World War II has ended with the United States and Russia emerging as the two dominant world powers. For the United States, that domination is partly due to the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But now the race is on to dominate in the age of nuclear weapons.
In June, 1953, paper boy Jimmy Bozart was collecting for his paper route. He often was tipped an extra nickel or dime. From the two retired teachers on the top floor of the apartment building, Jimmy was given a quarter and five nickels. But on his way down the stairs, he slipped and the change spilled. Jimmy found the quarter and four of the nickels. The fifth nickel was in two parts: the back and a hollowed out front containing what looked like a tiny piece of film.
Eventually the nickel came to a classmate's father who was a detective in the New York police and he passed it on to the FBI. They questioned the two teachers and did further investigation into the origins of the nickel but were unable to determine anything. The film was sent to code breakers in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the man who actually crafted the nickel was living in Brooklyn, not far from Jimmy Bozart's family. That man was Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy who had entered the country via Canada.
It wasn't until August, 1949 that the Soviets successfully tested their first atomic bomb, a weapon they were only able to make after stealing the technology from the United States. In early 1950, President Harry Truman announced the United States was working on a new, more powerful bomb, a hydrogen bomb or H-bomb. Abel was working to steal that technology in the hopes of giving the Soviets an advantage.
But the H-bomb would become a reality very quickly. Edward Teller, a Jewish physicist who fled Germany during the war, came to work at a secret lab called Los Alamos in New Mexico. After working on creating the atomic bomb, Teller along with other scientists wondered if it were possible to make a big bomb by fusing atoms together. It was Teller and Stanislaw Ulam who solved this problem. In November 1952, the United States successfully tested a H-bomb. By 1956, the U.S. would have 3,700 bombs. By 1959, the U.S. had over 12,000 bombs.
In the months after Josef Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev managed to seize control of power in Soviet Russia. He was determined to see the spread of communism throughout the world. In 1955, the Soviets successfully tested their own hydrogen bomb. The nuclear arms race was now on. Like the U.S., the Soviets began stockpiling bombs and building planes and rockets to deliver those bombs.
As both the United States and the Soviet Union continued to develop, test and stockpile nuclear weapons, a series of events over 1960 and 1961 would draw the superpowers into the ultimate nuclear showdown.
Discussion
With Fallout, Steve Sheinkin continues the story of the arms race and the development of weapons of mass destruction that began during World War II and was told in his book Bomb. In this book, he follows the events that led up to the showdown between the Soviet Union which was placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and the United States, the intended target of those missiles.
The series of events were many and all connected. The first was the capture of U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers who was on a final reconnaissance flight over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. These flights, in the era before satellites, had provided the United States with valuable military intelligence about the Soviet build-up of weapons.
The second was the growing alliance between Khrushchev and the new leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro. President Eisenhower considered Castro a growing threat not only to the U.S. but also to other countries in South America. The third was the election of John F. Kennedy as President of the United States in November, 1960. He was the youngest president ever elected to the office and he was relatively inexperienced. Khrushchev saw him as weak and immature but it was Kennedy's reluctance to escalate the conflict that helped avert a war.
The fourth event was the invasion of Cuba by the United States with the intent to remove Fidel Castro. There was evidence the Soviets were sending military supplies to Cuba. After much planning and denial by the U.S., the invasion occurred at Bahia de Cochinos, the Bay of Pigs and was a massive failure.
This was followed by the successful launch by the Soviets of a cosmonaut, Yuri Gagurin, into space - the fifth event. It meant the Soviets now had the potential capability to send a nuclear warhead over the ocean to America.
Finally, the building of the Berlin wall served to increase tension dramatically in Europe. This was the one place where communism and the free world directly faced off. After World War II, Germany was a country divided: West Germany was democratic while East Germany was a communist dictatorship. Similarly, the capital of Germany, Berlin was also split in two. East Berlin was part of communist East Germany while West Berlin was part of democratic free West Germany. Life in East Germany and East Berlin was difficult as both were oppressive, police states. As a result, people fled from east to west and by 1962, over a thousand a day were leaving. This infuriated Khrushchev who wanted to take over the entire city of Berlin. To stop the drain of people, Walter Ulbricht suggested building a wall between East and West Berlin.
These events were all important catalysts. But it was the fact that the Americans had bases all over Europe including a new operational one in Turkey and that the Soviets were still behind in the nuclear arms race that led Khrushchev to undertake what he later admitted to his son, was "a bluff". "The missiles in Cuba had always been a bluff....The goal was to give the Americans a taste of their own medicine, to make them live with a bit more fear. That would even out the global balance of power. The Soviets could refocus on driving the Americans out of Berlin, and the march to Cold War victory would continue from there."
It was unbelievable that it was this irresponsible "bluff" which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. It seems President Kennedy and Soviet naval Captain Vasili Arkhipov who was the chief of staff for the four Soviet subs near the naval blockage and who had seen the horrors of radiation poisoning from the K-19 nuclear submarine disaster, were the two men who likely prevented nuclear war. Kennedy couldn't imagine starting a nuclear war, despite intense pressure from his military staff and Arkhipov refused to allow the launch of a nuclear missile from one of the subs.
Fallout is well researched, and a fascinating read. The events are told in three parts bookended with a Prologue and an Epilogue. Each part presents black and white photographs of the major players in the events described. Sheinkin does an excellent job of portraying all the moving parts of these events including Russian spies, world leaders, and ordinary citizens including a young paper boy. Despite being well written, this is a book for much older readers and adults. The events are complex and all interconnected.
Sheinkin undertook the research and writing of this book before being interrupted by the pandemic. Nevertheless, he was able to continue his research and talk to Francis Gary Powers Jr. as well as Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikita Khrushchev. Dr. Khrushchev was able to provide valuable insights into the events from the Soviet perspective.
Fallout is a must-read for those who want to understand Europe as it exists today and the current events unfolding between Russia and Ukraine.
Book Details:
Fallout: Spies, Superbombs and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown by Steve Sheinkin
New York: Roaring Book Press 2021
341 pp.
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