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The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy

David E. Hoffman (Goodreads Author)

4.14 · Rating details · 4,156 ratings · 361 reviews

The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union—a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today.

The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill. In the last half of the twentieth century the two superpowe The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union—a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today.

The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill. In the last half of the twentieth century the two superpowers had perfected the science of mass destruction and possessed nuclear weapons with the combined power of a million Hiroshimas. What’s more, a Soviet biological warfare machine was ready to produce bacteria and viruses to sicken and kill millions. In The Dead Hand, a thrilling narrative history drawing on new archives and original research and interviews, David E. Hoffman reveals how presidents, scientists, diplomats, soldiers, and spies confronted the danger and changed the course of history.

The Dead Hand captures the inside story in both the United States and the Soviet Union, giving us an urgent and intimate account of the last decade of the arms race. With access to secret Kremlin documents, Hoffman chronicles Soviet internal deliberations that have long been hidden. He reveals that weapons designers in 1985 laid a massive “Star Wars” program on the desk of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to compete with President Reagan, but Gorbachev refused to build it. He unmasks the cover-up of the Soviet biological weapons program. He tells the exclusive story of one Soviet microbiologist’s quest to build a genetically engineered super-germ—it would cause a mild illness, a deceptive recovery, then a second, fatal attack. And he details the frightening history of the Doomsday Machine, known as the Dead Hand, which would launch a retaliatory nuclear strike if the Soviet leaders were wiped out.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the dangers remained. Soon rickety trains were hauling unsecured nuclear warheads across the Russian steppe; tons of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium lay unguarded in warehouses; and microbiologists and bomb designers were scavenging for food to feed their families.

The Dead Hand offers fresh and startling insights into Reagan and Gorbachev, the two key figures of the end of the Cold War, and draws colorful, unforgettable portraits of many others who struggled, often valiantly, to save the world from the most terrifying weapons known to man. ...more

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Hardcover, 592 pages

Published September 22nd 2009 by Doubleday

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Oct 06, 2009 Matt rated it liked it

Shelves: nuclear-war

I'll admit I picked this up because I am a fan of nuke porn. I grew up reading the surprisingly subtle On the Beach, the over-written, over-sexed The Last Ship, and the ridiculous Ian Slater series WW III. On television, I was thrilled by The Day After (I've never seen Steve Guttenberg the same, since). I even downloaded On Thermonuclear War, just to see what precautions I could take (step one: don't get into a thermonuclear war; there is no step two).

Some months ago, I read an article on the o ...more

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Jun 17, 2011 Dervishi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was a fantastic recounting of the Cold War. It was extremely factual, and did well in citing all of the sources for each piece of information and story that made this book non-fiction.

I always found the Cold War as this mysterious time period where we somehow miraculously avoided nuclear annihilation by coming up with Mutually Assured Destruction. However, Hoffman really gives us an in-depth and intimate look at how MAD came about. I was left intrigued as I learned about what the Dead ...more

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Apr 15, 2020 Dan rated it really liked it

Shelves: pulitzer-non-fiction

Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman

9/14/82 Teller explained his vision of an X-ray laser that he called Excalibur. An effective missile defense would turn mutual assured destruction on its head, Teller said — and lead to “assured survival” instead. Reagan asked him if an American antimissile system could really be made to work. “We have good evidence that it would,” Teller replied .... “He’s pushing an exciting idea,” Reagan wrote in his diary that night, “the nuclear weapons can be used in connection Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman

9/14/82 Teller explained his vision of an X-ray laser that he called Excalibur. An effective missile defense would turn mutual assured destruction on its head, Teller said — and lead to “assured survival” instead. Reagan asked him if an American antimissile system could really be made to work. “We have good evidence that it would,” Teller replied .... “He’s pushing an exciting idea,” Reagan wrote in his diary that night, “the nuclear weapons can be used in connection with lasers to be non-destructive except as used to intercept and destroy enemy missiles above the earth.” Reagan may not have grasped that Teller was talking about setting off nuclear weapons in outer space.

The Dead Hand is a Pulitzer winning book from 2009 that covers the Cold War period between 1980 and 1992. The title comes from a chilling top secret program called “The Dead Hand” that the Soviets had at the ready. It could assure nuclear destruction of the U.S. even if all of the Soviet leaders and their cities were attacked and blown up first. The system which was briefly in place used automated sensors and timers that could launch Soviet nuclear strikes even days and weeks after the first strikes. The Gorbachev administration put an end to the Dead Hand program in 1986 fearing an accidental launch and questioning the ethical basis for such a program to exist.

The vast majority of the book however focuses on the secret nuclear, biological and chemical programs of the Soviet Union. And it also focuses on the nuclear weapons program in the U.S. and the ill-conceived Strategic Defensive Initiative or Star Wars” initiative promoted by Reagan. SDI had little basis in science and also had a multi-decade time horizon that was unlikely to survive so many different administrations. The program also scared the devil out of the Soviet leaders who saw the defense shield as a crazy escalation in the nuclear arms race.

Gorbachev and Reagan play outsized roles in this book. They discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in several summits with one another. Each leader had a genuine desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons but were wary of being rolled during negotiations. At the Reykjavik summit in 1986 they nearly agreed to complete de-nuclearization by 2000 but Reagan refused to agree to a ban on research and development associated with SDI.

Sad isn’t it? How the world could be a safer place today if Reagan had given up the only item on the list that was an unrealizable pipe dream. And many scientists and national security experts in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union knew that it was. Ironically many of these same experts on both sides were also relieved when the agreement fell through — since they had deep distrust that the other side would even honor such an agreement.

The research and writing in this book is excellent. The last third of the book 1988-1992, after Reagan’s presidency, was not nearly as great however. Eventually Gorbachev’s presidency began to fail and the Soviet Union fell apart and the energy of the narrative petered out with it. This might not be the fault of the author but perhaps the book might have been better if it had ended with Reagan’s departure.

4 stars. Most of the book was five star material and I am glad to have read it. If nothing this book makes one realize how important it is for the world leaders to discuss de-proliferation today because there could always be an accident or an ill fated SDI project to bring the two biggest powers to nuclear war. ...more

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Jan 26, 2016 Ruth rated it really liked it

I thought this book would likely be boring; but no. Hoffman starts with a bang and generally kept me turning the pages. I did not remember all the Russian names, but I didn't have to, as some clue was inserted to jog my memory if the name returned. I have to say now, before I forget, that the book left me with a lingering question, which I mentally asked over and over as the book drew to a close. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RABBITS? There was this lovely scientist living in some remote area with his wi ...more

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Dec 16, 2012 Chad Sayban rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The second half of the twentieth century will always be defined by what became known as The Cold War. Born out of the distrust between the major allied powers in the Second World War, the standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States not only gave shape to the modern world, it also created two weapons building programs unrivaled in history. Ultra secret programs that produced weapons that are too horrifying to imagine and created consequences for those who chose to create them. And whi The second half of the twentieth century will always be defined by what became known as The Cold War. Born out of the distrust between the major allied powers in the Second World War, the standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States not only gave shape to the modern world, it also created two weapons building programs unrivaled in history. Ultra secret programs that produced weapons that are too horrifying to imagine and created consequences for those who chose to create them. And while those weapons were never actually employed in the war that luckily never happened, it wasn’t for lack of trying. And even now, the shadow of those military programs lives on in spite of the end of the Soviet Union. In fact, things might be more dangerous now than they were at the height of the Cold War.

David Hoffman’s inside look at the Cold War arms race and its consequences is in a word…frightening! Those of us who grew up in that time remember the fear that pervaded us – that one day we would wake up to cities being incinerated by nuclear warheads and that would be the end of that. However, until I read. The Dead Hand, I didn’t really appreciate just how close to the brink of World War III we came. Forget the Cuban Missile Crisis. We never came closer to calamity than during a few weeks in 1983 – and few knew anything about it until decades later.

The Dead Hand goes far beyond simply documenting how weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological) shaped policy between the superpowers. It describes just how perilously close we came at several points to all out Armageddon. Hoffman provides a wealth of information from sources on all sides of the Cold War. Even more chilling is how even today we are haunted by the legacy of destructive arsenals even though the two primary combatants no longer have a beef with each other. The industry of the two superpowers are now the deadly tools that rough states and terrorists would love to grab a hold of…and just one would alter our world forever.

That is not to say The Dead Hand is perfect. At times, Hoffman’s writing becomes a bit repetitive, at other times he drones on about minor things. However, the overall portrait he paints is both thoughtful and chilling. Hoffman doesn’t end with a litany of conclusions or things that need to be done. Ultimately, there are no easy answers to the world we have built other than a need to be vigilant about allowing paranoia and fear to push into acting in a devastating way. The tools of our protection can become the instruments of our destruction.

The Dead Hand is a must read for anyone who lived through the anxiety of the Cold War or wants to know what threatens our way of life today. The Cold War might be over, but the threats to humanity still remain. Well written…and frankly unnerving.
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Mar 24, 2013 Ed rated it really liked it

A chilling account of how close the world came to nuclear catastrophe during the Cold War and also a fascinating account of how the Cold War ended. Very interesting on the dynamics of the Reagan-Gorbachev relationship and also the whole parallel worlds of the US and Soviet Union and their perceptions of each other. Most worryingly it has details of the appalling biological weapons programs the Soviets pursued right up to the end and beyond of the Cold War in contravention of treaties they had si ...more

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Dec 26, 2020 Michael Burnam-Fink rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020, history, war

The Dead Hand is an account of Soviet biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons through the end of the Cold War, and how these weapons drove superpower politics, that manages to be sprawling without being comprehensive. The many interesting moments add up to less than the sum of their parts.

One chain is Biopreparat, the Soviet agency in charge of biological warfare. Biopreparat spent billions of rubles weaponizing anthrax, plague, smallpox, and a host of other diseases. There was infrastructure The Dead Hand is an account of Soviet biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons through the end of the Cold War, and how these weapons drove superpower politics, that manages to be sprawling without being comprehensive. The many interesting moments add up to less than the sum of their parts.

One chain is Biopreparat, the Soviet agency in charge of biological warfare. Biopreparat spent billions of rubles weaponizing anthrax, plague, smallpox, and a host of other diseases. There was infrastructure to produce plagues to kill nations. Accidental discharges from weapons labs sickened and killed Soviet citizens. And since biological weapons were banned by a treaty the Soviet's were party to, the whole thing was officially denied for decades. Most of what we know comes from defectors, including the memoirs of scientist Ken Alibek.

Another front was the dream of Reagan and Gorbachev to reduce nuclear arsenals. Mutually Assured Destruction kept the fragile peace of the Cold War, with the risk that the slightest accident could end the world. Some classes of weapons were worse than others. The Pershing II intermediate range missile could hit Moscow in less than five minutes, opening the possibility of a decapitation strike against Soviet leadership. Against this, the Soviet's deployed a system called Dead Hand, a semi-automatic response, which in a grim parody of Dr. Strangelove, which centered on a similar automatic response, was kept secret.

Hoffman doesn't get into the grimy details of the technology, preferring instead a diplomatic history of negotiations between the superpowers. At several points, efforts which might have eliminated nuclear weapons foundered because Reagan wanted to keep the Strategic Defense Initiative. In Reagan's mind, this was a shield to protect the world from missiles. Pragmatically, it was a way to spend billions trying to prove Edward Teller's thesis that the H-bomb was good for something.

The Dead Hand is frustrating, because it brushes up against some key issues in the technology and logic of nuclear weapons which are being forgotten as the Cold War fades from memory. MAD relies on the assumption that both parties are capable and willing to respond to a nuclear attack with one of their own. This requires a chain of command which will always drop the bomb when properly ordered to, from the supreme commander down to a junior officer carrying out the actual mechanism of delivery, and will never do so under any other circumstances. Orchestrating this always/never duality is a terrifying problem in safety, and one discussed in the American context in Schlosser's Command and Control. Hoffman doesn't really get at the Soviet solutions to the same problems, or lack thereof, instead focusing on an artificial line of 'semi-automated retaliation'. The basic problem, that a relatively junior and underinformed person in charge of a mobile rocket system, ballistic missile submarine, or alert bomber can trigger nuclear apocalypse, is present in both systems.

The book is redeemed by a terrifying coda about the 90s. The Soviet WMD system was sustained by the full force of the police state, and when the USSR fell, there were thousands of sites and scientists now without support. Iran and North Korea tried to hire specialists in rockets and biological warfare. Plutonium weapon cores and enriched uranium ingots were stored in shoddily maintained facilities guarded by starving soldiers. It is a wonder that proliferation in the 90s did not end with some kind of horrific incident.

The Dead Hand tries to straddle two world: a technical focus on the actual Evil Empire of an autonomous military industrial complex procuring tremendously expensive weapons that will never be used; and the collapses of the Soviet Union as a social and political entity, and manages to do neither full justice. But the partial history is still engaging, and worth reading. ...more

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Jun 06, 2017 Frank Stein rated it really liked it

Just a few decades later, it's hard to imagine how humanity spent so long living on the nuclear brink. Yet, throughout the Cold War, presidents, politicians, and generals in the United States and Soviet Union spent a good chunk of their time thinking about the "unthinkable," how to end billions of human lives. David Hoffman's book, although overlong and often circuitous, shows us how close we were to destruction, and why we decided to step back from the edge.

As Ronald Reagan remembered in his me Just a few decades later, it's hard to imagine how humanity spent so long living on the nuclear brink. Yet, throughout the Cold War, presidents, politicians, and generals in the United States and Soviet Union spent a good chunk of their time thinking about the "unthinkable," how to end billions of human lives. David Hoffman's book, although overlong and often circuitous, shows us how close we were to destruction, and why we decided to step back from the edge.

As Ronald Reagan remembered in his memoir, during his presidency he carried no wallet or money, "no keys in my pockets - only secret codes that were capable of bringing about the annihilation of much of the world as we know it." Since Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. Presidents have been shadowed at all times by aides with a "nuclear football," a briefcase containing the launch codes and targets for nuclear attack. The increased speed of nuclear missiles, however, meant Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had to confront the possibility these codes could be used in minutes. The Soviet intermediate range SS-N-18's placed in Europe in 1978 threatened to blow up that continent in five or six minutes, while the Pershing missiles placed there in response in 1983 threatened Moscow in the same time period. Both sides worried about what to do if they could not communicate to launch in time, and became obsessed with command and control channels. The Russians created a semi-"dead hand" nuclear system, whereby a communications missile would launch after a nuclear strike and send codes out to all silos to fire when ready. The world was on hair-trigger alert for years.

Reagan thought he had found a way out, comprehensive missile defense. One revelation from the book is just how important Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars," was in the superpower standoff in the 1980s. After Reagan's assistant Martin Anderson, his friend Karl Bendetsen, and the scientist Edward Teller all suggested to Reagan that he should propose a defense against nuclear attack, Reagan announced the idea to the world on March 23, 1983, against the advice of almost all his Cabinet. The Soviets became obsessed with the danger it posed to their retaliation capability, even though it remained no more than a drawing board plan. One KGB agent estimated that 40% of the info coming across his desk in that time had to do with missile defense. Ending the SDI was also the main stumbling block between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in negotiating what each secretly longed for, the end of nuclear weapons.

Yet by 1987, Gorbachev and Reagan negotiated an accord taking the intermediate missiles out of Europe. By 1990 the Soviet economy was collapsing so fast that both sides engaged in an arms race in reverse, deactivating submarines and missiles and planes by the thousands, and, for the Soviet Union, finally winding down the extensive biological weapons complex they had illegally kept. Soon, the US began spending billions not to build weapons but to prevent Soviet weapons and scientists from falling into the wrong hands. U.S. inspectors found purified uranium stacked in buckets in unlocked warehouses, or dropped about the floor in empty office buildings. Soviet trains to take weapons back from the old Soviet satellite countries had missiles tied down with wire and sticking out of the sides of the cars. It was a precarious time, and Hoffman makes clear that despite American efforts under the Nunn-Lugar Act to safeguard it, some of the Soviet arsenal probably got away.

The greater Cold War terror did end. By 1991, George H.W. Bush could ask his staff if nuclear football could stop trailing him everywhere, but they convinced him against it. The football still trails the President today. It is a perfect metaphor for what Hoffman calls the "Dead Hand," the continued danger, fear, and destruction that remains from the Cold War arms race, which still threatens much of our lives, even when the creators of the race have long passed. ...more

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Apr 26, 2010 Kelly rated it liked it

"The Dead Hand" covers enormous swaths of narrative terrain with an exceedingly narrow focus. After briefly introducing Soviet forays into biological and chemical warfare in the late 1970s, Hoffman commences with a retelling of the political and diplomatic bullet points between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The central concern of this story is the struggle of both superpowers to reduce or eliminate their respective stockpiles of nuclear weapons, with a subplot devoted to the aforem ...more

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Apr 21, 2012 Gail rated it really liked it

The Cold War seems both so recent and so long ago. This book brought back memories of the day to day events and the feelings they engendered. It was a fascinating summary of the diplomacy that brought down Communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. The back and forth of arms negotiations which did result in a reduction of nuclear weapons were revealing. Gorbachev come across as the major hero (at least to me) for being willing to make major changes in his system of government, though he s ...more

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Jun 11, 2017 Debbie rated it really liked it

Shelves: pulitzer-nonfiction, health, yz-audio, military, politics, spies, science, zy2017-pulitzer-challenge, social-commentary, technology

Incredible story of the history of the Cold War, including how the world almost came to war over a mistake. "Dead hand" refers to the idea of having automated systems determine the efficacy and need for initiating a retaliatory strike on an enemy prior to the arrival of the enemy's already launched attack systems. The book also discusses the Soviet Union's illegal bio-weapons research and development. The leaders of that country were convinced the US was doing it, so the Soviet Union needed to a ...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Nick Black rated it liked it

Shelves: oppenheimania

Great reporting and research -- I'd barely heard of the Biopreparat, despite The Doomsday Men's emphasis on biochem (particularly Shirō Ishii's Unit 731). Pretty crappy writing, though. The whole thing has a definite air of being hustled together on a bunch of adderall. ...more

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Jan 18, 2013 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio, history

Awesome recounting of the end of the cold war. From Reagan through Yelstin. Reagan come across as a hero. Gates & Snowcroft come off as kind of tools.

The sections on the biological weapons of the Soviets are really wild & scary.

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Jul 13, 2017 Katy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: pulitzer-nonfiction-2017, pulitzers-nonfiction

This is a very frightening book with it pointing out all that we have not known and what we don't know at present. The Cold War may be over, but the weapons still remain and so do those who wish to wage war. ...more

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Mar 13, 2019 Abhi Gupte rated it really liked it

What an explosive book!! I had read in magazines and seen in movies the scare of mutual assured destruction and Russian proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons; but the details elucidated by Hoffman in the "Dead Hand" sent shivers down my spine. He describes the mind-numbing mechanics of the management of these Weapons of Mass Destruction (I know that's a loaded term post-Iraq but it really deserves to be used here). The cognitive dissonance of both the leaders and the peoples of the two ...more

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May 19, 2020 Ron Willoughby rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The only thing more mind-boggling than our proximity to self destruction during the Cold War has to be our refusal to speak with honesty of mistakes made and evil plans undertaken. I say evil because what other word could be used for a program of biological annihilation intended as the follow-up to nuclear first strike.

David Hoffman has written an excellent book detailing so much of what transpired on the Soviet side of the Cold War regarding Nuclear, Chemical and Biological weapons of mass des ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Andrew Tollemache rated it really liked it

A riveting book that pursues a parallel set of narratives centered around the WMD programs of the Soviet Union and the 1980s strategic weapons negotiations between Gorbachev and Reagan. While both are interesting, it is the discussion of the Soviet's biological weapons program that is the most haunting. Even though both the US and the USSR signed the 1972 treaty outlawing the use of and development of bio weapons, the Soviets covertly pursued a very aggressive bio weapons program that developed ...more

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Jun 02, 2012 Ushan rated it liked it

Shelves: nuclear-weapons, cold-war

This is a conventional narrative history of the final stages of the Cold War and its end and aftermath, with an emphasis on weapons on mass destruction, mostly focusing on the Soviet Union and Russia, which is not surprising given that Hoffman was the Moscow bureau chief of the Washington Post in the 1990s. The same topics are mostly covered in the relevant chapters of Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly and Twilight of the Bombs. One topic Hoffman discusses at length and Rhodes doesn't is the So This is a conventional narrative history of the final stages of the Cold War and its end and aftermath, with an emphasis on weapons on mass destruction, mostly focusing on the Soviet Union and Russia, which is not surprising given that Hoffman was the Moscow bureau chief of the Washington Post in the 1990s. The same topics are mostly covered in the relevant chapters of Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly and Twilight of the Bombs. One topic Hoffman discusses at length and Rhodes doesn't is the Soviet biological weapons program. The belligerent in World War II with the most advanced program of biological warfare was Japan, which experimented on live Allied POWs and Chinese civilians. After the war both the Americans and the Soviets availed themselves of Japanese germ warfare expertise, just as they did with German rocketry. The American program was terminated in 1969 by President Richard Nixon; when speechwriter William Safire asked Nixon whether the United States should retain a few germs as a deterrent, Nixon answered, "If somebody uses germs on us, we’ll nuke 'em." Great Britain terminated its program in 1956. The Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain all signed the 1972 convention outlawing biological weapons. However, the convention did not include an effective regime of inspections, so the Soviet Union cheated: tens of thousands of Soviet scientists and technicians worked on weaponized anthrax, smallpox, the Marburg virus and more, genetically engineering the germs to be more effective and resistant to medicine, brewing enough of the poisons in enormous stainless-steel vats to kill the humanity many times over. This was no deterrent: how can something be a deterrent if its existence is a state secret? In Sverdlovsk in 1979, anthrax spores leaked from a factory, killing about 100 people; when the rumors of this found their way to the West, Soviet scientists lied to their Western colleagues that the epidemic was caused by people eating tainted meat; the truth was only acknowledged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The extent of the program was revealed to the West in 1989, when the director of an institute that worked on spraying plague germs from a low-flying cruise missile went to France to sign a contract for lab equipment. He defected to Great Britain and told all he knew; the West hushed it up lest the news of it harms Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of New Thinking. The defector called the Canadian embassy first because he was afraid that if he were to go to the United States or Great Britain, he would be forced to work on these countries' germ warfare programs; he and his colleagues did not believe that these programs did not exist. The Canadian embassy gave him a cold shoulder but the British one was more responsive.

The title of the book comes from a late Soviet second-strike nuclear command-and-control system called the Perimeter. If a Pershing II ballistic missile had hit the Kremlin and killed Konstantin Chernenko and the rest of Soviet leadership before they had time to react to its launch, several junior officers in a bunker would check that a nuclear attack had taken place and normal communication links had been severed, and launch a special rocket with a radio transmitter in place of a warhead. The transmitter would transmit commands for a retaliation strike, which would cause nuclear-tipped missiles to automatically launch. The officers would be analogous to the twitching fingers of a dead hand; hence the title of the book. This is analogous to the Doomsday Machine from the film "Dr. Strangelove". A character in the film says, "The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!" The Perimeter, however, was secret until the fall of the Soviet Union. The film is black comedy, but the book is nonfiction! ...more

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Nov 24, 2013 Raj Agrawal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: saass-books

This is a book I’ll definitely come back to. I’ve never gravitated toward history books, but this one reads like a novel – but “you can’t make this stuff up.” Hoffman tells the story of the major personalities involved in nuclear deterrence, especially during the Reagan and Gorbachev years. Hoffman shifts some of the emphasis off of Reagan’s effectiveness, and shares credit for the end of the Cold War with Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s genius, ability to shape information, and his apparent concerns wit ...more

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Feb 26, 2011 Glenn Hyman rated it it was amazing

Excellent book! The cold war is very much still with us. Still, Americans or Russians could send up their missiles and really the only possible responses are massive retaliation and doing nothing. I must say that I understand a little bit better the motivation of Ronald Reagan. He could not believe that if the Russians were to send up their missiles, there is not really much that we can do. That was behind the whole Star Wars thing. He wanted some way to protect us from a Soviet first strike, fo ...more

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Mar 02, 2018 Derek rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book was disappointing to me for several reasons. First, the titular doomsday machine is the subject of significantly less than a quarter of the book. Biological and Chemical weapons and arms control summits are the majority focus of the book. Chemical and biological weapons are definitely scary, but I was looking for nuclear terror instead. Secondly, the author treats Reagan without an ounce of criticism. His lofty speeches and contemplative letters are treated as if they are the only expr ...more

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Jan 31, 2020 Cav rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: military, history, politics, russia

This was an OK read. Not bad, but not great, either.
"The Dead Hand" spends most of its time on a very detailed back-and-forth account of the relationship and negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev, for what seemed like more time than it was worth. For such a long book (audio book was >20hrs long), it could have included a background about the Cold War and its early stages, which was what I was expecting.
Author David E. Hoffman praises Mikhail Gorbachev for his role in the de-escalation and d ...more

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Feb 13, 2014 Eric rated it it was amazing

Incredible book! An absolute must read for sure. Presents enough well researched background to create significant concern about the possibility both weaponized BW/CW stocks remain in Russia and the expertise/capability remains to make more. With Putin's actions over the last decade, it is clear the world has much to be concerned about with respect to the future actions of the Russian Federation. ...more

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Jan 14, 2017 Ying Zu rated it did not like it

Interesting recount of the cold war history, but the narrative is overly skewed as if every minute American actions during that horrible span of tension are automatically justified due to their moral superiority or some mysterious yet boundless love for humanity as a whole. Given up reading at around 90% mark, the storyline turns very pale after the soviet meltdown. Overall not recommended, wish I had spent the time reading something else.

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May 04, 2015 Bob rated it really liked it

Shelves: war, history

The Cold War is over, we no longer have nuclear attack drills in schools, so all's well. Right?

Wrong. Way wrong. Turns out the Soviets were developing some seriously dangerous biological weapons, and who knows where this technology has subsequently found a home. Chances are good that some really bad people now have this. ...more

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Feb 28, 2017 John rated it really liked it

How are any of us alive?

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Jan 09, 2019 Bill Weaver rated it it was ok

The Dead Hand: the Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, despite that lengthy title, won the Pulitzer. I thought it'd be a good follow up to the Making of the Atomic Bomb. Certainly it is different nonfiction. The Atomic Bomb book couldn't been written by a robot: it was just a chronological, objective retelling of events. The Dead Hand, on the other hand, is investigative journalism (or history?) and offers interpretation and opinion. Unfortunately, this book was offe ...more

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Dec 09, 2020 Niall rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

The Dead Hand is a dense, gripping and incredibly well sourced history of the Cold War arms race between the US and Russia. Hoffman expertly details the construction and implementation of what are two rival doomsday machines that are designed for maximum damage and hair-trigger automation. In addition to the massive arsenal of nukes pointed at each other and on constant stand-by for launch there were incredible amounts of chemical weapons and biological weapons also on stand-by, with horrific gr The Dead Hand is a dense, gripping and incredibly well sourced history of the Cold War arms race between the US and Russia. Hoffman expertly details the construction and implementation of what are two rival doomsday machines that are designed for maximum damage and hair-trigger automation. In addition to the massive arsenal of nukes pointed at each other and on constant stand-by for launch there were incredible amounts of chemical weapons and biological weapons also on stand-by, with horrific groundbreaking research being done by Soviet scientists. As an example: the Russians had discovered a way to manipulate small pox to ensure that if a bio-weapon was used, the victims (if they recovered from the initial disease) would have their nervous system attacked by their immune system two weeks later - a 100% fatality rate in other words. Similarly the Russians developed a nerve gas called novichok which is so deadly all it required was a single drop to kill someone in 15 minutes. They had over a million litres of it at the ready. The Russians also successfully developed a near automated nuclear launch system called "Perimeter" that would see a computerized missile launch and communicate with the nuclear arsenal to attack as it flew towards the US. It was implemented for use near the end of the Cold War. An nuclear holocaust was nearly unleashed when Russian radar thought a flock of geese were missiles coming from the US.

The specific details of the sheer amount of violent weaponry and the insane automation created by both the US and the Russians is only a portion of what's covered by Hoffman. He does a fantastic job of illustrating how high risk the collapse of the Soviet Union was for the world as nukes, chemical and biological weapons were left completely unguarded, not tracked by any official documents and left totally vulnerable to criminals or nations looking to gain an edge in warfare. There are weapons grade uranium left in buckets, weaponized anthrax buried in dirt and fissile material laying around under parking lots and in abandoned closed cities. Nuclear physicists were being paid $15.00/month when the collapse took place. Some were paid in eggs and sugar, others with vacuums which they then had to sell to earn money. One scientist working on bio-weapons ended up having to eat the test animals he had for experiments in order to feed his family. Iran and North Korea pounced on this weakness, offering scientists money to provide insight on weapons of mass destruction. The sudden availability of weapons, materials and knowledge to the highest bidder was yet another red alert threat and consequence of creating these dueling doomsday machines. The way Hoffman tells it, we got incredibly lucky not to have a variety of madmen with these weapons given how easy they were to obtain. The details of the US scrambling to control this situation is equally thrilling and harrowing.

I thought the book was a little fat in the middle section where Hoffman (albeit impressively) details every little bit of correspondence and opinions of Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev, the Soviet politburo and various public servants as arms control talks begin to ramp up. By what felt like the fifteenth time Reagan and Gorbachev have communication or correspondence on SDI (aka the "Star Wars" program) with neither side understanding the other, I was ready to move on. But Hoffman got everything back on track with the details and dangers of the Soviet collapse - that was pulse pounding stuff.

The Dead Hand has two clear lessons from the arms race that defined the Cold War. First, that simple communication and mature diplomacy should be the norm for foreign relations (especially when WMDs are involved). Due to mistrust and lack of dialogue, there were constant misunderstandings and escalations that could have easily caused an apocalypse. The second lesson comes in the form of a cautionary tale for nations who spend the majority of their resources on the military industrial complex rather than investing it in their own people. Following this path leads to ruin - the US should take note of this.

A final aside: The Dead Hand is an all-time book title. I just wanted to get that in there somewhere. ...more

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May 13, 2014 Steve Smits rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This amazing and, in many respects, chilling book is an account of the winding down of the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is amazing because of the interplay on nuclear arms control between the US leadership, principally Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet leaders following Brezhnev. Reagan was sincerely repulsed by the philosophy and practices of communism and his tough talk was an honest expression of his views on the so-called “Evil Empire”. At the same time, a This amazing and, in many respects, chilling book is an account of the winding down of the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is amazing because of the interplay on nuclear arms control between the US leadership, principally Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet leaders following Brezhnev. Reagan was sincerely repulsed by the philosophy and practices of communism and his tough talk was an honest expression of his views on the so-called “Evil Empire”. At the same time, and this isn’t so widely known, he was genuinely driven by the idea that the world could be rid of nuclear weapons. His disarmament overtures to the Soviets were bold, usually counter to the advice of his civilian and military advisors, and came remarkably close to succeeding.

Against this intention, however, were his constant provocative anti-Soviet public statements that could be legitimately received as antagonistic, even threatening. The story is chilling because of circumstances in the early 1980’s where misperceptions and the response to those brought us to the brink of an actual nuclear exchange. Reagan’s openly hostile demeanor toward the Soviets brought their leaders (a succession of old guard hacks – Andropov and Chernenko) to believe that the United States was planning a first-strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Their level of obsession reached a state of paranoia. They surmised that the US would first take out the leadership through an all-out attack with its nuclear arsenal. This led to devising a command and control protocol that would allow a launch command to be sent without the real-time authorization of the top leaders – a semi-automatic launch command to the missile officers at the silos, hence the “dead hand” that would in effect pull the nuclear trigger. One thing is clear: the Soviets felt genuinely, if erroneously, threatened about the West’s intentions. While they were not reckless about their own use of nuclear weapons, a series of missteps or technical breakdowns stemming from their fears could have resulted in a nuclear exchange. The book recounts incidents where, due to errors in early warning systems, the Soviets thought they were being attacked. The decision time to launch a counter attack is just minutes, the so-called “hair trigger” danger of nuclear strategy.

Reagan’s effort to eliminate nuclear weapons was thwarted by his obsession with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or the so-called Star Wars program). It is puzzling why he held so tightly to this new aspect that would inevitably upset the balance between the super powers. It seems clear that this was not just a bargaining chip he played against the Soviets. He apparently truly believed that this anti-ballistic missile “shield” would protect against nuclear attacks (although the science and technology were/are highly suspect) and could bring about the reduction or elimination of offensive weapons. The Soviets, whose economy could not bear another expensive weapons venture, logically viewed SDI as destabilizing the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) balance between the two countries. SDI would create greater threat to them since, after all, if the US could destroy the Soviet’s nuclear missiles then its own could be used without fear of retaliation.

Another chilling aspect of this story, told at great length and in remarkable detail, is the Soviet’s development of biological weapons. After an international treaty banning the production and possession of biological weapon agents was signed by most countries, the Soviet Union completely violated the treaty by continuing with a full-scale, highly secret program of manufacturing the most heinous weapons imaginable. The Soviets believed wrongly that the US was also ignoring the treaty and they continued on a massive scale to find and weaponize diseases that would create the most horrific consequences if used. The Soviet leaders were aware of this, but couldn’t exercise complete control as there was a powerful military-industrial combine that worked to perpetuate it. Indeed, the influence of the defense/warfare sector of the Russian economy (and surely our own) was a strongly contributing factor to the arms race in all dimensions. (One must remember that the Soviet economy had a huge defense industry, a much larger component of the country’s economy than in the US.)

The Soviet Union collapsed during Gorbachev’s rule. Gorbachev was not the radical reformer that he is often portrayed to be, but his moves to open up Soviet society unleashed forces that took matters far beyond what he intended. Gorbachev and Reagan develop a true rapport, but institutional impediments (including the military/industrial combines in both countries and the SDI) prevented making substantial progress on arms control. It was after the Soviet economy collapsed (and, yes, the constant pressure of keeping up with the Americans had something to do with this) that the unsustainability of the levels of nuclear weapons compelled change.

However, as the Soviet’s economy and authority structure collapsed the already poor controls over nuclear weapons and weapons materials have become clear and very worrisome. The book conveys the laxity of security over weapons and weapons materials and the ability of rogue actors to spread these elsewhere. Even if, thankfully, the chances of full-scale nuclear war have greatly lessened, the possibilities that weapons or weapons components could fall into maleficent hands has greatly increased. In the “MAD” era of the cold war (and one would not wish to return to this) the opposing powers had compelling institutional rationales for not attacking each other. Our new enemies have no such inhibiting pressure on them. There are international programs aimed at destroying stockpiles, or at least accounting for them under strict security, but the chances that these materials could fall under the control of terrorists seems very great. One remembers the fear and revulsion created by two homemade “pressure cooker” bombs in Boston; just think of what could happen if even a small amount of nuclear/radioactive elements were unleashed anywhere in the country. The efforts to gain (regain?) control over the security of the products of the Cold War deserve the highest attention possible.
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Oct 13, 2019 Mustafa Gundogan rated it it was ok

It looks like the author is in love with Reagan. Ideology aside, statistically speaking, there should be something he did that should be criticized, right? You won't find it in this book. He presents Reagan as someone willing to get rid of the nuclear weapons altogether. If this were the real intention he would've sat with Russians trying to find a way out. Instead he gave green light to defensive systems (by violating the previous agreements) fully knowing that the Soviets would understand this ...more

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About David E. Hoffman

David E. Hoffman

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David E. Hoffman covered Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign for the Knight-Ridder newspapers. In 1982, he joined The Washington Post to help cover the Reagan White House. He also covered the first two years of the George H.W. Bush presidency. His White House coverage won three national journalism awards. After reporting on the State Department, he became Jerusalem bureau chief for The Pos ...more

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“Katayev’s notes show that the military-industrial complex was indeed as large as Gorbachev feared. In 1985, Katayev estimated, defense took up 20 percent of the Soviet economy.16 Of the 135 million adults working in the Soviet Union, Katayev said, 10.4 million worked directly in the military-industrial complex at 1,770 enterprises. Nine ministries served the military, although in a clumsy effort to mask its purpose, the nuclear ministry was given the name “Ministry of Medium Machine Building,” and others were similarly disguised. More than fifty cities were almost totally engaged in the defense effort, and hundreds less so. Defense factories were called upon to make the more advanced civilian products, too, including 100 percent of all Soviet televisions, tape recorders, movie and still cameras and sewing machines.17” — 1 likes

“The United States cannot predict Soviet behavior because it has too little information about what goes on inside the Soviet Union; the Soviets cannot predict American behavior because they have too much information.” — 1 likes

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