Stalin and the Bomb

by David Holloway

In May 1948 the JCS approved the Joint Emergency War Plan, “Halfmoon,” which envisaged “a powerful air offensive designed to exploit the destructive and psychological power of atomic weapons against the vital elements of the Soviet war making capacity.”24 Truman rejected this plan and ordered that a plan based solely on conventional forces be prepared, for he still appears to have hoped that atomic weapons might be outlawed by international control. At the same time, however, he refused to countenance a defense budget that would allow the United States to maintain what the Joint Chiefs regarded as adequate conventional forces. As a result, American strategy came ultimately to depend on the atomic air offensive.25 The Strategic Air Command (SAC), which had been established in March 1946 to conduct long-range offensive operations in any part of the world, now became the spearhead of American military power.