The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

by Dan Carlin

Some of the more aggressive voices at the time argued for doing just that, acting before the advantage narrowed. General George Patton famously suggested before demobilization began that, since the Western Allies already had mobilized forces over in Europe, ready to fight, they ought to confront the Soviets right away. No one knew how long that window of opportunity was going to last.* Only a fool, some thought, would squander such a chance. There were differing opinions about what to do with the United States’ atomic monopoly. President Truman’s secretary of war, Henry Stimson, described the advantage of the monopoly in poker terms: The bomb was the equivalent, he said, of a royal straight flush. How do you resist playing with a hand like that? What would Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great—or Hitler, for that matter—have done with a monopoly on nuclear weapons? Not use them? If you gave the great Carthaginian general Hannibal nuclear weapons in his life-or-death struggle with the Roman Republic, handed him the button, and said, “If you push this, all of Rome will be devastated,” does he push it, or does he say, “Maybe I should think about this”?*