Nazi Germany's Use Of Nuclear Weapons

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Nuclear warfare is the use of nuclear weapons as a military strategy against enemies. Nuclear weapons or atomic weapons are bombs or missiles that use nuclear energy to cause an explosion and are considered the most powerful and destructive weapon ever created. The U.S. was the first country to build an atomic bomb in 1945 after Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, concerned about efforts in Nazi Germany to purify uranium-235 and create an atomic bomb. After this the U.S. began The Manhattan Engineer District Project to build an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany. The creation of nuclear weapons was done by some of the greatest minds of the time. The chief of this group was Robert Oppenheimer, who is often called “father of the …show more content…

Finally, the day came to test out the first atomic bomb, ‘The Trinity Gadget” a plutonium impulsion type bomb was going to be tested in a remote corner on the Alamogordo Bombing Range known as the "Jornada del Muerto" or "Journey of Death", 210 miles south of Los Alamos. The researchers were at the time worried that the bomb would ignite the atmosphere and either destroy the world or all New Mexico. In reality the scientist’s calculations concluded that it was highly unlikely for this to happen, but many people aware of the potential power of the bomb were anxious. And at exactly at 5:30 a.m. July 16, 1945 the Trinity bomb went off and was a success that ushered in the Atomic age. “The Gadget” materialized a mushroom cloud of radioactive vapor 7.5 miles high. Beneath the cloud, all that remained on the ground at the blast site were fragments of green radioactive glass created by the heat of the reaction. Now that “The Gadget” was proven a success, it was time to apply atomic bombs in war. About three weeks later “Little boy” and” Fat Man” were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroying a large part of the city. Little boy was the first atomic bomb to be used in …show more content…

On November 1, 1952, the U.S. detonated a 10.4 MT (megaton – millions of tons of TNT) hydrogen device in the Pacific on the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The test code-named "Mike," was the first successful attempt of the Edward Teller’s concept for a thermonuclear bomb. Scientists choose to use liquid deuterium (hydrogen isotopes) for “Mike” which meant they needed to keep the area below -417° F. Mike weighed 65 tons and left a crater more than a mile wide, and a mushroom cloud 100 miles wide and 25 miles high and destroyed life on the surrounding islands. As testing continued the U.S. made even stronger thermonuclear bombs that are smaller and light enough to be carried on a plane. Many people were beginning to worry about nations constantly funding projects of mass destruction so several treaties have been established to prevent nuclear testing and promoting nuclear disarmament, instead. Some treaties are Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in The Atmosphere, In Outer Space and Under Water, also known as the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was signed in 1996 but has yet to enter into

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