Known as ANZUS, the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty was signed in 1951. This military alliance was one of several entered into by the United States in the early 1950s, as part of its attempts to prevent the international spread of communism and to prepare for the possibility of armed conflict with the Soviet Union. Some thirty years later, as relations between the … Continue reading Maori Art of the Nuclear Mother
In an unprepossessing corner of London’s Green Park – an oasis of tranquillity squeezed between the busy thoroughfare of Piccadilly and the grandeur of Buckingham Palace – stands an imposing neo-classical stone structure. This is the Bomber Command Memorial, opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. The memorial took so long to be realised in large part due to the ongoing controversy about the magnitude of … Continue reading Commemorating Bomber Command
As the Soviets dramatically stepped up their nuclear weapons programme in the 1960s, the US government showed a willingness to take calculated risks with its atomic arsenal in order to maintain arms race superiority over its Cold War adversary. With some of America’s nuclear test sites situated close to the northern and southern borders, concerns were raised in classified documents that missiles could drift into neighbouring countries … Continue reading In the Silent Zone
The execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg at sundown on 19 June 1953 was one of the darkest moments in recent US history. The married couple were the only American civilians to be put to death for espionage-related activity during the Cold War, after they were convicted of passing top secret information to the Soviets. Their deaths left their two young sons orphaned. It was … Continue reading Art in Defence of the Rosenbergs
Emboldened by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the United States was keen to bolster its nuclear arsenal as it entered into an arms race with the Soviet Union. The remote reefs of Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which had come under American occupation during the war, were identified as a suitable test site, and the … Continue reading Saga of the Lucky Dragon
Terrified by the news that the Soviet Union had tested its first nuclear bomb in August 1949, the United States decided to up the ante – by going thermonuclear. On 1 November 1952, the world’s first H-bomb, codenamed Ivy Mike, was detonated on the Pacific island of Elugelab. The island was instantly transformed into a cloud of ash that reached 27 miles into the sky, and all vegetation within the path of … Continue reading Cheerful Collages of Mushroom Clouds
American Israeli artist Andi Arnovitz recently made headlines in the New York Times with a new series of collages crafted in response to the perceived nuclear threat posed against Israel by Iran. The painter and printmaker, who has lived in Jerusalem since 1999 and works out of the Jerusalem Print Workshop, recently exhibiting the works at the city’s L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art as … Continue reading Painting the Iranian Nuclear Threat
Recently the public got its first glance inside Albania’s most important Cold War era bunker, located just outside the Albanian capital of Tirana. Built 100m below ground between 1972 and 1978, the top secret complex boasts 106 rooms over five storeys. It also features a bedroom with red satin sheets for former communist dictator Enver Hoxha, as the bunker was intended to house the government … Continue reading Recommended: Cold War Bunkers – East and West
Having survived the horror of the World War I trenches as a teenager, celebrated English sculptor Henry Moore (1898–1986) continued to respond to the dramatic historical events he witnessed throughout his lifetime. During the Cold War, Moore’s work was infused with the tensions of the era and his anxiety about the development of atomic weapons. In this strange new world Moore’s familiar combination of the … Continue reading Featured Artist: Henry Moore
The atombic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 set the scene of the nuclear anxieties of the Cold War. Yet while the world would at moments come to the brink of nuclear war, the devastation wrought in Japan remains a unique tragedy. In May 1974 an old man walked in to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation studio in Hiroshima with … Continue reading Unforgettable Pictures of Hiroshima
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