Abstract
By 1949 atomic bombs were viewed in the United States through two contradictory perspectives. On the one hand they were seen as being particularly suitable for aggressors and unprovoked surprise attacks, and thus at variance with American constitutional and military practice. On the other hand they were also increasingly assumed to be, at least for the time, a valuable strategic asset. They offered an effective instrument for maintaining law and order in the post-war world, attractive because they were less expensive in terms of money, materials and manpower than conventional weapons, and, above all, because they were an American monopoly.
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Notes
- 1.
On the Soviet atom bomb project see Holloway, op. cit. For an early account, probably reflecting US intelligence sources, see Arnold Kramish, Atomic Energy in the Soviet Union (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1960).
- 2.
Jeffrey Richelson, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence From Nazi Germany To Iran And North Korea; (New York; W. W. Norton, 2007), 88–92; Michael S Goodman, Spying on the Nuclear Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Bill Burr, ed. U.S. Intelligence and the Detection of the First Soviet Nuclear Test (Washington, DC: National Security Archive, 2009), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb286/.
- 3.
Steven J. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945–2000 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), p. 21.
- 4.
Marc Trachtenberg, ‘A “Wasting Asset”: American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance, 1949–1954’, International Security, 13:3 (1988/89), pp. 5–49.
- 5.
Holloway, pp. 243–4.
- 6.
Charles Murphy, ‘The US as a bombing target’, Fortune (November 1953), p. 119.
- 7.
‘The Effect of Soviet Possession of Atomic Bombs on the Security of the United States’, Report by Joint Ad Hoc Committee, ORE 32–50, 9 June 1950. Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000258838.pdf.
- 8.
Le May comments as transcribed in Presentation by the Strategic Air Command, Commanders Conference United States Air Force, Ramey Air Force Base, 25–7 April 1950, pp. 225–7.
- 9.
The most detailed account of the H-bomb decision is found in Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, Atomic Shield: A History of the Atomic Energy Commission, Vol. II, 1947–1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). See also David Alan Rosenberg, ‘American Atomic Strategy and the Hydrogen Bomb Decision’, Journal of American History, 66:1 (June 1979), 62–87. For an early account see Warner R. Schilling ‘The H-Bomb decision: how to decide without actually choosing’, Political Science Quarterly LXXVI (March 1961). See also Herbert York, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller and the Superbomb (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976).
- 10.
The scientific story is told in Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (London: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
- 11.
On Oppenheimer see Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Vintage Books, 2006). On Teller see Istvan Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller (New York: Prometheus Books, 2010).
- 12.
Ken Young, ‘The Hydrogen Bomb, Lewis L. Strauss and the Writing of Nuclear History’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 36:6 (2013), 815–40.
- 13.
For an extensive discussion of the arguments for and against building the ‘Super’, see: Peter Galison and Barton Bernstein, ‘In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952–1954’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1989, pp. 267–347.
- 14.
GAC Report of October 30, 1949 (reprinted in York, The Advisors).
- 15.
Lilienthal, The Atomic Energy Years, pp. 628–9.
- 16.
Samuel F. Wells Jr., ‘Sounding the Tocsin: NSC-68 and the Soviet Threat’, International Security, IV:2 (Fall 1979), pp. 120–1.
- 17.
Galison and Bernstein, pp. 293, 300.
- 18.
Appendix A of Memorandum for the President by the United States Atomic Energy Commission, November 9, 1949, FRUS, 1949, National Security Affairs, Foreign Economic Policy, Vol. 1.
- 19.
York, The Advisors, p. 59.
- 20.
Galison and Bernstein. p. 304. Citation quoted here is Bradley to Secretary of Defense, ‘Request for comments on military views of members of General Advisory Committee’, 13 Jan 1950.
- 21.
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969), p. 349.
- 22.
Harry S Truman, Memoirs of Harry S. Truman: 1946–52, Years of Trial and Hope (New York, Doubleday, 1956), p. 308.
- 23.
Viner, ‘The implications of the atomic bomb’, op. cit., p. 53.
- 24.
Omar Bradley, ‘This Way Lies Peace’, Saturday Evening Post (15 October 1949).
- 25.
J. Kenneth Mansfield, Subject: Bernard Brodie on the Hydrogen Bomb Program, March 13, 1952.
- 26.
Cited in David Calingeart, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 11:2 (1988), p. 189.
- 27.
Scientific American, November 1951.
- 28.
A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, NSC-68 (14 April 1950). It is reprinted in Etzold and Gaddis, op. cit. See Paul Hammond ‘NSC-68: Prologue to Rearmament’, in Warner Schilling, Paul Hammond and Glenn Snyder, Strategy, Politics and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962); Samuel F. Wells, Jr., ‘Sounding the Tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat’, International Security, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 116–58.
- 29.
Calingeart, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War’; Conrad Crane, ‘To avert impending disaster: American military plans to use atomic weapons during the Korean War’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 23:2 (2000), pp. 72–88.
- 30.
Cited by Jones, who describes it as ‘understated’. After Hiroshima, p. 70.
- 31.
Crane, op. cit., p. 78.
- 32.
Jones, op. cit, p. 84. He provides many other examples of similar sentiments.
- 33.
Sergei N. Goncharov, John Wilson Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).
- 34.
Victor M. Gobarev, ‘Soviet Policy toward China: Developing Nuclear Weapons, 1949–1969’, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1999, pp. 7–9.
- 35.
David Alan Rosenberg, ‘U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, 1945 to 1950’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (May 1982), p. 26.
- 36.
See Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 319–20.
- 37.
See: Memorandum, ‘Discussion at the 145th Meeting of the National Security Council on Wednesday, May 20, 1953’, May 23, 1953.
- 38.
Clingaet, op. cit., p. 185.
- 39.
Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 37.
- 40.
Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO before the Korean War, April 1949–June 1950 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2013), p. 7.
- 41.
Robert Osgood, NATO: The Entangling Alliance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962).
- 42.
Phil Williams, The Senate and US Troops in Europe (London: Palgrave, 1985).
- 43.
Testimony of Secretary of State Acheson, Hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, Assignment of Ground Forces of the United States in the European Area (February 1951).
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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). Strategy for an Atomic Stalemate. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_6
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