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Physicist Igor Kurchatov headed the development of the bomb that began in 1946. They used a "layer-cake" method developed by Andrei Sakharov. This bomb was an original design, unlike their atomic bomb. On August 12, 1953 the hydrogen bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site in northern Kazakhstan. The nuclear arms program was given first priority by Stalin due to the arms race. This helped Soviets bridge the gap between their nuclear powers. -
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The Soviet Union had control of East Berlin, and the United States and Britain had control of the West. Unable to drive out democracy, communist East Germany started building a wall between the East and West to keep people from leaving East Berlin since many had been fleeing. Those who continued to try and get over the wall were stopped and sometimes killed. It was a detente to separate the two opposing sides without violence. Many saw the wall as the only resolution other than war. -
President JFK had announced in 1961 that the US would send a man to the moon and fulfilled his promise when the Apollo 11 sent Neil Armstrong and his crew. They were the first people to land and walk on the moon. The US was behind the Soviet Union in the space race, with the Soviets already having both a satellite and a man in space. The Apollo missions began to try and reach the moon first. It was expensive but justified by the fact that they beat the Soviets.