‘You and the Atom Bomb’: how George Orwell’s 1945 essay predicted the Cold War and nuclear proliferation

By Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Adjunct Professor, IE School of Humanities, IE University; California State University San Marcos

August 2025 marked the 80th anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just a month after the attacks, on 19 October 1945, George Orwell published an essay in the London Tribune, entitled “You and the Atom Bomb”. In it, he surmised what if “the great nations make a tacit agreement never to use the atomic bomb against one another?” He wrote that what would emerge is a “peace that is no peace”, and “a permanent state of ‘cold war’”, introducing…

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