Experts in the cold war. War experiences and peace conceptions of US-American physicists 1920-1963

The study is dedicated to the American elite of nuclear physicists, which explained after the second world war the possibilities of their science for war and peace. What induced their thinking and handling? The focus lies on the scientific shapings and war experiences of the first really international generation of physicists, which began in the 1920th years their career before many of their representatives had to fly from the NS regime from Europe and cooperated in the Manhattan project in the construction of the atomic bomb. These experiences the author refers to in order to get on the track of the explanations of the exper elite in the immediate afterwar time and in the cold war. How far their internationally and by actual war experiences shaped thinking about their own contribution as scientist to the national security - in the sense of discouragement or the cooperative conflict regulation - found its expression in the cold war, is drawn on different action levels of the participants from the Geneve conference ''Atoms for Peace'' of 1955 until the signing of the so-called Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.