Abstract
More than a generation has passed since the United States dropped atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and President Truman is said to have declared: ‘This is the greatest thing in history.’1Nuclear weapons have not so far been used again. But there is little question that their mere existence, unused and largely unseen as they have been since 1945, has profoundly influenced the course of history.
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Notes and References
B.H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (Pan Books, 1973) p.727.
B.H. Liddell Hart’s History of the First World War (Cassell, 1970) and History of the Second World War contain much detailed information on casualties. The estimate of 50 million deaths in the Second World War includes some 20 million Soviet citizens and an estimated six million Jews and two to three million others killed in Nazi concentration camps. The estimate of ten million deaths in wars since 1945 is in common use at the United Nations and elsewhere.
The earliest occurrence of the phrase ‘balance of terror’ of which the author is aware is in a speech by Lester Pearson at San Francisco on 24 June 1955. Mr Pearson said then that ‘The balance of terror has succeeded the balance of power’. Churchill had earlier predicted that peace would become ‘the sturdy child of terror’.
See chapter 8, second section.
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© 1986 A.J.C. Edwards
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Edwards, A.J.C. (1986). The Balance of Terror. In: Nuclear Weapons, the Balance of Terror, the Quest for Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08131-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08131-8_1
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