American leaders wanted enough nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union, but this proved ineffective as the two countries did not trust each other due to their opposing economic ideologies. The Soviets shocked the world by detonating their first atomic bomb in 1949, much sooner than Americans expected. They further demonstrated their capabilities by launching satellites in 1957 and 1959, concerning the U.S. as the Soviet Union closed the nuclear technology gap despite initially focusing on long-range inaccurate missiles.

2. • This happened because American leaders
would want to have enough nuclear weapons
to draw an argument from the soviet union
but this proved not very effective.
• They do not believe each other because they
both were world power and they were
competing for their views of (capitalism and
communism respectively) to be spread.

3. •
Because the American had dropped
the nuclear bomb in Japan , they
thought that the Soviet union
wouldn’t be able to make one , but
they dropped their first Soviet bomb
on august 29, 1949, shocking the
entire world.
• On October 4, 1957, the soviet union
showed the world that they are able
to reach any part of the world when
they launched their own satellite on
the 31 October 1959.
• The Soviet Union was extremely
concerned by these developments.
Although they had exploded their
first atomic weapon in 1949, they
were a long way behind the United
States in nuclear technology. They
had concentrated on producing large
missiles that could travel long
distances. However, these missiles
were inaccurate and their size made
them difficult to conceal.

5. http://youtu.be/OqBP
7RQvpxs