World War III in Popular Culture - 1960s: Expanding Popularity

1960s: Expanding Popularity

In the 1960s, media about the threat of nuclear world war gained wide popularity. According to Susan Sontag, these films struck people’s "imagination of disaster...in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself." A leading member of the 1960s anti-war movement, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan evoked the topic of WWIII thrice in his seminal The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". The 1968 Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, adapted to film in 1982 as Blade Runner, features as its setting an Earth having been damaged greatly by the radioactive fallout of a nuclear war termed "World War Terminus."

In 1964 three films about the threat of accidental nuclear war were released, Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe, and Seven Days in May. Their negative portrayal of nuclear defence prompted the United States Air Force to sponsor films such as A Gathering of Eagles to publicly address the potential dangers of nuclear defense.

Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy by Stanley Kubrick about the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Following a bizarre mental breakdown the C.O. of a SAC base orders the B-52 wing operating from his base to attack the Soviet Union. The title character, Dr. Strangelove, is a parody of a composite of Cold War figures, including Wernher von Braun, Henry Kissinger, and Herman Kahn. The secret code Operation DROPKICK, mentioned by George C. Scott's character, may be an oblique reference to Operation Dropshot.

The 1964 film Fail-Safe was adapted from a best-selling novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. In it, nuclear disaster is caused by a technological breakdown that mistakenly launches American bombers to attack the Soviet Union. In order to prove the mistake and placate the Soviets, thereby saving the world from nuclear war, the US President orders the destruction of New York after a US bomber succeeds in destroying Moscow. The film was made in a semi-documentary style, ending just as the explosion over New York City begins.

The War Game (1965), produced by Peter Watkins, deals with a fictional nuclear attack on Britain. This film won the Oscar for Best Documentary, but was withheld from broadcast by the BBC for two decades.