Nuclear warfare throughout history: World War II [timeline]

With the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, the nature of military conflict was changed forever. The nuclear arms race that ensued between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated throughout the twentieth century, limited by “Deterrance,” a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In the timeline below, we trace the evolution of nuclear warfare and the role it played in World War II, with content pulled from Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation since 1945.

Featured image credit: TrinityColorLargeRestored by Jack Aeby of the Special Engineering Detachment, Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, 1945. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.