The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

by Fred Kaplan

The American military wove the new weapons into its war plans with no hesitation. In March 1954, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the top officers of all the branches of the armed forces—declared in a Top Secret document, “In a general war, regardless of the manner of initiation, atomic weapons will be used at the outset.” The term “general war” was defined as an armed conflict that pitted American and Soviet forces directly against one another. In other words, a war between the world’s two new superpowers would be, from the first salvos, a nuclear war. This would be the case “regardless of the manner of initiation.” Any armed Soviet incursion into territory deemed vital to U.S. interests—even a tentative crossing of the East-West German border—would spark an instant, all-out nuclear response.