Understanding the Imaginary War

Matthew Grant is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of EssexBenjamin Ziemann is Professor of Modern German History at the University of Sheffield

‘Understanding the Imaginary War is useful both as a historical tool, but also as a reminder that nuclear weapons still exist, and that nuclear war is still a very real possibility. If anything, the current political situation between Russia and the United States, and especially the inclusion of Article 27 in Russia’s 2014 Military Doctrine relating to the possibility of using nuclear weapons to respond to a conventional attack, shows that emotions felt during the Cold War still affect contemporary relations.’April Curtis‘The book’s fresh approach to the topic and wide range of perspectives will be welcomed by all with an interest in history, political science and cultural studies, and in particular by those of us interested in the Cold War and the history of nuclear weapons.’Dr Mattias Eken, University of St Andrews, Reviews in History‘The volume succeeds in providing a deeper understanding of the cultural responses to nuclear weapons and is an important entry in Cold War historiography, bridging the gap between political, cultural, psychological, and emotional interpretations of nuclear weapons.’Emily Gibbs, University of Liverpool, Journal of Contemporary History

• Introduction: The cold war as an imaginary war - Matthew Grant and Benjamin Ziemann1. The apocalyptic fiction: shaping the future in the cold war - Eva Horn 2. Building peace, fearing the apocalypse: Nuclear danger in Soviet cold war culture, 1945-91 - Miriam Dobson 3. Nuclear themes in American culture, 1945 to the present - Paul Boyer 4. The imaginative landscape of nuclear war in Britain, 1945-65 - Matthew Grant 5. German angst? Debating cold war anxieties in West Germany, 1945-90 - Benjamin Ziemann 6. After Hiroshima. Günther Anders and the history of anti-nuclear critique - Jason Dawsey 7. Hiroshima/Nagasaki, civil rights and anti-war protest in Japan's cold war - Ann Sheriff 8. Catholic anti-communism, the bomb and perceptions of apocalypse in West Germany and the USA, 1945-90 - Daniel Gerster9. 'The nuclear arms race is psychological at its roots.' Physicians and their therapies for the Cold War - Claudia Kemper 10. Imagining the apocalypse: nuclear winter in science and the world - Paul Rubinson 11. Images of nuclear war in U.S. government films from the early cold war - Lars Nowak Index