The Berlin blockade was the first nuclear crisis, and it gave new impetus to the nuclear competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb came to occupy a central role in United States military strategy, while the deployment of B-29s to Britain signified an American nuclear commitment to the defense of Western Europe.63 For the Soviet Union the Berlin blockade was not a nuclear crisis to the same degree. There were, however, several signs in 1948 that the American atomic threat was being taken more seriously.
