Graduation Semester and Year

2013

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in History

Department

History

First Advisor

Joyce S Goldberg

Abstract

Prior to August 6, 1945, the end of the world had been an abstract concept left to the gods to enact via supernatural means. Yet on that day, humanity saw for the first time the actual mechanism whereby it might end the world. So it was that in the aftermath of Hiroshima, two diametrically opposed messages emerged to give Americans a framework in which to assimilate the advent of nuclear weaponry. The first, articulated by atomic scientists and other intellectuals, reasoned that the threat of nuclear annihilation meant that war must be abolished through the formation of a One World government and that concessions should be made to the Soviet Union rather than risk nuclear confrontation. The second, promoted by biblically literal Fundamentalists, believed that nuclear weaponry was actually the fulfillment of apocalyptic biblical prophesies that heralded the fast-approaching Second Coming of Christ and therefore One World designs and the communism of the Soviet Union should be fervently resisted because they represented Satanic institutions prophesied to emerge during the Last Days.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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