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The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-50
s/t: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-50
This book makes clear how, & why, after WWII American diplomats tried to make the atom bomb a 'winning weapon,' an absolute advantage in negotiations with the USSR.
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Hiroshima & after, the atomic bomb in diplomacy, 1945-46
The Atomic curtain, domestic & international consequences of atomic energy, 1945-47
Diplomacy & deterrence, the military dimension, 1945-50
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
This book makes clear how, & why, after WWII American diplomats tried to make the atom bomb a 'winning weapon,' an absolute advantage in negotiations with the USSR.
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Hiroshima & after, the atomic bomb in diplomacy, 1945-46
The Atomic curtain, domestic & international consequences of atomic energy, 1945-47
Diplomacy & deterrence, the military dimension, 1945-50
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
- GenresHistory
425 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 4, 2026
imagine being harry truman in fall 1945 like “huh I guess we should govern this bomb, shouldn’t we,” and then just proceeding to YOLO it
if you are reading this or some other history of baruch plan, 1945-1950 atomic diplomacy, pre-1949 atomic blitz OPLANing, etc., and trying to find somebody to root for, or at least somebody not to hate — probably lilienthal, who was repeatedly right even when others violently disagreed with him (and a tragic figure, brutally smeared by congress with lies supplied too gladly by groves). oppenheimer also did his darnedest in this stage — though he made some serious mistakes, like leaning too much on denaturing uranium and plutonium as a “safeguard” to prevent or at least delay their use in weapons, which was technically debunked as a method — and we all know how his story ended up too.
despite being so different from lilienthal (they were enemies at times), forrestal was also a sympathetic figure for me, being a realist about the dangers of the soviet union and the practical challenges of international control, while also being reasonable about the huge gaps in what air-atomic strategy could actually achieve in wartime, especially with the stockpiles circa the 40s/50s. he was a more complicated figure, and a bit too much of a brinkman for me, but he was early on some key game theory stuff (even if he didn’t know it), early on the inability of the bomb to totally displace the need for conventional forces, and early on the need for clear doctrine (at least internal to USG) and an actually functional wartime OPLAN, while the joint staff kept spinning their wheels on stuff that didn’t make sense. he ended up so distressed when caught between the services’ cries for more nuclear program approps, and truman’s refusal to budge on the austerity budget, that he couldn’t see a way out of his situation — armed with the weapon that was supposed to be “winning,” but that he didn’t actually think could defeat the USSR in the war that many thought was coming — and literally killed himself.
I didn’t exactly have fun reading this, but this or something like it should be mandatory reading for all “AI treaty” folks IMO. too many read Richard Rhodes and stop there, or read Dead Hand without winding back, but 1945-1950 was the real chance we had, and it’s sobering. everyone was asleep at the wheel and had a bunch of empirically false beliefs; those who were awake, wrote plans for suicidal strikes killing millions as the default war plan, without realizing that this almost certainly wouldn’t prevent a devastating conventional war that they still might not (lowkey probably wouldn’t?) win with the armaments they had; and baruch was dead in the water before it even hit the UN. the acheson-lilienthal plan will be the big “what if” for the rest of nuclear history. (you can find it on the internet, btw!)
finally: perhaps the creepiest part of this for me was the truman administration’s completely genuine belief that they could corner the world’s fissile material market to preserve their monopoly, with total refusal to update, even for big revelations like thorium. it was recognized early that maybe russia and/or eastern europe would have low-grade uranium ore the soviets could use, but the administration vaguely assumed it would be too hard to mine and enrich in quantity relative to what we were getting from the congo. this perceived supply chain chokepoint is a big part of why essentially everybody in USG — the manhattan project / murray hill, the services, the joint staff, the CIA, the white house — was wildly off about soviet A-bomb “timelines,” and completely shit themselves after the 1949 nuclear test. how devastatingly costly an assumption, resting on the shelf-life of a particular chokepoint. reminds me of something else!
FP
if you are reading this or some other history of baruch plan, 1945-1950 atomic diplomacy, pre-1949 atomic blitz OPLANing, etc., and trying to find somebody to root for, or at least somebody not to hate — probably lilienthal, who was repeatedly right even when others violently disagreed with him (and a tragic figure, brutally smeared by congress with lies supplied too gladly by groves). oppenheimer also did his darnedest in this stage — though he made some serious mistakes, like leaning too much on denaturing uranium and plutonium as a “safeguard” to prevent or at least delay their use in weapons, which was technically debunked as a method — and we all know how his story ended up too.
despite being so different from lilienthal (they were enemies at times), forrestal was also a sympathetic figure for me, being a realist about the dangers of the soviet union and the practical challenges of international control, while also being reasonable about the huge gaps in what air-atomic strategy could actually achieve in wartime, especially with the stockpiles circa the 40s/50s. he was a more complicated figure, and a bit too much of a brinkman for me, but he was early on some key game theory stuff (even if he didn’t know it), early on the inability of the bomb to totally displace the need for conventional forces, and early on the need for clear doctrine (at least internal to USG) and an actually functional wartime OPLAN, while the joint staff kept spinning their wheels on stuff that didn’t make sense. he ended up so distressed when caught between the services’ cries for more nuclear program approps, and truman’s refusal to budge on the austerity budget, that he couldn’t see a way out of his situation — armed with the weapon that was supposed to be “winning,” but that he didn’t actually think could defeat the USSR in the war that many thought was coming — and literally killed himself.
I didn’t exactly have fun reading this, but this or something like it should be mandatory reading for all “AI treaty” folks IMO. too many read Richard Rhodes and stop there, or read Dead Hand without winding back, but 1945-1950 was the real chance we had, and it’s sobering. everyone was asleep at the wheel and had a bunch of empirically false beliefs; those who were awake, wrote plans for suicidal strikes killing millions as the default war plan, without realizing that this almost certainly wouldn’t prevent a devastating conventional war that they still might not (lowkey probably wouldn’t?) win with the armaments they had; and baruch was dead in the water before it even hit the UN. the acheson-lilienthal plan will be the big “what if” for the rest of nuclear history. (you can find it on the internet, btw!)
finally: perhaps the creepiest part of this for me was the truman administration’s completely genuine belief that they could corner the world’s fissile material market to preserve their monopoly, with total refusal to update, even for big revelations like thorium. it was recognized early that maybe russia and/or eastern europe would have low-grade uranium ore the soviets could use, but the administration vaguely assumed it would be too hard to mine and enrich in quantity relative to what we were getting from the congo. this perceived supply chain chokepoint is a big part of why essentially everybody in USG — the manhattan project / murray hill, the services, the joint staff, the CIA, the white house — was wildly off about soviet A-bomb “timelines,” and completely shit themselves after the 1949 nuclear test. how devastatingly costly an assumption, resting on the shelf-life of a particular chokepoint. reminds me of something else!
FP
May 14, 2016
A dated but well-written history of how US policymakers viewed the fact that their country was the only one capable of deploying nuclear weapons in the years prior to losing that monopoly. The one thing that tends to grab your attention is how utterly unimaginative they could be.
Herken starts off with America’s post-World War II foreign policy and how the US used its atomic monopoly to gain certain diplomatic advantages (in the form of both threats and offers of nuclear cooperation) and how it was affected by the growing hostility between the US and USSR (when eventually the idea of cooperation became “monopoly and exclusion”) He also covers the debate over civilian vs. military control of the nuclear arsenal, and how the notion of international regulation became nixed by the Baruch plan (which Herken argues was more symbolic than substantive), and how even the British were sidelined (Herken argues that Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech was also a bid for a greater British role)
The rest of the book deals with military planning related to the Bomb from Hiroshima to about 1950 and how it was affected by interservice rivalry. Herken emphasizes how simple the plans tended to be; despite all the sterile language over “strategy,” the plans amounted to little more than Russia’s destruction, and US planners consistently refused to rule out the use of atomic weapons or the possibility of an American first strike, and the more the US nuclear arsenal expanded, the more expansive the target list grew. When the Soviets tested their own weapon, the US simply looked for a more powerful weapon rather than rethink the strategy. In fact, US military planners were so ignorant of the matter that they somehow lost track of how few atomic weapons the US even had.
A good book on the subject, and the sections on military strategy were great. The writing is fine if unremarkable, and the subheadings are all cryptic quotations that break up the flow of the narrative and sometimes distract. The book draws heavily on documentary sources, and none of the people introduced in the narrative ever come to life. Also, Herken often writes that this or that event was an important milestone in US nuclear strategy but never explains why (the Berlin airlift or the NATO treaty, for example)
Herken starts off with America’s post-World War II foreign policy and how the US used its atomic monopoly to gain certain diplomatic advantages (in the form of both threats and offers of nuclear cooperation) and how it was affected by the growing hostility between the US and USSR (when eventually the idea of cooperation became “monopoly and exclusion”) He also covers the debate over civilian vs. military control of the nuclear arsenal, and how the notion of international regulation became nixed by the Baruch plan (which Herken argues was more symbolic than substantive), and how even the British were sidelined (Herken argues that Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech was also a bid for a greater British role)
The rest of the book deals with military planning related to the Bomb from Hiroshima to about 1950 and how it was affected by interservice rivalry. Herken emphasizes how simple the plans tended to be; despite all the sterile language over “strategy,” the plans amounted to little more than Russia’s destruction, and US planners consistently refused to rule out the use of atomic weapons or the possibility of an American first strike, and the more the US nuclear arsenal expanded, the more expansive the target list grew. When the Soviets tested their own weapon, the US simply looked for a more powerful weapon rather than rethink the strategy. In fact, US military planners were so ignorant of the matter that they somehow lost track of how few atomic weapons the US even had.
A good book on the subject, and the sections on military strategy were great. The writing is fine if unremarkable, and the subheadings are all cryptic quotations that break up the flow of the narrative and sometimes distract. The book draws heavily on documentary sources, and none of the people introduced in the narrative ever come to life. Also, Herken often writes that this or that event was an important milestone in US nuclear strategy but never explains why (the Berlin airlift or the NATO treaty, for example)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews