Daily Life and Culture in the Shadow of Nuclear War

Both World War II and the cold war shaped postwar culture. People across Europe engaged in heated debates over who was responsible for Nazism and how to achieve ethnic and racial justice. Europeans also discussed the Americanization that seemed to accompany the influx of U.S. dollars, consumer goods, and cultural media. As Europeans examined their war-filled past and their newfound prosperity, the cold war menaced hopes for peace and stability. In 1961, the USSR demanded the construction of a massive wall that physically divided the city of Berlin in half. In October 1962, the world held its breath while the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States nearly provoked nuclear conflagration over the issue of missiles on the island of Cuba. In hindsight, the existence of extreme nuclear threat in an age of unprecedented prosperity seems utterly bewildering, but for those who lived with the threat of global annihilation, the dangers were all too real.