Why was there an escalation in the nuclear arms race in the 1950s?
             The nuclear arms race was a competition between the United States and the USSR to have superiority in the quantity and quality of nuclear weapons. This competition took place during the conflict between the two States in the Cold War. It is important to note that the Soviet Union was a communist state, while the United States was a democratic one. This meant that their foreign policy had to be different and thus ones would go against the others. Conflict in the future was highly probable.
             The first nuclear weapons had been created by the United States in the Second World War, with the main objective of using them against Germany and its allies. The first ones were made in 1945 known as the 'Fission Bombs'. These produced explosions equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. A nuke explosion has 1 megaton of warhead, could blind anyone looking at it within 160km and heat would melt anything within 5 km, and burn people up to 32km away. At this time, this force was unimaginable to anybody. (*Source 4)
             In the Second World War, the Great War Alliance existed, of which the USSR, USA and Great Britain were very much part of. However the USSR had no knowledge whatsoever of these developments mainly because the United States was already suspicious of USSR's intentions and decided to keep the developments of the nuclear weapons a secret, though Stalin was receiving unconfirmed reports that the United States was developing a nuclear bomb. The United States saw the USSR as a potential enemy after the war because of its communist government and because of its size. The USA did not want the nuclear weapons to reach the hands of the USSR fearing that the USSR might later become a threat to the national security of the United States.
             In 1945, when the victory was very close and Japan was still fighting the allies, President Truman ordered the dropping of the Atomic bo...