Liberté (9 August 1955). 

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Further reading:
Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear, chapter 8.
John Krige, "Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence," Osiris 21 (2006): 161-181.
Jacob Darwin Hamblin, "Exorcising Ghosts in the Age of Automation: United Nations Experts and Atoms for Peace," Technology and Culture 47 (2006): 734-756.
Sonja Schmid, "Nuclear colonization? Soviet technopolitics in the second world," in G. Hecht, ed., Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War (2011), 125-154.
Stefano Salvia, "Embattled Cooperation(s): Peaceful Atoms, Pacifist Physicists, and Partisans of Peace in the Early Cold War (1947–1957)," Perspectives in Physics 21 (2019): 43-62.

Assigned reading:

"Savants in Clash on Atomic Perils," New York Times (26 August 1945).

Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 2d. ed. (1994), chapters 18 and 19.

Further reading:

Bob Mielke, "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Nuclear Test Documentary," Film Quarterly 58 (2005): 28-37.

Andrei Shcherbenok, “Asymmetric Warfare: The Vision of the Enemy in American and Soviet Cold War Cinemas,” KinoKultura 23 (2010).

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Class activity:

Screening of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

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Assigned reading:

L. Kowarski, "The making of CERN: An experiment in cooperation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 11 (December 1955): 354-357, 381.

Dominique Pestre and John Krige, “Some thoughts on the early history of CERN,” Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research, eds. Galison and Hevly (1992), 78-99.

(We will spend the bulk of this class discussing the international negotiations leading to the formation of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, the East Bloc counterpart of CERN.)

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Assigned reading:

Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (1987), 1-39.

David Holloway, "The Soviet Union and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency," Cold War History 16: (2016): 1-17.

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Assigned reading:

Paul Erickson, "Mathematical models, rational choice, and the search for Cold War culture," Isis 101 (2010).

Thomas Schelling, "The reciprocal fear of surprise attack" (1958). (Tijana)

Albert Wohlstetter, "The delicate balance of terror," Foreign Affairs 37 (1959): 211-234. (George)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Farewell address to the nation," 17 January 1961. (Kyra)

Oral report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council (1963). (Sveta)

Hermann Kahn, “The nature and feasibility of war and deterrence” (1960). (Viktoriia)

Assigned reading:

Hannah Arendt, "Introduction into politics" (excerpts), in The Promise of Politics (2008).

(For brief remarks in a more famous published text, see also Arendt, "War and revolution," introduction to On Revolution (1963). [See pp. 14-16 in particular.])

Suggested reading:

N.A.J. Taylor, "On the possibility of an Arendtian nuclear theory," Amor Mundi (2016).

Cara O'Connor, "Arendt, Jaspers, and the politicized physicists," Constellations 20 (2013): 102-120.

Jonathan Schell, "In search of a miracle: Hannah Arendt and the atomic bomb," in S. Benhabib et al., eds., Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt (2010), 247-258.

Waseem Yaqoob, "The Archimedean point: Science and technology in the thought of Hannah Arendt," Journal of European Studies 44 (2014): 199-234.

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