August 6 Hiroshima 1945

Cold War Literature Collection When War and Insanity were linked

Most Americans agreed with the purpose of the war The purpose of the US involvement with the war was to fight against tyranny and regimes that threatened the American way of life. Hitler's Tyrannical Rule led to the Establishment of Concentration Camps in Europe, http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/H/Holocaust.htm

The Atomic Bombs’ presence and its possible use by the Soviet Union (whom) we were engaged in a Cold War with brought anxiety.                                            Movies like this depicted what nuclear destruction would be like in the US

Many Americans adopted some element of the following US official's quip, “[IF you Don’t like America Either] dig in, die, or get out!"

"dig"--bomb shelters American Fall Out Shelter 1960,                                                        American Fall Out Shelter 1960, http://www.historywiz.com/armsrace.htm

"die"--(self explanatory) A Milder form of this was to tune out The rise in the prevalence of the Psychedelic Drug culture medicates anxieties

"get out“ Suburbs flourished the thought was the bombs are trained on the cities The Countryside Must still be safe, Right?

Anxiety Led to Paranoia As People began to fear The Invisible but threatening superpowers, they turned that fear on their neighbors. McCarthyism was a movement that sought to expose communist sympathizers in the United states Arthur Miller explored this ‘Witch Hunt” Like Time in history by using the Salem Witch Trials as a Metaphor in his play “The crucible” http://i.current.com/images/studio/asset/2006/10/27/494185_1300613730_400x300.jpg http://pods.binghamton.edu/~ccarpen/Miller.htm

Mutual Assured Destruction even "dig" and "get out" became moot because bombs had become so powerful.

1960s Vietnam War showed that Americans had begun even to question our purpose to fight those that indirectly threaten the American way of life? www.promotion.opb.org/ cambodia/cambodia.htm

War AND MADNESS LINKED Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 Was one of the first major texts to Link War and Madness in Literature note the synopsis Catch 22 a bout a third of the way down This page. http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/dd/95/cdf3024128a0fcec0b4cf010.L.jpg

War and madness inextricably linked. The Literature of the 60s and 70s reflected these questions and Fears