The Cold War
The irrational fear of Soviet invasion gripped our country for over 35 years. That fear led to the upper echelons of authority making decisions, which would create a feeling of near hysteria throughout the public. Americans feared that the Soviets were planning some nuclear attacks on the States, and were frightened by the thought that the Soviets might have a lead in the arms race. The words "race" and "gap" came to be used everyday when referring to anything the Soviets created, and Americans felt that the "gap" which kept America on top of the arms "race" needed to remain a "gap". With our submarines constantly finding new ways to tap into Soviet intelligence, it seemed that America did, in fact, have the upper hand. This could have cause some to feel confidence instead of fear; however, this did not come to be so. The whole nation, from the very head of government to the bottom rungs of society, feared the Soviets. Was this fear justified? What caused such intense fear? This is what this paper will explore. We will use the movie Dr. Strangelove and the book Blind Man's Bluff to look at why it could have been justified and also at the reasons for why such fear came into being. We begin by analyzing why the irrat
" (Sontag, 251) In the same way, in the movie Dr. Strangelove, when the Russians first built the doomsday machine, they felt it to be exciting and daring, keeping up with a 'doomsday gap', but when it came down to their own safety and realization that the whole world would be destroyed, the originally idea struck them as absurd and dangerous. It seemed that no one could ever be safe from Soviet infiltration. Strangelove tapped into society's fear of our printed material being used against us. Strangelove shows almost every aspect of Cold War mentality in the United States during that period. "The Soviets had been developing missiles at a phenomenal rate ever since they were forced to back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Some submariners were daredevils who risked not only their crew's lives, but the national security, some argued. "Was it possible that, just six years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets were positioned to launch a first strike with little or no warning? If the subs were as silent and deadly as they seemed, then at the very least, the Soviets would have matched the United States in creating a second-strike capability, a way to punch back if all their land missiles and bombers were destroyed" (Sontag, 173) There were many other things that Naval Intelligence was able to find out about the Soviets, driving the fear of Soviet attack even deeper into America's heart. Russia combated that with sending her own spies. The Russian ambassador in the film claims that they learned of America's development of a doomsday machine in the New York Times. The cables were finally found and tapped, and a store of information brought up out of the deep, frigid waters of Okhotsk.
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Acceptance Essays
