Cold War, Apocalypse and Peaceful Atoms. Interpretations of Nuclear Energy in the British and West German Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movements, 1955-1964

Most environmental historians argue that an awareness of the dangers of nuclear energy emerged only during the 1970s. Conversely, they have noted a "blindness towards the apocalypse" (Günter Anders) during the 1950s and early 1960s. This article examines the perceptions of the dangers and possible benefits connected with nuclear energy within the protests against nuclear weapons in Britain and West Germany during the late 1950s and early 1960s in order to differentiate this assessment. Especially in the Federal Republic, discussions about the military use of nuclear energy prefigured the tropes which were to resurface in the environmental movements of the 1970s and 1980s. The civilian use of nuclear energy was, by contrast, increasingly seen as the harbinger of peace.