The hydrogen bomb was a weapon designed to release nuclear energy with much greater magnitude than its precursor, the atomic bomb.
The United States developed the first such device in 1952 to deter Soviet aggression. While its proponents claimed it provided national security, opponents argued that the bomb created fear and uneasiness in America and around the world.
In 1942, while working on the Manhattan Project to create an atomic bomb, nuclear physicists Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi discovered the possibility of using atomic technology to ignite a thermonuclear reaction, like that on the surface of the sun. A fission reaction like the one used at Hiroshima resulted from split atoms creating energy and releasing heat. The heat generated from fission, surpassing the temperature of the earth’s core, sparked a chain reaction using heavy water, leading to a hydrogen explosion. After the successful use of atomic weapons in Japan in 1945, Teller tenaciously lobbied the government to develop such a hydrogen bomb. Unlike his colleagues, particularly Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Teller expressed few reservations about exploring America’s nuclear frontiers.
In 1949-50, cold war events intervened as civilian and military leaders debated the nuclear program’s future. Within a span of six months, the Soviet Union detonated an atomic device, communists overtook China, and American inspectors uncovered security lapses at Los Alamos and in the State Department. America’s atomic monopoly and postwar pride in unlocking atomic secrets vanished. President Harry S. Truman promptly ordered the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to initiate a hydrogen bomb program. Despite a stockpile of over 200 atomic bombs, American officials believed “the Super” would best deter Soviet expansion.
With the help of crude computers, Teller and mathematician Stanislaw Ulam led a successful effort to manufacture a hydrogen bomb at California’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The first thermonuclear test took place on the Pacific atoll Eniwetok on November 1, 1952. Code-named “Mike,” the device weighed 65 tons and yielded 10.4 megatons of TNT, the unimaginable equivalent of 1,000 atomic bombs. It was enough to incinerate New York City. In seconds, the three-mile-wide mushroom cloud vaporized the island, leaving a crater one-half mile deep and two miles wide. Observation crews felt the intense heat 30 miles away.
As with the atomic bomb, the world situation changed. American physicist Herbert York wrote that the explosion marked “a moment when the course of the world suddenly shifted, from the path it had been on to a more dangerous one. Fission bombs, destructive as they might have been, were thought of [as] being limited in power. Now, it seemed, we had learned how to brush even these limits aside and to build bombs whose power was boundless.” Just as in 1945, Americans experienced both relief and anxiety. The United States enjoyed the security in advancing beyond Soviet capabilities, but worried about the potential apocalypse the hydrogen bomb promised. Also, as in the case of atomic technology, the Soviets developed their own device earlier than expected, in 1953.
This shocking development fueled the domestic hunt for spies and communist sympathizers, particularly, in the atomic program. The “red scare” revealed atomic spies, such as German scientist Klaus Fuchs, and American accomplices, such as JuLius and Ethel Rosenberg. But the investigation also persecuted those merely guilty by association. Red hysteria even ensnared Oppenheimer, who, in 1954, was denied his security clearance at the AEC after Teller’s damaging testimony against him. Oppen-heimer’s reservations about the martial uses of nuclear power cost him his reputation and any influence in the nuclear program.
America’s hydrogen bomb, so quickly matched by the Soviets, also marked an acceleration of the arms race. Throughout the 1950s, the superpowers continued to seek nuclear advantage through the deployment of powerful delivery systems. Other countries also created atomic and hydrogen bombs, some using them for leverage against old regional enemies. The success and promise of the hydrogen bomb program prompted Dwight D. Eisenhower to favor a nuclear arsenal over conventional forces. His “New Look” strategy provided what his administration called “more bang for the buck.” But “brinkmanship” with the Soviets also held obvious risks.
While few Americans could adequately comprehend the complex technology behind the bomb, many appreciated its potential for swift devastation. Most complied with
The mushroom cloud from the hydrogen blast at Eniwetok in the Pacific in 1952 (National Archives)
Civil defense drills, some constructed fallout shelters, and a few promoted disarmament. A vocal minority of pacifists, such as SANE (National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), organized a campaign to prevent further construction, testing, and deployment. After the Cuban missile crisis brought the superpowers dangerously close to nuclear war, Americans, Soviets, and nearly 100 other nations signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963
Designed to curtail atmospheric testing. Five years later, more than 60 countries signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. By the end of the century, however, over two dozen countries possessed nuclear weapons.
Further reading: Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
—Andrew J. Falk
World History
