AQA GCSE History 8145
America, 1840–1895: Expansion and ConsolidationPeriod study
America, 1920–1973: Opportunity and InequalityPeriod study
Conflict and Tension Between East and West, 1945–1972Wider world depth
Conflict and Tension in Asia, 1950–1975Wider world depth
Conflict and Tension in the Gulf and Afghanistan, 1990–2009Wider world depth
Conflict and Tension: The First World War, 1894–1918Wider world depth
Conflict and Tension: The Inter-War Years, 1918–1939Wider world depth
Elizabethan England, c1568–1603British depth
Germany, 1890–1945: Democracy and DictatorshipPeriod study
Health and the People in Britain, c1000 to the Present DayThematic study
Medieval England: The Reign of Edward I, 1272–1307British depth
Migration, Empires and the People in Britain, c790 to the Present DayThematic study
Norman England, c1066–c1100British depth
Power and the People in Britain, c1170 to the Present DayThematic study
Restoration England, 1660–1685British depth
Russia, 1894–1945: Tsardom and CommunismPeriod study
Conflict and Tension Between East and West, 1945–1972
Military rivalries: the arms race and the space race
- 3 things to know
- Paper 1 section B
Overview
The arms race from the Soviet atomic bomb to the hydrogen bomb, mutually assured destruction, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and the space race from Sputnik and Gagarin to ICBMs, Polaris, Kennedy's Moon pledge and the Apollo 11 landing.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
When did the USSR break the American nuclear monopoly, and how quickly did the next stage follow?
What was meant by mutually assured destruction?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
What is an arms race?
Model answer
A competition in which each side builds more and better weapons because the other has done so, with neither daring to stop.
- 2
When did the USSR break the American nuclear monopoly, and how quickly did the next stage follow?
Model answer
It tested an atomic bomb in 1949; the USA tested a far more powerful hydrogen bomb in 1952 and the USSR had one the following year.
- 3
What was meant by mutually assured destruction?
Model answer
Neither side could attack first without being destroyed in the reply, so the weapons were held to prevent a war rather than to fight one.
- 4
When was NATO founded, and which countries set it up?
Model answer
In April 1949, by the USA, Canada, Britain, France and eight other western states.
- 5
What did the members of NATO commit themselves to?
Model answer
To treat an armed attack on any one of them as an attack on them all, and to defend one another with American forces stationed in Europe.
- 6
What event of 1955 provoked the founding of the Warsaw Pact?
Model answer
West Germany was rearmed and admitted to NATO, which the USSR saw as German soldiers being pointed east again only ten years after the war.
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