
Contents
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Introduction Introduction
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The Doomsday Decade: 1954–64 The Doomsday Decade: 1954–64
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Protest and Survive: 1964–85 Protest and Survive: 1964–85
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Further Reading Further Reading
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21 ‘Gentlemen, you are Mad!’: Mutual Assured Destruction and Cold War Culture
Get accessIvan T. Berend is a Distinguished Professor at the Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, he was professor of economic history at the Budapest University of Economics (1953-1985); President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985-90); and President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1995-2000). He is a Member of the British Academy and five other European academies of sciences. His most recent book is Europe since 1980 (2010). Among his earlier works, he published a tetralogy on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe, The European Periphery and Industrialization, 1780-1914 (1984), and An Economic History of 20th Century Europe (2006). He is currently working on an economic history of nineteenth-century Europe.
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Published:18 September 2012
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Abstract
In the year after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the historian and critic Lewis Mumford made a dramatic attack on the insanity of the nuclear age. In his article entitled ‘Gentlemen: You are Mad!’, Mumford said: ‘We in America are living among madmen. Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order and security’. According to Mumford, the modern superweapon society, for all its technological supremacy, was unable to recognise the looming disaster. People were sleepwalking towards the abyss of atomic war. The Cold War arms race created and served to maintain what Winston Churchill termed ‘the balance of terror’. By the end of the 1960s, both the United States and the Soviet Union had more than enough nuclear weapons to withstand a first strike and still be able to retaliate. This article explores how mutual assured destruction (MAD) was reflected and refracted in European culture and society from 1950 to 1985, and shows how film and fiction played a key role in highlighting the potential effects of MAD – a global nuclear holocaust.
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